Woodlands, 271.
Woolman, John, 540.
_Woolman, John, the Journal of_, 4 and note.
Worcester, 154.
Wordsworth, Catherine, 563.
Wordsworth, Rev. Christopher, D. D., 225 n.;
Charles Lloyd reads Greek with, 311.
Wordsworth, Rev. Christopher, M. A., his _Social Life at the English
Universities in the Eighteenth Century_, 225 n.
Wordsworth, Rt. Rev. Christopher, D. D., his _Memoirs of William
Wordsworth_, 432 n., 585 n.
Wordsworth, Dorothy, 10 n.;
C.’s description of, 218 n.;
visits C. with her brother, 224-227;
228, 231, 245 n., 249;
goes to Germany with William Wordsworth, Coleridge, and John Chester,
259;
with her brother at Goslar, 272, 273;
returns with him to England, 288, 296;
311 n., 346, 367, 373, 385;
accompanies her brother and C. on a tour in Scotland, 431, 432 and
note;
577, 599 n.
Wordsworth, John, son of William W., 545.
Wordsworth, Captain John, and the effect of his death on C.’s spirits,
494 and note, 495 and note, 497.
Wordsworth, Thomas, death of, 599 n.;
C.’s love of, 600.
Wordsworth, William, 10 n., 163 and note, 164 and note, 218 n.;
visit from C. at Racedown, 220 and note, 221;
greatness of, 221, 224;
settles at Alfoxden, near Stowey, 224;
at C.’s cottage, 224-227;
C. visits him at Alfoxden, 227;
228, 231, 232;
suspected of conspiracy against the government, 232 n., 233;
memoranda scribbled on the outside sheet of a letter from C., 238 n.;
his greatness and amiability, 239;
his _Excursion_, 244 n., 337 n., 585 n., 641, 642, 645-650;
245;
C.’s admiration for, 246;
250 n.;
accompanies C. to Germany, 259;
268, 269 n.;
considers settling near the Lakes, 270;
271;
at Goslar with his sister, 272, 273;
an _Epitaph_ by, 284;
returns to England, 288, 296;
wishes C. to live near him in the North of England, 296;
his grief at C.’s refusal, 296, 297;
304, 313;
his and C.’s _Lyrical Ballads_, 336, 337, 341, 350 and note, 387;
his admiration for _Christabel_, 337;
338, 342;
proposal from William Calvert in regard to sharing his house and
studying chemistry with him, 345, 346;
his _Stanzas written in my Pocket Copy of Thomson’s Castle of
Indolence_, 345 n.;
348, 350;
marries Miss Mary Hutchinson, 359 n.;
363, 367, 370, 373;
his opinion of poetic license, 373-375;
C. addresses his _Ode to Dejection_ to, 378 and note, 379 and note,
380-384;
385-387;
his _Ruth_, 387;
400, 418, 428;
with C. on a Scotch tour, 431-434;
his _Peter Bell_, 432 and note;
441, 443;
receives a visit at Grasmere from C., who is taken ill there, 447;
his hypochondria, 448;
his happiness and philosophy, 449, 450;
a most original poet, 450;
451;
his _To a Highland Girl_, 459;
464, 468;
his reference to C. in _The Prelude_, 386 n.;
452;
his _Brothers_, 494 n., 609 n.;
his _Happy Warrior_, 494 n.;
extract from a letter to Sir George Beaumont on John Wordsworth’s
death, 494 n.;
511 and note, 522;
his essays on the Convention of Cintra, 534 and note, 543 and note,
548-550;
535;
his _To the Spade of a Friend_, 558 n.;
543 and note, 546, 522, 553 n., 556;
C.’s misunderstanding with, 576 n., 577, 578, 586-588, 612;
his _Essays upon Epitaphs_, 585 and note;
a long-delayed explanation from C., 588-595;
reconciled with C., 596, 597, 599, 612;
death of his son Thomas, 599 n.;
second rupture with C., 599 n., 600 n.;
his projected poem, _The Recluse_, 646, 647 and note, 648-650;
678;
on William Blake as a poet, 686 n.;
his unfinished translation of the _Æneid_, 733 and note, 734;
felicities and unforgettable lines and stanzas in his poems, 734;
influence of the _Edinburgh Review_ on the sale of his works in
Scotland, 741, 742;
759 n.;
letters from C., 234, 588, 596, 599, 643, 733.
_Wordsworth, William, Life of_, by Rev. William Angus Knight, LL. D.,
164 n., 220 n., 447 n., 585 n., 591 n., 596 n., 599 n., 600 n.,
733 n., 759 n.
_Wordsworth, William, Memoirs of_, by Christopher Wordsworth, 432 n.,
550 n., 585 n.
_Wordsworth, William, To_, 641, 644;
C. quotes from, 646, 647;
647 n.
Wordsworth, Mrs. William, extract from a letter to Sara Coleridge, 220;
525.
_See_ Hutchinson, Mary.
Wordsworths, the, visit from C. and his son Hartley at Coleorton
Farmhouse, 509-514;
545;
letter from C., 456.
Wrangham, Francis, 363 and note.
Wrexham, 77, 78.
Wright, Joseph, A. R. A. (Wright of Derby), 152 and note.
Wright, W. Aldis, 174 n.
Wynne, Mr., an old friend of Southey’s, 639 n.
Wyville’s proofs of C.’s portrait, 770.
Yarmouth, 258, 259.
Yates, Miss, 39.
Yews near Brecon, 411.
York, Duke of, 543 n., 555 n., 567 and note.
Young, Edward, 404.
_Youth and Age_, 730 n.
_Zapolya: A Christmas Tale, in two Parts_, its publication in book form
after rejection by the Drury Lane Committee, 666 and note, 667-669.
FOOTNOTES:
[1] Pickering, 1838.
[2] The Journal of John Woolman, the Quaker abolitionist, was published in
Philadelphia in 1774, and in London in 1775. From a letter of Charles
Lamb, dated January 5, 1797, we may conclude that Charles Lloyd had, in
the first instance, drawn Coleridge’s attention to the writings of John
Woolman. Compare, too, _Essays of Elia_, “A Quakers’ Meeting.” “Get the
writings of John Woolman by heart; and love the early Quakers.” _Letters
of Charles Lamb_, 1888, i. 61; _Prose Works_, 1836, ii. 106.
[3] I have been unable to trace any connection between the family of
Coleridge and the Parish or Hundred of Coleridge in North Devon.
Coldridges or Coleridges have been settled for more than two hundred years
in Doddiscombsleigh, Ashton, and other villages of the Upper Teign, and to
the southwest of Exeter the name is not uncommon. It is probable that at
some period before the days of parish registers, strangers from Coleridge
who had settled farther south were named after their birthplace.
[4] Probably a mistake for Crediton. It was at Crediton that John
Coleridge, the poet’s father, was born (Feb. 21, 1718) and educated; and
here, if anywhere, it must have been that the elder John Coleridge “became
a respectable woollen-draper.”
[5] John Coleridge, the younger, was in his thirty-first year when he was
matriculated as sizar at Sidney Sussex College, Cambridge, March 18, 1748.
He is entered in the college books as _filius Johannis textoris_. On the
13th of June, 1749, he was appointed to the mastership of Squire’s Endowed
Grammar School at South Molton. It is strange that Coleridge forgot or
failed to record this incident in his father’s life. His mother came from
the neighbourhood, and several of his father’s scholars, among them
Francis Buller, afterwards the well-known judge, followed him from South
Molton to Ottery St. Mary.
[6] George Coleridge was Chaplain Priest, and Master of the King’s School,
but never Vicar of Ottery St. Mary.
[7] Anne (“Nancy”) Coleridge died in her twenty-fifth year. Her illness
and early death form the subject of two of Coleridge’s early sonnets.
_Poetical Works of Samuel Taylor Coleridge_, Macmillan, 1893, p. 13. See,
also, “Lines to a Friend,” p. 37, and “Frost at Midnight,” p. 127.
[8] A mistake for October 21st.
[9] Compare some doggerel verses “On Mrs. Monday’s Beard” which Coleridge
wrote on a copy of Southey’s _Omniana_, under the heading of “Beards”
(_Omniana_, 1812, ii. 54). Southey records the legend of a female saint,
St. Vuilgefortis, who in answer to her prayers was rewarded with a beard
as a mark of divine favour. The story is told in some Latin elegiacs from
the _Annus Sacer Poeticus_ of the Jesuit Sautel which Southey quotes at
length. Coleridge comments thus, “_Pereant qui ante nos nostra dixere!_
What! can nothing be one’s own? This is the more vexatious, for at the age
of eighteen I lost a legacy of Fifty pounds for the following Epigram on
my Godmother’s Beard, which she had the _barbarity_ to revenge by striking
me out of her Will.”
The epigram is not worth quoting, but it is curious to observe that, even
when scribbling for his own amusement, and without any view to
publication, Coleridge could not resist the temptation of devising an
“apologetic preface.”
The verses, etc., are printed in _Table Talk and Omniana_, Bell, 1888, p.
391. The editor, the late Thomas Ashe, transcribed them from Gillman’s
copy of the _Omniana_, now in the British Museum. I have followed a
transcript of the marginal note made by Mrs. H. N. Coleridge before the
volume was cut in binding. Her version supplies one or two omissions.
[10] The meaning is that the events which had taken place between March
and October, 1797, the composition, for instance, of his tragedy,
_Osorio_, the visit of Charles Lamb to the cottage at Nether Stowey, the
settling of Wordsworth and his sister Dorothy at Alfoxden, would hereafter
be recorded in his autobiography. He had failed to complete the record of
the past, only because he had been too much occupied with the present.
[11] He records his timorous passion for fairy stories in a note to _The
Friend_ (ed. 1850, i. 192). Another version of the same story is to be
found in some MS. notes (taken by J. Tomalin) of the Lectures of 1811, the
only record of this and other lectures:--
_Lecture 5th_, 1811. “Give me,” cried Coleridge, with enthusiasm, “the
works which delighted my youth! Give me the _History of St. George, and
the Seven Champions of Christendom_, which at every leisure moment I used
to hide myself in a corner to read! Give me the _Arabian Nights’
Entertainments_, which I used to watch, till the sun shining on the
bookcase approached, and, glowing full upon it, gave me the courage to
take it from the shelf. I heard of no little Billies, and sought no praise
for giving to beggars, and I trust that my heart is not the worse, or the
less inclined to feel sympathy for all men, because I first learnt the
powers of my nature, and to reverence that nature--for who can feel and
reverence the nature of man and not feel deeply for the affliction of
others possessing like powers and like nature?” Tomalin’s _Shorthand
Report of Lecture V._
[12] Compare a MS. note dated July 19, 1803. “Intensely hot day, left off
a waistcoat, and for yarn wore silk stockings. Before nine o’clock had
unpleasant chillness, heard a noise which I thought Derwent’s in sleep;
listened and found it was a calf bellowing. Instantly came on my mind that
night I slept out at Ottery, and the calf in the field across the river
whose lowing so deeply impressed me. Chill and child and calf lowing.”
[13] Sir Stafford, the seventh baronet, grandfather of the first Lord
Iddesleigh, was at that time a youth of eighteen. His name occurs among
the list of scholars who were subscribers to the second edition of the
_Critical Latin Grammar_.
[14] Compare a MS. note dated March 5, 1818. “Memory counterfeited by
present impressions. One great cause of the coincidence of dreams with the
event--ἡ μήτηρ ἐμή.”
[15] The date of admission to Hertford was July 18, 1782. Eight weeks
later, September 12, he was sent up to London to the great school.
[16] Compare the autobiographical note of 1832. “I was in a continual low
fever. My whole being was, with eyes closed to every object of present
sense, to crumple myself up in a sunny corner and read, read, read; fixing
myself on Robinson Crusoe’s Island, finding a mountain of plumb cake, and
eating a room for myself, and then eating it into the shapes of tables and
chairs--hunger and fancy.” Lamb in his _Christ’s Hospital Five and Thirty
Years Ago_, and Leigh Hunt in his _Autobiography_, are in the same tale as
to the insufficient and ill-cooked meals of their Bluecoat days. _Life of
Coleridge_, by James Gillman, 1838, p. 20; Lamb’s _Prose Works_, 1836, ii.
27; _Autobiography of Leigh Hunt_, 1860, p. 60.
[17] Coleridge’s “letters home” were almost invariably addressed to his
brother George. It may be gathered from his correspondence that at rare
intervals he wrote to his mother as well, but, contrary to her usual
practice, she did not, with this one exception, preserve his letters. It
was, indeed, a sorrowful consequence of his “long exile” at Christ’s
Hospital, that he seems to have passed out of his mother’s ken, that
absence led to something like indifference on both sides.
[18] Compare the autobiographical note of 1832 as quoted by Gillman. About
this time he became acquainted with a widow lady, “whose son,” says he,
“I, as upper boy, had protected, and who therefore looked up to me, and
taught me what it was to have a mother. I loved her as such. She had three
daughters, and of course I fell in love with the eldest.” _Life of
Coleridge_, p. 28.
[19] Scholarship of Jesus College, Cambridge, for sons of clergymen.
[20] At this time Frend was still a Fellow of Jesus College. Five years
had elapsed since he had resigned from conscientious motives the living of
Madingley in Cambridgeshire, but it was not until after the publication of
his pamphlet _Peace and Union_, in 1793, that the authorities took alarm.
He was deprived of his Fellowship, April 17, and banished from the
University, May 30, 1793. Coleridge’s demeanour in the Senate House on the
occasion of Frend’s trial before the Vice-Chancellor forms the subject of
various contradictory anecdotes. See _Life of Coleridge_, 1838, p. 55;
_Reminiscences of Cambridge_, Henry Gunning, 1855, i. 272-275.
[21] The Rev. George Caldwell was afterwards Fellow and Tutor of Jesus
College. His name occurs among the list of subscribers to the original
issue of _The Friend_. _Letters of the Lake Poets_, 1889, p. 452.
[22] “First Grecian of my time was Launcelot Pepys Stevens [Stephens],
kindest of boys and men, since the Co-Grammar Master, and inseparable
companion of Dr. T[rollop]e.” _Lamb’s Prose Works_, 1835, ii. 45. He was
at this time Senior-Assistant Master at Newcome’s Academy at Clapton near
Hackney, and a colleague of George Coleridge. The school, which belonged
to three generations of Newcomes, was of high repute as a private academy,
and commanded the services of clever young schoolmasters as assistants or
ushers. Mr. Sparrow, whose name is mentioned in the letter, was
headmaster.
[23] A Latin essay on _Posthumous Fame_, described as a declamation and
stated to have been composed by S. T. Coleridge, March, 1792, is preserved
at Jesus College, Cambridge. Some extracts were printed in the College
magazine, _The Chanticleer_, Lent Term, 1886.
[24] _Poetical Works_, p. 19.
[25] _Ibid._ p. 19.
[26] _Poetical Works_, p. 20.
[27] Robert Allen, Coleridge’s earliest friend, and almost his exact
contemporary (born October 18, 1772), was admitted to University College,
Oxford, as an exhibitioner, in the spring of 1792. He entertained
Coleridge and his _compagnon de voyage_, Joseph Hucks, on the occasion of
the memorable visit to Oxford in June, 1794, and introduced them to his
friend, Robert Southey of Balliol. He is mentioned in letters of Lamb to
Coleridge, June 10, 1796, and October 11, 1802. In both instances his name
is connected with that of Stoddart, and it is probable that it was through
Allen that Coleridge and Stoddart became acquainted. For anecdotes
concerning Allen, see Lamb’s Essay, “Christ’s Hospital,” etc., _Prose
Works_, 1836, ii. 47, and _Leigh Hunt’s Autobiography_, 1860, p. 74. See,
also, _Letters to Allsop_, 1864, p. 170.
[28] George Richards, a contemporary of Stephens, and, though somewhat
senior, of Middleton, was a University prize-man and Fellow of Oriel. He
was “author,” says Lamb, “of the ‘Aboriginal Britons,’ the most spirited
of Oxford prize poems.” In after life he made his mark as a clergyman, as
Bampton Lecturer (in 1800), and as Vicar of St. Martin-in-the-Fields. He
was appointed Governor of Christ’s Hospital in 1822, and founded an annual
prize, the “Richards’ Gold Medal,” for the best copy of Latin hexameters.
_Christ’s Hospital._ _List of Exhibitioners, from 1566-1885_, compiled by
A. M. Lockhart.
[29] Robert Percy (Bobus) Smith, 1770-1845, the younger brother of Sydney
Smith, was Browne Medalist in 1791. His Eton and Cambridge prize poems, in
Lucretian metre, are among the most finished specimens of modern Latinity.
The principal contributors to the _Microcosm_ were George Canning, John
and Robert Smith, Hookham Frere, and Charles Ellis. _Gentleman’s
Magazine_, N. S., xxiii. 440.
[30] For complete text of the Greek Sapphic Ode, “On the Slave Trade,”
which obtained the Browne gold medal for 1792, see Appendix B, p. 476, to
Coleridge’s _Poetical Works_, Macmillan, 1893. See, also, Mr. Dykes
Campbell’s note on the style and composition of the ode, p. 653. I possess
a transcript of the Ode, taken, I believe, by Sara Coleridge in 1823, on
the occasion of her visit to Ottery St. Mary. The following note is
appended:--
“Upon the receipt of the above poem, Mr. George Coleridge, being vastly
pleased by the composition, thinking it would be a sort of compliment to
the superior genius of his brother the author, composed the following
lines:--
IBI HÆC INCONDITA SOLUS.
Say _Holy Genius_--Heaven-descended Beam,
Why interdicted is the sacred Fire
That flows spontaneous from thy golden Lyre?
Why _Genius_ like the emanative Ray
That issuing from the dazzling Fount of Light
Wakes all creative Nature into Day,
Art thou not all-diffusive, all benign?
Thy _partial_ hand I blame. For _Pity_ oft
In Supplication’s Vest--a weeping child
That meets me pensive on the barren wild,
And pours into my soul Compassion soft,
The never-dying strain commands to flow--
Man sure is vain, nor sacred Genius hears,
Now speak in melody--now weep in Tears.
G. C.”
[31] He was matriculated as pensioner March 31, 1792. He had been in
residence since September, 1791.
[32] For the Craven Scholarship. In an article contributed to the
_Gentleman’s Magazine_ of December, 1834, portions of which are printed in
Gillman’s _Life of Coleridge_, C. V. Le Grice, a co-Grecian with Coleridge
and Allen, gives the names of the four competitors. The successful
candidate was Samuel Butler, afterwards Head Master of Shrewsbury and
Bishop of Lichfield. _Life of Coleridge_, 1838, p. 50.
[33] Musical glee composer, 1769-1821. _Biographical Dictionary._
[34] _Poetical Works_, p. 20.
[35] Francis Syndercombe Coleridge, who died shortly after the fall of
Seringapatam, February 6, 1792.
[36] Edward Coleridge, the Vicar of Ottery’s fourth son, was then
assistant master in Dr. Skinner’s school at Salisbury. His marriage with
an elderly widow who was supposed to have a large income was a source of
perennial amusement to his family. Some years after her death he married
his first cousin, Anne Bowdon.
[37] The husband of Coleridge’s half sister Elizabeth, the youngest of the
vicar’s first family, “who alone was bred up with us after my birth, and
who alone of the three I was wont to think of as a sister.” See
Autobiographical Notes of 1832. _Life of Coleridge_, 1838, p. 9.
[38] The brother of Mrs. Luke and of Mrs. George Coleridge.
[39] A note to the _Poems of Samuel Taylor Coleridge_, Moxon, 1852, gives
a somewhat different version of the origin of this poem, first printed in
the edition of 1796 as Effusion 27, and of the lines included in Letter
XX., there headed “Cupid turned Chymist,” but afterwards known as
“Kisses.”
[40] G. L. Tuckett, to whom this letter was addressed, was the first to
disclose to Coleridge’s family the unwelcome fact that he had enlisted in
the army. He seems to have guessed that the runaway would take his old
schoolfellows into his confidence, and that they might be induced to
reveal the secret. He was, I presume, a college acquaintance,--possibly an
old Blue, who had left the University and was reading for the bar. In an
unpublished letter from Robert Allen to Coleridge, dated February, 1796,
there is an amusing reference to this kindly _Deus ex Machina_. “I called
upon Tuckett, who thus prophesied: ‘You know how subject Coleridge is to
fits of idleness. Now, I’ll lay any wager, Allen, that after three or four
numbers (of the _Watchman_) the sheets will contain nothing but
parliamentary debates, and Coleridge will add a note at the bottom of the
page: “I should think myself deficient in my duty to the Public if I did
not give these interesting debates at _full_ length.”’”
[41] It would seem that there were alleviations to the misery and
discomfort of this direful experience. In a MS. note dated January, 1805,
he recalls as a suitable incident for a projected work, _The Soother in
Absence_, the “_Domus quadrata hortensis_, at Henley-on-Thames,” and “the
beautiful girl” who, it would seem, soothed the captivity of the forlorn
trooper.
[42] In the various and varying reminiscences of his soldier days, which
fell “from Coleridge’s own mouth,” and were repeated by his delighted and
credulous hearers, this officer plays an important part. Whatever
foundation of fact there may be for the touching anecdote that the Latin
sentence, “_Eheu! quam infortunii miserrimum est fuisse felicem_,”
scribbled on the walls of the stable at Reading, caught the attention of
Captain Ogle, “himself a scholar,” and led to Comberbacke’s detection, he
was not, as the poet Bowles and Miss Mitford maintained, the sole
instrument in procuring the discharge. He may have exerted himself
privately, but his name does not occur in the formal correspondence which
passed between Coleridge’s brothers and the military authorities.
[43] The Compasses, now The Chequers, High Wycombe, where Coleridge was
billeted just a hundred years ago, appears to have preserved its original
aspect.
[44] See Notes to _Poetical Works of Coleridge_ (1893), p. 568. The
“intended translation” was advertised in the _Cambridge Intelligencer_ for
June 14 and June 16, 1794: “Proposals for publishing by subscription
_Imitations from the Modern Latin Poets, with a Critical and Biographical
Essay on the Restoration of Literature_. By S. T. Coleridge, of Jesus
College, Cambridge....
“In the course of the Work will be introduced a copious selection from the
Lyrics of Casimir, and a new Translation of the Basia of Secundus.”
One ode, “Ad Lyram,” was printed in _The Watchman_, No. 11, March 9, 1796,
p. 49.
[45] The _Barbou Casimir_, published at Paris in 1759.
[46] Compare the note to chapter xii. of the _Biographia Literaria_: “In
the Biographical Sketch of my Literary Life I may be excused if I mention
here that I had translated the eight Hymns of Synesius from the Greek into
English Anacreontics before my fifteenth year.” The edition referred to
may be that published at Basle in 1567. _Interprete G. Cantero._ Bentley’s
Quarto Edition was probably the Quarto Edition of Horace, published in
1711.
[47] Charles Clagget, a musical composer and inventor of musical
instruments, flourished towards the close of the eighteenth century. I
have been unable to ascertain whether the songs in question were ever
published. _Dictionary of Music and Musicians_, edited by George Grove, D.
C. L., 1879, article “Clagget,” i. 359.
[48] The entry in the College Register of Jesus College is brief and to
the point: “1794 Apr.: _Coleridge admonitus est per magistrum in præsentiâ
sociorum_.”
[49] A letter to George Coleridge dated April 16, 1794, and signed J.
Plampin, has been preserved. The pains and penalties to which Coleridge
had subjected himself are stated in full, but the kindly nature of the
writer is shown in the concluding sentence: “I am happy in adding that I
thought your brother’s conduct on his return extremely proper; and I beg
to assure you that it will give me much pleasure to see him take such an
advantage of his experience as his own good sense will dictate.”
[50] A week later, July 22, in a letter addressed to H. Martin, of Jesus
College, to whom, in the following September, he dedicated “The Fall of
Robespierre,” Coleridge repeated almost verbatim large portions of this
_lettre de voyage_. The incident of the sentiment and the Welsh clergyman
takes a somewhat different shape, and both versions differ from the report
of the same occurrence contained in Hucks’ account of the tour, which was
published in the following year. Coleridge’s letters from foreign parts
were written with a view to literary effect, and often with the
half-formed intention of sending them to the “booksellers.” They are to be
compared with “letters from our own correspondent,” and in respect of
picturesque adventure, dramatic dialogue, and so forth, must be judged
solely by a literary standard. _Biographia Literaria_, 1847, ii. 338-343;
J. Hucks’ _Tour in North Wales_, 1795, p. 25.
[51] The lines are from “Happiness,” an early poem first published in
1834. See _Poetical Works_, p. 17. See, too, Editor’s Note, p. 564.
[52] Quoted from a poem by Bowles entitled, “Verses inscribed to His Grace
the Duke of Leeds, and other Promoters of the Philanthropic Society.”
Southey adopted the last two lines of the quotation as a motto for his
“Botany Bay Eclogues.” _Poetical Works of Milman, Bowles, etc._, Paris,
1829, p. 117; Southey’s _Poetical Works_, 1837, ii. 71.
[53] Southey, we may suppose, had contrasted Hucks with Coleridge. “H. is
on my level, not yours.”
[54] _Poetical Works_, p. 33. See, too, Editor’s Note, p. 570.
[55] Hucks records the incident in much the same words, but gives the name
of the tune as “Corporal Casey.”
[56] The letter to Martin gives further particulars of the tour, including
the ascent of Penmaen Mawr in company with Brookes and Berdmore. Compare
_Table Talk_ for May 31, 1830: “I took the thought of _grinning for joy_
in that poem (_The Ancient Mariner_) from my companion’s remark to me,
when we had climbed to the top of Plinlimmon, and were nearly dead with
thirst. We could not speak from the constriction till we found a little
puddle under a stone. He said to me, ‘You grinned like an idiot.’ He had
done the same.” The parching thirst of the pedestrians, and their
excessive joy at the discovery of a spring of water, are recorded by
Hucks. _Tour in North Wales_, 1795, p. 62.
[57] Southey’s _Poetical Works_, 1837, ii. 93.
[58] Southey’s _Poetical Works_, 1837, ii. 94.
[59] See Letter XLI. p. 110, note 1.
[60] “A tragedy, of which the first act was written by S. T. Coleridge.”
See footnote to quotation from “The Fall of Robespierre,” which occurs in
the text of “An Address on the Present War.” _Conciones ad Populum_, 1795,
p. 66.
[61] One of six sisters, daughters of John Brunton of Norwich. Elizabeth,
the eldest of the family, was married in 1791 to Robert Merry the
dramatist, the founder of the so-called Della Cruscan school of poetry.
Louisa Brunton, the youngest sister, afterwards Countess of Craven, made
her first appearance at Covent Garden Theatre on October 5, 1803, and at
most could not have been more than twelve or thirteen years of age in the
autumn of 1794. Coleridge’s Miss Brunton, to whom he sent a poem on the
French Revolution, that is, “The Fall of Robespierre,” must have been an
intermediate sister less known to fame. It is curious to note that “The
Right Hon. Lady Craven” was a subscriber to the original issue of _The
Friend_ in 1809. _National Dictionary of Biography_, articles “Craven” and
“Merry.” _Letters of the Lake Poets_, 1885, p. 455.
[62] This sonnet, afterwards headed, “On a Discovery made too late,” was
“first printed in _Poems_, 1796, as Effusion XIX., but in the Contents it
was called, ‘To my own Heart.’” _Poetical Works_, p. 34. See, too,
Editor’s Note, p. 571.
[63] “The Race of Banquo.” Southey’s _Poetical Works_, 1837, ii. 155.
[64] The Editor of the _Cambridge Intelligencer_.
[65] “To a Young Lady, with a Poem on the French Revolution.” _Poetical
Works_, p. 6.
[66] Compare “Sonnet to the Author of The Robbers.” _Poetical Works_, p.
34.
[67] The date of this letter is fixed by that of Thursday, November 6, to
George Coleridge. Both letters speak of a journey to town with Potter of
Emanuel, but in writing to his brother he says nothing of a projected
visit to Bath. There is no hint in either letter that he had made up his
mind to leave the University for good and all. In a letter to Southey
dated December 17, he says that “they are making a row about him at
Jesus,” and in a letter to Mary Evans, which must have been written a day
or two later, he says, “I return to Cambridge to-morrow.” From the date of
the letter to George Coleridge of November 6 to December 11 there is a
break in the correspondence with Southey, but from a statement in Letter
XLIII. it appears plain that a visit was paid to the West in December,
1794. But whether he returned to Cambridge November 8, and for how long,
is uncertain.
[68] “Lines on a Friend who died of a Frenzy Fever,” etc. _Poetical
Works_, p. 35. A copy of the same poem was sent on November 6 to George
Coleridge.
[69] “The Sigh.” _Poetical Works_, p. 29.
[70] Probably Thomas Edwards, LL. D., a Fellow of Jesus College,
Cambridge, editor of Plutarch, _De Educatione Liberorum_, with notes,
1791, and author of “A Discourse on the Limits and Importance of Free
Inquiry in Matters of Religion,” 1792. _Natural Dictionary of Biography_,
xvii. 130.
[71] Compare “Lines on a Friend,” etc., which accompanied this letter.
To me hath Heaven with liberal hand assigned
Energic reason and a shaping mind,
* * * * *
Sloth-jaundiced all! and from my graspless hand
Drop Friendship’s precious pearls, like hour-glass sand.
_Poetical Works_, p. 35.
[72] The lines occur in Barrère’s speech, which concludes the third act of
the “Fall of Robespierre.” _Poetical Works_, p. 225.
[73] “Fall of Robespierre,” Act I. l. 198.
O this new freedom! at how dear a price
We’ve bought the seeming good! The peaceful virtues
And every blandishment of private life,
The father’s care, the mother’s fond endearment
All sacrificed to Liberty’s wild riot.
_Poetical Works_, p. 215.
[74] See “Fall of Robespierre,” Act I. l. 40. _Poetical Works_, p. 212.
[75] For full text of the “Lines on a Friend who died of a Frenzy Fever,”
see Letter XXXVIII. See, too, _Poetical Works_, p. 35.
[76] Southey’s _Poetical Works_, 1837, ii. 263.
[77] See _Poems by Robert Lovell, and Robert Southey of Balliol College_.
Bath. Printed by A. Cruttwell, 1795, p. 17. “Ode to Lycon,” p. 77.
The last stanza runs thus:--
Wilt thou float careless down the stream of time,
In sadness borne to dull oblivious shore,
Or shake off grief, and “build the lofty rhyme,”
And live till time shall be no more?
If thy light bark have met the storms,
If threatening cloud the sky deforms,
Let honest truth be vain; look back on me,
Have I been “sailing on a Summer sea”?
Have only zephyrs fill’d my swelling sails,
As smooth the gentle vessel glides along?
Lycon! I met unscar’d the wintry gales,
And sooth’d the dangers with the song:
So shall the vessel sail sublime,
And reach the port of fame adown the stream of time.
BION [_i. e._ R. S.].
Compare the following unpublished letter from Southey to Miss Sarah
Fricker:--
October 18, 1794.
“Amid the pelting of the pitiless storm” did I, Robert Southey, the
Apostle of Pantisocracy, depart from the city of Bristol, my natal
place--at the hour of five in a wet windy evening on the 17th of
October, 1794, wrapped up in my father’s old great coat and my own
cogitations. Like old Lear I did not call the elements unkind,--and on
I passed, musing on the lamentable effects of pride and
prejudice--retracing all the events of my past life--and looking
forward to the days to come with pleasure.
Three miles from Bristol, an old man of sixty, most royally drunk,
laid hold of my arm, and begged we might join company, as he was going
to Bath. I consented, for he wanted assistance, and dragged this foul
animal through the dirt, wind, and rain!...
Think of me, with a mind so fully occupied, leading this man nine
miles, and had I not led him he would have lain down under a hedge and
probably perished.
I reached not Bath till nine o’clock, when the rain pelted me most
unmercifully in the face. I rejoiced that my friends at Bath knew not
where I was, and was once vexed at thinking that you would hear it
drive against the window and be sorry for the way-worn traveller. Here
I am, well, and satisfied with my own conduct....
My clothes are arrived. “I will never see his face again [writes Miss
Tyler], and, if he writes, will return his letters unopened;” to
comment on this would be useless. I feel that strong conviction of
rectitude which would make me smile on the rack.... The crisis is
over--things are as they should be; my mother vexes herself much, yet
feels she is right. Hostilities are commenced with America! so we must
go to some neutral fort--Hambro’ or Venice.
Your sister is well, and sends her love to all; on Wednesday I hope to
see you. Till then farewell,
ROBERT SOUTHEY.
Bath, Sunday morning.
Compare, also, letter to Thomas Southey, dated October 19, 1794.
_Southey’s Life and Correspondence_, i. 222.
[78] _Poems_, 1795, p. 123.
[79] See Southey’s _Poetical Works_, 1837, ii. 91:--
“If heavily creep on one little day,
The medley crew of travellers among.”
[80] _Poems_, 1795, p. 67.
[81] _Poetical Works_, 1837, ii. 92.
[82] “Rosamund to Henry; written after she had taken the veil.” _Poems_,
1795, p. 85.
[83] _Poetical Works_, 1837, ii. 216. Southey appears to have accepted
Coleridge’s emendations. The variations between the text of the “Pauper’s
Funeral” and the _editio purgata_ of the letter are slight and
unimportant.
[84] In a letter from Southey to his brother Thomas, dated October 21,
1794, this sonnet “on the subject of our emigration” is attributed to
Favell, a convert to pantisocracy who was still at Christ’s Hospital. The
first eight lines are included in the “Monody on Chatterton.” See
_Poetical Works_, p. 63, and Editor’s Note, p. 563.
[85] Printed as Effusion XVI. in _Poems_, 1796. It was afterwards headed
“Charity.” In the preface he acknowledges that he was “indebted to Mr.
Favell for the rough sketch.” See _Poetical Works_, p. 45, and Editor’s
Note, p. 576.
[86] Southey’s _Poetical Works_, ii. 143. In this instance Coleridge’s
corrections were not adopted.
[87] Published in 1794.
[88] First version, printed in _Morning Chronicle_, December 26, 1794. See
_Poetical Works_, p. 40.
[89] First printed as Effusion XIV. in _Poems_, 1796. Of the four lines
said to have been written by Lamb, Coleridge discarded lines 13 and 14,
and substituted a favourite couplet, which occurs in more than one of his
early poems. See _Poetical Works_, p. 23, and Editor’s Note, p. 566.
[90] Imitated from the Welsh. See _Poetical Works_, p. 33.
[91] A parody of “Qui Bavium non odit, amet tua carmina, Mævi.” Virgil,
_Ecl._ iii. 90. Gratio and Avaro were signatures adopted by Southey and
Lovell in their joint volume of poems published at Bristol in 1795.
[92] Implied in the second line.
[93] Of the six sonnets included in this letter, those to Burke,
Priestley, and Kosciusko had already appeared in the _Morning Chronicle_
on the 9th, 11th, and 16th of December, 1794. The sonnets to Godwin,
Southey, and Sheridan were published on the 10th, 14th, and 29th of
January, 1795. See _Poetical Works_, pp. 38, 39, 41, 42.
[94] First published in the _Morning Chronicle_, December 30, 1794. An
earlier draft, dated October 24, 1794, was headed “Monologue to a Young
Jackass in Jesus Piece. Its Mother near it, chained to a Log.” See
_Poetical Works_, Appendix C, p. 477, and Editor’s Note, p. 573.
[95] Compare the last six lines of a sonnet, “On a Discovery made too
late,” sent in a letter to Southey, dated October 21, 1794. (Letter
XXXVII.) See _Poetical Works_, p. 34, and Editor’s Note, p. 571.
[96] The first of six sonnets on the Slave Trade. Southey’s _Poetical
Works_, 1837, ii. 55.
[97] Prefixed as a dedication to Juvenile and Minor Poems. It is addressed
to Edith Southey, and dated Bristol, 1796. Southey’s _Poetical Works_,
1837, vol. ii. The text of 1837 differs considerably from the earlier
version. Possibly in transcribing Coleridge altered the original to suit
his own taste.
[98] To a Friend [Charles Lamb], together with an Unfinished Poem
[“Religious Musings”]. _Poetical Works_, p. 37.
[99] This farewell letter of apology and remonstrance was not sent by
post, but must have reached Southey’s hand on the 13th of November, the
eve of his wedding day. The original MS. is written on small foolscap. A
first draft, or copy, of the letter was sent to Coleridge’s friend, Josiah
Wade.
[100] The Rev. David Jardine, Unitarian minister at Bath. Cottle lays the
scene of the “inaugural sermons” on the corn laws and hair powder tax,
which Coleridge delivered in a blue coat and white waistcoat, in Mr.
Jardine’s chapel at Bath. _Early Recollections_, i. 179.
[101] If we may believe Cottle, the dispute began by Southey attacking
Coleridge for his non-appearance at a lecture which he had undertaken to
deliver in his stead. The scene of the quarrel is laid at Chepstow, on the
first day of the memorable excursion to Tintern Abbey, which Cottle had
planned to “gratify his two young friends.” Southey had been “dragged,”
much against the grain, into this “detestable party of pleasure,” and was,
no doubt, rendered doubly sore by his partner’s delinquency. See _Early
Recollections_, i. 40, 41. See, also, letter from Southey to Bedford,
dated May 28, 1795. _Life and Correspondence_, i. 239.
[102] At Chepstow.
[103] A village three miles W. S. W. of Bristol.
[104] During the course of his tour (January-February, 1796) to procure
subscribers for the _Watchman_, Coleridge wrote seven times to Josiah
Wade. Portions of these letters have been published in Cottle’s _Early
Recollections_, i. 164-176, and in the “Biographical Supplement” to the
_Biographia Literaria_, ii. 349-354. It is probable that Wade supplied
funds for the journey, and that Coleridge felt himself bound to give an
account of his progress and success.
[105] Joseph Wright, A. R. A., known as Wright of Derby, 1736-1797. Two of
his most celebrated pictures were _The Head of Ulleswater_, and _The Dead
Soldier_. An excellent specimen of Wright’s work, _An Experiment with the
Air Pump_, was presented to the National Gallery in 1863.
[106] Compare _Biographia Literaria_, ch. i. “During my first Cambridge
vacation I assisted a friend in a contribution for a literary society in
Devonshire, and in that I remember to have compared Darwin’s works to the
Russian palace of ice, glittering, cold, and transitory.” Coleridge’s
_Works_, Harper & Bros., 1853, iii. 155.
[107] Dr. James Hutton, the author of the Plutonian theory. His _Theory of
the Earth_ was published at Edinburgh in 1795.
[108] The title of this pamphlet, which was published shortly after the
_Conciones ad Populum_, was “The Plot Discovered; or, an Address to the
People against Ministerial Treason. By S. T. Coleridge. Bristol, 1795.” It
had an outer wrapper with this half-title: “A Protest against Certain
Wills. Bristol: Printed for the Author, November 28, 1795.” It is
reprinted in _Essays on His Own Times_, i. 56-98.
[109] The review of “Burke’s Letter to a Noble Lord,” which appeared in
the first number of _The Watchman_, is reprinted in _Essays on His Own
Times_, i. 107-119.
[110] _Ibid._ 120-126.
[111] The occasion of this “burst of affectionate feeling” was a
communication from Poole that seven or eight friends had undertaken to
subscribe a sum of £35 or £40 to be paid annually to the “author of the
monody on the death of Chatterton,” as “a trifling mark of their esteem,
gratitude, and affection.” The subscriptions were paid in 1796-97, but
afterwards discontinued on the receipt of the Wedgwood annuity. See
_Thomas Poole and his Friends_, i. 142.
[112] Mrs. Robert Lovell, whose husband had been carried off by a fever
about two years after his marriage with my aunt.--S. C.
[113] Compare _Conciones ad Populum_, 1795, p. 22. “Such is Joseph
Gerrald! Withering in the sickly and tainted gales of a prison, his
healthful soul looks down from the citadel of his integrity on his
impotent persecutors. I saw him in the foul and naked room of a jail; his
cheek was sallow with confinement, his body was emaciated; yet his eye
spake the invincible purpose of his soul, and he still sounded with
rapture the successes of Freedom, forgetful of his own lingering
martyrdom.”
Together with four others, Gerrald was tried for sedition at Edinburgh in
March, 1794. He delivered an eloquent speech in his own defence, but with
the other prisoners was convicted and sentenced to be transported for
fifteen years. “In April Gerrald was removed to London, and committed to
Newgate, where Godwin and his other friends were allowed to visit him....
In May, 1795, he was suddenly taken from his prison and placed on board
the hulks, and soon afterwards sailed. He survived his arrival in New
South Wales only five months. A few hours before he died, he said to the
friends around him, ‘I die in the best of causes, and, as you witness,
without repining.’” Mrs. Shelley’s Notes, as quoted by Mr. C. Kegan Paul
in his _William Godwin_, i. 125. See, too, “the very noble letter”
(January 23, 1794) addressed by Godwin to Gerrald relative to his defence.
_Ibid._ i. 125. Lords Cockburn and Jeffrey considered the conviction of
these men a gross miscarriage of justice, and in 1844 a monument was
erected at the foot of the Calton Hill, Edinburgh, to their memory.
[114] Edward Williams (Iolo Morgangw), 1747-1826. His poems in two volumes
were published by subscription in 1794. Coleridge possessed a copy
presented to him “by the author,” and on the last page of the second
volume he has scrawled a single but characteristic marginal note. It is
affixed to a translation of one of the “Poetic Triades.” “The three
principal considerations of poetical description: what is obvious, what
instantly engages the affections, and what is strikingly characteristic.”
The comment is as follows: “I suppose, rather what we recollect to have
frequently seen in nature, though not in the description of it.”
[115] The allusion must be to Wordsworth, but there is a difficulty as to
dates. In a MS. note to the second edition of his poems (1797) Coleridge
distinctly states that he had no personal acquaintance with Wordsworth as
early as March, 1796. Again, in a letter (Letter LXXXI.) to Estlin dated
“May [? 1797],” but certainly written in May, 1798, Coleridge says that he
has known Wordsworth for a year and some months. On the other hand, there
is Mrs. Wordsworth’s report of her husband’s “impression” that he first
met Coleridge, Southey, Sara, and Edith Fricker “in a lodging in Bristol
in 1795,”--an imperfect recollection very difficult to reconcile with
other known facts. Secondly, there is Sara Coleridge’s statement that “Mr.
Coleridge and Mr. Wordsworth first met in the house of Mr. Pinney,” in the
spring or summer of 1795; and, thirdly, it would appear from a letter of
Lamb to Coleridge, which belongs to the summer of 1796, that “the personal
acquaintance” with Wordsworth had already begun. The probable conclusion
is that there was a first meeting in 1795, and occasional intercourse in
1796, but that intimacy and friendship date from the visit to Racedown in
June, 1797. Coleridge quotes Wordsworth in his “Lines from Shurton Bars,”
dated September, 1795, but the first trace of Wordsworth’s influence on
style and thought appears in “This Lime-Tree Bower my Prison,” July, 1797.
In May, 1796, Wordsworth could only have been “his very dear friend”
_sensu poetico_. _Life of W. Wordsworth_, i. 111; Biographical Supplement
to _Biographia Literaria_, chapter ii.; _Letters of Charles Lamb_,
Macmillan, 1888, i. 6.
[116] On the side of the road, opposite to Poole’s house in Castle Street,
Nether Stowey, is a straight gutter through which a stream passes. See
_Thomas Poole and his Friends_, i. 147.
[117] _The Peripatetic, or Sketches of the Heart, of Nature, and of
Society_, a miscellany of prose and verse issued by John Thelwall, in
1793.
[118] January 10, 1795. See _Poetical Works_, p. 41, and Editor’s Note, p.
575. Margarot, a West Indian, was one of those tried and transported with
Gerrald.
[119] See _Poetical Works_, p. 66.
[120] Early in the autumn of 1796, a proposal had been made to Coleridge
that he should start a day school in Derby. Poole dissuaded him from
accepting this offer, or rather, perhaps, Coleridge succeeded in procuring
Poole’s disapproval of a plan which he himself dreaded and disliked.
[121] Thomas Ward, at first the articled clerk, and afterwards partner in
business and in good works, of Thomas Poole. He it was who transcribed in
“Poole’s Copying Book” Coleridge’s letters from Germany, and much of his
correspondence besides. See _Thomas Poole and his Friends_, i. 159, 160,
304, 305, etc.
[122] This letter, first printed in Gillman’s _Life_, pp. 338-340, and
since reprinted in the notes to Canon Ainger’s edition of _Lamb’s Letters_
(i. 314, 315), was written in response to a request of Charles Lamb in his
letter of September 27, 1796, announcing the “terrible calamities” which
had befallen his family. “Write me,” said Lamb, “as religious a letter as
possible.” In his next letter, October 3, he says, “Your letter is an
inestimable treasure.” But a few weeks later, October 24, he takes
exception to the sentence, “You are a temporary sharer in human miseries
that you may be an eternal partaker of the Divine nature.” Lamb thought
that the expression savoured too much of theological subtlety, and
outstepped the modesty of weak and suffering humanity. Coleridge’s
“religious letter” came from his heart, but he was a born preacher, and
naturally clothes his thoughts in rhetorical language. I have seen a note
written by him within a few hours of his death, when he could scarcely
direct his pen. It breathes the tenderest loving-kindness, but the
expressions are elaborate and formal. It was only in poetry that he
attained to simplicity.
[123] Coleridge must have resorted occasionally to opiates long before
this. In an unpublished letter to his brother George, dated November 21,
1791, he says, “Opium never used to have any disagreeable effects on me.”
Most likely it was given to him at Christ’s Hospital, when he was
suffering from rheumatic fever. In the sonnet on “Pain,” which belongs to
the summer of 1790, he speaks of “frequent pangs,” of “seas of pain,” and
in the natural course of things opiates would have been prescribed by the
doctors. Testimony of this nature appears at first sight to be
inconsistent with statements made by Coleridge in later life to the effect
that he began to take opium in the second year of his residence at
Keswick, in consequence of rheumatic pains brought on by the damp climate.
It was, however, the first commencement of the secret and habitual resort
to narcotics which weighed on memory and conscience, and there is abundant
evidence that it was not till the late spring of 1801 that he could be
said to be under the dominion of opium. To these earlier indulgences in
the “accursed drug,” which probably left no “disagreeable effects,” and of
which, it is to be remarked, he speaks openly, he seems to have attached
but little significance.
Since the above note was written, Mr. W. Aldis Wright has printed in the
_Academy_, February 24, 1894, an extract from an unpublished letter from
Coleridge to the Rev. Mr. Edwards of Birmingham, recently found in the
Library of Trinity College, Cambridge. It is dated Bristol, “12 March,
1795” (read “1796”), and runs as follows:--
“Since I last wrote you, I have been tottering on the verge of madness--my
mind overbalanced on the _e contra_ side of happiness--the blunders of my
associate [in the editing of the _Watchman_, G. Burnett], etc., etc.,
abroad, and, at home, Mrs. Coleridge dangerously ill.... Such has been my
situation for the last fortnight--I have been obliged to take laudanum
almost every night.”
[124] The news of the evacuation of Corsica by the British troops, which
took place on October 21, 1796, must have reached Coleridge a few days
before the date of this letter. Corsica was ceded to the British, June 18,
1794. A declaration of war on the part of Spain (August 19, 1796) and a
threatened invasion of Ireland compelled the home government to withdraw
their troops from Corsica. In a footnote to chapter xxv. of his _Life of
Napoleon Bonaparte_, Sir Walter Scott quotes from Napoleon’s memoirs
compiled at St. Helena the “odd observation” that “the crown of Corsica
must, on the temporary annexation of the island to Great Britain, have
been surprised at finding itself appertaining to the successor of Fingal.”
Sir Walter’s patriotism constrained him to add the following comment: “Not
more, we should think, than the diadem of France and the iron crown of
Lombardy marvelled at meeting on the brow of a Corsican soldier of
fortune.”
In the _Biographia Literaria_, 1847, ii. 380, the word is misprinted
Corrica, but there is no doubt as to the reading of the MS. letter, or to
the allusion to contemporary history.
[125] It was to this lady that the lines “On the Christening of a Friend’s
Child” were addressed. _Poetical Works_, p. 83.
[126] See Letter LXVIII., p. 206, note.
[127] The preface to the quarto edition of Southey’s _Joan of Arc_ is
dated Bristol, November, 1795, but the volume did not appear till the
following spring. Coleridge’s contribution to Book II. was omitted from
the second (1797) and subsequent editions. It was afterwards republished,
with additions, in _Sibylline Leaves_ (1817) as “The Destiny of Nations.”
[128] The lines “On a late Connubial Rupture” were printed in the _Monthly
Magazine_ for September, 1796. The well-known poem beginning “Low was our
pretty Cot” appeared in the following number. It was headed, “Reflections
on entering into active Life. A Poem which affects not to be Poetry.”
[129] Compare the following lines from an early transcript of “Happiness”
now in my possession:--
“Ah! doubly blest if Love supply
Lustre to the now heavy eye,
And with unwonted spirit grace
That fat vacuity of face.”
The transcriber adds in a footnote, “The author was at this time, at
seventeen, remarkable for a plump face.”
The “Reminiscences of an Octogenarian” (The Rev. Leapidge Smith),
contributed to the _Leisure Hour_, convey a different impression: “In
person he was a tall, dark, handsome young man, with long, black, flowing
hair; eyes not merely dark, but black, and keenly penetrating; a fine
forehead, a deep-toned, harmonious voice; a manner never to be forgotten,
full of life, vivacity, and kindness; dignified in person and, added to
all these, exhibiting the elements of his future greatness.”--_Leisure
Hour_, 1870, p. 651.
[130] _Origine de tous les Cultes, ou Religion universelle._
[131] Thelwall executed his commission. The Iamblichus and the Julian were
afterwards presented by Coleridge to his son Derwent. They are still in
the possession of the family.
[132] The three letters to Poole, dated December 11, 12, and 13, relative
to Coleridge’s residence at Stowey, were published for the first time in
_Thomas Poole and his Friends_. The long letter of expostulation, dated
December 13, which is in fact a continuation of that dated December 12, is
endorsed by Poole: “An angry letter, but the breach was soon healed.”
Either on Coleridge’s account or his own it was among the few papers
retained by Poole when, to quote Mrs. Sandford, “in 1836 he placed the
greater number of the letters which he had received from S. T. Coleridge
at the disposal of his literary executors for biographical purposes.”
_Thomas Poole and his Friends_, i. 182-193. Mrs. Sandford has kindly
permitted me to reprint it _in extenso_.
[133] “Sonnet composed on a journey homeward, the author having received
intelligence of the birth of a son. September 20, 1796.”
The opening lines, as quoted in the letter, differ from those published in
1797, and again from a copy of the same sonnet sent in a letter to Poole,
dated November 1, 1796. See _Poetical Works_, p. 66, and Editor’s Note, p.
582.
[134] Coleridge’s _Poetical Works_, p. 66.
[135] Compare Lamb’s letter to Coleridge, December 5, 1796. “I am glad you
love Cowper. I could forgive a man for not enjoying Milton, but I would
not call that man my friend who should be offended with the ‘divine
chit-chat of Cowper.’” Compare, too, letter of December 10, 1796, in which
the origin of the phrase is attributed to Coleridge. _Letters of Charles
Lamb_, i. 52, 54. See, too, Canon Ainger’s note, i. 316.
[136] “Southey misrepresented me. My maxim was and is that the name of God
should not be introduced into _Love Sonnets_.” MS. Note by John Thelwall.
[137] Revelation x. 1-6. Some words and sentences of the original are
omitted, either for the sake of brevity, or to heighten the dramatic
effect.
[138] Hebrews xii. 18, 19, 22, 23.
[139] “In reading over this after an interval of twenty-three years I was
wondering what I could have said that looked like contempt of age. May not
slobberers have referred not to age but to the drivelling of decayed
intellect, which is surely an ill guide in matters of understanding and
consequently of faith?” MS. Note by John Thelwall, 1819.
[140] Patience--permit me as a definition of the word to quote one
sentence from my first Address, p. 20. “Accustomed to regard all the
affairs of man as a process, they never hurry and they never pause.” In
his not possessing _this_ virtue, all the horrible excesses of Robespierre
did, I believe, originate.--MS. note to text of letter by S. T. Coleridge.
[141] Godliness--the belief, the habitual and efficient belief, that we
are always in the presence of our universal Parent. I will translate
literally a passage [the passage is from Voss’s _Luise_. I am enabled by
the courtesy of Dr. Garnett, of the British Museum, to give an exact
reference: _Luise, ein ländliches Gedicht in drei Idyllen_, von Johann
Heinrich Voss, Königsberg, MDCCXCV. Erste Idylle, pp. 41-45, lines
303-339.--E. H. C.] from a German hexameter poem. It is the speech of a
country clergyman on the birthday of his daughter. The _latter part_ fully
expresses the spirit of godliness, and its connection with
brotherly-kindness. (Pardon the harshness of the language, for it is
translated _totidem verbis_.)
“Yes! my beloved daughter, I am cheerful, cheerful as the birds singing in
the wood here, or the squirrel that hops among the airy branches around
its young in their nest. To-day it is eighteen years since God gave me my
beloved, now my only child, so intelligent, so pious, and so dutiful. How
the time flies away! Eighteen years to come--how far the space extends
itself before us! and how does it vanish when we look back upon it! It was
but yesterday, it seems to me, that as I was plucking flowers here, and
offering praise, on a sudden the joyful message came, ‘A daughter is born
to us.’ Much since that time has the Almighty imparted to us of good and
evil. But the evil itself was good; for his loving-kindness is infinite.
Do you recollect [to his wife] as it once had rained after a long drought,
and I (Louisa in my arms) was walking with thee in the freshness of the
garden, how the child snatched at the rainbow, and kissed me, and said:
‘Papa! there it rains flowers from heaven! Does the blessed God strew
these that we children may gather them up?’ ‘Yes!’ I answered,
‘full-blowing and heavenly blessings does the Father strew who stretched
out the bow of his favour; flowers and fruits that we may gather them with
thankfulness and joy. _Whenever I think of that great Father then my heart
lifts itself up and swells with active impulse towards all his children,
our brothers who inhabit the earth around us; differing indeed from one
another in powers and understanding, yet all dear children of the same
parent, nourished by the same Spirit of animation, and ere long to fall
asleep, and again to wake in the common morning of the Resurrection; all
who have loved their fellow-creatures, all shall rejoice with Peter, and
Moses, and Confucius, and Homer, and Zoroaster, with Socrates who died for
truth, and also with the noble Mendelssohn who teaches that the divine one
was never crucified._’”
Mendelssohn is a German Jew by parentage, and _deist_ by election. He has
written some of the most acute books possible in favour of natural
immortality, and Germany deems him her profoundest metaphysician, with the
exception of the most unintelligible Immanuel Kant.--MS. note to text of
letter by S. T. Coleridge.
[142] 2 Peter i. 5-7.
[143] They were criticised by Lamb in his letter to Coleridge Dec. 10,
1796 (xxxi. of Canon Ainger’s edition), but in a passage first printed in
the _Atlantic Monthly_ for February, 1891. The explanatory notes there
printed were founded on a misconception, but the matter is cleared up in
the _Athenæum_ for June 13, 1891, in the article, “A Letter of Charles
Lamb.”
[144] The reference is to a pamphlet of sixteen pages containing
twenty-eight sonnets by Coleridge, Southey, Lloyd, Lamb, and others, which
was printed for private circulation towards the close of 1796, and
distributed among a few friends. Of this selection of sonnets, which was
made “for the purpose of binding them up with the sonnets of the Rev. W.
L. Bowles,” the sole surviving copy is now in the Dyce Collection of the
South Kensington Museum. On the fly-leaf, in Coleridge’s handwriting, is a
“presentation note” to Mrs. Thelwall. For a full account of this curious
and interesting volume, see Coleridge’s _Poetical and Dramatic Works_, 4
vols., 1877-1880, ii. 377-379; also, _Poetical Works_ (1893), 542-544.
[145] A folio edition of “_Poems on the Death of Priscilla Farmer_, by her
grandson Charles Lloyd,” was printed at Bristol in 1796. The volume was
prefaced by Coleridge’s sonnet, “The piteous sobs which choke the virgin’s
breast,” and contained Lamb’s “Grandame.” As Mr. Dykes Campbell has
pointed out, it is to this “magnificent folio” that Charles Lamb alludes
in his letter of December 10, 1796 (incorrectly dated 1797), when he
speaks of “my granny so gaily decked,” and records “the odd coincidence of
two young men in one age carolling their grandmothers.” _Poetical Works_,
note 99, p. 583.
[146] “To a friend (C. Lamb) who had declared his intention of writing no
more poetry.” _Poetical Works_, p. 69. See, too, Editor’s Note, p. 583.
[147] Printed in the _Annual Anthology_ for 1799.
[148] These lines, which were published with the enlarged title “To a
Young Man of Fortune who had abandoned himself to an indolent and
causeless melancholy,” may have been addressed to Charles Lloyd.
The last line, “A prey to the throned murderess of mankind,” was
afterwards changed to “A prey to tyrants, murderers of mankind.” The
reference is, doubtless, to Catherine of Russia. Her death had taken place
a month before the date of this letter, but possibly when Coleridge wrote
the lines the news had not reached England. It is not a little strange
that Coleridge should write and print so stern and uncompromising a rebuke
to his intimate and disciple before there had been time for coolness and
alienation on either side. Very possibly the reproof was aimed in the
first instance against himself, and afterwards he permitted it to apply to
Lloyd.
[149] Compare the line, “From precipices of distressful sleep,” which
occurs in the sonnet, “No more my visionary soul shall dwell,” which is
attributed to Favell in a letter of Southey’s to his brother Thomas, dated
October 24, 1795. Southey’s _Life and Correspondence_, i. 224. See, also,
Editor’s Note to “Monody on the Death of Chatterton,” _Poetical Works_, p.
563.
[150] The _Ode on the Departing Year_.
[151] Œdipus.
[152] _Poetical Works_, p. 459.
[153] William and Joseph Strutt were the sons of Jedediah Strutt, of
Derby. The eldest, William, was the father of Edward Strutt, created Lord
Belper in 1856. Their sister, Elizabeth, who had married William Evans of
Darley Hall, was at this time a widow. She had been struck by Coleridge’s
writings, or perhaps had heard him preach when he visited Derby on his
_Watchman_ tour, and was anxious to engage him as tutor to her children.
The offer was actually made, but the relations on both sides intervened,
and she was reluctantly compelled to withdraw her proposal. By way of
consolation, she entertained Coleridge and his wife at Darley Hall, and
before he left presented him with a handsome sum of money and a store of
baby-linen, worth, if one may accept Coleridge’s valuation, a matter of
forty pounds. _Thomas Poole and his Friends_, i. 152-154; _Estlin
Letters_, p. 13.
[154] Probably Jacob Bryant, 1715-1804, author of _An Address to Dr.
Priestley upon his Doctrine of Philosophical Necessity_, 1780; _Treatise
on the Authenticity of the Scriptures_, 1792; _The Sentiments of
Philo-Judæus concerning the Logos or Word of God_, 1797, etc. Allibone’s
_Dictionary_, i. 270.
[155] “Ode to the Departing-Year,” published in the _Cambridge
Intelligencer_, December 24, 1796. The lines on the “Empress,” to which
Thelwall objected, are in the first epode:--
No more on Murder’s lurid face
The insatiate Hag shall gloat with drunken eye.
_Poetical Works_, p. 79.
[156] Compare the well-known description of Dorothy Wordsworth, in a
letter to Cottle of July, 1797: “W. and his exquisite sister are with me.
She is a woman, indeed,--in mind I mean, and heart. Her information
various. Her eye watchful in minutest observation of nature; and her taste
a perfect electrometer. It bends, protrudes, and draws in, at subtlest
beauties and most recondite faults.”
Bennett’s, or the gold leaf electroscope, is an instrument for “detecting
the presence, and determining the kind of electricity in any body.” Two
narrow strips of gold leaf are attached to a metal rod, terminating in a
small brass plate above, contained in a glass shade, and these under
certain conditions of the application of positive and negative electricity
diverge or collapse.
The gold leaf electroscope was invented by Abraham Bennett in 1786.
Cottle’s _Early Recollections_, i. 252; Ganot’s _Physics_, 1870, p. 631.
[157] His tract _On the Strength of the Existing Government (the
Directory) of France, and the Necessity of supporting it_, was published
in 1796.
The translator, James Losh, described by Southey as “a provincial
counsel,” was at one time resident in Cumberland, and visited Coleridge at
Greta Hall. At a later period he settled at Jesmond, Newcastle. His name
occurs among the subscribers to _The Friend_. _Letters from the Lake
Poets_, p. 453.
[158] Compare stanzas eight and nine of “The Mad Ox:”--
Old Lewis (’twas his evil day)
Stood trembling in his shoes;
The ox was his--what could he say?
His legs were stiffened with dismay,
The ox ran o’er him mid the fray,
And gave him his death’s bruise.
The baited ox drove on (but here,
The Gospel scarce more true is,
My muse stops short in mid career--
Nay, gentle reader, do not sneer!
I could chuse but drop a tear,
A tear for good old Lewis!)
_Poetical Works_, p. 134.
[159] The probable date of this letter is Thursday, June 8, 1797. On
Monday, June 5, Coleridge breakfasted with Dr. Toulmin, the Unitarian
minister at Taunton, and on the evening of that or the next day he arrived
on foot at Racedown, some forty miles distant. Mrs. Wordsworth, in a
letter to Sara Coleridge, dated November 7, 1845, conveys her husband’s
recollections of this first visit in the following words: “Your father,”
she says, “came afterwards to visit us at Racedown, where I was living
with my sister. We have both a distinct remembrance of his arrival. He did
not keep to the high road, but leaped over a high gate and bounded down
the pathless field, by which he cut off an angle. We both retain the
liveliest possible image of his appearance at that moment. My poor sister
has just been speaking of it to me with much feeling and tenderness.” A
portion of this letter, of which I possess the original MS., was printed
by Professor Knight in his _Life of Wordsworth_, i. 111.
[160] This passage, which for some reason Cottle chose to omit, seems to
imply that the second edition of the poems had not appeared by the
beginning of June.
[161]
... Such, O my earliest friend!
Thy lot, and such thy brothers too enjoy.
At distance did ye climb life’s upland road,
Yet cheered and cheering: now fraternal love
Hath drawn you to one centre.
_Poetical Works_, p. 81, l. 9-14.
[162]
... and some most false,
False, and fair-foliaged as the Manchineel,
Have tempted me to slumber in their shade
E’en mid the storm; then breathing subtlest damp
Mixed their own venom with the rain from Heaven,
That I woke poisoned.
_Poetical Works_, p. 82, l. 25-30.
Compare Lamb’s humorous reproach in a letter to Coleridge, September,
1797: “For myself I must spoil a little passage of Beaumont and Fletcher’s
to adapt it to my feelings:--
... I am prouder
That I was once your friend, tho’ now forgot,
Than to have had another true to me.
“If you don’t write to me now, as I told Lloyd, I shall get angry, and
call you hard names--Manchineel, and I don’t know what else.”
_Letters of Charles Lamb_, i. 83.
[163] Charles Lamb’s visit to the cottage of Nether Stowey lasted from
Friday, July 7, to Friday, July 14, 1797.
[164] According to local tradition, the lime-tree bower was at the back of
the cottage, but according to this letter it was in Poole’s garden. From
either spot the green ramparts of Stowey Castle and the “airy ridge” of
Dowseborough are full in view.
[165] “He [Le Grice] and Favell ... wrote to the Duke of York, when they
were at college, for commissions in the army. The Duke good-naturedly sent
them.” _Autobiography of Leigh Hunt_, p. 72.
[166] Possibly he alludes to his appointment as deputy-surgeon to the
Second Royals, then stationed in Portugal.
His farewell letter to Coleridge (undated) has been preserved and will be
read with interest.
PORTSMOUTH.
My Beloved Friend,--Farewell! I shall never think of you but with
tears of the tenderest affection. Our routes in life have been so
opposite, that for a long time past there has not been that
intercourse between us which our mutual affection would have otherwise
occasioned. But at this serious moment, all your kindness and love for
me press upon my memory with a weight of sensation I can scarcely
endure.
* * * * *
You have heard of my destination, I suppose. I am going to Portugal to
join the Second Royals, to which I have been appointed Deputy-Surgeon.
What fate is in reserve for me I know not. I should be more
indifferent to my future lot, if it were not for the hope of passing
many pleasant hours, in times to come, in your society.
Adieu! my dearest fellow. My love to Mrs. C. Health and fraternity to
young David.
Yours most affectionate,
R. ALLEN.
[167] A friend and fellow-collegian of Christopher Wordsworth at Trinity
College, Cambridge. He was a member of the “Literary Society” to which
Coleridge, C. Wordsworth, Le Grice, and others belonged. He afterwards
became a sergeant-at-law. He was an intimate friend of H. Crabb Robinson.
See H. C. Robinson’s _Diary_, _passim_. See, too, _Social Life at the
English Universities_, by Christopher Wordsworth, M. A., Fellow of
Peterhouse, Cambridge, 1874, Appendix.
[168] Not, as has been supposed, Charles and Mary Lamb, but Wordsworth and
his sister Dorothy. Mary Lamb was not and could not have been at that time
one of the party. The version sent to Southey differs both from that
printed in the _Annual Anthology_ of 1800, and from a copy in a
contemporary letter sent to C. Lloyd. It is interesting to note that the
words, “My sister, and my friends,” ll. 47 and 53, which gave place in the
_Anthology_ to the thrice-repeated, “My gentle-hearted Charles,” appear,
in a copy sent to Lloyd, as “My Sara and my friend.” It was early days for
him to address Dorothy Wordsworth as “My sister,” but in forming
friendships Coleridge did not “keep to the high road, but leaped over a
gate and bounded” from acquaintance to intimacy. _Poetical Works_, p. 92.
For version of “This Lime-Tree Bower my Prison,” sent to C. Lloyd, see
_Ibid._, Editor’s Note, p. 591.
[169] “Elastic, I mean.”--S. T. C.
[170] “The ferns that grow in moist places grow five or six together, and
form a complete ‘Prince of Wales’s Feathers,’--that is, plumy.”--S. T. C.
[171] “You remember I am a _Berkleian_.”--S. T. C.
[172] “This Lime-Tree Bower,” l. 38. _Poetical Works_, p. 93.
[173] “Osorio,” Act V., Sc. 1, l. 39. _Poetical Works_, p. 507.
[174] Thelwall’s visit brought Coleridge and Wordsworth into trouble. At
the instance of a “titled Dogberry,” Sir Philip Hale of Cannington, a
government spy was sent to watch the movements of the supposed
conspirators, and, a more serious matter, Mrs. St. Albyn, the owner of
Alfoxden, severely censured her tenant for having sublet the house to
Wordsworth. See letter of explanation and remonstrance from Poole to Mrs.
St. Albyn, September 16, 1797. _Thomas Poole and his Friends_, i. 240.
See, too, Cottle’s _Early Recollections_, i. 319, and for apocryphal
anecdotes about the spy, etc., _Biographia Literaria_, cap. x.
[175] Their proposal was to settle on Coleridge “an annuity for life of
£150, to be regularly paid by us, no condition whatever being annexed to
it.” See letter of Josiah Wedgwood to Coleridge, dated January 10, 1798.
_Thomas Poole and his Friends_, i. 258. An unpublished letter from
Thelwall to Dr. Crompton dated Llyswen, March 3, 1798, contains one of
several announcements of “his good fortune,” made by Coleridge at the time
to his numerous friends.
To DR. CROMPTON, Eton House, Nr. Liverpool.
LLYSWEN, 3d March, 1798.
I am surprised you have not heard the particulars of Coleridge’s good
fortune. It is not a legacy, but a gift. The circumstances are thus
expressed by himself in a letter of the 30th January: “I received an
invitation from Shrewsbury to be the Unitarian minister, and at the
same time an order for £100 from Thomas and Josiah Wedgwood. I
accepted the former and returned the latter in a long letter
explanatory of my motive, and went off to Shrewsbury, where they were
on the point of electing me unanimously and with unusual marks of
affection, where I received an offer from T. and J. Wedgwood of an
annuity of £150 to be legally settled on me. Astonished, agitated, and
feeling as I could not help feeling, I accepted the offer in the same
worthy spirit, I hope, in which it was made, and this morning I have
returned from Shrewsbury.” This letter was written in a great hurry in
Cottle’s shop in Bristol, in answer to one which a friend of mine had
left for him there, on his way from Llyswen to Gosport, and you will
perceive that it has a dash of the obscure not uncommon to the rapid
genius of C. Whether he did or did not accept the cure of Unitarian
Souls, it is difficult from the account to make out. I suppose he did
not, for I know his aversion to preachings God’s holy word for hire,
which is seconded not a little, I expect, by his repugnance to all
regular routine and application. I also hope he did not, for I know he
cannot preach very often without travelling from the pulpit to the
Tower. Mount him but upon his darling hobby-horse, “the republic of
God’s own making,” and away he goes like hey-go-mad, spattering and
splashing through thick and thin and scattering more _levelling_
sedition and constructive treason than poor Gilly or myself ever
dreamt of. He promised to write to me again in a few days; but, though
I answered his letter directly, I have not heard from him since.
[176] _Count Benyowsky, or the Conspiracy of Kamtschatka, a Tragi-comedy._
Translated from the German by the Rev. W. Render, teacher of the German
Language in the University of Cambridge. Cambridge, 1798.
[177] Coleridge’s copy of Monk Lewis’ play is dated January 20, 1798.
[178] The following memoranda, presumably in Wordsworth’s handwriting,
have been scribbled on the outside sheet of the letter: “Tea--Thread
fine--needles Silks--Strainer for starch--Mustard--Basil’s shoes--Shoe
horn.
“The sun’s course is short, but clear and blue the sky.”
[179] “Duplex nobis vinculum, et amicitiæ et similium junctarumque
Camœnarum; quod utinam neque mors solvat, neque temporis longinquitas.”
[180] _The Task_, Book V., “A Winter’s Morning Walk.”
[181] A later version of these lines is to be found at the close of the
fourth book of “The Excursion.” _Works of Wordsworth_, 1889, p. 467.
[182] In the series of letters to Dr. Estlin, contributed to the privately
printed volumes of the Philobiblon Society, the editor, Mr. Henry A.
Bright, dates this letter _May_ (? 1797). A comparison with a second
letter to Estlin, dated May 14, 1798 (Letter LXXXII.), with a letter to
Poole, dated May 28, 1798 (Letter LXXXIV.), with a letter to Charles Lamb
belonging to the spring of 1798 (Letter LXXXV.), and with an entry in
Dorothy Wordsworth’s journal for May 16, 1798, affords convincing proof
that the date of the letter should be May, 1798.
The MS. note of November 10, 1810, to which a previous reference has been
made, connects a serious quarrel with Lloyd, and consequent distress of
mind, with the retirement to “the lonely farm-house,” and a first recourse
to opium. If, as the letters intimate, these events must be assigned to
May, 1798, it follows that “Kubla Khan” was written at the same time, and
not, as Coleridge maintained in the Preface of 1816, “in the summer of
1797.”
It would, indeed, have been altogether miraculous if, before he had
written a line of “Christabel,” or “The Ancient Mariner,” either in an
actual dream, or a dreamlike reverie, it had been “given to him” to divine
the enchanting images of “Kubla Khan,” or attune his mysterious vision to
consummate melody.
[183] Berkeley Coleridge, born May 14, 1798, died February 10, 1799.
[184] The original MS. of this letter, which was preserved by Coleridge,
is, doubtless, a copy of that sent by post. Besides this, only three of
Coleridge’s letters to Lamb have been preserved,--the “religious letter”
of 1796, a letter concerning the quarrel with Wordsworth, of May, 1812
[Letter CLXXXIV.], and one written in later life (undated, on the
particulars of Hood’s _Odes to Great People_).
[185] Charles Lloyd.
[186] The three sonnets of “Nehemiah Higginbottom” were published in the
_Monthly Magazine_ for November, 1797. Compare his letter to Cottle (_E.
R._ i. 289) which Mr. Dykes Campbell takes to have been written at the
same time.
“I sent to the _Monthly Magazine_, three mock sonnets in ridicule of my
own Poems, and Charles Lloyd’s and Charles Lamb’s, etc., etc., exposing
that affectation of unaffectedness, of jumping and misplaced accent, in
commonplace epithets, flat lines forced into poetry by italics (signifying
how well and mouthishly the author would read them), puny pathos, etc.,
etc. The instances were all taken from myself and Lloyd and Lamb. I signed
them ‘Nehemiah Higginbottom.’ I hope they may do good to our young bards.”
The publication of these sonnets in November, 1797, cannot, as Mr. Dykes
Campbell points out (_Poetical Works_, p. 599), have been the immediate
cause of the breach between Coleridge and Lamb which took place in the
spring or early summer of 1798, but it seems that during the rise and
progress of this quarrel the Sonnet on Simplicity was the occasion of
bitter and angry words. As Lamb and Lloyd and Southey drew together, they
drew away from Coleridge, and Southey, who had only been formally
reconciled with his brother-in-law, seems to have regarded this sonnet as
an ill-natured parody of his earlier poems. In a letter to Wynn, dated
November 20, 1797, he says, “I am aware of the danger of studying
simplicity of language,” and he proceeds to quote some lines of blank
verse to prove that he could employ the “grand style” when he chose.
A note from Coleridge to Southey, posted December 8, 1797, deals with the
question, and would, if it had not been for Lloyd’s “tittle-tattle,” have
convinced both Southey and Lamb that in the matter they were entirely
mistaken.
* * * * *
I am sorry, Southey! very sorry that I wrote or published those
sonnets--but ‘sorry’ would be a tame word to express my feelings, if I had
written them with the motives which you have attributed to me. I have not
been in the habit of treating our separation with levity--nor ever since
the first moment thought of it without deep emotion--and how could you
apply to yourself a sonnet written to ridicule infantine simplicity,
vulgar colloquialisms, and lady-like friendships? I have no conception,
neither I believe could a passage in your writings have suggested to me or
any man the notion of _your_ ‘plainting plaintively.’ I am sorry that I
wrote thus, because I am sorry to perceive a disposition in you to believe
evil of me, of which your remark to Charles Lloyd was a painful instance.
I say this to you, because I shall say it to no other being. I feel myself
wounded and hurt and write as such. I believe in my letter to Lloyd I
forgot to mention that the Editor of the _Morning Post_ is called Stuart,
and that he is the brother-in-law of Mackintosh. Yours sincerely,
S. T. COLERIDGE.
Thursday morning.
Post-mark, Dec. 8, 1797.
MR. SOUTHEY, No. 23 East Street, Red Lion Square, London.
[187] Charles Lloyd’s novel, _Edmund Oliver_, was published at Bristol in
1798. It is dedicated to “His friend Charles Lamb of the India House.” He
says in the Preface: “The incidents relative to the army were given me by
an intimate friend who was himself eye-witness of one of them.” The
general resemblance between the events of Coleridge’s earlier history and
the story of Edmund Oliver is not very striking, but apart from the
description of “his person” in the first letter of the second volume,
which is close enough, a single sentence from Edmund Oliver’s journal, i.
245, betrays the malignant nature of the attack. “I have at all times a
strange dreaminess about me which makes me indifferent to the future, if I
can by any means fill the present with sensations,--with that dreaminess I
have gone on here from day to day; if at any time thought-troubled, I have
swallowed some spirits, or had recourse to my laudanum.” In the same
letter, the account which Edmund Oliver gives of his sensations as a
recruit in a regiment of light horse, and the vivid but repulsive picture
which he draws of his squalid surroundings in “a pot-house in the
Borough,” leaves a like impression that Coleridge confided too much, and
that Lloyd remembered “not wisely but too well.” How Coleridge regarded
Lloyd’s malfeasance may be guessed from one of his so-called epigrams.
TO ONE WHO PUBLISHED IN PRINT WHAT HAD BEEN INTRUSTED TO HIM BY MY
FIRESIDE.
Two things hast thou made known to half the nation,
My secrets and my want of penetration:
For oh! far more than all which thou hast penned,
It shames me to have called a wretch, like thee, my friend!
_Poetical Works_, p. 448.
[188] In a letter dated November 1, 1798, Mrs. Coleridge acquaints her
husband with the danger and the disfigurement from smallpox which had
befallen her little Berkeley. “The dear child,” she writes, “is getting
strength every hour; but ‘when you lost sight of land, and the faces of
your children crossed you like a flash of lightning,’ you saw _that_ face
for the last time.”
[189] “Fears in Solitude, written in 1798, during the alarm of an
invasion. To which are added, France, an Ode; and Frost at Midnight. By S.
T. Coleridge. London: Printed for J. Johnson, in St. Paul’s Churchyard.
1798.”
[190] According to Burke’s _Peerage_, Emanuel Scoope, second Viscount
Howe, and father of the Admiral, “Our Lord Howe,” married, in 1719, Mary
Sophia, daughter of Baron Kielmansegge, Master of the Horse to George I.
Coleridge’s countess must have been a great-granddaughter of the baron. In
her reply to this letter, dated December 13, 1798, Mrs. Coleridge writes:
“I am very proud to hear that you are so forward in the language, and that
you are so gay with the ladies. You may give my respects to them, and say
that I am not at all jealous, for I know my dear Samuel in her affliction
will not forget entirely his most affectionate wife, Sara Coleridge.”
[191] The “Rev. Mr. Roskilly” had been curate-in-charge of the parish of
Nether Stowey, and the occasion of the letter was his promotion to the
Rectory of Kempsford in Gloucestershire. Mrs. S. T. Coleridge, in a late
letter (probably 1843) to her sister, Mrs. Lovell, writes: “In March
[1800] I and the child [Hartley] left him [S. T. C.] in London, and
proceeded to Kempsford in Gloucestershire, the Rectory of Mr. Roskilly;
remained there a month. Papa was to have joined us there, but did not.”
See _Thomas Poole and his Friends_, i. 25-27, and _Letters from the Lake
Poets_, p. 6.
[192] In his letter of January 20, 1799, Josiah Wedgwood acknowledges the
receipt of a letter dated November 29, 1798, but adds that an earlier
letter from Hamburg had not come to hand. A third letter, dated Göttingen,
May 21, 1799, was printed by Cottle in his _Reminiscences_, 1848, p. 425.
[193] Miss Meteyard, in her _Group of Englishmen_, 1871, p. 99, gives
extracts from the account-current of Messrs. P. and O. Von Axen, the
Hamburg agents of the Wedgwoods. According to her figures, Coleridge drew
£125 from October 20 to March 29, 1799, and, “conjointly with Wordsworth,”
£106 10_s._ on July 8, 1799. Mr. Dykes Campbell, in a footnote to his
_Memoir_, p. xliv., combats Miss Meteyard’s assertion that these sums were
advanced by the Wedgwoods to Coleridge and Wordsworth, and argues that
Wordsworth merely drew on the Von Axens for sums already paid in from his
own resources. Coleridge, he thinks, had only his annuity to look to, but
probably anticipated his income. In a MS. note-book of 1798-99, Coleridge
inserted some concise but not very business-like entries as to
expenditures and present resources, but says nothing as to receipts.
“March 25th, being Easter Monday, Chester and S. T. C., in a damn’d dirty
hole in the Burg Strasse at Göttingen, possessed at that moment eleven
Louis d’ors and two dollars. When the money is spent in common expenses S.
T. Coleridge will owe Chester 5 pounds 12 shillings.
“NOTE.--From September 8 to April 8 I shall have spent £90, of which £15
was in Books; and Cloathes, mending and making, £10.
“May 10. We have 17 Louis d’or, of which, as far as I can at present
calculate, 10 belong to Chester.”
The most probable conclusion is that both Coleridge and Chester were
fairly well supplied with money when they left England, and that the £178
10_s._ which Coleridge received from the Von Axens covered some portion of
Chester’s expenses in addition to his own. I may add that a recent
collation of the autograph letter of Coleridge to Josiah Wedgwood dated
May 21, 1799, Göttingen, with the published version in Cottle’s
_Reminiscences_, pp. 425-429, fully bears out Mr. Campbell’s contention,
that though Coleridge anticipated his annuity, he was not the recipient of
large sums over and above what was guaranteed to him.
[194] A portion of this description of Ratzeburg is included in No. III.
of _Satyrane’s Letters_, originally published in No. 10 of _The Friend_,
December 21, 1809.
[195] The following description of the frozen lake was thrown into a
literary shape and published in No. 19 of _The Friend_, December 28, 1809,
as “Christmas Indoors in North Germany.”
[196] A letter from Mrs. Coleridge to her husband, dated March 25, 1799,
followed Poole’s letter of March 15. (_Thomas Poole and his Friends_, i.
290.) She writes:--
“MY DEAREST LOVE,--I hope you will not attribute my long silence to want
of affection. If you have received Mr. Poole’s letter you will know the
reason and acquit me. My darling infant left his wretched mother on the
10th of February, and though the leisure that followed was intolerable to
me, yet I could not employ myself in reading or writing, or in any way
that prevented my thoughts from resting on him. This parting was the
severest trial that I have ever yet undergone, and I pray to God that I
may never live to behold the death of another child. For, O my dear
Samuel, it is a suffering beyond your conception! You will feel and lament
the death of your child, but you will only recollect him a baby of
fourteen weeks, but I am his mother and have carried him in my arms and
have fed him at my bosom, and have watched over him by day and by night
for nine months. I have seen him twice at the brink of the grave, but he
has returned and recovered and smiled upon me like an angel,--and now I am
lamenting that he is gone!”
In her old age, when her daughter was collecting materials for a life of
her father, Mrs. Coleridge wrote on the back of the letter:--
“No secrets herein. I will not burn it for the sake of my sweet Berkeley.”
[197] From “Osorio,” Act V. Sc. 1. _Poetical Works_, p. 506.
[198] The following description of the Christmas-tree, and of Knecht
Rupert, was originally published, almost verbatim, in No. 19 of the
original issue of _The Friend_, December 28, 1809.
[199] First published in _Annual Anthology_ of 1800, under the signature
_Cordomi_. See _Poetical Works_, p. 146, and Editor’s Note, p. 621.
[200] The men who rip the oak bark from the logs for tanning.
[201]
My dear babe,
Who capable of no articulate sound,
Mars all things with his imitative lisp,
How he would place his hand beside his ear,
His little hand, the small forefinger up,
And bid us listen.
--“The Nightingale, a Conversation Poem,” written in April, 1798.
_Poetical Works_, p. 133.
[202] Hutton Hall, near Penrith.
[203] First published in the _Annual Anthology_ of 1800. See _Poetical
Works_, p. 146, and Editor’s Note, p. 621. According to Carlyon the lines
were dictated by Coleridge and inscribed by one of the party in the
“Stammbuch” of the Wernigerode Inn. _Early Years_, i. 66.
[204] Olaus Tychsen, 1734-1815, was “Professor of Oriental Tongues” at
Rostock, in Mecklenburg-Schwerin.
[205] F. C. Achard, born in 1754, was author of an “Instruction for making
sugar, molasses, and vinous spirit from Beet-root.”
[206] The Coleridges were absent from Stowey for about a month. For the
first fortnight they were guests of George Coleridge at Ottery. The latter
part of the time was spent with the Southeys in their lodgings at Exeter.
It was during this second visit that Coleridge accompanied Southey on a
walking tour through part of Dartmoor and as far as Dartmouth.
[207] Coleridge took but few notes during this tour. In 1803 he
retranscribed his fragmentary jottings and regrets that he possessed no
more, “though we were at the interesting Bovey waterfall [Becky Fall],
through that wild dell of ashes which leads to Ashburton, most like the
approach to upper Matterdale.” “I have,” he adds, “at this moment very
distinct visual impressions of the tour, namely of Torbay, the village of
Paignton with the Castle.” Southey was disappointed in South Devon, which
he contrasts unfavourably with the North of Somersetshire, but for “the
dell of ashes” he has a word of praise. _Selections from Letters of Robert
Southey_, i. 84.
[208] Suwarrow, at the head of the Austro-Russian troops, defeated the
French under Joubert at Novi near Alessandria, in North Italy, August 15,
1799.
[209] A temporary residence of Josiah Wedgwood, who had taken it on lease
in order to be near his newly purchased property at Combe Florey, in
Somersetshire. Meteyard’s _Group of Englishmen_, 1871, p. 107.
[210] Southey’s brother, a midshipman on board the Sylph gun-brig. A
report had reached England that the Sylph had been captured and brought to
Ferrol. _Southey’s Life and Correspondence_, ii. 30.
[211] Marshal Massena defeated the Russians under Prince Korsikov at
Zurich, September 25, 1799.
[212] William Jackson, organist of Exeter Cathedral, 1730-1803, a musical
composer and artist. He published, among other works, _The Four Ages with
Essays_, 1798. See letter of Southey to S. T. Coleridge, October 3, 1799,
_Southey’s Life and Correspondence_, ii. 26.
[213] John Codrington Warwick Bampfylde, second son of Richard Bampfylde,
of Poltimore, was the author of _Sixteen Sonnets_, published in 1779. In
the letter of October 3 (see above) Southey gives an interesting account
of his eccentric habits and melancholy history. In a prefatory note to
four of Bampfylde’s sonnets, included by Southey in his _Specimens of the
Later English Poets_, he explains how he came to possess the copies of
some hitherto unpublished poems.
“Jackson of Exeter, a man whose various talents made all who knew him
remember him with regret, designed to republish the little collection of
Bampfylde’s Sonnets, with what few of his pieces were still unedited.
“Those poems which are here first printed were transcribed from the
originals in his possession.”
“Bampfylde published his Sonnets at a very early age; they are some of the
most original in our language. He died in a private mad-house, after
twenty years’ confinement.” _Specimens of the Later English Poets_, 1808,
iii. 434.
[214] “A sister of General McKinnon, who was killed at Ciudad Rodrigo.” In
the same letter to Coleridge (see above) Southey says that he looked up to
her with more respect because the light of Buonaparte’s countenance had
shone upon her.
[215] Dr. Cookson, Canon of Windsor and Rector of Forncett, Norfolk.
Dorothy Wordsworth passed much of her time under his roof before she
finally threw in her lot with her brother William in 1795.
[216] The journal, or notes for a journal, of this first tour in the Lake
Country, leaves a doubt whether Coleridge and Wordsworth slept at Keswick
on Sunday, November 10, 1799, or whether they returned to Cockermouth. It
is certain that they passed through Keswick again on Friday, November 15,
as the following entry testifies:--
“1 mile and ½ from Keswick, a Druidical circle. On the right the road and
Saddleback; on the left a fine but unwatered vale, walled by grassy hills
and a fine black crag standing single at the terminus as sentry. Before
me, that is, towards Keswick, the mountains stand, one behind the other,
in orderly array, as if evoked by and attentive to the white-vested
wizards.” It was from almost the same point of view that, thirty years
afterwards, his wife, on her journey south after her daughter’s marriage,
took a solemn farewell of the Vale of Keswick once so strange, but then so
dear and so familiar.
[217] George Fricker, Mrs. Coleridge’s younger brother.
[218] A gossiping account of the early history and writings of “Mr. Robert
Southey” appeared in _Public Characters for 1799-1800_, a humble
forerunner of _Men of the Time_, published by Richard Phillips, the
founder of the _Monthly Magazine_, and afterwards knighted as a sheriff of
the city of London. Possibly Coleridge was displeased at the mention of
his name in connection with Pantisocracy, and still more by the following
sentence: “The three young poetical friends, Lovel, Southey, and
Coleridge, married three sisters. Southey is attached to domestic life,
and, fortunately, was very happy in his matrimonial connection.” It was
Sir Richard Phillips, the “knight” of Coleridge’s anecdote, who told Mrs.
Barbauld that he would have given “nine guineas a sheet for the last hour
and a half of his conversation.” _Letters, Conversations_, etc., 1836, ii.
131, 132.
[219] “These various pieces were rearranged in three volumes under the
title of _Minor Poems_, in 1815, with this motto, _Nos hæc novimus esse
nihil_.” _Poetical Works of Robert Southey_, 1837, ii., xii.
[220] Mary Hayes, a friend of Mary Wollstonecraft, whose opinions she
advocated with great zeal, and whose death she witnessed. Among other
works, she wrote a novel, _Memoirs of Emma Courtney_, and _Female
Biography, or Memoirs of Illustrious and Celebrated Women_. Six volumes.
London: R. Phillips. 1803.
[221] He used the same words in a letter to Poole dated December 31, 1799.
_Thomas Poole and his Friends_, i. 1.
[222] “Essay on the New French Constitution,” _Essays on His Own Times_,
i. 183-189.
[223] The Ode appeared in the _Morning Post_, December 24, 1799. The
stanzas in which the Duchess commemorated her passage over Mount St.
Gothard appeared in the _Morning Post_, December 21. They were inscribed
to her children, and it was the last stanza, in which she anticipates her
return, which suggested to Coleridge the far-fetched conceit that maternal
affection enabled the Duchess to overcome her aristocratic prejudices, and
“hail Tell’s chapel and the platform wild.” It runs thus:--
Hope of my life! dear _children_ of my heart!
That anxious heart to each fond feeling true,
To you still pants each pleasure to impart,
And soon--oh transport--reach its home and you.
_From a transcript in my possession of which the opening lines are in the
handwriting of Mrs. H. N. Coleridge._
[224] The libel of which Coleridge justly complained was contained in
these words: “Since this time (that is, since leaving Cambridge) he has
left his native country, commenced citizen of the world, left his poor
children fatherless and his wife destitute. _Ex his disce_ his friends
Lamb and Southey.” _Biographia Literaria_, 1817, vol. i. chapter i. p. 70,
_n._
[225] Mrs. Robinson (“Perdita”) contributed two poems to the _Annual
Anthology_ of 1800, “Jasper” and “The Haunted Beach.” The line which
caught Coleridge’s fancy, the first of the twelfth stanza, runs thus:--
“Pale Moon! thou Spectre of the Sky.”
_Annual Anthology_, 1800, p. 168.
[226] _St. Leon_ was published in 1799. _William Godwin, his Friends and
Contemporaries_, i. 330.
[227] See “Mr. Coleridge’s Report of Mr. Pitt’s Speech in Parliament of
February 17, 1800, On the continuance of the War with France.” _Morning
Post_, February 18, 1800; _Essays on His Own Times_, ii. 293. See, too,
Mrs. H. N. Coleridge’s note, and the report of the speech in _The Times_.
_Ibid._ iii. 1009-1019. The original notes, which Coleridge took in
pencil, have been preserved in one of his note-books. They consist, for
the most part, of skeleton sentences and fragmentary jottings. How far
Coleridge may have reconstructed Pitt’s speech as he went along, it is
impossible to say, but the speech as reported follows pretty closely the
outlines in the note-book. The remarkable description of Buonaparte as the
“child and champion of Jacobinism,” which is not to be found in _The
Times_ report, appears in the notes as “the nursling and champion of
Jacobinism,” and, if these were the words which Pitt used, in this
instance, Coleridge altered for the worse.
[228] “The Beguines I had looked upon as a religious establishment, and
the only good one of its kind. When my brother was a prisoner at Brest,
the sick and wounded were attended by nurses, and these women had made
themselves greatly beloved and respected.” Southey to Rickman, January 9,
1800. _Life and Correspondence_, ii. 46. It is well known that Southey
advocated the establishment of Protestant orders of Sisters of Mercy.
[229] In a letter from Southey to Coleridge, dated February 15, 1800
(unpublished), he proposes the establishment of a Magazine with signed
articles. But a “History of the Levelling Principle,” which Coleridge had
suggested as a joint work, he would only publish anonymously.
[230] See Letter from Southey to Coleridge, December 27, 1799. _Life and
Correspondence_, ii. 35.
[231] “Concerning the French, I wish Bonaparte had staid in Egypt and that
Robespierre had guilloteened Sieyès. These cursed complex governments are
good for nothing, and will ever be in the hands of intriguers: the
Jacobins were the men, and one house of representatives, lodging the
executive in committees, the plain and common system of government. The
cause of republicanism is over, and it is now only a struggle for
dominion. There wants a Lycurgus after Robespierre, a man loved for his
virtue, and bold and inflexible, who should have levelled the property of
France, and then would the Republic have been immortal--and the world must
have been revolutionized by example.” From an unpublished letter from
Southey to Coleridge, dated December 23, 1799.
[232] “Alas, poor human nature! Or rather, indeed, alas, poor Gallic
nature! For Γραῖοι ἀεὶ μαῖδες the French are always children, and it is an
infirmity of benevolence to wish, or dread, aught concerning them.” S. T.
C., _Morning Post_, December 31, 1797; _Essays on His Own Times_, i. 184.
[233] See _Poetical Works_, Appendix K, pp. 544, 545. Editor’s Note, pp.
646-649.
[234]
“The _winter_ Moon upon the sand
A silvery Carpet made,
And mark’d the sailor reach the land--
And mark’d _his Murderer_ wash his hand
Where the green billows played!”
_Annual Anthology_, 1800: “The Haunted Beach,” sixth stanza, p. 256.
[235] These letters, under the title of “Monopolists” and “Farmers,”
appeared in the _Morning Post_, October 3-9, 1800. Coleridge wrote the
first of the series, and the introduction to No. III. of “Farmers,” “In
what manner they are affected by the War” _Essays on His Own Times_, ii.
413-450; _Thomas Poole and his Friends_, ii. 15, 16.
[236] It is impossible to explain this statement, which was repeated in a
letter to Josiah Wedgwood, dated November 1, 1800. The printed
“Christabel,” even including the conclusion to Part II., makes only 677
lines, and the discarded portion, if it ever existed, has never come to
light. See Mr. Dykes Campbell’s valuable and exhaustive note on
“Christabel,” _Poetical Works_, pp. 601-607.
[237] A former title of “The Excursion.”
[238] “Sunday night, half past ten, September 14, 1800, a boy born
(Bracy).
“September 27, 1800. The child being very ill was baptized by the name of
Derwent. The child, hour after hour, made a noise exactly like the
creaking of a door which is being shut very slowly to prevent its
creaking.” (_MS._) S. T. C.
My father’s life was saved by his mother’s devotion. “On the occasion here
recorded,” he writes, “I had eleven convulsion fits. At last my father
took my mother gently out of the room, and told her that she must make up
her mind to lose this child. By and by she heard the nurse lulling me, and
said she would try once more to give me the breast.” She did so; and from
that time all went well, and the child recovered.
[239] Afterwards Sir Anthony, the distinguished surgeon, 1768-1840.
[240] According to Dr. Davy, the editor of _Fragmentary Remains of Sir H.
Davy_, London, 1858, the reference is to the late Mr. James Thompson of
Clitheroe.
[241] William, the elder brother of Raisley Calvert, who left Wordsworth a
legacy of nine hundred pounds. In that mysterious poem, “Stanzas written
in my Pocket Copy of Thomson’s Castle of Indolence,” it would seem that
Wordsworth begins with a blended portrait of himself and Coleridge, and
ends with a blended portrait of Coleridge and William Calvert. Mrs. Joshua
Stanger (Mary Calvert) maintained that “the large gray eyes” and “low-hung
lip” were certainly descriptive of Coleridge and could not apply to her
father; but she admitted that, in other parts of the poem, Wordsworth may
have had her father in his mind. Of this we may be sure, that neither
Coleridge nor Wordsworth had “inventions rare,” or displayed beetles under
a microscope. It is evident that Hartley Coleridge, who said “that his
father’s character and habits are here [that is, in these stanzas]
preserved in a livelier way than in anything that has been written about
him,” regarded the first and not the second half of the poem as a
description of S. T. C. “The Last of the Calverts,” _Cornhill Magazine_,
May, 1890, pp. 494-520.
[242] On page 210 of vol. ii. of the second edition of the _Lyrical
Ballads_ (1800), there is a blank space. The omitted passage, fifteen
lines in all, began with the words, “Though nought was left undone.”
_Works of Wordsworth_, p. 134, II. 4-18.
[243] During the preceding month Coleridge had busied himself with
instituting a comparison between the philosophical systems of Locke and
Descartes. Three letters of prodigious length, dated February 18, 24 (a
double letter), and addressed to Josiah Wedgwood, embodied the result of
his studies. They would serve, he thought, as a preliminary excursus to a
larger work, and would convince the Wedgwoods that his _wanderjahr_ had
not been altogether misspent. Mr. Leslie Stephen, to whom this
correspondence has been submitted, is good enough to allow me to print the
following extract from a letter which he wrote at my request: “Coleridge
writes as though he had as yet read no German philosophy. I knew that he
began a serious study of Kant at Keswick; but I fancied that he had
brought back some knowledge of Kant from Germany. This letter seems to
prove the contrary. There is certainly none of the transcendentalism of
the Schelling kind. One point is, that he still sticks to Hartley and to
the Association doctrine, which he afterwards denounced so frequently.
Thus he is dissatisfied with Locke, but has not broken with the philosophy
generally supposed to be on the Locke line. In short, he seems to be at
the point where a study of Kant would be ready to launch him in his later
direction, but is not at all conscious of the change. When he wrote the
_Friend_ [1809-10] he had become a Kantian. Therefore we must, I think,
date his conversion later than I should have supposed, and assume that it
was the study of Kant just after this letter was written which brought
about the change.”
[244] Nothing is known of these lines beyond the fact that in 1816
Coleridge printed them as “Conclusion to Part II.” of “Christabel.” It is
possible that they were intended to form part of a distinct poem in the
metre of “Christabel,” or, it may be, they are the sole survival of an
attempted third part of the ballad itself. It is plain, however, that the
picture is from the life, that “the little child, the limber elf,” is the
four-year-old Hartley, hardly as yet “fitting to unutterable thought, The
breeze-like motion, and the self-born carol.”
[245] George Hutchinson, the fourth son of John Hutchinson of Penrith, was
at this time in occupation of land at Bishop’s Middleham, the original
home of the family. He migrated into Radnorshire in 1815, being then about
the age of thirty-seven; but between that date and his leaving Bishop’s
Middleham he had resided for some time in Lincolnshire, at Scrivelsby,
where he was engaged probably as agent on the estate of the “Champion.”
His first residence after migration was at New Radnor, where he married
Margaret Roberts of Curnellan, but he subsequently removed into
Herefordshire, where he resided in many places, latterly at Kingston. He
died at his son’s house, The Vinery, Hereford, in 1866. It would seem from
a letter dated July 25, 1801 (Letter CXX.), that at this time Sarah
Hutchinson kept house for her brother George, and that Mary (Mrs.
Wordsworth) and Joanna Hutchinson lived with their elder brother Tom at
Gallow Hill, in the parish of Brompton, near Scarborough. The register of
Brompton Church records the marriage of William Wordsworth and Mary
Hutchinson, on October 4, 1802; but in the notices of marriages in the
_Gentleman’s Magazine_, of October, 1802, the latter is described as “Miss
Mary Hutchinson of Wykeham,” an adjoining parish.
[From information kindly supplied to me by Mr. John Hutchinson, the keeper
of the Library of the Middle Temple.]
[246] The historian William Roscoe (afterwards M. P. for Liverpool), and
the physician James Currie, the editor and biographer of Burns, were at
this time settled at Liverpool and on terms of intimacy with Dr. Peter
Crompton of Eaton Hall.
[247] The Bristol merchant who lent the manor-house of Racedown to
Wordsworth in 1795.
[248] In the well-known lines “On revisiting the Sea-shore,” allusion is
made to this “mild physician,” who vainly dissuaded him from bathing in
the open sea. Sea-bathing was at all times an irresistible pleasure to
Coleridge, and he continued the practice, greatly to his benefit, down to
a late period of his life and long after he had become a confirmed
invalid. _Poetical Works_, p. 159.
[249] Francis Wrangham, whom Coleridge once described as “admirer of me
and a pitier of my political principles” (Letter to Cottle [April], 1796),
was his senior by a few years. On failing to obtain, it is said on account
of his advanced political views, a fellowship at Trinity Hall, he started
taking pupils at Cobham in Surrey in partnership with Basil Montagu. The
scheme was of short duration, for Montagu deserted tuition for the bar,
and Wrangham, early in life, was preferred to the benefices of Hemmanby
and Folkton, in the neighborhood of Scarborough. He was afterwards
appointed to a Canonry of York, to the Archdeaconry of Cleveland, and
finally to a prebendal stall at Chester. He published a volume of _Poems_
(London, 1795), in which are included Coleridge’s Translation of the
“Hendecasyllabli ad Bruntonam e Grantâ exituram,” and some “Verses to Miss
Brunton with the preceding Translation.” He died in 1842. _Poetical
Works_, p. 30. See, too, Editor’s Note, p. 569; _Reminiscences of
Cambridge_, by Henry Gunning, London, 1855, ii. 12 _seq._
[250] “I took a first floor for him in King Street, Covent Garden, at my
tailor’s, Howell’s, whose wife is a cheerful housewife of middle age, who
I knew would nurse Coleridge as kindly as if he were her son.” D. Stuart,
_Gent. Mag._, May, 1838. See, too, _Letters from the Lake Poets_, p. 7.
[251] Captain Luff, for many years a resident at Patterdale, near
Ulleswater, was held in esteem for the energy with which he procured the
enrolment of large companies of volunteers. Wordsworth and Coleridge were
frequent visitors at his house, For his account of the death of Charles
Gough, on Helvellyn, and the fidelity of the famous spaniel, see
_Coleorton Letters_, i. 97. _Letters from the Lake Poets_, p. 131.
[252] _Ciceronis Epist. ad Fam._ iv. 10.
[253] _Ib._ i. 2.
[254] The lines are taken, with some alterations, from a kind of _l’envoy_
or epilogue which Bruno affixed to his long philosophical poem, _Jordani
Bruni Nolani de Innumerabilibus Immenso et Infigurabili; seu de Universo
et Mundis libri octo_. Francofurti, 1591, p. 654.
[255] John Hamilton Mortimer, 1741-1779. He painted _King John granting
Magna Charta_, the _Battle of Agincourt_, the _Conversion of the Britons_,
and other historical subjects.
[256] Drayton’s _Poly-Olbion_, Song 22, 1-17.
[257] The Latin Iambics, in which Dean Ogle celebrated the little Blyth,
which ran through his father’s park at Kirkley, near Ponteland, deserve
the highest praise; but Bowles’s translation is far from being execrable.
He may not have caught the peculiar tones of the Northumbrian burn which
awoke the memories of the scholarly Dean, but his irregular lines are not
without their own pathos and melody. Bowles was a Winchester boy, and Dr.
Newton Ogle, then Dean of Winchester, was one of his earliest patrons. It
was from the Dean’s son, his old schoolfellow, Lieutenant Ogle, that he
claimed to have gathered the particulars of Coleridge’s discovery at
Reading and discharge from the army. “Poems of William Lisle Bowles,”
_Galignani_, 1829, p. 131; “The Late Mr. Coleridge a Common Soldier,”
_Times_, August 13, 1834.
[258] One of a series of falls made by the Dash Beck, which divides the
parishes of Caldbeck and Skiddaw Forest, and flows into Bassenthwaite
Lake.
The following minute description is from an entry in a note-book dated
October 10, 1800:--
“The Dash itself is by no means equal to the Churnmilk (_sic_) at Eastdale
(_sic_) or the Wytheburn Fall. This I wrote standing under and seeing the
whole Dash; but when I went over and descended to the bottom, then I only
_saw_ the real _Fall_ and the curve of the steep slope, and retracted. It
is, indeed, so seen, a fine thing. It falls parallel with a fine black
rock thirty feet, and is more shattered, more completely atomized and
white, than any I have ever seen.... The Fall of the Dash is in a
horse-shoe basin of its own, wildly peopled with small ashes standing out
of the rocks. Crossed the beck close by the white pool, and stood on the
other side in a complete spray-_rain_. Here it assumes, I think, a still
finer appearance. You see the vast rugged net and angular points and
upright cones of the black rock; the Fall assumes a variety and
complexity, parts rushing in wheels, other parts perpendicular, some in
white horse-tails, while towards the right edge of the black [rock] two or
three leisurely fillets have escaped out of the turmoil.”
[259] I have been unable to discover any trace of the MS. of this
translation.
[260] The “Ode to Dejection,” of which this is the earliest version, was
composed on Sunday evening, April 4, and published six months later, in
the _Morning Post_ of October 4, 1802. It was reprinted in the _Sibylline
Leaves_, 1817. A comparison of the Ode, as sent to Sotheby, with the first
printed version (_Poetical Works_, Appendix G, pp. 522-524) shows that it
underwent many changes before it was permitted to see the “light of common
day” in the columns of the _Morning Post_. The Ode was begun some three
weeks after Coleridge returned to Keswick, after an absence of four
months. He had visited Southey in London, he had been a fellow guest with
Tom Wedgwood for a month at Stowey, he had returned to London and attended
Davy’s lectures at the Royal Institution, and on his way home he had
stayed for a fortnight with his friend T. Hutchinson, Wordsworth’s
brother-in-law, at Gallow Hill.
He left Gallow Hill “on March 13 in a violent storm of snow, wind, and
rain,” and must have reached Keswick on Sunday the 14th or Monday the 15th
of March. On the following Friday he walked over to Dove Cottage, and once
more found himself in the presence of his friends, and, once again, their
presence and companionship drove him into song. The Ode is at once a
confession and a contrast, a confession that he had fled from the conflict
with his soul into the fastnesses of metaphysics, and a contrast of his
own hopelessness with the glad assurance of inward peace and outward
happiness which attended the pure and manly spirit of his friend.
But verse was what he had been wedded to,
And his own mind did like a tempest strong
Come thus to him, and drove the weary wight along.
A MS. note-book of 1801-2, which has helped to date his movements at the
time, contains, among other hints and jottings, the following almost
illegible fragment: “The larches in spring push out their separate bundles
of ... into green brushes or pencils which ... small tassels;”--and with
the note may be compared the following lines included in the version
contained in the letter, but afterwards omitted:--
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--
Another jotting in the same note-book: “A Poem on the endeavour to
emancipate the mind from day-dreams, with the different attempts and the
vain ones,” perhaps found expression in the lines which follow “My shaping
spirit of Imagination,” which appeared for the first time in print in
_Sibylline Leaves_, 1817, but which, as Mr. Dykes Campbell has rightly
divined, belonged to the original draft of the Ode. _Poetical Works_, p.
159. Appendix G, pp. 522-524. Editor’s Note, pp. 626-628.
[261] “A lovely skye-canoe.” _Morning Post._ The reference is to the
Prologue to “Peter Bell.” Compare stanza 22,
“My little vagrant Form of light,
My gay and beautiful Canoe.”
Wordsworth’s _Poetical Works_, p. 100.
[262] For Southey’s reply, dated Bristol, August 4, 1802, see _Life and
Correspondence_, ii. 189-192.
[263] The Right Hon. Isaac Corry, Chancellor of the Exchequer for Ireland,
to whom Southey acted as secretary for a short time.
[264] “On Sunday, August 1st, ½ after 12, I had a shirt, cravat, 2 pairs
of stockings, a little paper, and half dozen pens, a German book (Voss’s
Poems), and a little tea and sugar, with my night cap, packed up in my
natty green oil-skin, neatly squared, and put into my net knapsack, and
the knapsack on my back and the besom stick in my hand, which for want of
a better, and in spite of Mrs. C. and Mary, who both raised their voices
against it, especially as I left the besom scattered on the kitchen floor,
off I sallied over the bridge, through the hop-field, through the Prospect
Bridge, at Portinscale, so on by the tall birch that grows out of the
centre of the huge oak, along into Newlands.” MS. Journal of tour in the
Lake District, August 1-9, 1802, sent in the form of a letter to the
Wordsworths and transcribed by Miss Sarah Hutchinson.
[265] “The following month, September (1802), was marked by the birth of
his first child, a daughter, named after her paternal grandmother,
Margaret.” _Southey’s Life and Correspondence_, ii. 192.
[266] Southey’s reply, which was not in the affirmative, has not been
preserved. The joint-residence at Greta Hall began in September, 1803.
[267] Charles and Mary Lamb’s visit to Greta Hall, which lasted three full
weeks, must have extended from (about) August 12 to September 2, 1802.
_Letters of Charles Lamb_, i. 180-184.
[268]
“_Here melancholy, on the pale crags laid,
Might muse herself to sleep_; or Fancy come,
Watching the mind with tender cozenage
And shaping things that are not.”
“Coombe-Ellen, written in Radnorshire, September, 1798.” “Poems of William
Lisle Bowles,” _Galignani_, p. 139. For “Melancholy, a Fragment,” see
_Poetical Works_, p. 34.
[269] I have not been able to verify this reference.
[270] “O my God! what enormous mountains there are close by me, and yet
below the hill I stand on.... And here I am, _lounded_ [i. e.,
sheltered],--so fully lounded,--that though the wind is strong and the
clouds are hastening hither from the sea, and the whole air seaward has a
lurid look, and we shall certainly have thunder,--yet here (but that I am
hungered and provisionless), _here_ I could be warm and wait, methinks,
for to-morrow’s sun--and on a nice stone table am I now at this moment
writing to you--between 2 and 3 o’clock, as I guess. Surely the first
letter ever written from the top of Sca Fell.”
“After the thunder-storm I shouted out all your names in the
sheep-fold--where echo came upon echo, and then Hartley and Derwent, and
then I laughed and shouted Joanna. It leaves all the echoes I ever heard
far, far behind, in number, distinctness and humanness of voice; and then,
not to forget an old friend, I made them all say Dr. Dodd etc.” _MS.
Journal_, August 6, 1802. Compare Lamb’s Latin letter of October 9,
1802:--
“Ista tua Carmina Chamouniana satis grandia esse mihi constat; sed hoc
mihi nonnihil displicet, quod in iis illæ montium Grisosonum inter se
responsiones totidem reboant anglicé, _God, God_, haud aliter atque temet
audivi tuas [sic] montes Cumbrianas [sic] resonare docentes, _Tod, Tod_,
nempe Doctorem infelicem: vocem certe haud Deum sonantem.” _Letters of
Charles Lamb_, i. 185. See, too, Canon Ainger’s translation and note,
_ibid._ p. 331. See, also, Southey’s Letter to Grosvenor Bedford, January
9, 1804. _Life and Correspondence_, ii. 248.
[271] “The Spirit of Navigation and Discovery.” “Bowles’s Poetical Works,”
_Galignani_, p. 142.
[272] These lines form part of the poem addressed “To Matilda Betham. From
a Stranger.” The date of composition was September 9, 1802, the day before
they were quoted in the letter to Sotheby. _Poetical Works_, p. 168.
[273] The “Hymn before Sunrise in the Vale of Chamouni” was first printed
in the _Morning Post_, September 11, 1802. It was reprinted in the
original issue of _The Friend_, No. xi. (October 16, 1809, pp. 174-176),
and again in _Sibylline Leaves_, 1817. As De Quincey was the first to
point out, Coleridge was indebted to the Swiss poetess, Frederica Brun,
for the framework of the poem and for many admirable lines and images, but
it was his solitary walk on Scafell, and the consequent uplifting of
spirit, which enabled him “to create the dry bones of the German outline
into the fulness of life.”
Coleridge will never lose his title of a _Lake Poet_, but of the ten years
during which he was nominally resident in the Lake District, he was absent
at least half the time. Of his greater poems there are but four, the
second part of “Christabel,” the “Dejection: an Ode,” the “Picture,” and
the “Hymn before Sunrise,” which take their colouring from the scenery of
Westmoreland and Cumberland.
He was but twenty-six when he visited Ottery for the last time. It was in
his thirty-fifth year that he bade farewell to Stowey and the Quantocks,
and after he was turned forty he never saw Grasmere or Keswick again. Ill
health and the _res angusta domi_ are stern gaolers, but, if he had been
so minded, he would have found a way to revisit the pleasant places in
which he had passed his youth and early manhood. In truth, he was well
content to be a dweller in “the depths of the huge city” or its outskirts,
and like Lamb, he “could not _live_ in Skiddaw.” _Poetical Works_, p. 165,
and Editor’s Note, pp. 629, 630.
[274] Coleridge must have presumed on the ignorance of Sotheby and of his
friends generally. He could hardly have passed out of Boyer’s hands
without having learned that Ἔστησε signifies, “He hath placed,” not “He
hath stood.” But, like most people who have changed their opinions, he
took an especial pride in proclaiming his unswerving allegiance to fixed
principles. The initials S. T. C., Grecised and mistranslated, expressed
this pleasing delusion, and the Greek, “Punic [sc. punnic] Greek,” as he
elsewhere calls it, might run the risk of detection.
[275] Parts III. and IV. of the “Three Graves”--were first published in
_The Friend_, No. vi. Sept. 21, 1809. Parts I. and II. were published for
the first time in _The Poetical Works of Samuel Taylor Coleridge_,
Macmillan, 1893. The final version of this stanza (ll. 509-513) differs
from that in the text. “A small blue sun” became “A tiny sun,” and for
“Ten thousand hairs of colour’d light” Coleridge substituted “Ten thousand
hairs and threads of light.” See _Poetical Works_, p. 92, and Editor’s
Note, pp. 589-591.
[276] The six essays to which he calls Estlin’s attention are reprinted in
_Essays on His Own Times_, ii. 478-585.
[277] The residence of Josiah Wedgwood.
[278] Paley’s last work, “_Natural Theology_; or, Evidences of the
Existence and Attributes of A Deity, collected from the Appearances of
Nature,” was published in 1802.
[279] For Southey’s well known rejoinder to this “ebullience of
schematism,” see _Life and Correspondence_, ii. 220-223.
[280] Southey’s correspondence contains numerous references to the
historian Sharon Turner [1768-1847], and to William Owen, the translator
of the _Mabinogion_ and author of the _Welsh Paradise Lost_.
[281] It may be interesting to compare the following unpublished note from
Coleridge’s Scotch Journal with the well known passage in Dorothy
Wordsworth’s Journal of her tour in the Highlands (_Memoir of Wordsworth_,
i. 235): “Next morning we went in the boat to the end of the lake, and so
on by the old path to the Garrison to the Ferry House by Loch Lomond,
where now the Fall was in all its fury, and formed with the Ferry cottage,
and the sweet Highland lass, a nice picture. The boat gone to the
preaching we stayed all day in the comfortless hovel, comfortless, but the
two little lassies did everything with such sweetness, and one of them,
14, with such native elegance. Oh! she was a divine creature! The sight of
the boat, full of Highland men and women and children from the preaching,
exquisitely fine. We soon reached E. Tarbet--all the while rain. Never,
never let me forget that small herd-boy in his tartan-plaid, dim-seen on
the hilly field, and long heard ere seen, a melancholy voice calling to
his cattle! nor the beautiful harmony of the heath, and the dancing fern,
and the ever-moving birches. That of itself enough to make Scotland
visitable, its fields of heather giving a sort of shot silk finery in the
apotheosis of finery. On Monday we went to Arrochar. Here I left W. and D.
and returned myself to E. Tarbet, slept there, and now, Tuesday, Aug. 30,
1803, am to make my own way to Edinburgh.”
Many years after he added the words: “O Esteese, that thou hadst from thy
22nd year indeed made thy _own_ way and _alone_!”
[282]
A sweet and playful Highland girl,
As light and beauteous as a squirrel,
As beauteous and as wild!
Her dwelling was a lonely house,
A cottage in a heathy dell;
And she put on her gown of green
And left her mother at sixteen,
And followed Peter Bell.
_Peter Bell, Part III._
[283] Margaret Southey, who was born in September, 1802, died in the
latter part of August, 1803.
[284] The “Pains of Sleep” was published for the first time, together with
“Christabel” and “Kubla Khan,” in 1816. With the exception of the
insertion of the remarkable lines 52-54, the first draft of the poem does
not materially differ from the published version. A transcript of the same
poem was sent to Poole in a letter dated October 3, 1803. _Poetical
Works_, p. 170, and Editor’s Note, pp. 631, 632.
[285] The Rev. Peter Elmsley, the well known scholar, who had been a
school and college friend of Southey’s, was at this time resident at
Edinburgh. The _Edinburgh Review_ had been founded the year before, and
Elmsley was among the earliest contributors. His name frequently recurs in
Southey’s correspondence.
[286] Compare Southey’s first impressions of Edinburgh, contained in a
letter to Wynn, dated October 20, 1805: “You cross a valley (once a loch)
by a high bridge, and the back of the old city appears on the edge of this
depth--so vast, so irregular--with such an outline of roofs and chimneys,
that it looks like the ruins of a giant’s palace. I never saw anything so
impressive as the first sight of this; there was a wild red sunset
slanting along it.” _Selections from the Letters of R. Southey_, i. 342.
[287] Compare _Table Talk_, for September 26, 1830, where a similar
statement is made in almost the same words.
[288] The same sentence occurs in a letter to Sir G. Beaumont, dated
September 22, 1803. _Coleorton Letters_, i. 6.
[289] The MS. of this letter was given to my father by the Rev. Dr.
Wreford. I know nothing of the person to whom it was addressed, except
that he was “Matthew Coates, Esq., of Bristol.”
[290] Dr. Joseph Adams, the biographer of Hunter, who in 1816 recommended
Coleridge to the care of Mr. James Gillman.