MY DEAREST FRIEND,--I have been prevented from answering your last letter

entirely by the state of my eyes, and my wish to write more fully to you

than their weakness would permit. For the last month and more I have

indeed been a very crazy machine.... _That_ consequence of this

long-continued ill-health which I most regret is, that it has thrown me so

sadly behindhand in the performance of my engagements with the bookseller,

that I almost fear I shall not be able to raise money enough by Christmas

to make it prudent for me to journey southward. I shall, however, try hard

for it. My plan was to go to London, and make a faint trial whether or no

I could get a sort of dramatic romance, which I had more than half

finished, upon the stage, and from London to visit Stowey and Gunville.

Dear little Hartley has been ill in a stomach complaint which ended in the

yellow jaundice, and frightened me sorely, as you may well believe. But,

praise be to God, he is recovered and begins to look like himself. He is a

very extraordinary creature, and if he live will, I doubt not, prove a

great genius. Derwent is a fat, pretty child, healthy and hungry. I

deliberated long whether I should not call him Thomas Poole Coleridge, and

at last gave up the idea only because your nephew is called Thomas Poole,

and because if ever it should be my destiny once again to live near you, I

believed that such a name would give pain to some branches of your family.

You will scarcely exact a very severe account of what a man has been doing

who has been obliged for days and days together to keep his bed. Yet I

have not been altogether idle, having in my own conceit gained great light

into several parts of the human mind which have hitherto remained either

wholly unexplained or most falsely explained. To one resolution I am

wholly made up, to wit, that as soon as I am a freeman in the world of

money I will never write a line for the express purpose of money (but only

as believing it good and useful, in some way or other). Although I am

certain that I have been greatly improving both in knowledge and power in

these last twelve months, yet still at times it presses upon me with a

painful weight that I have not evidenced a more tangible utility. I have

too much trifled with my reputation. You have conversed much with Davy; he

is delighted with you. What do you think of him? Is he not a great man,

think you?... I and my wife were beyond measure delighted by your account

of your mother’s health. Give our best, kindest loves to her. Charles

Lloyd has settled at Ambleside, sixteen miles from Keswick. I shall not

see him. If I cannot come, I will write you a very, very long letter,

containing the most important of the many thoughts and feelings which I

want to communicate to you, but hope to do it face to face.

Give my love to Ward, and to J. Chester. How is poor old Mr. Rich and his

wife?

God have you ever in his keeping, making life tranquil to you. Believe me

to be what I have been ever, and am, attached to you _one_ degree more at

least than to any other living man.

S. T. COLERIDGE.

CXV. TO SIR H. DAVY.

February 3, 1801.

MY DEAR DAVY,--I can scarcely reconcile it to my conscience to make you

pay postage for another letter. Oh, what a fine unveiling of modern

politics it would be if there were published a minute detail of all the

sums received by government from the post establishment, and of all the

outlets in which the sums so received flowed out again! and, on the other

hand, all the domestic affections which had been stifled, all the

intellectual progress that would have been, but is not, on account of the

heavy tax, etc., etc. The letters of a nation ought to be paid for as an

article of national expense. Well! but I did not take up this paper to

flourish away in splenetic politics. A gentleman resident here, his name

Calvert,[241] an idle, good-hearted, and ingenious man, has a great desire

to commence fellow-student with me and Wordsworth in chemistry. He is an

intimate friend of Wordsworth’s, and he has proposed to W. to take a house

which he (Calvert) has nearly built, called Windy Brow, in a delicious

situation, scarce half a mile from Greta Hall, the residence of S. T.

Coleridge, Esq., and so for him (Calvert) to live with them, that is,

Wordsworth and his sister. In this case he means to build a little

laboratory, etc. Wordsworth has not quite decided, but is strongly

inclined to adopt the scheme, because he and his sister have before lived

with Calvert on the same footing, and are much attached to him; because my

health is so precarious and so much injured by wet, and his health, too,

is like little potatoes, no great things, and therefore Grasmere (thirteen

miles from Keswick) is too great a distance for us to enjoy each other’s

society without inconvenience, as much as it would be profitable for us

both; and, likewise, because he feels it more necessary for him to have

some intellectual pursuit less closely connected with deep passion than

poetry, and is of course desirous, too, not to be so wholly ignorant of

knowledge so exceedingly important. However, whether Wordsworth come or

no, Calvert and I have determined to begin and go on. Calvert is a man of

sense and some originality, and is, besides, what is well called a handy

man. He is a good practical mechanic, etc., and is desirous to lay out any

sum of money that is necessary. You know how long, how ardently I have

wished to initiate myself in chemical science, both for its own sake and

in no small degree likewise, my beloved friend, that I may be able to

sympathise with all that you do and think. Sympathise blindly with it all

I do even _now_, God knows! from the very middle of my heart’s heart, but

I would fain sympathise with you in the light of knowledge. This

opportunity is exceedingly precious to me, as on my own account I could

not afford the least additional expense, having been already, by long and

successive illnesses, thrown behindhand so much that for the next four or

five months I fear, let me work as hard as I can, I shall not be able to

do what my heart within me _burns_ to do, that is, to _concentre_ my free

mind to the affinities of the feelings with words and ideas under the

title of “Concerning Poetry, and the nature of the Pleasures derived from

it.” I have faith that I do understand the subject, and I am sure that if

I write what I ought to do on it, the work would supersede all the books

of metaphysics, and all the books of morals too. To whom shall a young man

utter _his pride_, if not to a young man whom he loves?

I beg you, therefore, my dear Davy, to write me a long letter when you are

at leisure, informing me: Firstly, What books it will be well for me and

Calvert to purchase. Secondly, Directions for a convenient little

laboratory. Thirdly, To what amount apparatus would run in expense, and

whether or no you would be so good as to superintend its making at

Bristol. Fourthly, Give me your advice how to _begin_. And, fifthly, and

lastly, and mostly, do send a _drop_ of hope to my parched tongue, that

you will, if you can, come and visit me in the spring. Indeed, indeed, you

ought to see this country, this beautiful country, and then the joy you

would send into me!

The shape of this paper will convince you with what eagerness I began this

letter; I really did not see that it was not a sheet.

I have been _thinking_ vigorously during my illness, so that I cannot say

that my long, long wakeful nights have been all lost to me. The subject of

my meditations has been the relations of thoughts to things; in the

language of Hume, of ideas to impressions. I may be truly described in the

words of Descartes: I have been “res cogitans, id est, dubitans,

affirmans, negans, pauca intelligens, multa ignorans, volens, nolens,

imaginans etiam, et sentiens.” I please myself with believing that you

will receive no small pleasure from the result of these broodings,

although I expect in you (in some points) a determined opponent, but I say

of my mind in this respect: “Manet imperterritus ille hostem magnanimum

opperiens, et mole suâ stat.” Every poor fellow has his proud hour

sometimes, and this I suppose is mine.

I am better in every respect than I was, but am still _very feeble_. The

weather has been woefully against me for the last fortnight, having rained

here almost incessantly. I take quantities of bark, but the effect is (to

express myself with the dignity of science) _x_ = 0000000, and I shall not

gather strength, or that little suffusion of bloom which belongs to my

healthy state, till I can walk out.

God bless you, my dear Davy! and your ever affectionate friend,

S. T. COLERIDGE.

P. S. An electrical machine, and a number of little knickknacks connected

with it, Mr. Calvert has.--_Write._

CXVI. TO THOMAS POOLE.

Monday, March 16, 1801.

MY DEAR FRIEND,--The interval since my last letter has been filled up by

me in the most intense study. If I do not greatly delude myself, I have

not only _completely extricated the notions of time and space_, but have

overthrown the doctrine of association, as taught by Hartley, and with it

all the irreligious metaphysics of modern infidels--especially the

doctrine of necessity. This I have _done_; but I trust that I am about to

do more--namely, that I shall be able to evolve all the five senses, that

is, to deduce them from one sense, and to state their growth and the

causes of their difference, and in this evolvement to solve the process of

life and consciousness. _I write this to you only, and I pray you, mention

what I have written to no one._ At Wordsworth’s advice, or rather fervent

entreaty, I have intermitted the pursuit. The intensity of thought, and

the number of minute experiments with light and figure, have made me so

nervous and feverish that I cannot sleep as long as I ought and have been

used to do; and the sleep which I have is made up of ideas so connected,

and so little different from the operations of reason, that it does not

afford me the due refreshment. I shall therefore take a week’s respite,

and make “Christabel” ready for the press; which I shall publish by

itself, in order to get rid of all my engagements with Longman. My German

Book I have suffered to remain suspended chiefly because the thoughts

which had employed my sleepless nights during my illness were imperious

over me; and though poverty was staring me in the face, yet I dared behold

my image miniatured in the pupil of her hollow eye, so steadily did I look

her in the face; for it seemed to me a suicide of my very soul to divert

my attention from truths so important, which came to me almost as a

revelation. Likewise, I cannot express to you, dear Friend of my heart!

the loathing which I once or twice felt when I attempted to write, merely

for the bookseller, without any sense of the moral utility of what I was

writing. I shall therefore, as I said, immediately publish my

“Christabel,” with two essays annexed to it, on the “Preternatural” and on

“Metre.”--This done, I shall propose to Longman, instead of my Travels

(which, though nearly done, I am exceedingly anxious not to publish,

because it brings me forward in a _personal_ way, as a man who relates

little adventures of himself to _amuse_ people, and thereby exposes me to

sarcasm and the malignity of anonymous critics, and is, besides, _beneath

me_, ...) I shall propose to Longman to accept instead of these Travels a

work on the originality and merits of Locke, Hobbes, and Hume, which work

I mean as a _pioneer_ to my greater work, and as exhibiting a proof that I

have not formed opinions without an attentive perusal of the works of my

predecessors, from Aristotle to Kant.

I am confident that I can prove that the reputation of these three men has

been wholly unmerited, and I have in what I have already written traced

the whole history of the causes that effected this reputation entirely to

Wordsworth’s satisfaction.

You have seen, I hope, the “Lyrical Ballads.” In the divine poem called

“Michael,” by an infamous blunder[242] of the printer, near twenty lines

are omitted in page 210, which makes it nearly unintelligible. Wordsworth

means to write to you and to send them together with a list of the

numerous errata. The character of the “Lyrical Ballads” is very great, and

will increase daily. They have extolled them in the “British Critic.” Ask

Chester (to whom I shall write in a week or so concerning his German

books) for Greenough’s address, and be so kind as to send it immediately.

Indeed, I hope for a _long_ letter from you, your opinion of the L. B.,

the preface, etc. You know, I presume, that Davy is appointed Director of

the Laboratory, and Professor at the Royal Institution? I received a very

affectionate letter from him on the occasion. Love to all. We are all

well, except, perhaps, myself. Write! God love you and

S. T. COLERIDGE.

CXVII. TO THE SAME.

Monday, March 23, 1801.

MY DEAR FRIEND,--I received your kind letter of the 14th. I was agreeably

disappointed in finding that you had been interested in the letter

respecting Locke. Those which follow are abundantly more entertaining and

important; but I have no one to transcribe them. Nay, three letters are

written which have not been sent to Mr. Wedgwood,[243] because I have no

one to transcribe them for me, and I do not wish to be without copies. Of

that letter which you have I have no copy. It is somewhat unpleasant to me

that Mr. Wedgwood has never answered my letter requesting his opinion of

the utility of such a work, nor acknowledged the receipt of the long

letter containing the evidences that the whole of Locke’s system, as far

as it was a system, and with the exclusion of those parts only which have

been given up _as absurdities_ by his warmest admirers, preëxisted in the

writings of Descartes, in a far more pure, elegant, and delightful form.

Be not afraid that I shall join the party of the _Little-ists_. I believe

that I shall delight you by the detection of their artifices. _Now Mr.

Locke was the founder of this sect, himself a perfect Little-ist._

My opinion is thus: that deep thinking is attainable only by a man of deep

feeling, and that all truth is a species of revelation. The more I

understand of Sir Isaac Newton’s works, the more boldly I dare utter to my

own mind, and therefore to _you_, that I believe the souls of five hundred

Sir Isaac Newtons would go to the making up of a Shakespeare or a Milton.

But if it please the Almighty to grant me health, hope, and a steady mind

(always the three clauses of my hourly prayers), before my thirtieth year

I will thoroughly understand the whole of Newton’s works. At present I

must content myself with endeavouring to make myself entire master of his

easier work, that on Optics. I am exceedingly delighted with the beauty

and neatness of his experiments, and with the accuracy of his _immediate_

deductions from them; but the opinions founded on these deductions, and

indeed his whole theory is, I am persuaded, so exceedingly superficial as

without impropriety to be deemed false. Newton was a mere materialist.

_Mind_, in his system, is always _passive_,--a lazy _Looker-on_ on an

external world. If the mind be not _passive_, if it be indeed made in

God’s Image, and that, too, in the sublimest sense, the _Image of the

Creator_, there is ground for suspicion that any system built on the

passiveness of the mind must be false, as a system. I need not observe, my

dear friend, how unutterably silly and contemptible these opinions would

be if written to any but to another self. I assure you, solemnly assure

you, that you and Wordsworth are the only men on earth to whom I would

have uttered a word on this subject.

It is a rule, by which I hope to direct all my literary efforts, to let my

opinions and my proofs go together. It is _insolent_ to _differ_ from the

public _opinion_ in _opinion_, if it be only _opinion_. It is sticking up

little _i by itself_, _i_ against the whole alphabet. But one _word_ with

_meaning_ in it is worth the whole alphabet together. Such is a sound

argument, an incontrovertible fact.

_Oh, for a Lodge_ in a land where human life was an end to which labour

was only a means, instead of being, as it is here, a mere means of

carrying on labour. I am oppressed at times with a true heart-gnawing

melancholy when I contemplate the state of my poor oppressed country. God

knows, it is as much as I can do to put meat and bread on my own table,

and hourly some poor starving wretch comes to my door to put in his claim

for part of it. It fills me with indignation to hear the _croaking_

account which the English emigrants send home of America. “The society so

bad, the manners so vulgar, the servants so insolent!” Why, then, do they

not seek out one another and make a society? It is arrant ingratitude to

talk so of a land in which there is no poverty but as a consequence of

absolute idleness; and to talk of it, too, with abuse comparatively with

England, with a place where the laborious poor are dying with grass in

their bellies. It is idle to talk of the seasons, as if that country must

not needs be miserably governed in which an unfavourable season introduces

a famine. No! no! dear Poole, it is our pestilent commerce, our unnatural

crowding together of men in cities, and our government by rich men, that

are bringing about the manifestations of offended Deity. I am assured that

such is the depravity of the public mind, that no literary man can find

bread in England except by mis-employing and debasing his talents; that

nothing of real excellence would be either felt or understood. The annuity

which I hold, _perhaps by a very precarious tenure_, will shortly from the

decreasing value of money become less than one half what it was when first

allowed to me. If I were allowed to retain it, I would go and settle near

Priestley, in America. I shall, no doubt, get a certain price for the two

or three works which I shall next publish, but I foresee they will not

sell. The booksellers, finding this, will treat me as an unsuccessful

author, that is, they will employ me only as an anonymous translator at a

guinea a sheet. I have no doubt that I could make £500 a year if I liked.

But then I must forego all desire of truth and excellence. I say I would

go to America if Wordsworth would go with me, and we could persuade two or

three farmers of this country, who are exceedingly attached to us, to

accompany us. I would go, if the difficulty of procuring sustenance in

this country remain in the state and degree in which it is at present; not

on any romantic scheme, but merely because society has become a matter of

great indifference to me. I grow daily more and more attached to solitude;

but it is a matter of the utmost importance to be removed from seeing and

suffering want.

God love you, my dear friend.

S. T. COLERIDGE.

CXVIII. TO ROBERT SOUTHEY.

GRETA HALL, KESWICK, [May 6, 1801].

MY DEAR SOUTHEY,--I wrote you a very, very gloomy letter; and I have taken

blame to myself for inflicting so much pain on you without any adequate

motive. Not that I exaggerated anything, as far as the immediate present

is concerned; but had I been in better health and a more genial state of

sensation, I should assuredly have looked out upon a more cheerful future.

Since I wrote you, I have had another and more severe fit of illness,

which has left me weak, very weak, but with so calm a mind that I am

determined to believe that this fit was _bonâ fide_ the last. Whether I

shall be able to pass the next winter in this country is doubtful; nor is

it possible I should know till the fall of the leaf. At all events, you

will (I hope and trust, and if need were, _entreat_) spend as much of the

summer and autumn with us as will be in your power, and if our _healths_

should permit it, I am confident there will be no other solid objection to

our living together in the same house, divided. We have ample room,--room

enough, and more than enough, and I am willing to believe that the blessed

dreams we dreamt some six years ago may be auguries of something really

noble which we may yet perform together.

We wait impatiently, anxiously, for a letter announcing your arrival.

Indeed, the article _Falmouth_ has taken precedence of the _Leading

Paragraph_ with me for the last three weeks. Our best love to Edith.

Derwent is the boast of the county; the little river god is as beautiful

as if he had been the child of Venus Anaduomene previous to her emersion.

Dear Hartley! we are at times alarmed by the state of his health, but at

present he is well. If I were to lose him, I am afraid it would

exceedingly deaden my affection for any other children I may have.

A little child, a limber elf

Singing, dancing to itself;

A faery thing with red round cheeks

That always _finds_, and never _seeks_,

Doth make a vision to the sight, 5

Which fills a father’s eyes with light!

And pleasures flow in so thick and fast

Upon his heart that he at last

Must needs express his love’s excess

In words of wrong and bitterness. 10

Perhaps it is pretty to force together

Thoughts so all unlike each other;

To mutter and mock a broken charm;

To dally with wrong that does no harm.

Perhaps ’tis tender, too, and pretty, 15

At each wild word to feel within

A sweet recoil of love and pity;

And what if in a world of sin

(Oh sorrow and shame! should this be true)

Such giddiness of heart and brain 20

Comes seldom, save from rage and pain,

So talks as it’s most used to do.[244]

A very metaphysical account of fathers calling their children rogues,

rascals, and little varlets, etc.

God bless you, my dear Southey! I need not say, Write.

S. T. COLERIDGE.

P. S. We shall have peas, beans, turnips (with boiled leg of mutton),

cauliflowers, French beans, etc., etc., endless! We have a noble garden.

CXIX. TO THE SAME.

Wednesday, July 22, 1801.

MY DEAR SOUTHEY,--Yesterday evening I met a boy on an ass, winding down

_as picturisk a glen_ as eye ever looked at, he and his beast no mean part

of the picture. I had taken a liking to the little blackguard at a

distance, and I could have downright hugged him when he gave me a letter

in your handwriting. Well, God be praised! I shall surely see you once

more, somewhere or other. If it be really impracticable for you to come to

me, I will doubtless do anything rather than not see you, though, in

simple truth, travelling in chaises, or coaches even, for one day is sure

to lay me up for a week. But do, do, for heaven’s sake, come and go the

shortest way, however dreary it be; for there is enough to be seen when

you get to our house. If you did but know what a flutter the old moveable

at my left breast has been in since I read your letter. I have not had

such a fillip for many months. My dear Edith; how glad you were to see old

Bristol again!

I am again climbing up that rock of convalescence from which I have been

so often washed off and hurried back; but I have been so unusually well

these last two days that I should begin to look the damsel Hope full in

the face, instead of sheep’s-eyeing her, were it not that the weather has

been so unusually hot, and that is my joy. Yes, sir! we will go to

Constantinople; but as it rains there, which my gout loves as the devil

does holy water, the Grand Turk shall shew the exceeding attachment he

will no doubt form towards us by appointing us his viceroys in Egypt. I

will be Supreme Bey of that showerless district, and you shall be my

supervisor. But for God’s sake make haste and come to me, and let us talk

of the sands of Arabia while we are floating in our lazy boat on Keswick

Lake, with our eyes on massy Skiddaw, so green and high. Perhaps Davy

might accompany you. Davy will remain unvitiated; his deepest and most

recollectable delights have been in solitude, and the next to those with

one or two whom he loved. He is placed, no doubt, in a perilous desert of

good things; but he is connected with the present race of men by a very

awful tie, that of being able to confer immediate benefit on them; and the

cold-blooded, venom-toothed snake that winds around him shall be only his

coat of arms, as God of Healing.

I exceedingly long to see “Thalaba,” and perhaps still more to read

“Madoc” over again. I never heard of any third edition of my poems. I

think you must have confused it with the L. B. Longman could not surely be

so uncouthly ill-mannered as not to write to me to know if I wished to

make any corrections or additions. If I am well enough, I mean to alter,

with a devilish sweep of revolution, my Tragedy, and publish it in a

little volume by itself, with a new name, as a poem. But I have no heart

for poetry. Alas! alas! how should I? who have passed nine months with

giddy head, sick stomach, and swoln knees. My dear Southey! it is said

that long sickness makes us all grow selfish, by the necessity which it

imposes of continuously thinking about ourselves. But long and sleepless

nights are a fine antidote.

Oh, how I have dreamt about you! Times that _have been_, and never can

return, have been with me on my bed of pain, and how I yearned towards you

in those moments. I myself can know only by feeling it over again. But

come “strengthen the weak hands, and confirm the feeble knees. Then shall

the lame man leap as a hart, and sorrow and sighing shall flee away.”

I am here, in the vicinity of Durham, for the purpose of reading from the

Dean and Chapter’s Library an ancient of whom you may have heard, _Duns

Scotus_! I mean to set the poor old Gemman on his feet again; and in order

to wake him out of his present lethargy, I am burning Locke, Hume, and

Hobbes under his nose. They stink worse than feather or assafœtida. Poor

Joseph! [Cottle] he has scribbled away both head and heart. What an

affecting essay I could write on that man’s character! Had he gone in his

quiet way on a little pony, looking about him with a sheep’s-eye cast now

and then at a short poem, I do verily think from many parts of the

“Malvern Hill,” that he would at last have become a poet better than many

who have had much fame, but he would be an Epic, and so

“Victorious o’er the Danes, I Alfred, preach,

Of my own forces, Chaplain-General!”

... Write immediately, directing Mr. Coleridge, Mr. George

Hutchinson’s,[245] Bishop’s Middleham, Rushiford, Durham, and tell me

when you set off, and I will contrive and meet you at Liverpool, where, if

you are jaded with the journey, we can stay a day or two at Dr.

Crompton’s, and chat a bit with Roscoe and Curry,[246] whom you will like

as men far, far better than as writers. O Edith; how happy Sara will be,

and little Hartley, who uses the air of the breezes as skipping-ropes, and

fat Derwent, so beautiful, and so proud of his three teeth, that there’s

no bearing of him!

God bless you, dear Southey, and

S. T. COLERIDGE.

P. S. Remember me kindly to Danvers and Mrs. Danvers.

[Care of] MRS. DANVERS,

Kingsdown Parade, Bristol.

CXX. TO THE SAME.

DURHAM, Saturday, July 25, 1801.

MY DEAR SOUTHEY,--I do loathe cities, that’s certain. I am in Durham, at

an inn,--and that, too, I do not like, and have dined with a large parcel

of priests all belonging to the cathedral, thoroughly ignorant and

hard-hearted. I have had no small trouble in gaining permission to have a

few books sent to me eight miles from the place, which nobody has ever

read in the memory of man. Now you will think what follows a lie, and it

is not. I asked a stupid haughty fool, who is the Librarian of the Dean

and Chapter’s Library in this city, if it had Leibnitz. He answered, “We

have no Museum in this Library for natural curiosities; but there is a

Mathematical Instrument setter in the town, who shews such animalcula

through a glass of great magnifying powers.” Heaven and earth! he

understood the word “_live nits_.” Well, I return early to-morrow to

Middleham; to a quiet good family that love me dearly--a young farmer and

his sister, and he makes very droll verses in the northern dialects and in

the metre of Burns, and is a great humourist, and the woman is so very

good a woman that I have seldom indeed seen the like of her. Death! that

everywhere there should be one or two good and excellent people like

these, and that they should not have the power given ’em ... to whirl away

the rest to Hell!

I do not approve the Palermo and Constantinople scheme, to be secretary to

a fellow that would poison you for being a poet, while he is only a lame

verse-maker. But verily, dear Southey! it will not suit you to be under

any man’s control, or biddances. What if you were a consul? ’Twould fix

you to one place, as bad as if you were a parson. It won’t do. Now mark my

scheme! St. Nevis is the most lovely as well as the most healthy island in

the W. Indies. Pinney’s[247] estate is there, and he has a country-house

situated in a most heavenly way, a very large mansion. Now between you and

me I have reason to believe that not only this house is at my service, but

many advantages in a family way that would go one half to lessen the

expenses of living there, and perhaps Pinney would appoint us sinecure

negro-drivers, at a hundred a year each, or some other snug and reputable

office, and, perhaps, too, we might get some office in which there is

quite nothing to do under the Governor. Now I and my family, and you and

Edith, and Wordsworth and his sister might all go there, and make the

Island more illustrious than Cos or Lesbos! A heavenly climate, a heavenly

country, and a good house. The seashore so near us, dells and rocks and

streams. Do now think of this. But say nothing about it on account of old

Pinney. Wordsworth would certainly go if I went. By the living God, it is

my opinion that we should not leave three such men behind us. N. B. I have

every reason to believe Keswick (and Cumberland and Westmoreland in

general) full as dry a climate as Bristol. Our rains fall more certainly

in certain months, but we have fewer rainy days, taking the year through.

As to cold, I do not believe the difference perceptible by the human body.

But I feel that there is no relief for me in _any part_ of England. Very

hot weather brings me about in an instant, and I relapse as soon as it

coldens.

You say nothing of your voyage homeward, or the circumstances that

preceded it. This, however, I far rather hear from your mouth than your

letters. Come! and come quickly. My love to Edith, and remember me kindly

to Mary and Martha and Eliza and Mrs. Fricker. My kind respects to Charles

and Mrs. Danvers. Is Davy with you? If he is, I am sure he speaks

affectionately of me. God bless you! Write.

S. T. COLERIDGE.

CXXI. TO THE SAME.

SCARBOROUGH, August 1, 1801.

MY DEAR SOUTHEY,--On my return from Durham (I foolishly walked back), I

was taken ill, and my left knee swelled “pregnant with agony,” as Mr.

Dodsley says in one of his poems. Dr. Fenwick[248] has earnestly

persuaded me to try horse-exercise and warm sea-bathing, and I took the

opportunity of riding with Sara Hutchinson to her brother Tom, who lives

near the place, where I can ride to and fro, and bathe with no other

expense there than that of the bath. The fit comes on me either at nine at

night, or two in the morning. In the former case it continues nine hours,

in the latter five. I am often literally _sick_ with pain. In the daytime,

however, I am well, surprisingly so indeed, considering how very little

sleep I am able to snatch. Your letter was sent after me, and arrived here

this morning, and but that my letter _can_ reach you on the 5th of this

month, I would immediately set off again, though I arrived here only last

night. But I am unwilling not to try the baths for one week. If,

therefore, you have not made the immediate preparation you may stay one

week longer at Bristol. But if you have, you must look at the lake, and

play with my babies three or four days, though this grieves me. I do not

like it. I want to be with you, and to meet you even to the very verge of

the Lake Country. I would far rather that you would stay a week at

Grasmere (which is on the road, fourteen miles from Keswick), with

Wordsworth, than go on to Keswick, and I not there. Oh, how you will love

Grasmere!

All I ever wish of you with regard to wintering at Keswick is to stay with

me till you find the climate injurious. When I read that cheerful

sentence, “We will climb Skiddaw this year and scale Etna the next,” with

a right piteous and humorous smile did I ogle my poor knee, which at this

present moment is larger than the thickest part of my thigh.

A little Quaker girl (the daughter of the great Quaker mathematician

Slee, a friend of anti-negro-trade Clarkson, who has a house at the foot

of Ulleswater, which Slee Wordsworth dined with, a pretty parenthesis!),

this little girl, four years old, happened after a very hearty meal to

_eructate_, while Wordsworth was there. Her mother _looked_ at her, and

the little creature immediately and _formally_ observed: “Yan belks when

yan’s fu, and when yan’s empty.” That is, “One belches when one’s full and

when one’s empty.” Since that time this is a favourite piece of slang at

Grasmere and Greta Hall, whenever we talk of poor Joey, George Dyer, and

other perseverants in the noble trade of scribbleism.

Wrangham,[249] who lives near here, one of your anthology friends, has

married again, a lady of a neat £700 a year. His living by the Inclosure

[Act] will be something better than £600, besides what little fortune he

had with his last wife, who died in the first year. His present wife’s

cousin observed, “Mr. W. is a _lucky_ man: his present lady is very weakly

and delicate.” I like the idea of a man’s _speculating in sickly wives_.

It would be no bad character for a farce.

That letter £ was a kind-hearted, honest, well-spoken citizen. The three

strokes which _did_ for him were, as I take it, (1), the Ictus Cardiacus,

which devitalized his moral heart; (2ondly) the stroke of the apoplexy in

his _head_; and (thirdly) a stroke of the palsy in his right hand, which

produces a terrible shaking and impotence in the very attempt to reach his

breeches pocket. O dear Southey! what incalculable blessings, worthy of

thanksgiving in Heaven, do we not owe to our being and _having_ been

_poor_! No man’s heart can wholly stand up against property. My love to

Edith.

S. T. COLERIDGE.

CXXII. TO THOMAS POOLE.

KESWICK, September 19, 1801.

By a letter from Davy I have learnt, Poole, that your mother is with the

Blessed. I have given her the tears and the pang which belong to her

departure, and now she will remain to me forever, what she had long

been--a dear and venerable image, often gazed at by me in imagination, and

always with affection and filial piety. She was the only being whom I ever

_felt_ in the relation of Mother; and she is with God! We are all with

God!

What shall I say to _you_! I can only offer a prayer of thanksgiving for

you, that you are one who has habitually connected the act of thought with

that of feeling; and that your natural sorrow is so mingled up with a

sense of the omnipresence of the Good Agent, that I cannot wish it to be

other than what I know it is. The frail and the too painful will gradually

pass away from you, and there will abide in your spirit a great and sacred

accession to those solemn Remembrances and faithful Hopes in which, and by

which, the Almighty lays deep the foundations of our continuous Life, and

distinguishes us from the Brutes that perish. As all things pass away, and

those habits are broken up which constituted our own and particular Self,

our nature by a moral instinct cherishes the desire of an unchangeable

Something, and thereby awakens or stirs up anew the passion to promote

_permanent_ good, and facilitates that grand business of our

existence--still further, and further still, to generalise our affections,

till Existence itself is swallowed up in _Being_, and we are in Christ

even as He is in the Father.

It is among the advantages of these events that they learn us to associate

a keen and deep feeling with all the old good phrases, all the reverend

sayings of comfort and sympathy, that belong, as it were, to the whole

human race. I felt this, dear Poole! as I was about to write my old

God bless you, and love you for ever and ever!

Your affectionate friend,

S. T. COLERIDGE.

Would it not be well if you were to change the scene awhile! Come to me,

Poole! No--no--no. You have none that love you so well as I. I write with

tears that prevent my seeing what I am writing.

CXXIII. TO ROBERT SOUTHEY.

NETHER STOWEY, BRIDGEWATER, December 31, 1801.

DEAR SOUTHEY,--On Xmas Day I breakfasted with Davy, with the intention of

dining with you; but I returned very unwell, and in very truth in so utter

a dejection of spirits as both made it improper for me to go anywhither,

and a most unfit man to be with you. I left London on Saturday morning, 4

o’clock, and for three hours was in such a storm as I was never before out

in, for I was atop of the coach--rain, and hail, and violent wind, with

vivid flashes of lightning, that seemed almost to alternate with the

flash-like re-emersions of the waning moon, from the ever-shattered,

ever-closing clouds. However, I was armed cap-a-pie in a complete panoply,

namely, in a huge, most huge, roquelaure, which had cost the government

seven guineas, and was provided for the emigrants in the Quiberon

expedition, one of whom, falling sick, stayed behind and parted with his

cloak to Mr. Howel,[250] who lent it me. I dipped my head down, shoved it

up--and it proved a complete tent to me. I was as dry as if I had been

sitting by the fire. I arrived at Bath at eleven o’clock at night, and

spent the next day with Warren, who has gotten a very sweet woman to wife

and a most beautiful house and situation at Whitcomb on the Hill over the

bridge. On Monday afternoon I arrived at Stowey. I am a good deal better;

but my bowels are by no means de-revolutionized. So much for me. I do not

know what I am to say to you of your dear mother. Life passes away from us

in all modes and ways, in our friends, in ourselves. We all “die daily.”

Heaven knows that many and many a time I have regarded my talents and

requirements as a porter’s burthen, imposing on me the capital duty of

going on to the end of the journey, when I would gladly lie down by the

side of the road, and become the country for a mighty nation of maggots.

For what is life, gangrened, as it is with me, in its very vitals,

domestic tranquillity? These things being so, I confess that I feel for

you, but not for the _event_, as for the event only by an act of thought,

and not by any immediate _shock_ from the like feeling within myself. When

I return to town I can scarcely tell. I have not yet made up my mind

whether or no I shall move Devonward. My relations wish to see me, and I

wish to avoid the uneasy feeling I shall have, if I remain so near them

without gratifying the wish. No very brotherly mood of mind, I must

confess--but it is, nine tenths of it at least, a work of their own doing.

Poole desires to be remembered to you. Remember me to your wife and Mrs.

Lovell.

God bless you and

S. T. COLERIDGE.

CXXIV. TO HIS WIFE.

KING STREET, COVENT GARDEN, [February 24, 1802.]

MY DEAR LOVE,--I am sure it will make you happy to hear that both my

health and spirits have greatly improved, and I have small doubts that a

residence of two years in a mild and even climate will, with God’s

blessing, give me a new lease in a better constitution. You may be well

assured that I shall do nothing rashly, but our journey thither I shall

defray by letters to Poole and the Wedgwoods, or more probably addressed

to Mawman, the bookseller, who will honour my drafts in return. Of course

I shall not go till I have earned all the money necessary for the journey

that I can. The plan will be this, unless you can think of any better.

Wordsworth will marry soon after my return, and he, Mary, and Dorothy will

be our companions and neighbours. Southey means, if it is in his power, to

pass into Spain that way. About July we shall all set sail from Liverpool

to Bordeaux. Wordsworth has not yet settled whether he shall be married

from Gallow Hill or at Grasmere. But they will of course make a point that

either Sarah shall be with Mary or Mary with Sarah previous to so long a

parting. If it be decided that Sarah is to come to Grasmere, I shall

return by York, which will be but a few miles out of the way, and bring

her. At all events, I shall stay a few days at Derby,--for whom, think

you, should I meet in Davy’s lecture-room but Joseph Strutt? He behaved

most affectionately to me, and pressed me with great earnestness to pass

through Darley (which is on the road to Derby) and stay a few days at his

house among my old friends. I assure you I was much affected by his kind

and affectionate invitation (though I felt a little awkward, not knowing

_whom_ I might venture to ask after). I could not bring out the word “Mrs.

Evans,” and so said, “Your sister, sir? I _hope she_ is well!”

On Sunday I dined at Sir William Rush’s, and on Monday likewise, and went

with them to Mrs. Billington’s Benefit. ’Twas the “Beggar’s Opera;” it was

_perfection_! I seem to have acquired a new sense by hearing her. I wished

you to have been there. I assure you I am quite a man of _fashion_; so

many titled acquaintances and handsome carriages stopping at my door, and

fine cards. And then I am such an exquisite judge of music and painting,

and pass criticisms on furniture and chandeliers, and pay such very

handsome compliments to all women of fashion, that I do verily believe

that if I were to stay three months in town and have tolerable health and

spirits, I should be a Thing in vogue,--the very _tonish_ poet and

Jemmy-Jessamy-fine-talker in town. If you were only to see the tender

smiles that I occasionally receive from the Honourable Mrs. Damer! you

would scratch her eyes out for jealousy! And then there’s the _sweet_ (N.

B. musky) Lady Charlotte ----! Nay, but I won’t tell you her name,--you

might perhaps take it into your head to write an anonymous letter to her,

and distrust our little innocent amour.

Oh that I were at Keswick with my darlings! My Hartley and my fat Derwent!

God bless you, my dear Sarah! I shall return in love and cheerfulness, and

therefore in pleasurable convalescence, if not in health. We shall try to

get poor dear little Robert into Christ’s Hospital; that wretch of a

Quaker will do nothing. The skulking rogue! just to lay hold of the time

when Mrs. Lovell was on a visit to Southey; there was such low cunning in

the thought.

Remember me most kindly to Mr. and Mrs. Wilkinson, and tell Mr. Jackson

that I have not shaken a hand since I quitted him with more esteem and

glad feeling than I shall soon, I trust, shake his with. God bless you,

and your affectionate and faithful husband (notwithstanding the Honourable

Mrs. D. and Lady Charlotte!),

S. T. COLERIDGE.

[Illustration]

CXXV. TO W. SOTHEBY.

GRETA HALL, KESWICK, Tuesday, July 13, 1802.

MY DEAR SIR,--I had written you a letter and was about to have walked to

the post with it when I received yours from Luff.[251] It gave me such

lively pleasure that I threw my letter into the fire, for it related

chiefly to the “Erste Schiffer” of Gesner, and I could not endure that my

first letter to you should _begin_ with a subject so little interesting to

my heart or understanding. I trust that you are before this at the end of

your journey, and that Mrs. and Miss Sotheby have so completely recovered

themselves as to have almost forgotten all the fatigue except such

instances of it as it may be pleasant to them to remember. Why need I say

how often I have thought of you since your departure, and with what hope

and pleasurable emotion? I will acknowledge to you that your very, very

kind letter was not only a pleasure to me, but a relief to my mind; for,

after I had left you on the road between Ambleside and Grasmere, I was

dejected by the apprehension that I had been unpardonably loquacious, and

had oppressed you, and still more Mrs. Sotheby, with my many words so

impetuously uttered! But in simple truth, you were yourselves, in part,

the innocent causes of it. For the meeting with you, the manner of the

meeting, your kind attentions to me, the deep and healthful delight which

every impressive and beautiful object seemed to pour out upon you; kindred

opinions, kindred pursuits, kindred feelings in persons whose habits, and,

as it were, walk of life, have been so different from my own,--these and

more than these, which I would but cannot say, all flowed in upon me with

unusually strong impulses of pleasure,--and pleasure in a body and soul

such as I happen to possess “intoxicates more than strong wine.” However,

_I promise to be a much more subdued creature when you next meet me_, for

I had but just recovered from a state of extreme dejection, brought on in

part by ill health, partly by other circumstances; and solitude and

solitary musings do of themselves impregnate our thoughts, perhaps, with

more life and sensation than will leave the balance quite even. But you,

my dear sir! looked at a brother poet with a brother’s eyes. Oh that you

were now in my study and saw, what is now before the window at which I am

writing,--that rich mulberry-purple which a floating cloud has thrown on

the lake, and that quiet boat making its way through it to the shore!

We have had little else but rain and squally weather since you left us

till within the last three days. But showery weather is no evil to us; and

even that most oppressive of all weathers, hot, small _drizzle_, exhibits

the mountains the best of any. It produced such new combinations of ridges

in the Lodore and Borrowdale mountains on Saturday morning that I declare,

had I been blindfolded and so brought to the prospect, I should scarcely

have known them again. It was a dream such as lovers have,--a wild and

transfiguring, yet enchantingly lovely dream, of an object lying by the

side of the sleeper. Wordsworth, who has walked through Switzerland,

declared that he never saw anything superior, perhaps nothing equal, in

the Alps.

The latter part of your letter made me truly happy. Uriel himself should

not be half as welcome; and indeed he, I must admit, was never any great

favourite of mine. I always thought him a bantling of zoneless Italian

muses, which Milton heard cry at the door of his imagination and took in

out of charity. However, come as you may, _carus mihi expectatusque

venies_.[252] _De cœteris rebus si quid agendum est, et quicquid sit

agendum, ut quam rectissime agantur omni meâ curâ, operâ, diligentiâ,

gratiâ providebo._[253]

On my return to Keswick, I reperused the “Erste Schiffer” with great

attention, and the result was an increasing disinclination to the business

of translating it; though my fancy was not a little flattered by the idea

of seeing my rhymes in such a gay livery.--As poor Giordano Bruno[254]

says in his strange, yet noble poem, “De Immenso et Innumerabili,”--

“Quam Garymedeo cultu, graphiceque venustus!

Narcissis referam, peramarunt me quoque Nymphæ.”

But the poem was too silly. The first conception is noble, so very good

that I am spiteful enough to hope that I shall discover it not to have

been original in Gesner,--he has so abominably maltreated it. First, the

story is very inartificially constructed. We should have been let into the

existence of the girl by her mother, through the young man, and after

_his_ appearance. This, however, is comparatively a trifle. But the

machinery is so superlatively contemptible and commonplace; as if a young

man could not dream of a tale which had deeply impressed him without

Cupid, or have a fair wind all the way to an island without Æolus. Æolus

himself is a god devoted and dedicated, I should have thought, to the Muse

of Travestie. His speech in Gesner is not deficient in fancy, but it is a

girlish fancy, and the god of the wind, exceedingly disquieted with animal

love, makes a very ridiculous figure in my imagination. Besides, it was

ill taste to introduce Cupid and Æolus at a time which we positively know

to have been anterior to the invention and establishment of the Grecian

Mythology; and the speech of Æolus reminds me perpetually of little

engravings from the cut stones of the ancients,--seals, and whatever else

they call them. Again, the girl’s yearnings and conversations with him are

something between the nursery and the _Veneris volgivagæ templa, et

libidinem spirat et subsusurrat, dum innocentiæ loquillam, et virginiæ

cogitationis dulciter offensantis luctamina simulat_.

It is not the thought that a lonely girl could have; but exactly such as a

boarding-school _miss_, whose imagination, to say no worse, had been

somewhat stirred and heated by the perusal of French or German pastorals,

would suppose her to say. But this is, indeed, general in the German and

French poets. It is easy to clothe imaginary beings with our own thoughts

and feelings; but to send ourselves out of ourselves, to _think_ ourselves

into the thoughts and feelings of beings in circumstances wholly and

strangely different from our own, _hic labor hoc opus_; and who has

achieved it? Perhaps only Shakespeare. Metaphysics is a word that you, my

dear sir, are no great friend to, but yet you will agree with me that a

great poet must be _implicité_, if not _explicité_, a profound

metaphysician. He may not have it in logical coherence in his brain and

tongue, but he must have the ear of a wild Arab listening in the silent

desert, the eye of a North American Indian tracing the footsteps of an

enemy upon the leaves that strew the forest, the touch of a blind man

feeling the face of a darling child. And do not think me a bigot if I say

that I have read no French or German writer who appears to me to have a

_heart_ sufficiently pure and simple to be capable of this or anything

like it. I could say a great deal more in abuse of poor Gesner’s poems,

but I have said more than I fear will be creditable in your opinion to my

good nature. I must, though, tell you the malicious motto which I have

written in the first part of Klopstock’s “Messias:”--

“Tale tuum carmen nobis, divine poeta!

Quale sopor!”

Only I would have the words _divine poeta_ translated “verse-making

divine.” I have read a great deal of German; but I do dearly, dearly,

dearly love my own countrymen of old times, and those of my contemporaries

who write in their spirit.

William Wordsworth and his sister left me yesterday on their way to

Yorkshire. They walked yesterday to the foot of Ulleswater, from thence

they go to Penrith, and take the coach. I accompanied them as far as the

seventh milestone. Among the last things which he said to me was, “Do not

forget to remember me to Mr. Sotheby with whatever affectionate terms so

slight an intercourse may permit; and how glad we shall all be to see him

again!”

I was much pleased with your description of Wordsworth’s character as it

appeared to you. It is in a few words, in half a dozen strokes, like one

of Mortimer’s[255] figures, a fine portrait. The word “homogeneous” gave

me great pleasure, as most accurately and happily expressing him. I must

set you right with regard to my perfect coincidence with his poetic creed.

It is most certain that the heads of our mutual conversations, etc., and

the passages, were indeed partly taken from note of mine; for it was at

first intended that the preface should be written by me. And it is

likewise true that I warmly accord with Wordsworth in his abhorrence of

these poetic licenses, as they are called, which are indeed mere tricks of

convenience and laziness. _Ex. gr._ Drayton has these lines:--

“Ouse having Ouleney past, as she were waxed mad

From her first stayder course immediately doth gad,

And in meandered gyres doth whirl herself about,

_That, this_ way, here and there, backward in and out.

And like a wanton girl oft doubling in her gait

In labyrinthian turns and twinings intricate,” etc.[256]

The first poets, observing such a stream as this, would say with truth and

beauty, “it _strays_;” and now every stream shall _stray_, wherever it

prattles on its _pebbled way_, instead of its bed or channel. And I have

taken the instance from a poet from whom as few instances of this vile,

commonplace, trashy style could be taken as from any writer [namely], from

Bowles’ execrable translation[257] of that lovely poem of Dean Ogle’s

(vol. ii. p. 27). I am confident that Bowles good-naturedly translated it

in a hurry, merely to give him an excuse for printing the admirable

original. In my opinion, every phrase, every metaphor, every

personification, should have its justifying clause in some _passion_,

either of the poet’s mind or of the characters described by the poet. But

metre itself implies a passion, that is, a state of excitement both in the

poet’s mind, and is expected, in part, of the reader; and, though I stated

this to Wordsworth, and he has in some sort stated it in his preface, yet

he has not done justice to it, nor has he, in my opinion, sufficiently

answered it. In my opinion, poetry justifies as poetry, independent of any

other passion, some new combinations of language and _commands_ the

omission of many others allowable in other compositions. Now Wordsworth,

_me saltem judice_, has in his system not sufficiently admitted the

former, and in his practice has too frequently sinned against the latter.

Indeed, we have had lately some little controversy on the subject, and we

begin to suspect that there is somewhere or other a radical difference in

our opinions. _Dulce est inter amicos rarissimâ dissensione condere

plurimas consentiones_, saith St. Augustine, who said more good things

than any saint or sinner that I ever read in Latin.

Bless me! what a letter! And I have yet to make a request to you. I have

read your Georgics at a friend’s house in the neighbourhood, and in

sending for the book, I find that it belonged to a book-club, and has been

returned. If you have a copy interleaved, or could procure one for me and

will send it to me per coach, with a copy of your original poems, I will

return them to you with many thanks in the autumn, and will endeavour to

improve my own taste by writing on the blank leaves my feelings both of

the original and your translation. Your poems I want for another purpose,

of which hereafter.

Mrs. Coleridge and my children are well. She desires to be respectfully

remembered to Mrs. and Miss Sotheby. Tell Miss Sotheby that I will

endeavour to send her soon the completion of the “Dark Ladie,” as she was

good-natured enough to be pleased with the first part.

Let me hear from you soon, my dear sir! and believe me with heartfelt

wishes for you and yours, in every-day phrase, but, indeed, indeed, not

with every-day feeling.

Yours most sincerely,

S. T. COLERIDGE.

I long to lead Mrs. Sotheby to a scene that has the grandeur without the

toil or danger of Scale Force. It is called the White Water Dash.[258]

CXXVI. TO THE SAME.

KESWICK, July 19, 1802.

MY DEAR SIR,--I trouble you with another letter to inform you that I have

finished the First Book[259] of the “Erste Schiffer.” It consists of 530

lines; the Second Book will be a hundred lines less. I can transcribe both

legibly in three single-sheet letters; you will only be so good as to

inform me whither and whether I am to send them. If they are likely to be

of any use to Tomkins he is welcome to them; if not, I shall send them to

the “Morning Post.” I have given a faithful translation in blank verse. To

have decorated Gesner would have been, indeed, “to spice the spices;” to

have lopped and pruned _somewhat_ would have only produced incongruity; to

have done it sufficiently would have been to have published a poem of my

own, not Gesner’s. I have aimed at nothing more than purity and elegance

of English, a keeping and harmony in the colour of the style, a smoothness

without monotony in the versification. If I have succeeded, as I trust I

have, in these respects, my translation will be just so much better than

the original as metre is better than prose, in their judgment, at least,

who prefer blank verse to prose. I was probably too severe on the _morals_

of the poem, uncharitable perhaps. But I am a downright Englishman, and

tolerate downright grossness more patiently than this coy and distant

dallying with the appetites. “Die pflanzen entstehen aus dem saamen,

gewisse thiere gehen aus dem hervor andre so, andre anders, ich hab es

alles bemerkt, was hab ich zu thun.” Now I apprehend it will occur to

nineteen readers out of twenty, that a maiden so _very curious_, so

exceedingly _inflamed_ and harassed by a difficulty, and so _subtle_ in

the discovery of even comparatively _distant_ analogies, would necessarily

have seen the difference of sex in her flocks and herds, and the marital

as well as maternal character could not have escaped her. Now I avow that

the grossness and vulgar plain sense of Theocritus’ shepherd lads, bad as

it is, is in my opinion less objectionable than Gesner’s refinement, which

necessarily leads the imagination to ideas without _expressing them_.

Shaped and clothed, the mind of a pure being would turn away from them

from natural delicacy of taste, but in that shadowy half-being, that state

of nascent existence in the twilight of imagination and just on the

vestibule of consciousness, they are far more incendiary, stir up a more

lasting commotion, and leave a deeper stain. The suppression and obscurity

arrays a simple truth in a veil of something like guilt, that is

altogether meretricious, as opposed to the matronly majesty of our

Scripture, for instance; and the conceptions as they _recede_ from

distinctness of _idea_ approximate to the nature of _feeling_, and gain

thereby a closer and more immediate affinity with the appetites. But,

independently of this, the whole passage, consisting of precisely one

fourth of the whole poem, has not the least influence on the action of

the poem, and it is scarcely too much to say that it has nothing to do

with the main subject, except indeed it be pleaded that _Love_ is induced

by compassion for this maiden to make a young man _dream_ of her, which

young man had been, without any influence of the said Cupid, deeply

interested in the story, and, therefore, did not need the interference of

Cupid at all; any more than he did the assistance of Æolus for a fair wind

all the way to an island that was within sight of shore.

I translated the poem, partly because I could not endure to appear

_irresolute_ and _capricious_ to you in the first undertaking which I had

connected in any way with your person; in an undertaking which I connect

with our journey from Keswick to Grasmere, the carriage in which were your

son, your daughter, and your wife (all of whom may God Almighty bless! a

prayer not the less fervent, my dear sir! for being a little out of place

here); and, partly, too, because I wished to force myself out of

metaphysical trains of thought, which, when I wished to write a poem, beat

up game of far other kind. Instead of a covey of poetic partridges with

whirring wings of music, or wild ducks _shaping_ their rapid flight in

forms always regular (a still better image of verse), up came a

metaphysical bustard, urging its slow, heavy, laborious, earth-skimming

flight over dreary and level wastes. To have done with poetical prose

(which is a very vile Olio), sickness and some other and worse afflictions

first forced me into downright metaphysics. For I believe that by nature I

have more of the poet in me. In a poem written during that dejection, to

Wordsworth, and the greater part of a private nature, I thus expressed the

thought in language more forcible than harmonious:[260]--

Yes, dearest poet, yes!

There was a time when tho’ my path was rough,

The joy within me dallied with distress,

And all misfortunes were but as the stuff

Whence fancy made me dreams of happiness:

For Hope grew round me, like the climbing vine,

And fruit, and foliage, not my own, seemed mine.

But now afflictions bow me down to earth:

Nor care I, that they rob me of my mirth,

But oh! each visitation

Suspends what nature gave me at my birth,

My shaping spirit of Imagination.

* * * * *

For not to think of what I needs must feel,

But to be still and patient, all I can;

And haply by abstruse research to steal

From my own nature all the natural man--

This was my sole resource, my wisest plan:

And that which suits a part infects the whole,

And now is almost grown the temper of my soul.

Thank heaven! my better mind has returned to me, and I trust I shall go on

rejoicing. As I have nothing better to fill the blank space of this sheet

with, I will transcribe the introduction of that poem to you, that being

of a sufficiently general nature to be interesting to you. The first lines

allude to a stanza in the Ballad of Sir Patrick Spence: “Late, late

yestreen I saw the new moon with the old one in her arms, and I fear, I

fear, my master dear, there will be a deadly storm.”

Letter, written Sunday evening, April 4.

Well! if the Bard was weatherwise, who made

The dear old Ballad of Sir Patrick Spence,

This night, so tranquil now, will not go hence

Unrous’d by winds, that ply a busier trade

Than that, which moulds yon clouds in lazy flakes,

Or the dull sobbing draft, that drones and rakes

Upon the strings of this Eolian lute,

Which better far were mute.

For lo! the New Moon, winter-bright!

And overspread with phantom light

(With swimming phantom light o’erspread,

But rimmed and circled with a silver thread)

I see the Old Moon in her lap foretelling

The coming on of rain and squally blast!

And O! that even now the gust were swelling,

And the slant night-shower driving loud and fast.

* * * * *

A grief without a pang, void, dark, and drear!

A stifling, drowsy, unimpassioned grief,

That finds no natural outlet, no relief,

In word, or sigh, or tear!

This, William, well thou know’st,

Is that sore evil which I dread the most,

And oftnest suffer. In this heartless mood,

To other thoughts by yonder throstle woo’d,

That pipes within the larch-tree, not unseen,

The larch, that pushes out in tassels green

Its bundled leafits, woo’d to mild delights,

By all the tender sounds and gentle sights

Of this sweet primrose-month, and vainly woo’d!

O dearest Poet, in this heartless mood,

All this long eve, so balmy and serene,

Have I been gazing on the Western sky,

And its peculiar tint of yellow-green:

And still I gaze--and with how blank an eye!

And those thin clouds above, in flakes and bars,

That give away their motion to the stars;

Those stars, that glide behind them, or between,

Now sparkling, now bedimmed, but always seen;

Yon crescent moon, as fix’d as if it grew

In its own cloudless, starless lake of blue,

A boat becalm’d! thy own sweet sky-canoe![261]

I see them all, so exquisitely fair!

I see, not _feel_! how beautiful they are!

My genial spirits fail;

And what can these avail,

To lift the smoth’ring weight from off my breast?

It were a vain endeavour,

Though I should gaze for ever

On that green light that lingers in the west;

I may not hope from outward forms to win

The passion and the life, whose fountains are within.

* * * * *

O Wordsworth! we receive but what we give,

And in our life alone does Nature live;

Ours is her wedding garment, ours her shroud!

And would we aught behold, of higher worth,

Than that inanimate, cold world, _allow’d_

To the poor, loveless, ever-anxious crowd,

Ah! from the soul itself must issue forth,

A light, a glory, a fair luminous cloud

Enveloping the earth!

And from the soul itself must there be sent

A sweet and powerful voice, of its own birth,

Of all sweet sounds the life and element!

O pure of heart! thou need’st not ask of me

_What_ this strong music in the soul may be?

What and wherein it doth exist,

This light, this glory, this fair luminous mist,

This beautiful and beauty-making Power.

Joy, blameless poet! Joy that ne’er was given

Save to the pure, and in their purest hour,

Joy, William, is the spirit and the power

That wedding Nature to us gives in dower,

A new Earth and new Heaven,

Undream’d of by the sensual and proud--

We, we ourselves rejoice!

And thence comes all that charms or ear or sight,

All melodies an echo of that voice!

All colours a suffusion from that light!

Calm, steadfast spirit, guided from above,

O Wordsworth! friend of my devoutest choice,

Great son of genius! full of light and love,

Thus, thus, dost thou rejoice.

To thee do all things live, from pole to pole,

Their life the eddying of thy living Soul!

Brother and friend of my devoutest choice,

Thus mayst thou ever, ever more rejoice!

* * * * *

I have selected from the poem, which was a very long one and truly written

only for the solace of sweet song, all that could be interesting or even

pleasing to you, except, indeed, perhaps I may annex as a fragment a few

lines on the “Æolian Lute,” it having been introduced in its dronings in

the first stanza. I have used Yule for Christmas.

Nay, wherefore did I let it haunt my mind,

This dark, distressful dream?

I turn from it and listen to the wind

Which long has rav’d unnotic’d! What a scream

Of agony by torture lengthened out,

That lute sent out! O thou wild storm without,

Bare crag, or Mountain Tairn, or blasted tree,

Or pine-grove whither woodman never clomb,

Or lonely house, long held the witches’ home,

Methinks were fitter instruments for thee

Mad Lutanist! that, in this month of showers,

Of dark-brown gardens, and of peeping flowers,

Mak’st devil’s Yule, with worse than wintry song,

The blossoms, buds, and timorous leaves among!

Thou Actor, perfect in all tragic sounds!

Thou mighty Poet, even to frenzy bold!

What tell’st thou now about?

’Tis of the rushing of an host in rout,

With many groans from men, with smarting wounds--

At once they groan with pain, and shudder with the cold!

But hush! there is a pause of deeper silence!

Again! but all that noise, as of a rushing crowd,

With groans, and tremulous shudderings--all is over!

And it has other sounds, less fearful and less loud--

A tale of less affright,

And tempered with delight,

As thou thyself had’st fram’d the tender lay--

’Tis of a little child,

Upon a heath wild,

Not far from home, but she has lost her way--

And now moans low in utter grief and fear;

And now screams loud, and hopes to make her mother _hear_.

* * * * *

My dear sir! ought I to make an apology for troubling you with such a

long, verse-cramm’d letter? Oh, that instead of it, I could but send to

you the image now before my eyes, over Bassenthwaite. The sun is setting

in a glorious, rich, brassy light, on the top of Skiddaw, and one third

adown it is a huge, enormous mountain of cloud, with the outlines of a

mountain. This is of a starchy grey, but floating past along it, and upon

it, are various patches of sack-like clouds, bags and woolsacks, of a

shade lighter than the brassy light. Of the clouds that hide the setting

sun,--a fine yellow-red, somewhat more than sandy light, and these, the

farthest from the sun, are suffused with the darkness of a stormy colour.

Marvellous creatures! how they pass along! Remember me with most

respectful kindness to Mrs. and Miss Sotheby, and the Captains Sotheby.

Truly yours,

S. T. COLERIDGE.

CXXVII. TO ROBERT SOUTHEY.[262]

GRETA HALL, KESWICK, July 29, 1802.

MY DEAR SOUTHEY,--Nothing has given me half the pleasure, these many, many

months, as last week did Edith’s heralding to us of a minor Robert; for

that it will be a boy, one always takes for granted. From the bottom of my

heart I say it, I never knew a man that better deserved to be a father by

right of virtues that eminently belonged to him, than yourself; but beside

this I have cheering hopes that Edith will be born again, and be a healthy

woman. When I said, nothing had given me half the pleasure, I spoke truly,

and yet said more than you are perhaps aware of, for, by Lord Lonsdale’s

death, there are excellent reasons for believing that the Wordsworths will

gain £5,000, the share of which (and no doubt Dorothy will have more than

a mere share) will render William Wordsworth and his sister quite

independent. They are now in Yorkshire, and he returns in about a month

_one of us_.... Estlin’s Sermons, I fear, are mere moral discourses. If

so, there is but small chance of their sale. But if he had published a

_volume_ of _sermons_, of the same kind with those which he has published

singly, _i. e._ apologetical and ecclesiastico-historical, I _am almost_

confident, they would have a respectable circulation. To publish single

sermons is almost always a foolish thing, like single sheet quarto poems.

Estlin’s sermon on the Sabbath really surprised me. It was well written in

style, I mean, and the reasoning throughout is not only sound, but has a

cast of novelty in it. A superior sermon altogether it appeared to me. I

am myself a little theological, and if any bookseller will take the

risque, I shall in a few weeks, possibly, send to the press a small volume

under the title of “Letters to the British Critic concerning Granville

Sharp’s Remarks on the uses of the Definitive article in the Greek Text of

the New Testament, and the Revd C. Wordsworth’s Six Letters, to G. Sharp

Esqr, in confirmation of the same, together with a Review of the

Controversy between Horsley and Priestley respecting the faith of the

Primitive Christians.” This is no mere dream, like my “Hymns to the

Elements,” for I have written more than half the work. I purpose

afterwards to publish a book concerning Tythes and Church Establishment,

for I conceit that I can throw great light on the subject. You are not

apt to be much surprised at any change in my mind, active as it is, but it

will perhaps please you to know that I am become very fond of History, and

that I have read much with very great attention. I exceedingly like the

job of Amadis de Gaul. I wish you may half as well like the job, in which

I shall very shortly appear. Of its sale I have no doubt; but of its

prudence? There’s the rub. “Concerning Poetry and the characteristic

merits of the Poets, our contemporaries.” One volume Essays, the second

Selections.--The Essays are on Bloomfield, Burns, Bowles, Cowper,

Campbell, Darwin, Hayley, Rogers, C. Smith, Southey, Woolcot,

Wordsworth--the Selections from every one who has written at all, any

being above the rank of mere scribblers--Pye and his Dative Case Plural,

Pybus, Cottle, etc., etc. The object is not to examine what is good in

each writer, but what has _ipso facto_ pleased, and to what faculties, or

passions, or habits of the mind they may be supposed to have given

pleasure. Of course Darwin and Wordsworth having given each a defence of

their mode of poetry, and a disquisition on the nature and essence of

poetry in general, I shall necessarily be led rather deeper, and these I

shall treat of either first or last. But I will apprise you of one thing,

that although Wordsworth’s Preface is half a child of my own brain, and

arose out of conversations so frequent that, with few exceptions, we could

scarcely either of us, perhaps, positively say which first started any

particular thought (I am speaking of the Preface as it stood in the second

volume), yet I am far from going all lengths with Wordsworth. He has

written lately a number of Poems (thirty-two in all), some of them of

considerable length (the longest one hundred and sixty lines), the greater

number of these, to my feelings, very excellent compositions, but here and

there a daring humbleness of language and versification, and a strict

adherence to matter of fact, even to prolixity, that startled me. His

alterations, likewise, in “Ruth” perplexed me, and I have thought and

thought again, and have not had my doubts solved by Wordsworth. On the

contrary, I rather suspect that somewhere or other there is a radical

difference in our theoretical opinions respecting poetry; this I shall

endeavour to go to the bottom of, and, acting the arbitrator between the

old school and the new school, hope to lay down some plain and

perspicuous, though not superficial canons of criticism respecting poetry.

What an admirable definition Milton gives, quite in an “obiter” way, when

he says of poetry, that it is “_simple, sensuous, passionate_!” It truly

comprises the whole that can be said on the subject. In the new edition of

the L. Ballads there is a valuable appendix, which I am sure you must

like, and in the Preface itself considerable additions; one on the dignity

and nature of the office and character of a Poet, that is very grand, and

of a sort of Verulamian power and majesty, but it is, in parts (and this

is the fault, _me judice_, of all the latter half of that Preface),

obscure beyond any necessity, and the extreme elaboration and almost

constrainedness of the diction contrasted (to my feelings) somewhat

harshly with the general style of the Poems, to which the Preface is an

introduction. Sara (why, dear Southey! will you write it always Sarah?

Sar_a_, methinks, is associated with times that you and I cannot and do

not wish ever to forget), Sara, said, with some acuteness, that she wished

all that part of the Preface to have been in blank verse, and _vice

versâ_, etc. However, I need not say, that any diversity of opinion on the

subject between you and myself, or Wordsworth and myself, can only be

small, taken in a _practical_ point of view.

I rejoice that your History marches on so victoriously. It is a noble

subject, and I have the fullest confidence of your success in it. The

influence of the Catholic Religion--the influence of national glory on the

individual morals of a people, especially in the downfall of the nobility

of Portugal,--the strange fact (which seems to be admitted as with one

voice by all travellers) of the vileness of the Portuguese nobles compared

with the Spanish, and of the superiority of the Portuguese commonalty to

the same class in Spain; the effects of colonization on a small and not

very fruitful country; the effects important, and too often forgotten of

absolute accidents, such as the particular character of a race of Princes

on a nation--Oh what awful subjects these are! I long to hear you read a

few chapters to me. But I conjure you do not let “Madoc” go to sleep. Oh

that without words I could cause you to _know_ all that I think, all that

I feel, all that I hope concerning that Poem! As to myself, all my poetic

genius (if ever I really possessed any _genius_, and it was not rather a

mere general _aptitude_ of talent, and quickness in imitation) is gone,

and I have been fool enough to suffer deeply in my mind, regretting the

loss, which I attribute to my long and exceedingly severe metaphysical

investigations, and these partly to ill-health, and partly to private

afflictions which rendered any subjects, immediately connected with

feeling, a source of pain and disquiet to me.

There was a Time when tho’ my Path was rough,

I had a heart that dallied with distress;

And all misfortunes were but as the stuff

Whence Fancy made me dreams of Happiness;

For Hope grew round me like the climbing Vine,

And Fruits and Foliage, not my own, seemed mine!

But now afflictions bow me down to earth,

Nor car’d I that they robb’d me of my mirth.

But oh! each visitation

Suspends what Nature gave me at my Birth,

My shaping Spirit of Imagination!

Here follow a dozen lines that would give you no pleasure, and then what

follows:--

For not to _think_ of what I needs must feel,

But to be still and patient, all I can;

And haply by abstruse Research to steal

From my own Nature all the Natural Man,

This was my sole Resource, my wisest Plan!

And that which suits a part, infects the whole,

And now is almost grown the Temper of my Soul.

Having written these lines, I rejoice for you as well as for myself, that

I am able to inform you, that now for a long time there has been more love

and concord in my house than I have known for years before. I had made up

my mind to a very awful step, though the struggles of my mind were so

violent, that my sleep became the valley of the shadows of Death and my

health was in a state truly alarming. It did alarm Mrs. Coleridge. The

thought of separation wounded her pride,--she was fully persuaded that

deprived of the society of my children and living abroad without any

friends I should pine away, and the fears of widowhood came upon her, and

though these feelings were wholly selfish, yet they made her _serious_,

and that was a great point gained. For Mrs. Coleridge’s mind has very

little that is _bad_ in it; it is an innocent mind; but it is light and

_unimpressible_, warm in anger, cold in sympathy, and in all disputes

uniformly _projects itself forth_ to recriminate, instead of turning

itself inward with a silent self-questioning. Our virtues and our vices

are exact antitheses. I so attentively watch my own nature that my worst

self-delusion is a complete self-knowledge so mixed with intellectual

complacency, that my quickness to see and readiness to acknowledge my

faults is too often frustrated by the small pain which the sight of them

gives me, and the consequent slowness to amend them. Mrs. C. is so stung

with the very first thought of being in the wrong, because she never

endures to look at her own mind in all its faulty parts, but shelters

herself from painful self-inquiry by angry recrimination. Never, I

suppose, did the stern match-maker bring together two minds so utterly

contrariant in their primary and organical constitution. Alas! I have

suffered more, I think, from the amiable propensities of my nature than

from my worst faults and most erroneous habits, and I have suffered much

from both. But, as I said, Mrs. Coleridge was made _serious_, and for the

first time since our marriage she felt and acted as beseemed a wife and a

mother to a husband and the father of her children. She promised to set

about an alteration in her external manners and looks and language, and to

fight against her inveterate habits of puny thwarting and unintermitting

dyspathy, this immediately, and to do her best endeavours to cherish other

feelings. I, on my part, promised to be more attentive to all her feelings

of pride, etc., etc., and to try to correct my habits of impetuous

censure. We have both kept our promises, and she has found herself so much

more happy than she had been for years before, that I have the most

confident hopes that this happy revolution in our domestic affairs will be

permanent, and that this external conformity will gradually generate a

greater inward likeness of thoughts and attachments than has hitherto

existed between us. Believe me, if you were here, it would give you a

_deep_ delight to observe the difference of our minutely conduct towards

each other, from that which, I fear, could not but have disturbed your

comfort when you were here last. Enough. But I am sure you have not felt

it tedious.

So Corry[263] and you are off? I suspected it, but Edith never mentioned

an iota of the business to her sister. It is well. It was not your

destiny. Wherever you are, God bless you! My health is weak enough, but it

is so far amended that it is far less dependent on the influences of the

weather. The mountains are better friends in this respect. Would that I

could flatter myself that the same would be the case with you. The only

objection on my part is now,--God be praised!--done away. The services and

benefits I should receive from your society and the spur of your example

would be incalculable. The house consists--the first floor (or rather

ground floor) of a kitchen and a back kitchen, a large parlour and two

nice small parlours; the second floor of three bedrooms, one a large one,

and one large drawing-room; the third floor or floors of three

bedrooms--in all twelve rooms. Besides these, Mr. Jackson offers to make

that nice outhouse or workshop either two rooms or one noble large one for

a study if I wish it. If it suited you, you might have one kitchen, or (if

Edith and Sara thought it would answer) we might have the two kitchens in

common. You might have, I say, the whole ground floor, consisting of two

sweet wing-rooms, commanding that loveliest view of Borrowdale, and the

great parlour; and supposing we each were forced to have two servants, a

nursemaid and a housemaid, the two housemaids would sleep together in one

of the upper rooms, and the nursemaids have each a room to herself, and

the long room on the ground floor must be yours and Edith’s room, and if

Mary be with you, the other hers. We should have the whole second floor,

consisting of the drawing-room, which would be Mrs. Coleridge’s parlour,

two bedrooms, which (as I am so often ill, and when ill cannot rest at

all, unless I have a bed to myself) is absolutely necessary for me, and

one room for you if occasion should be, or any friend of yours or mine.

The highest room in the house is a very large one intended for two, but

suffered to remain one by my desire. It would be a capital healthy

nursery. The outhouse would become my study, and I _have_ a couch-bed on

which I am now sitting (in bed) and writing to you. It is now in the

study; of course it would be removed to the outhouse when that became my

study, and would be a second spare bed. I have no doubt but that Mr.

Jackson would willingly let us retain my present study, which might be

your library and study room. My dear Southey, I merely state these things

to you. All our lot on earth is compromise. Blessings obtained by

blessings foregone, or by evils undergone. I should be glad, no doubt, if

you thought that your health and happiness would find a home under the

same roof with me; and I am sure you will not accuse me as indelicate or

obtrusive in mentioning things as they are; but if you decline it

altogether, I shall know that you have good reasons for doing so, and be

perfectly satisfied, for if it detracted from your comfort it could, of

course, be nothing but the contrary of all advantage to me. You would have

access to four or five libraries: Sir W. Lawson’s, a most magnificent one,

but chiefly in Natural History, Travels, etc.; Carlton House (I am a

_prodigious_ favourite of Mrs. Wallis, the owner and resident, mother of

the Privy Counsellor Wallis); Carlisle, Dean and Chapter; the Library at

Hawkshead School, and another (of what value I know not) at St. Bees,

whither I mean to walk to-morrow to spend five or six days for bathing. It

is four miles from Whitehaven by the seaside. Mrs. Coleridge is but

poorly, children well. Love to Edith and May, and to whom I am at all

interested. God love you. If you let me hear from you, it is among my

firmest resolves--God ha’ mercy on ’em!--to be a regular correspondent of

yours.

S. T. COLERIDGE.

P. S. Mrs. C. must have one room on the ground floor, but this is only

putting one of your rooms on the second floor.

CXXVIII. TO THE SAME.

Monday night, August 9, 1802.

MY DEAR SOUTHEY,--Derwent can say his letters, and if you could but see

his darling mouth when he shouts out Q! This is a digression.

On Sunday, August 1st,[264] after morning church, I left Greta Hall,

crossed the fields to Portinscale, went through Newlands, where “Great

Robinson looks down upon Marden’s Bower,” and drank tea at Buttermere,

crossed the mountains to Ennerdale, and slept at a farm-house a little

below the foot of the lake, spent the greater part of the next day

mountaineering, and went in the evening through Egremont to St. Bees, and

slept there; returned next day to Egremont, and slept there; went by the

sea-coast as far as Gosforth, then turned off and went up Wasdale, and

slept at T. Tyson’s at the head of the vale. Thursday morning crossed the

mountains and ascended Scafell, which is more than a hundred yards higher

than either Helvellyn or Skiddaw; spent the whole day among clouds, and

one of them a frightening thunder-cloud; slipped down into Eskdale, and

there slept, and spent a good part of the next day; proceeded that evening

to Devock Lake, and slept at Ulpha Kirk; on Saturday passed through the

Dunnerdale Mountains to Broughton Vale, Tarver Vale, and in upon

Coniston. On Sunday I surveyed the lake, etc., of Coniston, and proceeded

to Bratha, and slept at Lloyd’s house; this morning walked from Bratha to

Grasmere, and from Grasmere to Greta Hall, where I now am, quite sweet and

ablute, and have not even now read through your letter, which I will

answer by the night’s post, and therefore must defer all account of my

very interesting tour, saying only that of all earthly things which I have

beheld, the view of Scafell and from Scafell (both views from its own

summit) is the most heart-exciting.

And now for business. The rent of the whole house, including taxes and the

furniture we have, will not be under forty, and not above forty-two,

pounds a year. You will have half the house and half the furniture, and of

course your share will be either twenty pounds or twenty guineas. As to

furniture, the house certainly will not be wholly, that is, completely

furnished by Jackson. Two rooms we must somehow or other furnish between

us, but not immediately; you may pass the winter without it, and it is

hard if we cannot raise thirty pounds in the course of the winter between

us. And whatever we buy may be disposed of any Saturday, to a moral

certainty, at its full value, or Mr. Jackson, who is uncommonly desirous

that you should come, will take it. But we can get on for the winter well

enough.

Your books may come all the way from Bristol either to Whitehaven,

Maryport, or Workington; sometimes directly, always by means of Liverpool.

In the latter case, they must be sent to Whitehaven, from whence waggons

come to Keswick twice a week. You will have twenty or thirty shillings to

lay out in tin and crockery, and you must bring with you, or buy here

(which you may do at eight months’ credit), knives and forks, etc., and

all your linen, from the diaper subvestments of the young jacobin[265] to

diaper table clothes, sheets, napkins, etc. But these, I suppose, you

already have.

What else I have to say I cannot tell, and indeed shall be too late for

the post. But I will write soon again. I was exceedingly amused with the

Cottelism; but I have not time to speak of this or of other parts of your

letter. I believe that I can execute the criticisms with no offence to

Hayley, and in a manner highly satisfactory to the admirers of the poet

Bloomfield, and to the friends of the man Bloomfield. But there are

certainly other objections of great weight.

Sara is well, and the children pretty well. Hartley is almost ill with

transport at my Scafell expedition. That child is a poet, spite of the

forehead, “villainously _low_,” which his mother smuggled into his face.

Derwent is more beautiful than ever, but very backward with his tongue,

although he can say all his letters.--N. B. Not out of the book. God bless

you and yours!

S. T. COLERIDGE.

If you are able to determine, you will of course let me know it without

waiting for a second letter from me; as if you determine in the

affirmative[266] of the scheme, it will be a great motive with Jackson,

indeed, a most infallible one, to get immediately to work so as to have

the whole perfectly furnished six weeks at least before your arrival.

Another reason for your writing immediately is, that we may lay you in a

stock of coals during the summer, which is a saving of some pounds; when I

say _determine_, of course I mean such determination as the thousand

contingencies, black and white, permit a wise man to make, and which would

be enough for me to act on.

Sara will write to Edith soon.

I have just received a letter from Poole; but I have found so many letters

that I have opened yours only.

CXXIX. TO W. SOTHEBY.

Thursday, August 26, 1802.

MY DEAR SIR,--I was absent on a little excursion when your letter arrived,

and since my return I have been waiting and making every enquiry in the

hopes of announcing the receipt of your “Orestes” and its companions, with

my sincere thanks for your kindness. But I can hear nothing of them. Mr.

Lamb,[267] however, goes to Penrith next week, and will make strict

scrutiny. I am not to find the “Welsh Tour” among them; and yet I think I

am correct in referring the ode “Netley Abbey” to that collection,--a poem

which I believe I can very nearly repeat by heart, though it must have

been four or five years since I last read it. I well remember that, after

reading your “Welsh Tour,” Southey observed to me that you, I, and himself

had all done ourselves harm by suffering an admiration of Bowles to bubble

up too often on the surface of our poems. In perusing the second volume of

Bowles, which I owe to your kindness, I met a line of my own which gave me

great pleasure, from the thought what a pride and joy I should have had at

the time of writing it if I had supposed it possible that Bowles would

have adopted it. The line is,--

Had melancholy mus’d herself to sleep.[268]

I wrote the lines at nineteen, and published them many years ago in the

“Morning Post” as a fragment, and as they are but twelve lines, I will

transcribe them:--

Upon a mouldering abbey’s broadest wall,

Where ruining ivies prop the ruins steep--

Her folded arms wrapping her tatter’d pall

Had Melancholy mused herself to sleep.

The fern was press’d beneath her hair,

The dark green Adder’s Tongue was there;

And still as came the flagging sea gales weak,

Her long lank leaf bow’d fluttering o’er her cheek.

Her pallid cheek was flush’d; her eager look

Beam’d eloquent in slumber! Inly wrought,

Imperfect sounds her moving lips forsook,

And her bent forehead work’d with troubled thought.

I met these lines yesterday by accident, and ill as they are written there

seemed to me a force and distinctness of image in them that were buds of

promise in a schoolboy performance, though I am giving them perhaps more

than their deserts in thus assuring them a reading from you. I have

finished the “First Navigator,” and Mr. Tomkins[269] may have it whenever

he wishes. It would be gratifying to me if you would look it over and

alter anything you like. My whole wish and purpose is to serve Mr.

Tomkins, and you are not only much more in the habit of writing verse than

I am, but must needs have a better tact of what will offend that class of

readers into whose hands a showy publication is likely to fall. I do not

mean, my dear sir, to impose on you ten minutes’ thought, but often

_currente oculo_ a better phrase or position of words will suggest itself.

As to the ten pounds, it is more than the thing is worth, either in German

or English. Mr. Tomkins will better give the true value of it by kindly

accepting what is given with kindness. Two or three copies presented in

my name, one to each of the two or three friends of mine who are likely to

be pleased with a fine book,--this is the utmost I desire or will receive.

I shall for the ensuing quarter send occasional verses, etc., to the

“Morning Post,” under the signature Ἔστησε, and I mention this to you

because I have some intention of translating Voss’s “Idylls” in English

hexameter, with a little prefatory essay on modern hexameters. I have

discovered that the poetical parts of the Bible and the best parts of

Ossian are little more than slovenly hexameters, and the rhythmical prose

of Gesner is still more so, and reads exactly like that metre in Boethius’

and Seneca’s tragedies, which consists of the latter half of the

hexameter. The thing is worth an experiment, and I wish it to be

considered merely as an experiment. I need not say that the greater number

of the verses signed Ἔστησε be such as were never meant for anything else

but the _peritura charta_ of the “Morning Post.”

I had written thus far when your letter of the 16th arrived, franked on

the 23d from Weymouth, with a polite apology from Mr. Bedingfell (if I

have rightly deciphered the name) for its detention. I am vexed I did not

write immediately on my return home, but I waited, day after day, in hopes

of the “Orestes,” etc. It is an old proverb that “extremes meet,” and I

have often regretted that I had not noted down as they _in_curred the

interesting instances in which the proverb is verified. The newest

subject, though brought from the planets (or asteroids) Ceres and Pallas,

could not excite my curiosity more than “Orestes.” I will write

immediately to Mr. Clarkson, who resides at the foot of Ulleswater, and

beg him to walk into Penrith, and ask at all the inns if any parcel have

arrived; if not, I will myself write to Mr. Faulder and inform him of the

failure. There is a subject of great merit in the ancient mythology

hitherto untouched--I believe so, at least. But for the _mode_ of the

death, which mingles the ludicrous and terrible, but which might be easily

altered, it is one of the finest subjects for tragedy that I am acquainted

with. Medea, after the murder of her children [having] fled to the court

of the old King Pelias, was regarded with superstitious horror, and

shunned or insulted by the daughters of Pelias, till, hearing of her

miraculous restoration of Æson, they conceived the idea of recalling by

her means the youth of their own father. She avails herself of their

credulity, and so works them up by pretended magical rites that they

consent to kill their father in his sleep and throw him into the magic

cauldron. Which done, Medea leaves them with bitter taunts of triumph. The

daughters are called Asteropæa, Autonoe, and Alcestis. Ovid alludes

briefly to this story in the couplet,--

“Quid referam Peliæ natas pietate nocentes,

Cæsaque virgineâ membra paterna manu?”

Ovid, Epist. XII. 129, 130.

What a thing to have seen a tragedy raised on this fable by Milton, in

rivalry of the “Macbeth” of Shakespeare! The character of Medea, wandering

and fierce, and invested with impunity by the strangeness and excess of

her guilt, and truly an injured woman on the other hand and possessed of

supernatural powers! The same story is told in a very different way by

some authors, and out of their narrations matter might be culled that

would very well coincide with and fill up the main incidents--her imposing

the sacred image of Diana on the priesthood of Iolcus, and persuading them

to join with her in inducing the daughters of Pelias to kill their father;

the daughters under the persuasion that their father’s youth would be

restored, the priests under the faith that the goddess required the death

of the old king, and that the safety of the country depended on it. In

this way Medea might be suffered to escape under the direct protection of

the priesthood, who may afterwards discover the delusion. The moral of

the piece would be a very fine one.

Wordsworth wrote a very animated account of his difficulties and his

joyous meeting with you, which he calls the happy rencontre or fortunate

rainstorm. Oh! that you had been with me during a thunder-storm[270] on

Thursday, August the 3d! I was sheltered (in the phrase of the country,

_lownded_) in a sort of natural porch on the summit of Sca Fell, the

central mountain of our Giants, said to be higher than Skiddaw or

Helvellyn, and in chasm, naked crag, bursting springs, and waterfall the

most interesting, without a rival. When the cloud passed away, to my right

and left, and behind me, stood a great national convention of mountains

which our ancestors most descriptively called Copland, that is, the Land

of Heads. Before me the mountains died away down to the sea in eleven

parallel ridges; close under my feet, as it were, were three vales:

Wastdale, with its lake; Miterdale and Eskdale, with the rivers Irt, Mite,

and Esk seen from their very fountains to their fall into the sea at

Ravenglass Bay, which, with these rivers, form to the eye a perfect

trident.

Turning round, I looked through Borrowdale out upon the Derwentwater and

the Vale of Keswick, even to my own house, where my own children were.

Indeed, I had altogether a most interesting walk through Newlands to

Buttermere, over the fells to Ennerdale, to St. Bees; up Wastdale to Sca

Fell, down Eskdale to Devock Lake, Ulpha Kirk, Broughton Mills, Tarver,

Coniston, Windermere, Grasmere, Keswick. If it would entertain you, I

would transcribe my notes and send them you by the first opportunity. I

have scarce left room for my best wishes to Mrs. and Miss Sotheby, and

affectionate wishes for your happiness and all who constitute it.

With unfeigned esteem, dear sir,

Yours, etc.,

S. T. COLERIDGE.

P. S. I am ashamed to send you a scrawl so like in form to a servant

wench’s first letter. You will see that the first half was written before

I received your last letter.

CXXX. TO THE SAME.

GRETA HALL, KESWICK, September 10, 1802.

MY DEAR SIR,--The books have not yet arrived, and I am wholly unable to

account for the delay. I suspect that the cause of it may be Mr. Faulder’s

mistake in sending them by the Carlisle waggon. A person is going to

Carlisle on Monday from this place, and will make diligent inquiry, and,

if he succeed, still I cannot have them in less than a week, as they must

return to Penrith and there wait for the next Tuesday’s carrier. I ought,

perhaps, to be ashamed of my weakness, but I must confess I have been

downright vexed by the business. Every cart, every return-chaise from

Penrith has renewed my hopes, till I began to play tricks with my own

impatience, and say, “Well, I take it for granted that I shan’t get them

for these seven days,” etc.,--with other of those half-lies that fear

begets on hope. You have imposed a pleasing task on me in requesting the

minutiæ of my opinions concerning your “Orestes.” Whatever these opinions

may be, the disclosure of them will be a sort of _map_ of my mind, as a

poet and reasoner, and my curiosity is strongly excited. I feel you a man

of genius in the choice of the subject. It is my faith that the _genus

irritabile_ is a phrase applicable only to bad poets. Men of great genius

have, indeed, as an essential of their composition, great sensibility, but

they have likewise great confidence in their own powers, and fear must

always precede anger in the human mind. I can with truth say that, from

those I love, mere general praise of anything I have written is as far

from giving me pleasure as mere general censure; in anything, I mean, to

which I have devoted much time or effort. “Be minute, and assign your

reasons often, and your first impressions always, and then blame or

praise. I care not which, I shall be gratified.” These are _my_

sentiments, and I assuredly believe that they are the sentiments of all

who have indeed felt a _true call_ to the ministry of _song_. Of course,

I, too, will act on the golden rule of doing to others what I wish others

to do unto me. But, while I think of it, let me say that I should be much

concerned if you applied this to the “First Navigator.” It would

absolutely mortify me if you did more than look over it, and when a

correction suggested itself to you, take your pen and make it, and let the

copy go to Tomkins. What they have been, I shall know when I see the thing

in print; for it must please the present times if it please any, and you

have been far more in the fashionable world than I, and must needs have a

finer and surer tact of that which will offend or disgust in the higher

circles of life. Yet it is not what I should have advised Tomkins to do,

and that is one reason why I cannot and will not accept more than a brace

of copies from him. I do not like to be associated in a man’s mind with

his losses. If he have the translation gratis, he must take it on his own

judgment; but when a man pays for a thing, and he loses by it, the idea

will creep in, spite of himself, that the failure was in part owing to the

badness of the translation. While I was translating the “Wallenstein,” I

told Longman it would never answer; when I had finished it I wrote to him

and foretold that it would be waste paper on his shelves, and the dullness

charitably laid upon my shoulders. Longman lost two hundred and fifty

pounds by the work, fifty pounds of which had been paid to me,--poor pay,

Heaven knows! for a thick octavo volume of blank verse; and yet I am sure

that Longman never thinks of me but “Wallenstein” and the ghosts of his

departed guineas dance an ugly waltz round my idea. This would not disturb

me a tittle, if I thought well of the work myself. I should feel a

confidence that it would win its way at last; but this is not the case

with Gesner’s “Der erste Schiffer.” It may as well lie here till Tomkins

wants it. Let him only give me a week’s notice, and I will transmit it to

you with a large margin. Bowles’s stanzas on “Navigation”[271] are among

the best in that second volume, but the whole volume is wofully inferior

to its predecessor. There reigns through all the blank verse poems such a

perpetual trick of moralizing everything, which is very well,

occasionally, but never to see or describe any interesting appearance in

nature without connecting it, by dim analogies, with the moral world

proves faintness of impression. Nature has her proper interest, and he

will know what it is who believes and feels that everything has a life of

its own, and that we are all _One Life_. A poet’s heart and intellect

should be _combined_, intimately combined and unified with the great

appearances of nature, and not merely held in solution and loose mixture

with them, in the shape of formal similes. I do not mean to exclude these

formal similes; there are moods of mind in which they are natural,

pleasing moods of mind, and such as a poet will often have, and sometimes

express; but they are not his highest and most appropriate moods. They are

“sermoni propriora,” which I once translated “properer for a sermon.” The

truth is, Bowles has indeed the _sensibility_ of a poet, but he has not

the _passion_ of a great poet. His latter writings all want _native_

passion. Milton here and there supplies him with an appearance of it, but

he has no native passion because he is not a thinker, and has probably

weakened his intellect by the haunting fear of becoming extravagant.

Young, somewhere in one of his prose works, remarks that there is as

profound a logic in the most daring and dithyrambic parts of Pindar as in

the “Organon” of Aristotle. The remark is a valuable one.

Poetic feelings, like the flexuous boughs

Of mighty oaks! yield homage to the gale,

Toss in the strong winds, drive before the gust,

Themselves one giddy storm of fluttering leaves;

Yet, all the while, self-limited, remain

Equally near the fix’d and parent trunk

Of truth in nature--in the howling blast,

As in the calm that stills the aspen grove.[272]

That this is deep in our nature, I felt when I was on Scafell. I

involuntarily poured forth a hymn[273] in the manner of the Psalms,

though afterwards I thought the ideas, etc., disproportionate to our

humble mountains.... You will soon see it in the “Morning Post,” and I

should be glad to know whether and how far it pleased you. It has struck

me with great force lately that the Psalms afford a most complete answer

to those who state the Jehovah of the Jews, as a personal and national

God, and the Jews as differing from the Greeks only in calling the minor

Gods Cherubim and Seraphim, and confining the word “God” only to their

Jupiter. It must occur to every reader that the Greeks in their religious

poems address always the Numina Loci, the Genii, the Dryads, the Naiads,

etc., etc. All natural objects were _dead_, mere hollow statues, but there

was a Godkin or Goddessling _included_ in each. In the Hebrew poetry you

find nothing of this poor stuff, as poor in genuine imagination as it is

mean in intellect. At best, it is but fancy, or the aggregating faculty of

the mind, not imagination or the _modifying_ and coadunating faculty. This

the Hebrew poets appear to me to have possessed beyond all others, and

next to them the English. In the Hebrew poets each thing has a life of its

own, and yet they are all our life. In God they move and live and _have_

their being; not _had_, as the cold system of Newtonian Theology

represents, but _have_. Great pleasure indeed, my dear sir, did I receive

from the latter part of your letter. If there be any two subjects which

have in the very depths of my nature interested me, it has been the Hebrew

and Christian Theology, and the Theology of Plato. Last winter I read the

Parmenides and the Timæus with great care, and oh, that you were

here--even in this howling rainstorm that dashes itself against my

windows--on the other side of my blazing fire, in that great armchair

there! I guess we should encroach on the morning ere we parted. How little

the commentators of Milton have availed themselves of the writings of

Plato, Milton’s darling! But alas, commentators only hunt out verbal

parallelisms--_numen abest_. I was much impressed with this in all the

many notes on that beautiful passage in “Comus” from l. 629 to 641. All

the puzzle is to find out what plant Hæmony is; which they discover to be

the English spleenwort, and decked out as a mere play and licence of

poetic fancy with all the strange properties suited to the purpose of the

drama. They thought little of Milton’s platonizing spirit, who wrote

nothing without an interior meaning. “Where more is meant than meets the

ear,” is true of himself beyond all writers. He was so great a man that he

seems to have considered fiction as profane unless where it is consecrated

by being emblematic of some truth. What an unthinking and ignorant man we

must have supposed Milton to be, if, without any hidden meaning, he had

described it as growing in such abundance that the dull swain treads on it

daily, and yet as never _flowering_. Such blunders Milton of all others

was least likely to commit. Do look at the passage. Apply it as an

allegory of Christianity, or, to speak more precisely, of the Redemption

by the Cross, every syllable is full of light! “_A small unsightly

root._”--“To the Greeks folly, to the Jews a stumbling-block”--“_The leaf

was darkish and had prickles on it_”--“If in this life only we have hope,

we are of all men the most miserable,” and a score of other texts. “_But

in another country, as he said, Bore a bright golden flower_”--“The

exceeding weight of glory prepared for us hereafter”--“_But not in this

soil; Unknown and like esteemed and the dull swain Treads on it daily with

his clouted shoon_”--The promises of Redemption offered daily and hourly,

and to all, but accepted scarcely by any--“_He called it Hæmony_.” Now

what is Hæmony? αἷμα οἶνος, Blood-wine. “And he took the wine and blessed

it and said, ‘This is my Blood,’”--the great symbol of the Death on the

Cross. There is a general ridicule cast on all allegorising of poets. Read

Milton’s prose works, and observe whether he was one of those who joined

in this ridicule. There is a very curious passage in Josephus [De Bello

Jud. 6, 7, cap. 25 (vi. § 3)] which is, in its literal meaning, more wild

and fantastically absurd than the passage in Milton; so much so, that

Lardner quotes it in exultation and says triumphantly, “Can any man who

reads it think it any disparagement to the Christian Religion that it was

not embraced by a man who would believe such stuff as this? God forbid

that it should affect Christianity, that it is not believed by the learned

of this world!” But the passage in Josephus, I have no doubt, is wholly

allegorical.

Ἔστησε signifies “He hath stood,”[274] which, in these times of apostasy

from the principles of freedom or of religion in this country, and from

both by the same persons in France, is no unmeaning signature, if

subscribed with humility, and in the remembrance of “Let him that stands

take heed lest he fall!” However, it is, in truth, no more than S. T. C.

written in Greek--Es tee see.

Pocklington will not sell his house, but he is ill, and perhaps it may be

to be sold, but it is sunless all winter.

God bless you, and

S. T. COLERIDGE.

CXXXI. TO THE SAME.

GRETA HALL, KESWICK, Tuesday, September 27, 1802.

MY DEAR SIR,--The river is full, and Lodore is full, and silver-fillets

come out of clouds and glitter in every ravine of all the mountains; and

the hail lies like snow, upon their tops, and the impetuous gusts from

Borrowdale snatch the water up high, and continually at the bottom of the

lake it is not distinguishable from snow slanting before the wind--and

under this seeming snow-drift the sunshine _gleams_, and over all the

nether half of the Lake it is _bright_ and _dazzles_, a cauldron of melted

silver boiling! It is in very truth a sunny, misty, cloudy, dazzling,

howling, omniform day, and I have been looking at as pretty a sight as a

father’s eyes could well see--Hartley and little Derwent running in the

green where the gusts blow most madly, both with their hair floating and

tossing, a miniature of the agitated trees, below which they were playing,

inebriate both with the pleasure--Hartley whirling round for joy, Derwent

eddying, half-willingly, half by the force of the gust,--driven backward,

struggling forward, and shouting his little hymn of joy. I can write thus

to you, my dear sir, with a confident spirit; for when I received your

letter on the 22nd, and had read the “family history,” I laid down the

sheet upon my desk, and sate for half an hour thinking of you, dreaming of

you, till the tear grown cold upon my cheek awoke me from my reverie. May

you live long, long, thus blessed in your family, and often, often may you

all sit around one fireside. Oh happy should I be now and then to sit

among you--your pilot and guide in some of your summer walks!

“Frigidus ut sylvis Aquilo si increverit, aut si

Hiberni pluviis dependent nubibus imbres,

Nos habeat domus, et multo Lar luceat igne.

Ante focum mihi parvus erit, qui ludat, Iulus,

Blanditias ferat, et nondum constantia verba;

Ipse legam magni tecum monumenta Platonis!”

Or, what would be still better, I could talk to you (and, if you were here

now, to an accompaniment of winds that would well suit the subject)

instead of writing to you concerning your “Orestes.” When we talk we are

our own living commentary, and there are so many _running notes_ of look,

tone, and gesture, that there is small danger of being misunderstood, and

less danger of being imperfectly understood--in writing; but no! it is

foolish to abuse a good substitute because it is not all that the original

is,--so I will do my best and, believe me, I consider this letter which I

am about to write as merely an exercise of my own judgment--a something

that may make you better acquainted, perhaps, with the architecture and

furniture of _my_ mind, though it will probably convey to you little or

nothing that had not occurred to you before respecting your own tragedy.

One thing I beg solicitously of you, that, if anywhere I appear to speak

positively, you will acquit me of any correspondent feeling. I hope that

it is not a frequent feeling with me in any case, and, that if it appear

so, I am belied by my own warmth of manner. In the present instance it is

impossible. I have been too deeply impressed by the work, and I am now

about to give you, not criticisms nor decisions, but a history of my

impressions, and, for the greater part, of my first impressions, and if

anywhere there seem anything like a tone of warmth or dogmatism, do, my

dear sir, be kind enough to regard it as no more than a way of conveying

to you the _whole_ of my meaning; or, for I am writing too seriously, as

the dexterous _toss_, necessary to turn an idea out of its pudding-bag,

round and _unbroken_.

[No signature.]

Several pages of minute criticisms on Sotheby’s “Orestes” form part of the

original transcript of the letter.

CXXXII. TO HIS WIFE.

ST. CLEAR, CAERMARTHEN, Tuesday, November 16, 1802.

MY DEAR LOVE,--I write to you from the New Passage, Saturday morning,

November 13. We had a favourable passage, dined on the other side, and

proceeded in a post-chaise to Usk, and from thence to Abergavenny, where

we supped and slept and breakfasted--a vile supper, vile beds, and vile

breakfast. From Abergavenny to Brecon, through the vale of Usk, I believe,

nineteen miles of most delightful country. It is not indeed comparable

with the meanest part of our Lake Country, but hills, vale, and river,

cottages and woods are nobly blended, and, thank Heaven, I seldom permit

my past greater pleasures to lessen my enjoyment of present charms. Of the

things which this nineteen miles has in common with our whole vale of

Keswick (which is about nineteen miles long), I may say that the two vales

and the two rivers are equal to each other, that the Keswick vale beats

the Welsh one all hollow in cottages, but is as much surpassed by it in

woods and timber trees. I am persuaded that every tree in the south of

England has three times the number of _leaves_ that a tree of the same

sort and size has in Cumberland or Westmoreland, and there is an

incomparably larger number of very large trees. Even the Scotch firs

luxuriate into beauty and pluminess, and the larches are magnificent

creatures indeed, in S. Wales. I must not deceive you, however, with all

the advantages. S. Wales, if you came into it with the very pictures of

Keswick, Ulleswater, Grasmere, etc., in your fancy, and were determined to

hold them, and S. Wales together with all its richer fields, woods, and

ancient trees, would needs appear flat and tame as ditchwater. I have no

firmer persuasion than this, that there is no place in our island (and,

saving Switzerland, none in Europe perhaps), which really equals the vale

of Keswick, including Borrowdale, Newlands, and Bassenthwaite. O Heaven!

that it had but a more genial climate! It is now going on for the

eighteenth week since they have had any rain here, more than a few casual

refreshing showers, and we have monopolized the rain of the whole kingdom.

From Brecon to Trecastle--a churchyard, two or three miles from Brecon, is

belted by a circle of the largest and noblest yews I ever saw--in a belt,

to wit; they are not so large as the yew in Borrowdale or that in Lorton,

but so many, so large and noble, I never saw before--and quite _glowing_

with those heavenly-coloured, silky-pink-scarlet berries. From Trecastle

to Llandovery, where we found a nice inn, an excellent supper, and good

beds. From Llandovery to Llandilo--from Llandilo to Caermarthen, a large

town all whitewashed--the roofs of the houses all whitewashed! a great

town in a confectioner’s shop, on Twelfth-cake-Day, or a huge snowpiece at

a distance. It is nobly situated along a hill among hills, at the head of

a very extensive vale. From Caermarthen after dinner to St. Clear, a

little hamlet nine miles from Caermarthen, three miles from the sea (the

nearest seaport being Llangan, pronounced _Larne_, on Caermarthen

Bay--look in the map), and not quite a hundred miles from Bristol. The

country immediately round is exceedingly bleak and dreary--just the sort

of country that there is around Shurton, etc. But the inn, the _Blue

Boar_, is the most comfortable little public-house I was ever in. Miss S.

Wedgwood left us this morning (we arrived here at half past four yesterday

evening) for Crescelly, Mr. _Allen’s_ seat (the Mrs. Wedgwood’s father),

fifteen miles from this place, and T. Wedgwood is gone out cock-shooting,

in high glee and spirits. He is very much better than I expected to have

found him--he says, the thought of my coming, and my really coming so

immediately, has sent a new life into him. He will be out all the

mornings. The evenings we chat, discuss, or I read to him. To me he is a

delightful and instructive companion. He possesses the _finest_, the

_subtlest_ mind and taste I have ever yet met with. His mind resembles

that miniature in my “Three Graves:”[275]--

A small blue sun! and it has got

A perfect glory too!

Ten thousand hairs of colour’d light,

Make up a glory gay and bright,

Round that small orb so blue!

I continue in excellent health, compared with my state at Keswick.... I

have now left off beer too, and will persevere in it. I take no tea; in

the morning coffee, with a teaspoonful of ginger in the last cup; in the

afternoon a large cup of ginger-tea, and I take ginger at twelve o’clock

at noon, and a glass after supper. I find not the least inconvenience from

any quantity, however large. I dare say I take a large table-spoonful in

the course of the twenty-four hours, and once in the twenty-four hours

(but not always at the same time) I take half a grain of purified opium,

equal to twelve drops of laudanum, which is not more than an eighth part

of what I took at Keswick, exclusively of beer, brandy, and tea, which

last is undoubtedly a pernicious thing--all which I have left off, and

will give this regimen a _fair, complete_ trial of one month, with no

other deviation than that I shall sometimes lessen the opiate, and

sometimes miss a day. But I am fully convinced, and so is T. Wedgwood,

that to a person with such a stomach and bowels as mine, if any stimulus

is needful, opium in the small quantities I now take it is incomparably

better in every respect than beer, wine, spirits, or any _fermented_

liquor, nay, far less pernicious than even tea. It _is my particular wish

that Hartley and Derwent should have as little tea as possible, and always

very weak, with more than half milk_. Read this sentence to Mary, and to

Mrs. Wilson. I should think that ginger-tea, with a good deal of milk in

it, would be an excellent thing for Hartley. A teaspoonful piled up of

ginger would make a potful of tea, that would serve him for two days. And

let him drink it half milk. I dare say that he would like it very well,

for it is pleasant with sugar, and tell him that his dear father takes it

instead of tea, and believes that it will make his dear Hartley grow. The

whole kingdom is getting ginger-mad. My dear love! I have said nothing of

Italy, for I am as much in the dark as when I left Keswick, indeed much

more. For I now doubt very much whether we shall go or no. Against our

going you must place T. W.’s improved state of health, and his exceeding

dislike to continental travelling, and horror of the sea, and his

exceeding attachment to his family; for our going, you must place his past

experience, the transiency of his enjoyments, the craving after change,

and the effect of a cold winter, especially if it should come on _wet_ or

_sleety_. His determinations are made so rapidly, that two or three days

of wet weather with a raw cold air might have such an effect on his

spirits, that he might go off immediately to Naples, or perhaps for

Teneriffe, which latter place he is always talking about. Look out for it

in the Encyclopædia. Again, these latter causes make it not impossible

that the pleasure he has in me as a companion may languish. I must

subscribe myself in haste,

Your dear husband,

S. T. COLERIDGE.

The mail is waiting.

CXXXIII. TO THE REV. J. P. ESTLIN.

CRESCELLY, near Narbarth, Pembrokeshire,

December 7, 1802.

MY DEAR FRIEND,--I took the liberty of desiring Mrs. Coleridge to direct a

letter for me to you, fully expecting to have seen you; but I passed

rapidly through Bristol, and left it with Mr. Wedgwood immediately--I

literally had _no time_ to see any one. I hope, however, to see you on my

return, for I wish very much to have some hours’ conversation with you on

a subject that will not cease to interest either of us while we _live_ at

least, and I trust that is a synonym of “for ever!”... Have you seen my

different essays in the “Morning Post”?[276]--the comparison of Imperial

Rome and France, the “Once a Jacobin, always a Jacobin,” and the two

letters to Mr. Fox? Are my politics yours?

Have you heard lately from America? A gentleman informed me that the

progress of religious Deism in the middle Provinces is exceedingly rapid,

that there are numerous congregations of Deists, etc., etc. Would to

Heaven this were the case in France! Surely, religious Deism is infinitely

nearer the religion of our Saviour than the _gross_ idolatry of Popery, or

the more decorous, but not less genuine, idolatry of a vast majority of

Protestants. If there be meaning in words, it appears to me that the

Quakers and Unitarians are the only Christians, altogether pure from

Idolatry, and even of these I am sometimes jealous, that some of the

Unitarians make too much an _Idol_ of their _one_ God. Even the worship of

one God becomes _Idolatry_ in my convictions, when, instead of the Eternal

and Omnipresent, in whom we live and move and _have_ our Being, we set up

a distinct Jehovah, tricked out in the _anthropomorphic_ attributes of

Time and _successive_ Thoughts, and think of him as a _Person_, _from_

whom we _had_ our Being. The tendency to _Idolatry_ seems to me to lie at

the root of all our human vices--it is our original Sin. When we dismiss

_three Persons_ in the Deity, only by subtracting _two_, we talk more

intelligibly, but, I fear, do not feel more religiously--for God is a

Spirit, and must be worshipped in spirit.

O my dear sir! it is long since we have seen each other--believe me, my

esteem and grateful affection for you and Mrs. Estlin has suffered no

abatement or intermission--nor can I persuade myself that my opinions,

fully stated and fully understood, would appear to you to differ

_essentially_ from your own. My creed is very simple--my confession of

Faith very brief. I approve altogether and embrace entirely the _Religion_

of the Quakers, but exceedingly dislike the _sect_, and their own notions

of their own Religion. By Quakerism I understand the opinions of George

Fox rather than those of Barclay--who was the St. Paul of Quakerism.--I

pray for you and yours!

S. T. COLERIDGE.

CXXXIV. TO ROBERT SOUTHEY.

Christmas Day, 1802.

MY DEAR SOUTHEY,--I arrived at Keswick with T. Wedgwood on Friday

afternoon, that is to say, yesterday, and had the comfort to find that

Sara was safely brought to bed, the morning before, that is on Thursday,

half-past six, of a healthy GIRL. I had never thought of a girl as a

possible event; the words child and man-child were perfect synonyms in my

feelings. However, I bore the sex with great fortitude, and she shall be

called Sara. Both Mrs. Coleridge and the Coleridgiella are as well as can

be. I left the little one sucking at a great rate. Derwent and Hartley are

both well.

[Illustration]

I was at Cote[277] in the beginning of November, and of course had

calculated on seeing you, and, above all, on seeing little Edith’s

physiognomy, among the certain things of my expedition, but I had no

sooner arrived at Cote than I was forced to quit it, T. Wedgwood having

engaged to go into Wales with his sister. I arrived at Cote in the

afternoon, and till late evening did not know or conjecture that we were

to go off early in the next morning. I do not say this for you,--you must

know how earnestly I yearn to see you,--but for Mr. Estlin, who expressed

himself wounded by the circumstance. When you see him, therefore, be so

good as to mention this to him. I was much affected by Mrs. Coleridge’s

account of your health and eyes. God have mercy on us! We are all sick,

all mad, all slaves! It is a theory of mine that virtue and genius are

diseases of the hypochondriacal and scrofulous genera, and exist in a

peculiar state of the nerves and diseased digestion, analogous to the

beautiful diseases that colour and variegate certain trees. However, I

add, by way of comfort, that it is my faith that the virtue and genius

produce the disease, not the disease the virtue, etc., though when present

it fosters them. Heaven knows, there are fellows who have more vices than

scabs, and scabs countless, with fewer ideas than plaisters. As to my own

health it is very indifferent. I am exceedingly temperate in everything,

abstain wholly from wine, spirits, or fermented liquors, almost

wholly from tea, abjure all fermentable and vegetable food, bread

excepted, and use _that_ sparingly; live almost entirely on eggs, fish,

flesh, and fowl, and thus contrive not to be _ill_. But well I am not, and

in this climate never shall be. A deeply ingrained though mild scrofula is

diffused through me, and is a very Proteus. I am fully determined to _try_

Teneriffe or Gran Canaria, influenced to prefer them to Madeira solely by

the superior cheapness of living. The climate and country are heavenly,

the inhabitants Papishes, all of whom I would burn with fire and faggot,

for what didn’t they do to us Christians under bloody Queen Mary? Oh the

Devil sulphur-roast them! I would have no mercy on them, unless they

drowned all their priests, and then, spite of the itch (which they have in

an inveterate degree, rich and poor, gentle and simple, old and young,

male and female), would shake hands with them ungloved.

By way of _one_ impudent half line in this meek and mild letter--will you

go with me? “I” and “you” mean mine and yours, of course. Remember you are

to give me Thomas Aquinas and Scotus Erigena.

God bless you and

S. T. COLERIDGE.

I can have the best letters and recommendation. My love and their sisters

to Mary and Edith, and if you see Mrs. Fricker, be so good as to tell her

that she will hear from me or Sara in the course of ten days.

CXXXV. TO THOMAS WEDGWOOD.

[The text of this letter, which was first published in Cottle’s

“Reminiscences,” 1849, p. 450, has been collated with that of the

original.]

KESWICK, January 9, 1803.

MY DEAR WEDGWOOD,--I send you two letters, one from your dear sister, the

second from Sharp, by which you will see at what short notice I must be

off, if I go to the Canaries. If your last plan continue in full force in

your mind, of course I have not even the phantom of a wish thitherward

struggling, but if aught have happened to you, in the things without, or

in the world within, to induce you to change the plan in itself, or the

plan relatively to me, I think I could raise the money, at all events, and

go and see. But I would a thousand-fold rather go with you whithersoever

you go. I shall be anxious to hear how you have gone on since I left you.

Should you decide in favour of a better climate somewhere or other, the

best scheme I can think of is that in some part of Italy or Sicily which

we both liked. I would look out for two houses. Wordsworth and his family

would take the one, and I the other, and then you might have a home either

with me, or, if you thought of Mr. and Mrs. Luff, under this modification,

one of your own; and in either case you would have neighbours, and so

return to England when the homesickness pressed heavy upon you, and back

to Italy when it was abated, and the climate of England began to poison

your comforts. So you would have abroad, in a genial climate, certain

comforts of society among simple and enlightened men and women; and I

should be an alleviation of the pang which you will necessarily feel,

always, as often as you quit your own family.

I know no better plan: for travelling in search of objects is, at best, a

dreary business, and whatever excitement it might have had, you must have

exhausted it. God bless you, my dear friend. I write with dim eyes, for

indeed, indeed, my heart is very full of affectionate sorrowful thoughts

toward you.

I found Mrs. Coleridge not so well as I expected, but she is better

to-day--and I, myself, write with difficulty, with all the fingers but one

of my right hand very much swollen. Before I was half up _Kirkstone_ the

storm had wetted me through and through, and before I reached the top it

was so wild and outrageous, that it would have been unmanly to have

suffered the poor woman (guide) to continue pushing on, up against such a

torrent of wind and rain; so I dismounted and sent her home with the storm

to her back. I am no novice in mountain mischiefs, but such a storm as

this was I never witnessed, combining the intensity of the cold with the

violence of the wind and rain. The rain-drops were pelted or, rather,

slung against my face by the gusts, just like splinters of flint, and I

felt as if every drop _cut_ my flesh. My hands were all shrivelled up like

a washerwoman’s, and so benumbed that I was obliged to carry my stick

under my arm. Oh, it was a wild business! Such hurry-skurry of clouds,

such volleys of sound! In spite of the wet and the cold, I should have had

some pleasure in it but for two vexations: first, an almost intolerable

pain came into my right eye, a _smarting_ and _burning_ pain; and

secondly, in consequence of riding with such cold water under my seat,

extremely uneasy and burthensome feelings attacked my groin, so that, what

with the pain from the one, and the alarm from the other, I had _no

enjoyment at all_!

Just at the brow of the hill I met a man dismounted, who could not sit on

horseback. He seemed quite scared by the uproar, and said to me, with much

feeling, “Oh, sir, it is a perilous buffeting, but it is worse for you

than for me, for I have it at my back.” However I got safely over, and,

immediately, all was calm and breathless, as if it was some mighty

fountain just on the summit of Kirkstone, that shot forth its volcano of

air, and precipitated huge streams of invisible lava down the road to

Patterdale.

I went on to Grasmere. I was not at all unwell when I arrived there,

though wet of course to the skin. My right eye had nothing the matter with

it, either to the sight of others, or to my own feelings, but I had a bad

night, with distressful dreams, chiefly about my eye; and awaking often

in the dark I thought it was the effect of mere recollection, but it

appeared in the morning that my right eye was bloodshot, and the lid

swollen. That morning, however, I walked home, and before I reached

Keswick my eye was quite well, but _I felt unwell all over_. Yesterday I

continued unusually unwell all over me till eight o’clock in the evening.

I took no _laudanum or opium_, but at eight o’clock, unable to bear the

stomach uneasiness and aching of my limbs, I took two large teaspoonsfull

of ether in a wine-glass of camphorated gum water, and a third

teaspoonfull at ten o’clock, and I received complete relief,--my body

calmed, my sleep placid,--but when I awoke in the morning my right hand,

with three of the fingers, was swollen and inflamed.... This has been a

very rough attack, but though I am much weakened by it, and look sickly

and haggard, yet I am not out of heart. Such a _bout_, such a “perilous

buffeting,” was enough to have hurt the health of a strong man. Few

constitutions can bear to be long wet through in intense cold. I fear it

will tire you to death to read this prolix scrawled story, but my health,

I know, interests you. Do continue to send me a few lines by the market

people on Friday--I shall receive it on Tuesday morning.

Affectionately, dear friend, yours ever,

S. T. COLERIDGE.

[Addressed “T. Wedgwood, Esq., C. Luff’s Esq., Glenridding, Ulleswater.”]

CXXXVI. TO HIS WIFE.

[LONDON], Monday, April 4, 1803.

MY DEAR SARA,--I have taken my place for Wednesday night, and, barring

accidents, shall arrive at Penrith on Friday noon. If Friday be a fine

morning, that is, if it do not rain, you will get Mr. Jackson to send a

lad with a horse or pony to Penruddock. The boy ought to be at Penruddock

by twelve o’clock that his horse may bait and have a feed of corn. But if

it be rain, there is no choice but that I must take a chaise. At all

events, if it please God, I shall be with you by Friday, five o’clock, at

the latest. You had better dine early. I shall take an egg or two at

Penrith and drink tea at home. For more than a fortnight we have had

burning July weather. The effect on my health was manifest, but Lamb

objected, very sensibly, “How do you know what part may not be owing to

the excitement of bustle and company?” On Friday night I was unwell and

restless, and uneasy in limbs and stomach, though I had been extremely

regular. I told Lamb on Saturday morning that I guessed the weather had

changed. But there was no mark of it; it was hotter than ever. On Saturday

evening my right knee and both my ankles swelled and were very painful;

and within an hour after there came a storm of wind and rain. It continued

raining the whole night. Yesterday it was a fine day, but cold; to-day the

same, but I am a great deal better, and the swelling in my ankle is gone

down and that in my right knee much decreased. Lamb observed that he was

glad he had seen all this with his own eyes; he now _knew_ that my illness

was truly linked with the weather, and no whim or restlessness of

disposition in me. It is curious, but I have found that the weather-glass

changed on Friday night, the very hour that I found myself unwell. I will

try to bring down something for Hartley, though toys are so outrageously

dear, and I so short of money, that I shall be puzzled.

To-day I dine again with Sotheby. He had informed me that ten gentlemen

who have met me at his house desired him to solicit me to finish the

“Christabel,” and to permit them to publish it for me; and they engaged

that it should be in paper, printing, and decorations the most magnificent

thing that had hitherto appeared. Of course I declined it. The lovely lady

shan’t come to that pass! Many times rather would I have it printed at

Soulby’s on the true ballad paper. However, it was civil, and Sotheby is

very civil to me.

I had purposed not to speak of Mary Lamb, but I had better write it than

tell it. The Thursday before last she met at Rickman’s a Mr. Babb, an old

friend and admirer of her mother. The next day she _smiled_ in an ominous

way; on Sunday she told her brother that she was getting bad, with great

agony. On Tuesday morning she laid hold of me with violent agitation and

talked wildly about George Dyer. I told Charles there was not a moment to

lose; and I did not lose a moment, but went for a hackney-coach and took

her to the private mad-house at Hugsden. She was quite calm, and said it

was the best to do so. But she wept bitterly two or three times, yet all

in a calm way. Charles is cut to the heart. You will send this note to

Grasmere or the contents of it, though, if I have time, I shall probably

write myself to them to-day or to-morrow.

Yours affectionately,

S. T. COLERIDGE.

CXXXVII. TO ROBERT SOUTHEY.

KESWICK, Wednesday, July 2, 1803.

MY DEAR SOUTHEY,--You have had much illness as well as I, but I thank God

for you, you have never been equally diseased in voluntary power with me.

I knew a lady who was seized with a sort of asthma which she knew would be

instantly relieved by a dose of ether. She had the full use of her limbs,

and was not an arm’s-length from the bell, yet could not command voluntary

power sufficient to pull it, and might have died but for the accidental

coming in of her daughter. From such as these the doctrines of materialism

and mechanical necessity have been deduced; and it is some small argument

against the truth of these doctrines that I have perhaps had a more

various experience, a more intuitive knowledge of such facts than most

men, and yet I do not believe these doctrines. My health is _middling_. If

this hot weather continue, I hope to go on endurably, and oh, for peace!

for I forbode a miserable winter in this country. Indeed, I am rather

induced to determine on wintering in Madeira, rather than staying at home.

I have enclosed ten pounds for Mrs. Fricker. Tell her I wish it were in my

power to increase this poor half year’s mite; but ill health keeps me

poor. Bella is with us, and seems likely to recover. I have not seen the

“Edinburgh Review.” The truth is that Edinburgh is a place of literary

gossip, and even _I_ have had my portion of puff there, and of course my

portion of hatred and envy. One man puffs me up--he has seen and talked

with me; another hears him, goes and reads my poems, written when almost a

boy, and candidly and logically hates me, because he does not admire my

poems, in the proportion in which one of his acquaintance had admired me.

It is difficult to say whether these reviewers do you harm or good.

You read me at Bristol a very interesting piece of casuistry from Father

Somebody, the author, I believe, of the “Theatre Critic,” respecting a

double infant. If you do not immediately want it, or if my using it in a

book of logic, with proper acknowledgment, will not interfere with your

use of it, I should be extremely obliged to you if you would send it me

without delay. I rejoice to hear of the progress of your History. The only

thing I dread is the division of the European and Colonial History. In

style you have only to beware of short, biblical, and pointed periods.

Your general style is delightfully natural and yet striking.

You may expect certain explosions in the “Morning Post,” Coleridge

_versus_ Fox, in about a week. It grieved me to hear (for I have a sort of

affection for the man) from Sharp, that Fox had not read my two letters,

but had heard of them, and that they were mine, and had expressed himself

more wounded by the circumstance than anything that had happened since

Burke’s business. Sharp told this to Wordsworth, and told Wordsworth that

he had been so affected by Fox’s manner, that he himself had declined

reading the two letters. Yet Sharp himself thinks my opinions right and

true; but Fox is not to be attacked, and why? Because he is an amiable

man; and not by me, because he had thought highly of me, etc., etc. O

Christ! this is a pretty age in the article _morality_! When I cease to

love Truth best of all things, and Liberty the next best, may I cease to

live: nay, it is my creed that I should thereby cease to live, for as far

as anything can be called probable in a subject so dark, it seems to me

most probable that our immortality is to be a work of our own hands.

All the children are well, and love to hear Bella talk of Margaret. Love

to Edith and to Mary and

S. T. COLERIDGE.

I have received great delight and instruction from _Scotus Erigena_. He is

clearly the modern founder of the school of Pantheism; indeed he expressly

defines the divine nature as _quæ fit et facit, et creat et creatur_; and

repeatedly declares creation to be _manifestation_, the epiphany of

philosophers. The eloquence with which he writes astonished me, but he had

read more Greek than Latin, and was a Platonist rather than an

Aristotelian. There is a good deal of _omne meus oculus_ in the notion of

the dark ages, etc., taken intensively; in extension it might be true.

They had _wells_: we are flooded ankle high: and what comes of it but

grass rank or rotten? Our age eats from that poison-tree of knowledge

yclept “Too-Much and Too-Little.” Have you read Paley’s last book?[278]

Have you it to review? I could make a dashing review of it.

CXXXVIII. TO THE SAME.

KESWICK, July, 1803.

MY DEAR SOUTHEY,--... I write now to propose a scheme,[279] or rather a

rude outline of a scheme, of your grand work. What harm can a proposal do?

If it be no pain to you to reject it, it will be none to me to have it

rejected. I would have the work entitled Bibliotheca Britannica, or an

History of British Literature, bibliographical, biographical, and

critical. The two _last_ volumes I would have to be a chronological

catalogue of all noticeable or extant books; the others, be the number six

or eight, to consist entirely of separate treatises, each giving a

critical biblio-biographical history of some one subject. I will, with

great pleasure, join you in learning Welsh and Erse; and you, I, Turner,

and Owen,[280] might dedicate ourselves for the first half-year to a

complete history of all Welsh, Saxon, and Erse books that are not

translations that are the native growth of Britain. If the Spanish

neutrality continues, I will go in October or November to Biscay, and

throw light on the Basque.

Let the next volume contain the history of _English_ poetry and poets, in

which I would include all prose truly poetical. The first half of the

second volume should be dedicated to great single names, Chaucer and

Spenser, Shakespeare, Milton and Taylor, Dryden and Pope; the poetry of

witty logic,--Swift, Fielding, Richardson, Sterne; I write _par hasard_,

but I mean to say all great names as have either formed epochs in our

taste, or such, at least, as are representative; and the great object to

be in each instance to determine, first, the true merits and demerits of

the _books_; secondly, what of these belong to the age--what to the author

_quasi peculium_. The second half of the second volume should be a history

of poetry and romances, everywhere interspersed with biography, but more

flowing, more consecutive, more bibliographical, chronological, and

complete. The third volume I would have dedicated to English prose,

considered as to style, as to eloquence, as to general impressiveness; a

history of styles and manners, their causes, their birth-places and

parentage, their analysis....

These three volumes would be so generally interesting, so exceedingly

entertaining, that you might bid fair for a sale of the work at large.

Then let the fourth volume take up the history of metaphysics, theology,

medicine, alchemy, common canon, and Roman law, from Alfred to Henry VII.;

in other words, a history of the dark ages in Great Britain: the fifth

volume--carry on metaphysics and ethics to the present day in the first

half; the second half, comprise the theology of all the reformers. In the

fourth volume there would be a grand article on the philosophy of the

theology of the Roman Catholic religion; in this (fifth volume), under

different names,--Hooker, Baxter, Biddle, and Fox,--the spirit of the

theology of all the other parts of Christianity. The sixth and seventh

volumes must comprise all the articles you can get, on all the separate

arts and sciences that have been treated of in books since the

Reformation; and, by this time, the book, if it answered at all, would

have gained so high a reputation that you need not fear having whom you

liked to write the different articles--medicine, surgery, chemistry, etc.,

etc., navigation, travellers, voyagers, etc., etc. If I go into Scotland,

shall I engage Walter Scott to write the history of Scottish poets? Tell

me, however, what you think of the plan. It would have one prodigious

advantage: whatever accident stopped the work, would only prevent the

future good, not mar the past; each volume would be a great and valuable

work _per se_. Then each volume would awaken a new interest, a new set of

readers, who would buy the past volumes of course; then it would allow you

ample time and opportunities for the slavery of the catalogue volumes,

which should be at the same time an index to the work, which would be in

very truth a pandect of knowledge, alive and swarming with human life,

feeling, incident. By the bye, what a strange abuse has been made of the

word encyclopædia! It signifies properly, grammar, logic, rhetoric, and

ethics, and metaphysics, which last, explaining the ultimate principle of

grammar--log.--rhet., and eth.--formed a circle of knowledge.... To call a

huge unconnected miscellany of the _omne scibile_, in an arrangement

determined by the accident of initial letters, an encyclopædia is the

impudent ignorance of your Presbyterian book-makers. Good night!

God bless you!

S. T. C.

CXXXIX. TO THE SAME.

KESWICK, Sunday, August 7, 1803.

(Read the last lines first; I send you this letter merely to show you how

anxious I have been about your work.)