P. S. Do you not know enough of the world to be convinced that by

declaring myself a warm defender of the Established Church against all

sectarians, or even by attacking Quakerism in particular as a sect hateful

to the bigots of the day from its rejection of priesthood and outward

sacraments, I should gain twenty subscribers to one? It shocks me even to

think that so mean a motive could be supposed to influence me. I say aloud

everywhere, that in the essentials of their faith I believe as the Quakers

do, and so I make enemies of the Church, of the Calvinists, and even of

the Unitarians. Again, I declare my dissatisfaction with several points

both of _notion_ and of _practice_ among the present Quakers--I dare not

conceal my convictions--and therefore receive little good opinion even

from those, with whom I most accord. But Truth is sacred.

CLXXIII. TO THOMAS POOLE.

GRASMERE, KENDAL, February 3, 1809.

MY DEAREST POOLE,--For once in my life I shall have been blamed by you for

silence, indolence, and procrastination without reason. Even now I write

this letter on a speculation, for I am to take it with me to-morrow to

Kendal, and if I can bring the proposed printer and publisher to final

terms, to put it into the post. It would be a tiresome job were I to

detail to you all the vexations, hindrances, scoundrelisms,

disappointments, and pros and cons that, without the least fault or

remissness on my part, have rendered it impracticable to publish “The

Friend” till the first week of March. The whole, however, is now settled,

provided that Pennington (a worthy old bookseller and printer of Kendal,

but a _genius_ and mightily indifferent about the affairs of this life,

both from that cause and from age, and from being as rich as he wishes)

will become, as he has almost promised, the printer and publisher.[52]

“The Friend” will be stamped as a newspaper and under the Newspaper Act,

which will take 3½d. from each shilling, but enable the essay to pass into

all parts and corners of the Empire without expense or trouble. It will be

so published as to appear in London every Saturday morning, and be sent

off from the Kendal post to every part of the Kingdom by the Thursday

morning’s post. I hope that Mr. Stuart will have the prospectuses printed

by this time,--at all events, within a day or two after your receipt of

this letter you will receive a parcel of them. The money is to be paid to

the bookseller, the agent, in the next town, once in twenty weeks, where

there are several subscribers in the same vicinity; otherwise, [it] must

be remitted to me direct. This is the ugliest part of the business: but

there is no getting over it without a most villainous diminution of my

profits. You will, I know, exert yourself to procure me as many names as

you can, for if it succeeds, it will almost _make_ me.

Among my subscribers I have Mr. Canning and Sturges Bourne, and Mr. W.

Rose, of whose moral odour your nose, I believe, has had competent

experience. The first prospectus I receive, I shall send with letters to

Lord Egmont and Lady E. Percival, and to Mr. Acland.

You will probably have seen two of Wordsworth’s Essays in the “Courier,”

signed “G.” The two last columns of the second, excepting the concluding

paragraph, were written all but a few sentences by me.[53] An accident in

London delayed the publication ten days. The whole, therefore, is now

publishing as a pamphlet, and I believe with a more comprehensive title.

I cannot say whether I was--indeed, both I and W. W.--more pleased or

affected by the whole of your last letter; it came from a very pure and

warm heart through the moulds of a clear and strong brain. But I have not

now time to write on these concerns. For _my_ opinions, feelings, hopes,

and apprehensions, I can safely refer you to Wordsworth’s pamphlet. The

minister’s conduct hitherto is easily defined. A great deal too much

because not half enough. Two essays of my own on this most lofty

theme,--what we are entitled to hope, what compelled to fear concerning

the Spanish nation, by the light of history and psychological knowledge,

you will soon see in the “Courier.” Poor Wardle![54] I fear lest his zeal

may have made him confound that degree of evidence which is sufficient to

convince an unprejudiced private company with that which will satisfy an

unwilling numerous assembly of factious and corrupt judges. As to the

truth of the charges, I have little doubt, knowing myself similar facts.

O dear Poole! Beddoes’ departure[55] has taken more hope out of my life

than any former event except perhaps T. Wedgwood’s. That did indeed pull

very hard at me; never a week, seldom two days have passed in which the

recollection has not made me sad or thoughtful. Beddoes’ seems to pull yet

harder, because it combines with the former, because it is the _second_,

and because I have not been in the habit of connecting such a weight of

despondency with my attachment to him as with my love of my revered and

dear benefactor. Poor Beddoes! he was good and beneficent to all men, but

to me he was, moreover, affectionate and loving, and latterly his

sufferings had opened out his being to a delicacy, a tenderness, a moral

beauty, and unlocked the source of sensibility as with a key from heaven.

My own health is more _regular_ than formerly, for I am severely temperate

and take nothing that has not been pronounced medically unavoidable; yet

my sufferings are often great, and I am rarely indeed wholly without pain

or sensations more oppressive than definite pain. But my mind, and what is

far better, my _will_ is active. I must leave a short space to add at

Kendal after all is settled.

My beloved and honoured friend! may God preserve you and your obliged, and

affectionately grateful,

S. T. COLERIDGE.

MY DEAREST POOLE,--Old Mr. Pennington has ultimately declined the printing

and publishing; indeed, he is about to decline business altogether. There

is no other in this country capable of doing the work, and to printing and

publishing in London there are gigantic objections. What think you of a

press at Grasmere? I will write when I get home. Oh, if you knew what a

warmth of unusual feeling, what a genial air of new and living hope

breathed upon me as I read that casual sentence in your letter, seeming to

imply a chance we have of seeing you at Grasmere! I assure you that the

whole family, Mrs. Wordsworth and her all-amiable sister, not with less

warmth than W. W. and Dorothy, were made cheerful and wore a more holiday

look the whole day after. Oh, _do, do_ come!

CLXXIV. TO DANIEL STUART.

Posted March 31, 1809.

MY DEAR FRIEND,--I have been severely indisposed, _knocked up_ indeed,

with a complaint of a contagious nature called _the Mumps_;[56] preceded

by most distressing low spirits, or rather absence of all spirits; and

accompanied with deafness and stupefying perpetual _echo_ in the ear. But

it is going off. Little John Wordsworth was attacked with it last year

when I was in London, and from the stupor with which it suffuses the eyes

and look, it was cruelly mistaken for water on the brain. It has been

brought here a second time by some miners, and is a disease with little

danger and no remedy.

I attributed your silence to its right cause, and I assure you when I was

at Penrith and Kendal it was very pleasant to me to hear how universally

the conduct of the “Courier” was extolled; indeed, you have behaved most

nobly, and it is impossible but that you must have had a great weight in

the displacing of that prime grievance of grievances. Among many

reflections that kept crowding on my mind during the trial,[57] this was

perhaps the chief--What if, after a long, long reign, some titled

sycophant should whisper to Majesty, “By what means do your Ministers

manage the Legislature?” “By the distribution of patronage, according to

the influence of individuals who claim it.” “Do this yourself, or by your

own family, and you become independent of parties, and your Ministers are

your servants. The Army under a favourite son, the Church with a wife,

etc., etc.” Good heavens! the very essence of the Constitution is

unmoulded, and the venerable motto of our liberty, “The king can do no

wrong,” becomes nonsense and blasphemy. As soon as ever my mind is a

little at ease, I will put together the fragments I have written on this

subject, and if Wordsworth have not anticipated me, add to it some

thoughts on the effect of the military principle. We owe something to

Whitbread for his quenching at the first _smell_ a possible fire. How is

it possible that a man apparently so honest can talk and think as he does

respecting France, peace, and Buonaparte?...

On Thursday Wordsworth, Southey, and myself, with the printer and

publisher, go to Appleby to sign and seal, which paper, etc., will of

course be immediately dispatched to London. I doubt not but that the £60

will be now paid at the “Courier” office in a few days; and as soon as you

will let me know whether the stamped paper is to be paid for necessarily

in ready money, or with what credit, I shall instantly write to some of my

friends to advance me what is absolutely necessary. I can only say I am

ready and eager to commence, and that I earnestly hope to see “The Friend”

advertised shortly for the first of May. As to the Paper, how and from

whom, and what and in what quantity, I must again leave to your judgment,

and recommend to your affection for me. I have reason to believe that I

shall commence with 500 names.

I write from Keswick. Mrs. Southey was delivered yester-morning of a

girl.[58] I forgot to say, that I have been obliged to purchase, and have

paid for, a font of types of small pica, the same with the London

Prospectus, from Wilsons of Glasgow. I was assured they would cost only

from £25 to £28, instead of which, £38 odd.

God bless you and

S. T. COLERIDGE.

CLXXV. TO THE SAME.

GRASMERE, KENDAL, June 13, 1809.

DEAR STUART,--I left Penrith Monday noon, and, prevented by the heavy rain

from crossing Grisedale Tarn (near the summit of Helvellyn, and our most

perilous and difficult Alpine Pass), the same day I slept at Luff’s, and

crossed it yester-morning, and arrived here by breakfast time. I was sadly

grieved at Wordsworth’s account of your late sorrows and troubles....

I cannot adequately express how much I am concerned lest anything I wrote

in my last letter (though God knows under the influence of no one feeling

which you would not wish me to have) should chance to have given you any

additional unpleasantness, however small. Would that I had worthier means

than words and professions of proving to you what my heart is....

I rise every morning at five, and work three hours before breakfast,

either in letter-writing or serious composition....

I take for granted that more than the poor £60 has been expended in the

paper I have received. But I have written to Mr. Clarkson to see what can

be done; for it would be a sad thing to give it all up now I am going on

so well merely for want of means to provide the first twenty weeks paper.

My present stock will not quite suffice for three numbers. I printed 620

of No. 1, and 650 of No. 2, and so many more are called for that I shall

be forced to reprint both as soon as I hear from Clarkson. The proof

sheet of No. 3 goes back to-day, and with it the copy of No. 4, so that

henceforth we shall be secure of regularity; indeed it was not all my

fault before, but the printer’s inexperience and the multitude of errors,

though from a very decent copy, which took him a full day and more in

correcting. I had altered my plan for the Introductory Essays after my

arrival at Penrith, which cost me exceeding trouble; but the numbers to

come are in a very superior style of polish and easy intelligibility. The

only thing at present which I am under the necessity of applying to you

for respects Clement. It may be his interest to sell “The Friend” at his

shop, and a certain number will always be sent; but I am quite in the dark

as to what profits he expects. Surely not book-profits for a newspaper

that can circulate by the post? And it is certainly neither my interest,

nor that of the regular purchasers of “The Friend,” to have it bought at a

shop, instead of receiving it as a franked letter. All I want to know is

his terms, for I have quite a horror of booksellers, whose mode of

carrying on trade in London is absolute rapacity....

On this ruinous plan poor Southey has been toiling for years, with an

industry honourable to human nature, and must starve upon it were it not

for the more profitable employment of reviewing; a task unworthy of him,

or even of a man with not one half of his honour and honesty.

I have just read Wordsworth’s pamphlet, and more than fear that your

friendly expectations of its sale and influence have been too sanguine.

Had I not known the author I would willingly have travelled from St.

Michael’s Mount to Johnny Groat’s House on a pilgrimage to see and

reverence him. But from the public I am apprehensive, first, that it will

be impossible to rekindle an exhausted interest respecting the Cintra

Convention, and therefore that the long porch may prevent readers from

entering the Temple. Secondly, that, partly from Wordsworth’s own style,

which represents the chain of his thoughts and the movements of his heart,

admirably for me and a few others, but I fear does not possess the more

profitable excellence of translating these down into that style which

might easily convey them to the understandings of common readers, and

partly from Mr. De Quincey’s strange and most mistaken system of

punctuation--(The periods are often alarmingly long, perforce of their

construction, but De Quincey’s punctuation has made several of them

immeasurable, and perplexed half the rest. Never was a stranger whim than

the notion that , ; : and . could be made logical symbols, expressing all

the diversities of logical connection)--but, lastly, I fear that readers,

even of judgement, may complain of a want of shade and background; that it

is all foreground, all in hot tints; that the first note is pitched at the

height of the instrument, and never suffered to sink; that such depth of

feeling is so incorporated with depth of thought, that the attention is

kept throughout at its utmost strain and stretch; and--but this for my own

feeling. I could not help feeling that a considerable part is almost a

self-robbery from some great philosophical poem, of which it would form an

appropriate part, and be fitlier attuned to the high dogmatic eloquence,

the oracular [tone] of impassioned blank verse. In short, cold readers,

conceited of their supposed judgement, on the score of their possessing

nothing else, and for that reason only, taking for granted that they

_must_ have judgement, will abuse the book as positive, violent, and “in a

mad passion;” and readers of sense and feeling will have no other dread,

than that the Work (if it should die) would die of a plethora of the

highest qualities of combined philosophic and poetic genius. The Apple Pie

they may say is made all of Quinces. I much admired our young friend’s

note on Sir John Moore and his despatch;[59] it was excellently arranged

and urged. I have had no opportunity, as yet, to speak a word to

Wordsworth himself about it; I wrote to you as usual in full confidence.

I shall not be a little anxious to have your opinion of my third number.

Lord Lonsdale blames me for excluding party politics and the events of the

day from my plan. I exclude both the one and the other, only as far as

they are merely _party_, _i. e._ personal and temporal interests, or

merely events of To-day, that are defunct in the To-morrow. I flatter

myself that I have been the first, who will have given a calm,

disinterested account of our Constitution as it really _is_ and _how_ it

is so, and that I have, more radically than has been done before, shown

the unstable and boggy grounds on which all systematic reformers hitherto

have stood. But be assured that I shall give up this opinion with joy, and

consider a truer view of the question a more than recompense for the

necessity of retracting what I have written.

God bless you! Do, pray, let me hear from you, though only three lines.

S. T. COLERIDGE.

CLXXVI. TO THOMAS POOLE.

October 9, 1809.

MY DEAR POOLE,--I received yours late last night, and sincerely thank you

for the contents. The whole shall be arranged as you have recommended. Yet

if I know my own wishes, I would far rather you had refused me, and said

you should have an opportunity in a few days of explaining your motives

_in person_, for oh, the autumn is divine here. You never beheld, I will

answer for it, such combinations of exquisite _beauty_ with _sufficient_

grandeur of elevation, even in Switzerland. Besides, I sorely want to talk

with you on many points.

All the defects you have mentioned I am perfectly aware of, and am

anxiously endeavouring to avoid. There is too often an _entortillage_ in

the sentences and even in the thought (which nothing can justify), and,

always almost, a stately piling up of _story_ on _story_ in one

architectural period, which is not suited to a periodical essay or to

essays at all (Lord Bacon, whose style mine more nearly resembles than any

other, in his greater works, thought Seneca a better model for his

Essays), but least of all suited to the present illogical age, which has,

in imitation of the French, rejected all the _cements_ of language, so

that a popular book is now a mere bag of marbles, that is, aphorisms and

epigrams on one subject. But be assured that the numbers will improve;

indeed, I hope that if the dire stoppage have not prevented it, you will

have seen proof of improvement already in the seventh and eighth

numbers,--still more in the ninth, tenth, eleventh, twelfth, thirteenth,

fourteenth, and fifteenth numbers. Strange! but the “Three Graves” is the

_only_ thing I have yet heard generally praised and inquired after!!

Remember how many different guests I have at my Round Table. I groan

beneath the _Errata_, but I am thirty miles cross-post from my printer and

publisher, and Southey, who has been my corrector, has been strangely

oscitant, or, which I believe is sometimes the case, has not understood

the sentences, and thought they might have a meaning for _me_ though they

had not for him. There was one direful one,[60] No. 5, p. 80, lines 3 and

4. Read,--“its _functions_ being to take up the passive affections of the

senses into distinct _thoughts_ and _judgements_, according to its own

essential _forms_, formæ formantes in the language of Lord Bacon in

contradistinction to the formæ formatæ.”

My greatest difficulty will be to avoid that _grievous_ defect of running

one number into another, I not being present at the printing. To really

cut down or stretch out every subject to the Procrustes-Bed of sixteen

pages is not possible without a sacrifice of my whole plan, but most often

I will divide them polypus-wise, so that the first half should get itself

a new tail of its own, and the latter a new head, and _always_ take care

to leave off at a paragraph. With my best endeavours I am baffled in

respect of making one Essay fill one number. The tenth number is, W.

thinks, the most interesting, “On the Errors of both Parties,” or

“Extremes Meet;” and, do what I would, it stretched to seven or eight

pages more; but I have endeavoured to take your advice _in toto_, and

shall announce to the public that, with the exception of my volume of

Political Essays and State Memorials, and some technical works of Logic

and Grammar, I shall consider “The Friend” as both the reservoir and the

living fountain of all my mind, that is, of both my powers and my

attainments, and shall therefore publish all my poems in “The Friend,” as

occasion rises. I shall begin with the “Fears in Solitude,” and the “Ode

on France,” which will fill up the remainder of No. 11; so that my next

Essay on vulgar Errors concerning Taxation, in which I have alluded to a

conversation with you, will just fill No. 12 by itself.

I have been much affected by your efforts respecting poor Blake. Cannot

you with propriety give me that narrative? But, above all, if you have no

_particular_ objection, no _very_ particular and _insurmountable_ reason

against it, do, do let me have that divine narrative of John Walford,[61]

which of itself stamps you a poet of the first class in the pathetic, and

the painting of poetry so very rarely combined.

As to politics, I am sad at the very best. Two cabinet ministers

_duelling_ on Cabinet measures like drunken Irishmen. O heaven, Poole!

this is wringing the dregs in order to drink the last drops of

degradation. Such base insensibility to the awfulness of their situation

and the majesty of the country! As soon as I can get them transcribed, I

will send you some most interesting letters from the ablest soldier I ever

met with (extra aide-de-camp to Sir J. Moore, and shot through the body at

Flushing, but still alive); they will serve as a key to more than one

woe-trumpet in the Apocalypse of national calamity. But the truth is, that

to combine a government every way fitted as ours is for quiet, justice,

freedom, and commercial activity _at home_, with the conditions of raising

up that individual greatness, and of securing in every department the very

man for the very place, which are requisite for maintaining the safety of

our Empire and the Majesty of our power abroad, is a state-riddle which

yet remains to be solved. I have thought myself as well employed as a

private citizen can be, in drawing off well-intentioned patriots from the

wrong scent and pointing out _what_ the _true_ evils are and _why_, and

the exceeding difficulty of removing them without hazarding worse.... I

was asked for a motto for a _market clock_. I uttered the following

literally, without a moment’s premeditation:--

What now, O man! thou dost or mean’st to do

Will help to give thee peace, or make thee rue,

When hovering o’er the Dot this hand shall tell

The moment that secures thee _Heaven_ or _Hell_.[62]

May God bless you! My kindest remembrances to Mr. Chubb, and to Ward. Pray

remember me when you write to your sister and Mr. King. Oh, but Poole! do

stretch a point and come. If the F. rises to a 1,000 I will frank you. Do

come; never will you have layed out money better.

CLXXVII. TO ROBERT SOUTHEY.

December, 1809.

MY DEAR SOUTHEY,--I suspect you have misunderstood me, and applied to the

Maltese Regiment what I said of the Corsican Rangers. Both are bad enough,

but of the former I know little, of course, as I was away from Malta

before the regiment had left the island. But in the Essays (2 or 3) which

I am now writing on Sir A. Ball, I shall mention it as an exemplification

among many others of his foresight. It was a _job_, I have no doubt,

merely to get General Valette a lucrative regiment; but _G. V._ is dead,

and it was not such a job as that of the Corsican Rangers, which can be

made _appear_ glaring. The long and short of the story is, that the men

were four fifths married, would have fought as well as the best, _at home_

and behind their own walls, but could not be expected to fight abroad,

where they had no interest. Besides, it was _cruel_, _shameful_ to take

1,500 men as soldiers for any part of our enormous Empire, out of a

population, man, woman, and child, not at that time more than 100,000.

There were two Maltese Militia Regiments officered by their own Maltese

nobility--these against the entreaties and _tears_ of the men and officers

(I myself saw them weeping), against the remonstrances and memorial

(written by myself) of Sir A. B., were melted into one large one,

officered by English officers, and a general affront given to the island,

_because_ General Valette had great friends at the War Office, Duke of

York, etc.! This is the whole, but do not either expose yourself or me to

judicial inquiries. It is one thing to _know_ a thing, and another to be

able to _prove_ it in a law court. This remark applies to the _damnable_

treatment of the prisoners of war at Malta.

I should have thought your facts, with which I am familiar, a confirmation

of Miss Schöning.[63] Be that as it may, take my word for it, that in

_substance_ the story is as certain as that Dr. Dodd was hung. To mention

one proof only, Von Hess,[64] the celebrated historian of Hamburg, and,

since Lessing, the best German prosist, went himself to Nuremberg,

examined into the facts officially and personally, and it was on him that

I relied, though if you knew the government of Nuremberg, you would see

that the first account could not have been published as it was, if it had

not been too notorious even for concealment to be hoped for. After I left

Germany, Von Hess had a public controversy that threatened to become a

_Diet_ concern with the magistrates of Nuremberg, for some other bitter

charges against them. I have their defence of themselves, but they do not

even attempt to deny the _fact_ of _Harlin_ and _Schöning_. But, indeed,

Southey! it is almost as bad as if I could have mistaken _e converso_

Patch’s trial for a novel.

Your remark on the voice is most just, but that was my purpose. Not only

so, but the _whole_ passage was inserted, and intertruded after the rest

was written, _reluctante amanuensi meâ_, in order to _unrealize_ it even

at the expense of _dis_naturalizing it. Lady B. therefore pleased me by

saying, “never was the golden tint of the poet more judiciously employed,”

etc. For this reason, too, I introduced the simile of the leaf, etc., etc.

I not only thought the “voice” part out of place, but in bad taste _per

se_.

May God bless you all.

S. T. COLERIDGE.

CLXXVIII. TO THOMAS POOLE.

GRASMERE, KENDAL, January 28, 1810.

MY DEAR FRIEND,--My “mantraps and spring guns in this garden” have

hitherto existed only in the painted board, _in terrorem_. Of course, I

have received and thank you for both your letters. What Wordsworth may do

I do not know, but I think it highly probable that I shall settle in or

near London. Of the fate of “The Friend” I remain in the same ignorance

nearly as at the publication of the 20th November. It would make you sick

were I to waste my paper by detailing the numerous instances of meanness

in the mode of payment and discontinuance, especially among the Quakers.

So just was the answer I once made in the presence of some “Friends” to

the query: What is genuine Quakerism? Answer, The antithesis of the

present Quakers. I have received this evening together with yours, one as

a specimen. (N. B. Three days after the publication of the 21st Number,

and sixteen days after the publication of the “Supernumerary” [number of

“The Friend,” January 11, 1810], a bill upon a postmaster, an order of

discontinuance, and information that any others that may come will not be

paid for, as if I had been gifted with prophecy. And this precious epistle

directed, “To Thomas Coleridge, of Grazemar”! And yet this Mr. ---- would

think himself libelled, if he were called a dishonest man.)... We will

take for granted that “The Friend” can be continued. On this supposition I

have lately studied “The Spectator,” and with increasing pleasure and

admiration. Yet it must be evident to you that there is a class of

thoughts and feelings, and these, too, the most important, even

practically, which it would be impossible to convey in the manner of

Addison, and which, if Addison had possessed, he would not have been

Addison. Read, for instance, Milton’s prose tracts, and only _try_ to

conceive them translated into the style of “The Spectator,” or the finest

part of Wordsworth’s pamphlet. It would be less absurd to wish that the

serious Odes of Horace had been written in the same style as his Satires

and Epistles. Consider, too, the very different objects of “The Friend,”

and of “The Spectator,” and above all do not forget, that these are AWEFUL

TIMES! that the love of reading as a refined pleasure, weaning the mind

from GROSSER enjoyments, which it was one of “The Spectator’s” chief

objects to awaken, has by that work, and those that followed (Connoisseur,

World, Mirror, etc.), but still more, by Newspapers, Magazines, and

Novels, been carried into excess: and “The Spectator” itself has

innocently contributed to the general taste for unconnected writing, just

as if “Reading made easy” should act to give men an aversion to words of

more than two syllables, instead of drawing them _through_ those words

into the power of reading books in general. In the present age, whatever

flatters the mind in its ignorance of its ignorance, tends to aggravate

that ignorance, and, I apprehend, does on the whole do more harm than

good. Have you read the debate on the Address? What a melancholy picture

of the intellectual feebleness of the country! So much on the one side of

the question. On the other (1) I will, preparatory to writing on any

chosen subject, consider whether it _can_ be treated popularly, and with

that lightness and variety of illustration which form the charms of “The

Spectator.” If it can, I will do my best. If not, next, whether yet there

may not be furnished by the _results_ of such an Essay thoughts and truths

that may be so treated, and form a second Essay. (2) I shall always,

_besides_ this, have at least one number in four of rational

entertainment, such as “Satyrane’s Letters,” as instructive as I can, but

yet making entertainment the chief object in my own mind. But, lastly, in

the Supplement of “The Friend” I shall endeavour to include whatever of

higher and more abstruse meditation may be needed as the foundations of

all the work after it; and the difference between those who will read and

master that Supplement, and those who decline the toil, will be simply

this, that what to the former will be _demonstrated conclusions_, the

latter must start from as from _postulates_, and (to all whose minds have

not been sophisticated by a half-philosophy) _axioms_. For no two things,

that are yet different, can be in closer harmony than the deductions of a

profound philosophy, and the dictates of plain common sense. Whatever

tenets are obscure in the one, and requiring the greatest powers of

abstraction to reconcile, are the same which are held in manifest

contradiction by the common sense, and yet held and firmly believed,

without sacrificing A to --A, or --A to A.... After this work I shall

endeavour to pitch my note to the idea of a common, well-educated,

thoughtful man, of ordinary talents; and the exceptions to this rule shall

not form more than one fifth of the work. If with all this it will not do,

well! And _well_ it will be, in its noblest sense: for _I_ shall have done

my best. Of parentheses I may be too fond, and will be on my guard in this

respect. But I am certain that no work of impassioned and eloquent

reasoning ever did or could subsist without them. They are the _drama_ of

reason, and present the thought growing, instead of a mere _Hortus

siccus_. The aversion to them is one of the numberless symptoms of a

feeble Frenchified Public. One other observation: I have reason to _hope_

for contributions from strangers. Some from _you I rely_ on, and these

will give a variety which is highly desirable--so much so, that it would

weigh with me even to the admission of many things from unknown

correspondents, though but little above mediocrity, if they were

proportionately short, and on subjects which I should not myself treat....

May God bless you, and your affectionate

S. T. COLERIDGE.

CHAPTER XI

A JOURNALIST, A LECTURER, A PLAYWRIGHT

1810-1813

CHAPTER XI

A JOURNALIST, A LECTURER, A PLAYWRIGHT

1810-1813

CLXXIX. TO HIS WIFE.

Spring, 1810.

MY DEAR LOVE,--I understand that Mr. De Quincey is going to Keswick

to-morrow; though between ourselves he is as great a _to-morrower_ to the

full as your poor husband, and without his excuses of anxiety from latent

disease and external pressure.

Now as Lieutenant Southey is with you, I fear that you could not find a

bed for me if I came in on Monday or Tuesday. I not only am desirous to be

with you and Sara for a while, but it would be of great importance to me

to be within a post of Penrith for the next fortnight or three weeks. How

long Mr. De Quincey may stay I cannot guess. He (Miss Wordsworth says)

talks of a week, but Lloyd of a _month_! However, put yourself to no

violence of inconvenience, only be sure to write to me (N. B.--to me) by

the carrier to-morrow.

I am middling, but the state of my spirit of itself requires a change of

scene. Catherine W. [the Wordsworths’ little daughter] has not recovered

the use of her arm, etc., but is evidently recovering it, and in all other

respects in better health than before,--indeed, so much better as to

confirm my former opinion that nature was weak in her, and can more easily

supply vital power for two thirds of her nervous system than for the

whole.

May God bless you, my dear! and

S. T. COLERIDGE.

Hartley looks and behaves all that the fondest parent could wish. He is

really handsome; at least as handsome as a face so original and

intellectual can be. And Derwent is “a nice little fellow,” and no

lack-wit either. I read to Hartley out of the German a series of very

masterly arguments concerning the startling gross improbabilities of

Esther (fourteen improbabilities are stated). It really _surprised_ me,

the acuteness and steadiness of judgment with which he answered more than

half, weakened many, and at last determined that two only were not to be

got over. I then read for myself and afterwards to him Eichhorn’s solution

of the fourteen, and the coincidences were surprising. Indeed, Eichhorn,

after a lame attempt, was obliged to give up the two which H. had declared

as desperate.

CLXXX. TO THE MORGANS.

December 21, “1810.”

MY DEAR FRIENDS,--I am at present at Brown’s Coffee House, Mitre Court,

Fleet Street. My objects are to settle something by which I can secure a

certain sum weekly, sufficient for lodging, maintenance, and physician’s

fees, and in the mean time to look out for a suitable place near Gray’s

Inn. My _immediate_ plan is not to trouble myself further about any

introduction to Abernethy, but to write a plain, honest, and full account

of my state, its history, causes, and occasions, and to send it to him

with two or three pounds enclosed, and asking him to take me under his

further care. If I have raised the money for the enclosure, this I shall

do to-morrow. For, indeed, it is not only useless but unkind and

ungrateful to you and all who love me, to trifle on any longer, depressing

your spirits, and, spite of myself, gradually alienating your esteem and

chilling your affection toward me. As soon as I have heard from Abernethy,

I will walk over to you, and spend a few days before I enter into my

lodging, and on my dread ordeal--as some kind-hearted Catholics have

taught, that the soul is carried slowly along close by the walls of

Paradise on its way to Purgatory, and permitted to breathe in some

snatches of blissful airs, in order to strengthen its endurance during its

fiery trial by the foretaste of what awaits it at the conclusion and final

gaol-delivery.

I pray you, therefore, send me immediately all my books and papers with

such of my linen as may be clean, in my box, by the _errand cart_,

directed--“Mr. Coleridge, Brown’s Coffee House, Mitre Court, Fleet

Street.” A couple of nails and a rope will sufficiently secure the box.

Dear, dear Mary! Dearest Charlotte! I entreat you to believe me, that if

at any time my manner toward you has appeared unlike myself, this has

arisen wholly either from a sense of self-dissatisfaction or from

apprehension of having given you offence; for at no time and on no

occasion did I ever see or imagine anything in your behaviour which did

not awaken the purest and most affectionate esteem, and (if I do not

grossly deceive myself) the sincerest gratitude. Indeed, indeed, my

affection is both deep and strong toward you, and such too that I am proud

of it.

“And looking towards the Heaven that bends above you,

Full oft I bless the lot that made me love you!”

Again and again and for ever may God bless you, and love you.

S. T. COLERIDGE.

J. J. MORGAN, Esq., No. 7, Portland Place, Hammersmith.

CLXXXI. TO W. GODWIN.

March 15, 1811.

MY DEAR GODWIN,--I receive twice the pleasure from my recovery that it

would have otherwise afforded, as it enables me to accept your kind

invitation, which in this instance I might with perfect propriety and

manliness thank you for, as an honour done to me. To sit at the same

table with Grattan, who would not think it a memorable honour, a red

letter day in the almanac of his life? No one certainly who is in any

degree worthy of it. Rather than not be in the same room, I could be well

content to wait at the table at which I was not permitted to sit, and this

not merely for Grattan’s undoubted great talents, and still less from any

entire accordance with his political opinions, but because his great

talents are the tools and vehicles of his genius, and all his speeches are

attested by that constant accompaniment of true genius, a certain moral

bearing, a moral dignity. His love of liberty has no snatch of the mob in

it.

Assure Mrs. Godwin of my anxious wishes respecting her health. The scholar

Salernitanus[65] says:--

“Si tibi deficiant medici, medici tibi fiant

Hæc tria: mens hilaris, requies, moderata diæta.”

The regulated diet she already has, and now she must contrive to call in

the two other doctors. God bless you.

S. T. COLERIDGE.

CLXXXII. TO DANIEL STUART.

Tuesday, June 4, 1811.

DEAR STUART,--I brought your umbrella in with me yester-morning, but,

having forgotten it at leaving Portland Place, sent the coachman back for

it, who brought what _appeared_ to me not the same. On returning, however,

with it, I could find no other, and it is certainly as good or better, but

looks to me as if it were not equally new, and as if it had far more silk

in it. I will, however, leave it at Brompton, and if by any inexplicable

circumstance it should not prove the same, you must be content with the

substitute. The family at Portland Place caught at my doubts as to the

identity of it. I had hoped to have seen you this morning, it being a

leisurely time in respect of fresh tidings, to have submitted to you two

Essays,[66] one on the Catholic Question, and the other on Parliamentary

Reform, addressed as a letter (from a correspondent) to the noblemen and

members of Parliament who had associated for this purpose. The former does

not exceed two columns; the latter is somewhat longer. But after the

middle of this month it is probable that the Paper will be more open to a

series of Articles on less momentary, though still contemporary,

interests. Mr. Street seems highly pleased with what I have written this

morning on the battle[67] of the 16th (May), though I apprehend the whole

cannot be inserted. I am as I ought to be, most cautious and shy in

recommending anything; otherwise, I should have requested Mr. Street to

give insertion to the paragraphs respecting Holland, and the nature of

Buonaparte’s resources, ending with the necessity of ever re-fuelling the

moral feelings of the people, as to the monstrosity of the giant fiend

that menaces them; [with an] _allusion_ to Judge Grose’s opinion[68] on

Drakard[69] before the occasion had passed away from the public memory.

So, too, if the Duke’s return is to be discussed at all, the Article

should be published before Lord Milton’s motion.[70] For though in a

complex and widely controverted question, where hundreds rush into the

field of combat, it is wise to defer it till the Debates in Parliament

have shown what the arguments are on which most stress is laid by men in

common, as in the Bullion Dispute; yet, generally, it is a great honour to

the London papers, that for one argument they borrow from the

parliamentary speakers, the latter borrow two from them, at all events are

_anticipated_ by them. But the true prudential rule is, to defer only when

any effect of _freshness_ or novelty is impracticable; but in most other

cases to consider _freshness_ of effect as the point which belongs to a

_Newspaper_ and distinguishes it from a library book; the former being the

Zenith, and the latter the Nadir, with a number of intermediate degrees,

occupied by pamphlets, magazines, reviews, satirical and occasional poems,

etc., etc. Besides, in a daily newspaper, with advertisements proportioned

to its sale, what is deferred must, four times in five, be extinguished. A

newspaper is a market for flowers and vegetables, rather than a granary or

conservatory; and the drawer of its editor, a common burial ground, not a

catacomb for embalmed mummies, in which the defunct are preserved to serve

in after times as medicines for the living. To turn from the Paper to

myself, as candidate for the place of _auxiliary_ to it. I drew, with Mr.

Street’s consent and order, ten pounds, which I shall repay during the

week as soon as I can see Mr. Monkhouse of Budge Row, who has collected

that sum for me. This, therefore, I put wholly aside, and indeed expect to

replace it with Mr. Green to-morrow morning. Besides this I have had five

pounds from Mr. Green,[71] chiefly for the purposes of coach hire. All at

once I could not venture to walk in the heat and other accidents of

weather from Hammersmith to the Office; but hereafter I intend, if I

continue here, to return on foot, which will reduce my coach hire for the

week from eighteen shillings to nine shillings. But to walk in, I know,

would take off all the blossom and fresh fruits of my spirits. I trust

that I need not say, how pleasant it would be to me, if it were in my

power to consider everything I could do for the “Courier,” as a mere

return for the pecuniary, as well as other obligations I am under to you;

in short as working off old scores. But you know how I am situated; and

that by the daily labour of the brain I must acquire the daily demands of

the other parts of the body. And it now becomes necessary that I should

form some settled system for my support in London, and of course know what

my weekly or monthly means may be. Respecting the “Courier,” I consider

you not merely as a private friend, but as the Co-proprietor of a large

concern, in which it is your duty to regulate yourself with relation to

the interests of that concern, and of your partner in it; and so take for

granted, and, indeed, wish no other, than that you and he should weigh

whether or no I can be of any material use to a Paper already so

flourishing, and an Evening Paper. For, all mock humility out of the

question (and when I write to you, every other sort of insincerity), I see

that such services as I might be able to afford, would be more important

to a rising than to a risen Paper; to a morning, perhaps, more than to an

evening one. You will however decide, after the experience hitherto

afforded, and modifying it by the temporary circumstances of debates,

press of foreign news, etc.; how far I can be of actual use by my

attendance, in order to help in the things of the day, as are the

paragraphs, which I have for the most part hitherto been called [upon] to

contribute; and, by my efforts, to sustain the literary character of the

Paper, by large articles, on open days, and [at] more leisure times.

My dear Stuart! knowing the foolish mental cowardice with which I slink

off from all pecuniary subjects, and the particular weight I must feel

from the sense of existing obligations to you, you will be convinced that

my only motive is the desire of settling with others such a plan for

myself, as may, by setting my mind at rest, enable me to realize whatever

powers I possess, to as much satisfaction to those who employ them, and to

my own sense of duty, as possible. If Mr. Street should think that the

“Courier” does not require any auxiliary, I shall then rely on your

kindness, for putting me in the way of some other paper, the principles of

which are sufficiently in accordance with my own; for while cabbage stalks

rot on dung hills, I will never write what, or for what, I do not think

right. All that prudence can justify is NOT to write what at certain times

one may yet think. God bless you and

S. T. COLERIDGE.

CLXXXIII. TO SIR G. BEAUMONT.

J. J. Morgan’s, Esq., 7, Portland Place, Hammersmith,

Saturday morning, December 7, 1811.

DEAR SIR GEORGE,--On Wednesday night I slept in town in order to have a

mask[72] taken, from which, or rather with which, Allston means to model

a bust of me. I did not, therefore, receive your letter and the enclosed

till Thursday night, eleven o’clock, on my return from the lecture; and

early on Friday morning, I was roused from my first sleep by an agony of

toothache, which continued almost without intermission the whole day, and

has left my head and the whole of my trunk, “not a man but a bruise.”[73]

What can I say more, my dear Sir George, than that I deeply feel the proof

of your continued friendship, and pray from my inmost soul that more

perseverance in efforts of duty may render me more worthy of your kindness

than I at present am? Ingratitude, like all _crimes_ that are at the same

time _vices_--bad as malady, and worse as symptom--is of so detestable a

nature that an honest man will mourn in silence under real injuries,

[rather] than hazard the very suspicion of it, and will be slow to avail

himself of Lord Bacon’s remark[74] (much as he may admire its

profundity),--“Crimen ingrati animi, quod magnis ingeniis haud raro

objicitur, sæpius nil aliud est quam perspicacia quædam in causam

beneficii collati.” Yet that man has assuredly tenfold reason to be

grateful who can be so, both head and heart, who, at once served and

honoured, knows himself more delighted by the motive that influenced his

friend than by the benefit received by himself; were it only perhaps for

this cause--that the consciousness of always repaying the former in kind

takes away all regret that he is incapable of returning the latter.

Mr. Dawe, Royal Associate, who plastered my face for me, says that he

never saw so excellent a mask, and so unaffected by any expression of pain

or uneasiness. On Tuesday, at the farthest, a cast will be finished, which

I was vain enough to desire to be packed up and sent to Dunmow. With it

you will find a chalk drawing of my face,[75] which I think far more like

than any former attempt, excepting Allston’s full-length portrait of

me,[76] which, with all his casts, etc., two or three valuable works of

the Venetian school, and his Jason--almost finished, and on which he had

employed eighteen months without intermission--are lying at Leghorn, with

no chance of procuring them. There will likewise be an epistolary essay

for Lady Beaumont on the subject of religion in reference to my own faith;

it was too long to send by the post.

Dawe is engaged on a picture (the figures about four feet) from my poem of

LOVE.

She leaned beside the armed man,

The statue of the armed knight;

She stood and listened to my harp

Amid the lingering light.

His dying words--but when I reached, etc.

All impulses of soul and sense, etc.

His sketch is very beautiful, and has more expression than I ever found in

his former productions--excepting, indeed, his Imogen.

Allston is hard at work on a large Scripture piece--the dead man recalled

to life by touching the bones of the Prophet. He models every figure.

Dawe, who was delighted with the Cupid and Psyche, seemed quite astonished

at the facility and exquisiteness with which Allston modelled. Canova at

Rome expressed himself to me in very warm terms of admiration on the same

subject. He means to exhibit but two or at the most three pictures, all

poetical or history painting, in part by my advice. It seemed to me

impolitic to appear to be _trying_ in half a dozen ways, as if his mind

had not yet discovered its main current. The longer I live the more deeply

am I convinced of the high importance, as a _symptom_, of the love of

_beauty_ in a young painter. It is neither honourable to a young man’s

heart or head to attach himself year after year to old or deformed

objects, comparatively too so easy, especially if bad drawing and worse

colouring leaves the spectator’s imagination at lawless liberty, and he

cries out, “How very like!” just as he would at a coal in the centre of

the fire, or at a frost-figure on a window pane. It is on this, added to

his quiet unenvious spirit, to his lofty feelings concerning his art, and

to the religious purity of his moral character, that I chiefly rest my

hopes of Allston’s future fame. His best productions seem to please him

principally because he sees and has learnt something which enables him to

promise himself, “I shall do better in my next.”

I have not been at the “Courier” office for some months past. I detest

writing politics, even on the right side, and when I discovered that the

“Courier” was not the independent paper I had been led to believe, and had

myself over and over again asserted, I wrote no more for it. Greatly,

indeed, do I prefer the present Ministers to the leaders of any other

party, but indiscriminate support of any class of men I dare not give,

especially when there is so easy and honourable an alternative as not to

write politics at all, which, henceforth, nothing but blank necessity

shall compel me to do. I will write for the PERMANENT, or not at all. “The

Comet” therefore I have never seen or heard of it, yet most true it is

that I myself have composed some verses on the comet, but I am quite

certain that no one ever saw them, for the best of all reasons, that my

own brain is the only substance on which they have been recorded. I will,

however, consign them to paper, and send them to you with the “Courier”

poem as soon as I can procure it, for the curiosity of the thing....

My most affectionate respects to Lady Beaumont, and believe me, dear Sir

George, with heartfelt regard,

Your obliged and grateful friend,

S. T. COLERIDGE.

P. S. Were you in town, I should be very sorry, indeed, to see you in

Fetter Lane.[77] The lectures were meant for the young men of the City.

Several of my friends join to take notes, and if I can correct what they

can shape out of them into any tolerable form, I will send them to you. On

Monday I lecture on “Love and the Female Character as displayed by

Shakespeare.” Good Dr. Bell is in town. He came from Keswick, all delight

with my little Sara, and quite enchanted with Southey. Some flights of

admiration in the form of questions to me (“Did you ever see anything so

finely conceived? so profoundly thought? as this passage in his review on

the Methodists? or on the Education?” etc.) embarrassed me in a very

ridiculous way; and, I verily believe, that my odd way of hesitating left

on Bell’s mind some shade of a suspicion, as if I did not like to hear my

friend so highly extolled. Half a dozen words from Southey would have

precluded this, without diminution to his own fame--I mean, in

conversation with Dr. Bell.

CLXXXIV. TO J. J. MORGAN.

KESWICK,[78] Sunday, February 28, 1812.

MY DEAR MORGAN,--I stayed a day in Kendal in order to collect the reprint

of “The Friend,” and reached Keswick on Tuesday last before dinner, having

taken Hartley and Derwent with me from Ambleside. Of course the first

evening was devoted _Laribus domesticis_, to Southey and his and my

children. My own are all the fondest father could pray for; and little

Sara does honour to her mother’s anxieties, reads French tolerably, and

Italian fluently, and I was astonished at her acquaintance with her native

language. The word “hostile” occurring in what she read to me, I asked her

what “hostile” meant? and she answered at once, “Why! inimical; only that

‘inimical’ is more often used for things and measures and not, as

‘hostile’ is, to persons and nations.” If I had dared, I should have urged

Mrs. C. to let me take her to London for four or five months, and return

with Southey, but I feared it might be inconvenient to you, and I knew it

would be presumptuous in me to bring her to you. But she is such a

sweet-tempered, meek, blue-eyed fairy and so affectionate, trustworthy,

and really serviceable! Derwent is the self-same, fond, small, Samuel

Taylor Coleridge as ever. When I went for them from Mr. Dawes,[79] he came

in dancing for joy, while Hartley turned pale[80] and trembled all

over,--then after he had taken some cold water, instantly asked me some

questions about the connection of the Greek with the Latin, which latter

he has just begun to learn. Poor Derwent, who has by no means strong

health (having inherited his poor father’s tenderness of bowels and

stomach, and consequently capriciousness of animal spirits), has

complained to me (having no other possible grievance) “that Mr. Dawes does

not _love_ him, because he can’t help crying when he is scolded, and

because he ain’t such a genius as Hartley--and that though Hartley should

have done the same thing, yet all the others are punished, and Mr. Dawes

only _looks_ at Hartley and never scolds _him_, and that _all_ the boys

think it very unfair--he _is_ a genius.” This was uttered in low spirits

and a tenderness brought on by my petting, for he adores his brother.

Indeed, God be praised, they all love each other. I was delighted that

Derwent, of his own accord, asked me about little Miss Brent that used to

play with him at Mr. and Mrs. Morgan’s, adding that he had almost forgot

what sort of a lady she was, “only she was littler,--less I mean--(this

was said hastily and laughing at his blunder) than Mama.” A gentleman who

took a third of the chaise with me from Ambleside, and whom I found a

well-informed and thinking man, said after two hours’ knowledge of us,

that the two boys united would be a perfect representation of myself.

I trust I need not say that I should have written on the second day if

nothing had happened; but from the dreadful dampness of the house, worse

than it was in the rudest state when I first lived in it, and the weather,

too, all storm and rain, I caught a violent cold which almost blinded me

by inflammation of both my eyes, and for three days bore all the symptoms

of an ague or intermittent fever. Knowing I had no time to lose, I took

the most Herculean remedies, among others a solution of arsenic, and am

now as well as when I left you, and see no reason to fear a relapse. I

passed through Grasmere; but did not call on Wordsworth. I hear from Mrs.

C. that he treats the affair as a trifle, and only wonders at my resenting

it, and that Dorothy Wordsworth before my arrival expressed her confident

hope that I should come to them at once! I who “for years past had been an

ABSOLUTE NUISANCE in the family.” This illness has thrown me behindhand;

so that I cannot quit Keswick till the end of the week. On Friday I shall

return by way of Ambleside, probably spend a day with Charles Lloyd.... It

will not surprise you that the statements respecting me and Montagu and

Wordsworth have been grossly perverted: and yet, spite of all this, there

is not a friend of Wordsworth’s, I understand, who does not severely blame

him, though they execrate the Montagus yet more heavily. But the tenth

part of the truth is not known. Would you believe it possible that

Wordsworth himself stated my _wearing powder_ as a proof positive that I

never could have suffered any pain of mind from the affair, and that it

was all pretence!! God forgive him! At Liverpool I shall either give

lectures, if I can secure a hundred pounds for them, or return immediately

to you. At all events, I shall not remain there beyond a fortnight, so

that I shall be with you before you have changed houses. Mrs. Coleridge

seems quite satisfied with my plans, and abundantly convinced of my

obligations to your and Mary’s kindness to me. Nothing (she said) but the

circumstance of my residing with you could reconcile her to my living in

London. Southey is the _semper idem_. It is impossible for a good heart

not to esteem and to love him; but yet the love is one fourth, the esteem

all the remainder. His children are, 1. Edith, seven years; 2. Herbert,

five; 3. Bertha, four; 4. Catharine, a year and a half.

I had hoped to have heard from you by this time. I wrote from Slough, from

Liverpool, and from Kendal. Why need I send my kindest love to Mary and

Charlotte? I would not return if I had a doubt that they believed me to be

in the very inmost of my being their and your affectionate and grateful

and constant friend,

S. T. COLERIDGE.

CLXXXV. TO HIS WIFE.

71, Berners Street, Tuesday, April 21, 1812.

MY DEAR LOVE,--Everything is going on so very well, so much beyond my

expectation, that I will not revert to anything unpleasant to damp good

news with. The last receipt for the insurance is now before me, the date

the 4th of May. Be assured that before April is past, you shall _receive_

both receipts, this and the one for the present year, in a frank.

In the first place, my health, spirits, and disposition to activity have

continued such since my arrival in town, that every one has been struck

with the change, and the Morgans say they had never before seen me

_myself_. I feel myself an altered man, and dare promise you that you

shall never have to complain of, or to apprehend, my not opening and

reading your letters. Ever since I have been in town, I have never taken

any stimulus of _any_ kind, till the moment of my getting into bed, except

a glass of British white wine after dinner, and from three to four glasses

of port, when I have dined out. Secondly, my lectures have been taken up

most warmly and zealously by Sir Thomas Bernard,[81] Sir George Beaumont,

Mr. Sotheby, etc., and in a few days, I trust that you will be agreeably

surprised with the mode in which Sir T. B. hopes and will use his best

exertions to have them announced. Thirdly, Gale and Curtis are in high

spirits and confident respecting the sale of “The Friend,”[82] and the

call for a second edition, after the complemental numbers have been

printed, and not less so respecting the success of the other work, the

Propædia (or Propaideia) Cyclica, and are desirous to have the terms

properly ratified, and signed as soon as possible. Nothing intervenes to

overgloom my mind, but the sad state of health of Mr. Morgan, a more

faithful and zealous friend than whom no man ever possessed. Thank God! my

safe arrival, the improvement of my health and spirits, and my smiling

prospects have already exerted a favourable influence on him. Yet I dare

not disguise from myself that there is cause for alarm to those who love

and value him. But do not allude to this subject in your letters, for to

be thought ill or to have his state of health spoken of, agitates and

depresses him.

As soon as ever I have settled the lecture room, which perhaps will be

Willis’s in Hanover Square, the price of which is at present ten guineas a

time, I will the very first thing pay the insurance and send off a parcel

of books for Hartley, Derwent, and dear Sara, whom I kissed seven times in

the shape of her pretty letterlet.

My poor darling Derwent! I shall be most anxious to receive a letter from

you, or from himself, about him.

In giving my love to Mrs. Lovell, tell her that I have not since the day

after my arrival been able to go into the city, my business having

employed me wholly either in writing or in traversing the West End of the

town. I dined with Lady Beaumont and her sister on Saturday, for Sir

George was engaged to Sir T. Bernard. He however came and sat with us to

the very last moment, and I dine with him to-day, and Allston is to be of

the party. The bust and the picture from Genevieve are at the Royal

Academy, and already are talked of. Dawe and I will be of mutual service

to each other. As soon as the pictures are settled, that is, in the first

week of May, he means to treat himself with a fortnight’s relaxation at

the Lakes. He is a very modest man, his manners not over polished, and his

worst point is that he is (at least, I have found him so) a fearful

questionist, whenever he thinks he can pick up any information, or ideas,

poetical, historical, topographical, or artistical, that he can make bear

on his profession. But he is sincere, friendly, strictly _moral_ in every

respect, I firmly believe even to _innocence_, and in point of cheerful

indefatigableness of industry, in regularity, and temperance--in short, in

a glad, yet quiet, devotion of his whole being to the art he has made

choice of, he is the only man I ever knew who goes near to rival

Southey--gentlemanly address, person, physiognomy, knowledge, learning,

and genius being of course wholly excluded from the comparison. God knows

my heart! and that it is my full belief and conviction, that taking all

_together_, there does not exist the man who could without flattery or

delusion be called Southey’s equal. It is quite delightful to hear how he

is spoken of by all good people. Dawe will doubtless _take_ him. Were S.

and I rich men, we would have ourselves and all of you, short and tall, in

one family picture. Pray receive Dawe as a friend. I called on Murray, who

complained that by Dr. Bell’s delays and irresolutions and scruples, the

book “On the Origin,”[83] etc., instead of 3,000 in three weeks, which he

has no doubt would have been the sale had it been brought out at the fit

time, will not now sell 300. I told him that I believed otherwise, but

much would depend on the circumstance whether temper or prudence would

have most influence on the Athenian critic and his friend Brougham. If, as

I hoped, the former, and the work should be reviewed in the “Edinburgh

Review,” if they took up the gauntlet thrown at them, then there was no

doubt but that a strong tide of sale would set in. Though verily this

gauntlet was of weighty metal, though of polished steel, and being thrown

_at_ rather than _down_, it was challenging a man to fight by a blow that

threatened to brain him. I have seen Dr. Bell and shall dine with him at

Sir T. Bernard’s on Monday next. The venerable Bishop of Durham[84] has

sent me a very kind message, that though he cannot himself appear in a

hired lecture room, yet he will be not only my subscriber but use his best

influence with his acquaintance. I am very anxious that my books should be

sent forward as soon as possible. They may be sent at three different

times, with a week’s intervention. But there is one, scarcely a book, but

a collection of loose sheets tied up together at Grasmere, which I want

immediately, and, if possible, would have sent up by the coach from Kendal

or Penrith. It is a German Romance with some name beginning with an A,

followed by “oder Die Glückliche Inseln.” It makes two volumes, but

several of the sheets are missing, at least were so when I put them

together. If sent off immediately, it would be of serious benefit to me in

my lectures. Miss Hutchinson knows them, and will probably recollect the

sheets I allude to, and these are what I especially want.

One pair only of breeches were in the parcel, and I am sadly off for

stockings, but the white and under ones I can buy here cheap, but if

young Mr. White could procure half a dozen or even a dozen pair of black

silk made as stout and weighty as possible, I would not mind giving

seventeen shillings per pair, if only they can be _relied_ on, which one

cannot do in London. A double knock. I meant to read over your letter

again, lest I should have forgot anything. If I have, I will answer it in

my next.

God bless you and your affectionate husband,

S. T. COLERIDGE.

Has Southey read “Childe Harold”? All the world is talking of it. I have

not, but from what I hear it is exactly on the plan that I myself had not

only conceived six years ago, but have the whole scheme drawn out in one

of my old memorandum books. My dear Edith, and my dear Moon![85] Though I

have scarce room to write it, yet I love you very much.

CLXXXVI. TO THE SAME.

71, Berners Street, April 24, 1812.

MY DEAR SARA,--Give my kind love to Southey, and inform him that I have,

_egomet his ipsis meis oculis_, seen _Nobs_, alive, well, and in full

fleece; that after the death of Dr. Samuel Dove,[86] of Doncaster, who did

not survive the loss of his faithful wife, Mrs. Dorothy Dove, more than

eleven months, Nobs was disposed of by his executors to Longman and

Clements, Musical Instrument Manufacturers, whose grand pianoforte hearses

he now draws in the streets of London. The carter was astonished at the

enthusiasm with which I intreated him to stop for half a minute, and the

embrace I gave to _Nobs_, who evidently understood me, and wistfully with

_such_ a sad expression in his eye, seemed to say, “Ah, my kind old

master, Doctor Daniel, and ah! my mild mistress, his dear duteous Dolly

Dove, my gratitude lies deeper than my obligation; it is not merely

skin-deep! Ah, what I _have_ been! Oh, what I _am_! his naked, neighing,

night-wandering, new-skinned, nibbling, noblenursling, _Nobs_!”

His legs and hoofs are more than half sheepified, and his fleece richer

than one ever sees in the Leicester breed, but not so fine as might have

been the case had the merino cross been introduced before the surprising

accident and _more_ surprising remedy took place. _More_ surprising I say,

because the first happened to St. Bartholomew (for there were skinners

even in the days of St. Bartholomew), but the other never before there was

no Dr. Daniel Dove. I trust that Southey will now not hesitate to record

and transmit to posterity so remarkable a fact. I am delighted, for now

malice itself will not dare to attribute the story to my invention. If I

can procure the money, I will attempt to purchase Nobs, and send him down

to Keswick by short journeys for Herbert and Derwent to ride upon,

provided you can get the field next us.

I have not been able to procure a frank, but I daresay you will be glad to

receive the enclosed receipt even with the drawback of postage.

Everything, my dear, goes on as prosperously as you could yourself wish.

Sir T. Bernard has taken Willis’s Rooms, King Street, St. James’s, for me,

at only four guineas a week, fires, benches, etc., included, and I expect

the lectures to commence on the first Tuesday in May. But at the present

moment I need both the advice and the aid of Southey. The “Friends” have

arrived in town. I am at work on the Supplemental Numbers, and it is of

the last importance that they should be brought out as quickly as possible

during the flush and fresh breeze of my popularity; but this I cannot do

without knowing whether Mr. Wordsworth will transmit to me the two

finishing Essays on Epitaphs.[87] It is, I know and feel, a very delicate

business; yet I wish Southey would immediately write to Wordsworth and

urge him to send them by the coach, either to J. J. Morgan, Esq., 71,

Berners Street, or to Messrs. Gale and Curtis, Booksellers, Paternoster

Row, with as little delay as possible, or if he decline it, that Southey

should apprize me as soon as possible.

S. T. COLERIDGE.

The Morgans desire to be kindly remembered, and Charlotte Brent (tell

Derwent) hopes he has not forgot his old playfellow.

CLXXXVII. TO CHARLES LAMB.

May 2, 1812.

MY DEAR CHARLES,--I should almost deserve what I have suffered, if I

refused even to put my life in hazard in defence of my own honour and

veracity, and in satisfaction of the honour of a friend. I say _honour_,

in the latter instance, _singly_, because I never felt as a matter of

serious complaint, _what_ was stated to have been said (for this, though

painfully aggravated, was yet substantially true)--but _by_ WHOM it was

said, and _to_ whom, and _how_ and _when_. Grievously unseasonable

therefore as it is, that I should again be overtaken and hurried back by

the surge, just as I had begun to feel the firm ground under my feet--just

as I had flattered myself, and given reason to my hospitable friends to

flatter themselves, that I had regained tranquillity, and had become quite

myself--at the time, too, when every thought should be given to my

lectures, on the success or failure of my efforts in which no small part

of my reputation and future prospects will depend--yet if Wordsworth, upon

reflection, adheres to the plan proposed, I will not draw back. It is

right, however, that I should state one or two things. First, that it has

been my constant desire that evil should not propagate evil--or the

unhappy accident become the means of _spreading_ dissension. (2) That I

never quarrelled with Mr. Montagu--say rather, for that is the real truth,

that Mr. Montagu never was, or appeared to be, a man with whom I could,

without self-contempt, allow myself to quarrel--and lastly, that in the

present business there are but three possible cases--either (1) Mr.

Wordsworth said what I solemnly aver that I most distinctly recollect Mr.

Montagu’s representing him as having said, and which _I_ understood, not

merely as great unkindness and even cruelty, but as an intentional means

of putting an end to our long friendship, or to the terms at least, under

which it had for so long a period subsisted--or (2), Mr. Montagu has

grossly misrepresented Wordsworth, and most cruelly and wantonly injured

me--or (3), I have wantonly invented and deliberately persevered in

atrocious falsehoods, which place me in the same relation to Mr. Montagu

as (in the second case) Mr. Montagu would stand in to me. If, therefore,

Mr. Montagu declares to my face that he did not say what I solemnly aver

that he did--what must be the consequence, unless I am a more abject

coward than I have hitherto suspected, I need not say. Be the consequences

what they may, however, I will not shrink from doing my duty; but

previously to the meeting I should very much wish to transmit to

Wordsworth a statement which I long ago began, with the intention of

sending it to Mrs. Wordsworth’s sister,--but desisted in consequence of

understanding that she had already decided the matter against me. My

reason for wishing this is that I think it right that Wordsworth should

know, and have the means of ascertaining, some conversations which yet I

could not publicly bring forward without hazarding great disquiet in a

family known (though slightly) to Wordsworth--(2) Because common humanity

would embarrass me in stating before a man what I and others think of his

wife--and lastly, certain other points which my own delicacy and that due

to Wordsworth himself and his family, preclude from being talked of. For

Wordsworth ought not to forget that, whatever influence old associations

may have on his mind respecting Montagu, yet that _I_ never respected or

liked him--for if I had ever in a _common_ degree done so, I should have

quarrelled with him long before we arrived in London. Yet all these facts

ought to be known--because supposing Montagu to affirm what I am led to

suppose he has--then nothing remains but the comparative probability of

our two accounts, and for this the state of my feelings towards Wordsworth

and his family, my opinion of Mr. and Mrs. Montagu, and my previous

intention not to lodge with them in town, are important documents as far

as they do not rely on my own present assertions. Woe is me, that a

friendship of fifteen years should come to this! and such a friendship, in

which I call God Almighty to be my witness, as I ever thought it no more

than my duty, so did I ever feel a readiness to prefer him to myself, yea,

even if life and outward reputation itself had been the pledge required.

But this is now vain talking. Be it, however, remembered that I have never

wandered beyond the one single complaint, that I had been cruelly and

unkindly treated--that I made no charge against my friend’s veracity, even

in respect to his charges against me--that I have explained the

circumstance to those only who had already more or less perfectly become

acquainted with our difference, or were certain to hear of it from others,

and that except on this one point, no word of reproach, or even of

subtraction from his good name, as a good man, or from his merits as a

great man, ever escaped me. May God bless you, my dear Charles.

S. T. COLERIDGE.

CLXXXVIII. TO WILLIAM WORDSWORTH.

71, Berners Street. Monday, May 4, 1812.

I will divide my statement, which I will endeavour to send you to-morrow,

into two parts, in separate letters. The latter, commencing from the

Sunday night, 28 October, 1810, that is, that on which the communication

was made to me, and which will contain my solemn avowal of what was said

by Mr. and Mrs. Montagu, you will make what use of you please--but the

former I write to _you_, and in _confidence_--yet only as far as to your

own heart it shall appear evident, that in desiring it I am actuated by no

wish to shrink personally from any test, not involving an acknowledgement

of my own degradation, and so become a false witness against myself, but

only by delicacy towards the feelings of others, and the dread of

spreading the curse of dissension. But, Wordsworth! the very message you

sent by Lamb and which _Lamb_ did not deliver to me from the anxiety not

to add fuel to the flame, sufficiently proves what I had learnt on my

first arrival at Keswick, and which alone prevented my going to

Grasmere--namely, that you had prejudged the case. As soon as I was

informed that you had denied having used certain expressions, I did not

hesitate a moment (nor was it in my power to do so) to give you my fullest

faith, and approve to my own consciousness the truth of my declaration,

that I should have felt it as a blessing, though my life had the same

instant been hazarded as the pledge, could I with firm conviction have

given Montagu the lie, at the conclusion of his story, even as, at the

very first sentence, I exclaimed--“Impossible! It is impossible!” The

expressions denied were indeed only the most offensive part to the

feelings--but at the same time I learnt that you did not hesitate

instantly to express your conviction that Montagu never said those words

and that I had invented them--or (to use your own words) “had forgotten

myself.” Grievously indeed, if I know aught of my nature, must I have

forgotten both myself and common honesty, could I have been villain enough

to have invented and persevered in such atrocious falsehoods. Your message

was that “if I declined an explanation, you begged I would no longer

continue to talk about the affair.” When, Wordsworth, did I ever decline

an explanation? From you I expected one, and had a right to expect it--for

let Montagu have added what he may, still that which remained was most

unkind and what I had little deserved from you, who might by a single

question have learnt from me that I never made up my mind to lodge with

Montagu and had tacitly acquiesced in it at Keswick to tranquillise Mrs.

Coleridge, to whom Mrs. Montagu had made the earnest professions of

watching and nursing me, and for whom this and her extreme repugnance to

my original, and much wiser, resolution of going to Edinburgh and placing

myself in the house, and under the constant eye, of some medical man, were

the sole grounds of her assent that I should leave the North at all. Yet

at least a score of times have I begun to write a detailed account, to

Wales[88] and afterwards to Grasmere, and gave it up from excess of

agitation,--till finally I learnt that _all_ of your family had decided

against me unheard--_and that_ [you begged] _I would no longer talk about

it_. If, Wordsworth, you had but done me the common justice of asking

those with whom I have been most intimate and confidential since my first

arrival in Town in Oct., 1810, you would have received other negative or

positive proofs how little I needed the admonition or deserve the sarcasm.

Talk about it? O God! it _has_ been talked about! and that it had, was the

sole occasion of my disclosing it even to Mary Lamb, the first person who

heard of it from me and that not voluntarily--but that morning a friend

met me, and communicated what so agitated me that then having previously

meant to call at Lamb’s I was compelled to do so from faintness and

universal trembling, in order to sit down. Even to her I did not intend to

mention it; but alarmed by the wildness and paleness of my countenance and

agitation I had no power to conceal, she entreated me to tell her what was

the matter. In the first attempt to speak, my feelings overpowered me; an

agony of weeping followed, and then, alarmed at my own imprudence and

conscious of the possible effect on her health and mind if I left her in

that state of suspense, I brought out convulsively some such words

as--“Wordsworth, Wordsworth has given me up. _He_ has no hope of me--I

have been an absolute nuisance[89] in his family”--and when long weeping

had relieved me, and I was able to relate the occurrence connectedly, she

can bear witness for me that, disgraceful as it was that I should be made

the topic of vulgar gossip, yet that “had the whole and ten times more

been proclaimed by a speaking-trumpet from the chimneys, I should have

smiled at it--or indulged indignation only as far as it excited me to

pleasurable activity--but that _you_ had said it, this and this only, was

the sting! the scorpion-tooth!” Mr. Morgan and afterwards his wife and her

sister were made acquainted with the whole case--and why? Not merely that

I owed it to their ardent friendship, which has continued to be mainly my

comfort and my only support, but because they had already heard of it, in

part--because a most intimate and dear friend of Mr. and Mrs. Montagu’s

had urged Mr. Morgan to call at the Montagus in order to be put on his

guard against me. He came to me instantly, told me that I had enemies at

work against my character, and pressed me to leave the hotel and to come

home with him--with whom I have been ever since, with the exception of a

few intervals when, from the bitter consciousness of my own infirmities

and increasing irregularity of temper, I took lodgings, against his will,

and was always by his zealous friendship brought back again. If it be

allowed to call any one on earth Saviour, Morgan and his family have been

my Saviours, body and soul. For my moral will was, and I fear is, so

weakened relatively to my duties to myself, that I cannot act, as I ought

to do, except under the influencing knowledge of its effects on those I

love and believe myself loved by. To him likewise I explained the affair;

but neither from him or his family has one word ever escaped me concerning

it. Last autumn Mr. and Mrs. Southey came to town, and at Mr. Ray’s at

Richmond, as we were walking alone in the garden, the subject was

introduced, and it became my duty to state the whole affair to them, even

as the means of transmitting it to you. With these exceptions I do not

remember ever to have made any one my confidant--though in two or three

instances I have alluded to the suspension of our familiar intercourse

without explanation, but even here only where I knew or fully believed the

persons to have already heard of it. Such was Mrs. Clarkson, who wrote to

me in consequence of one sentence in a letter to her; yet even to her I

entered into no detail, and disclosed nothing that was not necessary to my

own defence in not continuing my former correspondence. In short, the one

only thing which I have to blame in myself was that in my first letter to

Sir G. Beaumont I had concluded with a desponding remark allusive to the

breach between us, not in the slightest degree suspecting that he was

ignorant of it. In the letters, which followed, I was compelled to say

more (though I never detailed the words which had been uttered to me) in

consequence of Lady Beaumont’s expressed apprehension and alarm lest in

the advertisement for my lectures the sentence “concerning the Living

Poets” contained an intention on my part to attack your literary merits.

The very thought, that I could be imagined capable of feeling

_vindictively_ toward you at all, much more of gratifying the passion in

so despicable as well as detestable manner, agitated me. I sent her

Ladyship the verses composed after your recitation of the great Poem at

Coleorton, and desired her to judge whether it was possible that a man,

who had written that poem, could be capable of such an act, and in a

letter to Sir G. B., anxious to remove from his mind the assumption that I

had been agitated by the disclosure of any till then unknown actions of

mine or parts of conduct, I endeavoured to impress him with the real truth

that not the facts disclosed, but the manner and time and the person by

whom and the person to whom they had been disclosed, formed the whole

ground of the breach. And writing in great agitation I once again used the

same words which had venially burst from me the moment Montagu had ended

his account. “And this is cruel! this is _base_!” I did not reflect on it

till it was irrevocable--and for that one word, the only word of positive

reproach that ever escaped from me, I feel sorrow--and assure you, that

there is no permanent feeling in my heart which corresponds to it. Talk

about it? Those who have seen me and been with me, day by day, for so many

many months could have told you, how anxiously every allusion to the

subject was avoided--and with abundant reason--for immediate and palpable

derangement of body as well as spirits regularly followed it. Besides, had

there not existed in your mind--let me rather say, if ever there had

existed any portion of esteem and regard for me since the autumn of 1810,

would it have been possible that your quick and powerful judgement could

have overlooked the gross improbability, that I should first invent and

then scatter abroad for talk at public tables the phrases which (Mr.

Robinson yesterday informed me) Mr. Sharon Turner was indelicate enough to

trumpet abroad at Longman’s table? I at least will call on Mr. Sharon and

demand his authority. It is my full conviction, that in no one of the

hundred tables at which any _particulars_ of our breach have been

mentioned, could the authority be traced back to those who had received

the account from myself.

It seemed unnatural to me, nay, it was unnatural to me to write to you or

to any of your family with a cold exclusion of the feelings which almost

overpower me even at this moment, and I therefore write this preparatory

letter to disburthen my heart, as it were, before I sit down to detail my

recollections simply, and unmixed with the anguish which, spite of my best

efforts, accompany them.

But one thing more, the last complaint that you will hear from me,

perhaps. When without my knowledge dear Mary Lamb, just then on the very

verge of a relapse, wrote to Grasmere, was it kind or even humane to have

returned such an answer, as Lamb deemed it unadvisable to shew me; but

which I learnt from the only other person, who saw the answer, amounted in

substance to a sneer on my reported high spirits and my wearing powder?

When and to whom did I ever make a merit of my sufferings? Is it

consistent _now_ to charge me with going about complaining to everybody,

and _now_ with my high spirits? Was I to carry a gloomy face into every

society? or ought I not rather to be grateful that in the natural activity

of my intellect God had given me a counteracting principle to the

intensity of my feelings, and a means of escaping from a part of the

pressure? But for this I had been driven mad, and yet for how many months

was there a continual brooding and going on of the one gnawing

recollection behind the curtain of my outward being, even when I was most

exerting myself, and exerting myself more in order the more to benumb it!

I might have truly said with Desdemona:--

“I am not merry, but I do beguile

The Thing I am, by seeming otherwise.”

And as to the powder, it was first put in to prevent my taking cold after

my hair had been thinned, and I was advised to continue it till I became

wholly grey, as in its then state it looked as if I had dirty powder in my

hair, and even when known to be only the everywhere-mixed-grey, yet

contrasting with a face even younger than my real age it gave a queer and

contradictory character to my whole appearance. Whatever be the result of

this long-delayed explanation, I have loved you and yours too long and too

deeply to have it in my own power to cease to do so.

S. T. COLERIDGE.

CLXXXIX. TO DANIEL STUART.

May 8, 1812.

MY DEAR STUART,--I send you seven or eight tickets,[90] entreating you, if

pre-engagements or your health does not preclude it, to bring a group with

you; as many ladies as possible; but gentlemen if you cannot muster

ladies--for else I shall not only have been left in the lurch as to the

actual receipts by my great patrons (the five hundred half-promised are

likely to shrink below fifty) but shall absolutely make a ridiculous

appearance. The tickets are transferable. If you can find occasion for

more, pray send for them to me, as (what it really will be) a favour done

to myself.

I am anxious to see you, and to learn how far Bath has improved or (to use

a fashionable slang phrase) disimproved your health.

Sir James and Lady Mackintosh are I hear at Bath Hotel, Jermyn Street. Do

you think it will be taken amiss if I enclosed two or three tickets and

cards with my respectful congratulations on his safe return.[91] I abhor

the doing anything that could be even interpreted into servility, and yet

feel increasingly the necessity of not neglecting the courtesies of

life....

God bless you, my dear sir, and your obliged and affectionate friend,

S. T. COLERIDGE.

P. S. Mr. Morgan has left his card for you.

CXC. TO WILLIAM WORDSWORTH.

71, Berners Street,

Monday afternoon, 3 o’clock, May 11, 1812.

MY DEAR WORDSWORTH,--I declare before God Almighty that at no time, even

in my sorest affliction, did even the _possibility_ occur to me of ever

doubting your word. I never ceased for a moment to have faith in you, to

love and revere you; though I was unable to explain an unkindness, which

seemed anomalous in your character. Doubtless it would have been better,

wiser, and more worthy of my relation to you, had I immediately written to

you a full account of what had happened--especially as the person’s

language concerning your family was such as nothing but the wild general

counter-panegyric of the same person almost in the same breath of

yourself--as a converser, etc.,--could have justified me in not resenting

to the uttermost....[92] All these, added to what I mentioned in my

letter to you, may not justify, but yet must palliate, the _only_ offence

I ever committed against you in deed or word or thought--that is, the not

writing to you and trusting instead to our common friends. Since I left

you my pocket books have been my only full confidants,[93]--and though

instructed by prudence to write so as to be intelligible to no being on

earth but yourself and your family, they for eighteen months together

would furnish proof that in anguish or induration I yet never ceased both

to _honour_ and love you.

S. T. COLERIDGE.

I need not say, of course, that your presence at the Lectures, or anywhere

else, will be gratifying to me.

CXCI. TO ROBERT SOUTHEY.

[May 12, 1812.]

MY DEAR SOUTHEY,--The awful event of yester-afternoon has forced me to

defer my Lectures to Tuesday, the 19th, by advice of all my patrons. The

same thought struck us all at the same moment, so that our letters might

be said to meet each other. I write now to urge you, if it be in your

power, to give one day or two of your time to write something in your

impressive way on that theme which no one I meet seems to feel as they

ought to do,--which, I find scarcely any but ourselves estimate according

to its true gigantic magnitude--I mean the sinking down of Jacobinism

below the middle and tolerably educated classes into the readers and

all-swallowing auditors in tap-rooms, etc.; and the [political sentiments

in the] “Statesman,” “Examiner,” etc. I have ascertained that throughout

the great manufacturing counties, Whitbread’s, Burdett’s, and Waithman’s

speeches and the leading articles of the “Statesman” and “Examiner” are

printed in ballad [shape] and sold at a halfpenny or a penny each. I was

turned numb, and then sick, and then into a convulsive state of weeping on

the first tidings--just as if Perceval[94] had been my near and personal

friend. But good God! the atrocious sentiments universal among the

populace, and even the lower order of householders. On my return from the

“Courier,” where I had been to offer my services if I could do anything

for them on this occasion, I was faint from the heat and much walking, and

took that opportunity of going into the tap-room of a large public house

frequented about one o’clock by the lower orders. It was really shocking,

nothing but exultation! Burdett’s health drank with a clatter of pots and

a sentiment given to at least fifty men and women--“May Burdett soon be

the man to have sway over us!” These were the very words. “This is but the

beginning.” “More of these damned scoundrels must go the same way, and

then poor people may live.” “Every man might maintain his family decent

and comfortable, if the money were not picked out of our pockets by these

damned placemen.” “God is above the devil, _I_ say, and down to Hell with

him and all his brood, the Ministers, men of Parliament fellows.” “They

won’t hear Burdett; no! he is a Christian man and speaks for the poor,”

etc., etc. I do not think I have altered a word.

My love to Sara, and I have received everything right. The plate will go

as desired, and among it a present to Sariola and Edith from good old Mr.

Brent, who had great delight in hearing them talked of. It was wholly the

old gentleman’s own thought. Bless them both!

The affair between Wordsworth and me seems settled, much against my first

expectation from the message I received from him and his refusal to open a

letter from me. I have not yet seen him, but an explanation has taken

place. I sent by Robinson an attested, avowed statement of what Mr. and

Mrs. Montagu told me, and Wordsworth has sent me an unequivocal denial of

the whole _in spirit_ and of the most offensive passages in letter as well

as spirit, and I instantly informed him that were ten thousand Montagus to

swear against it, I should take his word, not ostensibly only, but with

inward faith!

To-morrow I will write out the passage from “Apuleius,” and send the

letter to Rickman. It is seldom that want of leisure can be fairly stated

as an excuse for not writing; but really for the last ten days I can

honestly do it, if you will but allow a due portion to agitated feelings.

The subscription is languid indeed compared with the expectations. Sir T.

Bernard almost pledged himself for my success. However, he has done his

best, and so has Lady Beaumont, who herself procured me near thirty names.

I should have done better by myself for the present, but in the future

perhaps it will be better as it is.

CXCII. TO WILLIAM WORDSWORTH.[95]

71, Berners Street,

Monday noon, December 7, 1812.

Write? My dear Friend! Oh that it were in my power to be with you myself

instead of my letter. The Lectures I could give up; but the rehearsal of

my Play commences this week, and upon this depends my best hopes of

leaving town after Christmas, and living among you as long as I live.

Strange, strange are the coincidences of things! Yesterday Martha Fricker

dined here, and after tea I had asked question after question respecting

your children, first one, then the other; but, more than all, concerning

Thomas, till at length Mrs. Morgan said, “What ails you, Coleridge? Why

don’t you talk about Hartley, Derwent, and Sara?” And not two hours ago

(for the whole family were late from bed) I was asked what was the matter

with my eyes? I told the fact, that I had awoke three times during the

night and morning, and at each time found my face and part of the pillow

wet with tears. “Were you dreaming of the Wordsworths?” she asked.--“Of

the children?” I said, “No! not so much of them, but of Mrs. W. and Miss

Hutchinson, and yourself and sister.”

Mrs. Morgan and her sister are come in, and I have been relieved by tears.

The sharp, sharp pang at the heart needed it, when they reminded me of my

words the very yester-night: “It is not possible that I should do

otherwise than love Wordsworth’s children, all of them; but Tom is nearest

my heart--I so often have him before my eyes, sitting on the little stool

by my side, while I was writing my essays; and how quiet and happy the

affectionate little fellow would be if he could but touch one, and now and

then be looked at.”

O dearest friend! what comfort can I afford you? What comfort ought I not

to afford, who have given you so much pain? Sympathy deep, of my whole

being.... In grief, and in joy, in the anguish of perplexity, and in the

fulness and overflow of confidence, it has been ever what it is! There is

a sense of the word, Love, in which I never felt it but to you and one of

your household! I am distant from you some hundred miles, but glad I am

that I am no longer distant in spirit, and have faith, that as it has

happened but once, so it never can happen again. An awful truth it seems

to me, and prophetic of our future, as well as declarative of our present

_real_ nature, that one mere thought, one feeling of suspicion, jealousy,

or resentment can remove two human beings farther from each other than

winds or seas can separate their bodies.

The words “_religious_ fortitude” occasion me to add that my faith in our

progressive nature, and in all the doctrinal facts of Christianity, is

become habitual in my understanding, no less than in my feelings. More

cheering illustrations of our survival I have never received, than from

the recent study of the instincts of animals, their clear heterogeneity

from the reason and moral essence of man and yet the beautiful analogy.

Especially, on the death of children, and of the _mind_ in childhood,

altogether, many thoughts have accumulated, from which I hope to derive

consolation from that most oppressive feeling which hurries in upon the

first anguish of such tidings as I have received; the sense of

uncertainty, the fear of enjoyment, the pale and deathy gleam thrown over

the countenances of the living, whom we love.... But this is bad

comforting. Your own virtues, your own love itself, must give it. Mr. De

Quincey has left town, and will by this time have arrived at Grasmere. On

Sunday last I gave him a letter for you; but he (I have heard) did not

leave town till Thursday night, by what accidents prevented I know not. In

the oppression of spirits under which I wrote that letter, I did not make

it clear that it was only Mr. Josiah’s half of the annuity[96] that was

withdrawn from me. My answer, of course, breathed nothing but gratitude

for the past.

I will write in a few days again to you. To-morrow is my lecture night,

“On the _human_ causes of the spread of Christianity, and its effects

after the establishment of Christendom.” Dear Mary! dear Dorothy! dearest

Sara! Oh, be assured, no thought relative to myself has half the influence

in inspiring the wish and effort to _appear_ and to _act_ what I always in

my will and heart have been, as the knowledge that few things could more

console you than to see me healthy, and worthy of myself! Again and again,

my dearest Wordsworth!!! I am affectionately and truly yours,

S. T. COLERIDGE.

CXCIII. TO HIS WIFE.

Wednesday afternoon [January 20,] 18[13].

MY DEAR SARA,--_Hitherto_ the “Remorse” has met with _unexampled

applause_, but whether it will _continue_ to fill the _house_, that is

quite another question, and of this, my friends are, in my opinion, far,

far too sanguine. I have disposed not of the copyright but of edition by

edition to Mr. Pople, on terms advantageous to me as an author and

honourable to him as a publisher. The expenses of printing and paper (at

the trade-price) advertising, etc., are to be deducted from the total

produce, and the net profits to be divided into three equal parts, of

which Pople is to have one, and I the other two. And at any future time, I

may publish it in any volume of my poems _collectively_. Mr. Arnold (the

manager) has just left me. He called to urge me to exert myself a little

with regard to the daily press, and brought with him “The Times”[97] of

Monday as a specimen of the _infernal lies_ of which a newspaper scribe

can be capable. Not only is not _one_ sentence in it true; but every one

is in the direct face of a palpable truth. The misrepresentations must

have been wilful. I must now, therefore, write to “The Times,” and if

Walter refuses to insert, I will then, recording the circumstance, publish

it in the “Morning Post,” “Morning Chronicle,” and “The Courier.” The

dirty malice of Antony Pasquin[98] in the “Morning Herald” is below

notice. This, however, will explain to you why the shortness of this

letter, the main business of which is to desire you to draw upon Brent and

Co., No. 103 Bishopsgate Street Within, for an hundred pounds, at a

month’s date from the drawing, or, if that be objected to, for three

weeks, only let me know which. In the course of a month I have no

hesitation in promising you another hundred, and I hope likewise before

Midsummer, if God grant me life, to repay you whatever you have expended

for the children.

My wishes and purposes concerning Hartley and Derwent I will communicate

as soon as this bustle and endless rat-a-tat-tat at our door is somewhat

over. I concluded my Lectures last night most triumphantly, with loud,

long, and enthusiastic applauses at my entrance, and ditto in yet fuller

chorus as, and for some minutes after I had retired. It was lucky that (as

I never once thought of the Lecture till I had entered the Lecture Box),

the two last were the most impressive and really the best. I suppose that

no dramatic author ever had so large a number of unsolicited, unknown yet

_predetermined_ plauditors in the theatre, as I had on Saturday night. One

of the malignant papers asserted that I had collected all the saints from

Mile End turnpike to Tyburn Bar. With so many warm friends, it is

impossible, in the present state of human nature, that I should not have

many unprovoked and unknown enemies. You will have heard that on my

entering the box on Saturday night, I was discovered by the pit, and that

they all turned their faces towards our box, and gave a treble cheer of

claps.

I mention these things because it will please Southey to hear that there

is a large number of persons in London who hail with enthusiasm my

prospect of the stage’s being purified and rendered classical. My success,

if I succeed (of which I assure you I entertain doubts in my opinion well

founded, both from the want of a prominent actor for Ordonio, and from the

want of vulgar pathos in the play itself--nay, there is not enough even of

_true_ dramatic pathos), but if I succeed, I succeed for others as well as

myself....

S. T. COLERIDGE.

P. S. I _pray you_, my dear Sara! do take on yourself the charge of

instantly sending off by the waggon Mr. Sotheby’s folio edition of all

Petrarch’s Works, which I left at Grasmere. (I am ashamed to meet Sotheby

till I have returned it.) At the same time my quarto MS. Book with the

German Musical Play in it,[99] and the two folio volumes of the Greek

Poets may go. For I want them hourly and I must try to imitate W. Scott in

making hay while the sun shines.

Kisses and heartfelt loves for my sweet Sara, and scarce less for dear

little Herbert and Edith.

CXCIV. TO ROBERT SOUTHEY.

71, Berners Street, Tuesday, February 8, 1813.

MY DEAR SOUTHEY,--It is seldom that a man can with _literal truth_

apologise for delay in writing; but for the last three weeks I have had

more upon my hands and spirits than my health was equal to.

The first copy I can procure of the second edition (of the play) I will do

my best to get franked to you. You will, I hope, think it much improved as

a poem. Dr. Bell, who is all kindness and goodness, came to me in no small

bustle this morning in consequence of “a censure passed on the ‘Remorse’

by a man of great talents, both in prose and verse, who was impartial, and

thought highly of the work on the whole.” What was it, think you? There

were many unequal lines in the Play, but which he did not choose to

specify. Dr. Bell would not mention the critic’s name, but was very

earnest with me to procure some indifferent person of good sense to read

it over, by way of spectacles to an author’s own dim judgement. Soon after

he left me I discovered that the critic was Gifford, who had said

good-naturedly that I ought to be whipt for leaving so many weak and

slovenly lines in so fine a poem. What the lines were _he_ would not say

and _I_ do not care. Inequalities have every poem, even an Epic--much

more a Dramatic Poem must have and ought to have. The question is, are

they in their own place _dissonances_? If so I am the last man to stickle

for them, who am nicknamed in the Green Room the “anomalous author,” from

my utter indifference or prompt facility in sanctioning every omission

that was suggested. That paragraph in the “Quarterly Review”[100]

respecting me, as ridiculed in “Rejected Addresses,” was surely unworthy

of a man of sense like Gifford. What reason could _he_ have to suppose me

a man so childishly irritable as to be provoked by a trifle so

contemptible? If he had, how could he think it a _parody_ at all? But the

noise which the “Rejected Addresses” made, the notice taken of Smith the

author by Lord Holland, Byron, etc., give a melancholy confirmation of my

assertion in “The Friend” that “we worship the vilest reptile if only the

brainless head be expiated by the sting of personal malignity in the

tail.” I wish I could procure for you the “Examiner” and Drakard’s London

Paper. They were forced to affect admiration of the Tragedy, but yet abuse

me they must, and so comes the old infamous _crambe bis millies cocta_ of

the “sentimentalities, puerilities, whinings, and meannesses, both of

style and thought,” in my former writings, but without (which is worth

notice both in these gentlemen and in all our former Zoili), without one

single quotation or reference in proof or exemplification. No wonder! for

excepting the “Three Graves,” which was announced as not meant for poetry,

and the poem on the Tethered Ass, with the motto _Sermoni propriora_,[101]

and which, like your “Dancing Bear,” might be called a ludicro-splenetic

copy of verses, with the diction purposely appropriate, they might (as at

the first appearance of my poems they did) find, indeed, all the opposite

vices. But if it had not been for the _Preface_ to W.’s “Lyrical Ballads,”

they would never themselves have dreamt of affected simplicity and

meanness of thought and diction. This slang has gone on for fourteen or

fifteen years against us, and really deserves to be exposed. As far as my

judgement goes, the two best qualities of the tragedy are, first, the

simplicity and unity of the plot, in respect of that which, of all the

unities, is the only one founded on good sense--the presence of a one

all-pervading, all-combining Principle. By REMORSE I mean the anguish and

disquietude arising from the self-contradiction introduced into the soul

by guilt, a feeling which is good or bad according as the will makes use

of it. This is expressed in the lines chosen as the motto:--

Remorse is as the heart in which it grows:

If that be gentle, it drops balmy dews

Of true repentance; but if proud and gloomy,

It is a poison tree that, pierced to the inmost,

Weeps only tears of poison!

Act i. sc. 1.

And Remorse is everywhere distinguished from virtuous penitence. To excite

a sanative remorse Alvar returns, the Passion is put in motion at

Ordonio’s first entrance by the appearance of Isidore’s wife, etc.; it is

carried still higher by the narration of Isidore, Act ii. sc. 1; higher

still by the interview with the supposed wizard; and to its acme by the

Incantation Scene and Picture. Now, then, we are to see its effects and to

exemplify the second part of the motto, “but if proud and gloomy, It is a

poison tree,” etc. Ordonio, too proud to look steadily into himself,

catches a false scent, plans the murder of Isidore and the poisoning of

the Sorcerer, perpetrates the one, and, attempting the other, is driven by

Remorse and the discovery of Alvar to a temporary distraction; and,

finally, falling a victim to the only crime that had been realized, by the

hand of Alhadra, breathes his last in a pang of pride: “O couldst thou

forget me!” As from a circumference to a centre, every ray in the tragedy

converges to Ordonio. Spite of wretched acting, the passage told

wonderfully in which, as in a struggle between two unequal Panathlists or

wrestlers, the weaker had for a moment got uppermost, and Ordonio, with

unfeigned love, and genuine repentance, says, “I will kneel to thee, my

Brother! Forgive me, Alvar!” till the Pride, like the bottom-swell on our

lake, gusts up again in “_Curse_ me with forgiveness!” The second good

quality is, I think, the variety of metres according as the speeches are

merely transitive, or narrative, or passionate, or (as in the Incantation)

deliberate and formal poetry. It is true they are all, or almost all,

Iambic blank verse, but under that form there are five or six perfectly

distinct metres. As to the outcry that the “Remorse” is not pathetic

(meaning such pathos as convulses in “Isabella” or “The Gamester”) the

answer is easy. True! the poet never meant that it should be. It is as

pathetic as the “Hamlet” or the “Julius Cæsar.” He woo’d the feelings of

the audience, as my wretched epilogue said:--

With no TOO _real_ Woes that make you groan

(At home-bred, kindred grief, perhaps your own),

Yet with no image compensate the mind,

Nor leave one joy for memory behind.

As to my thefts from the “Wallenstein,” they came on compulsion from the

necessity of haste, and do not lie on my conscience, being partly thefts

from myself, and because I gave Schiller twenty for one I have taken, and

in the mean time I hope they will lie snug. “The obscurest Haunt of all

our mountains,”[102] I did not recognize as Wordsworth till after the play

was all printed. I must write again to-morrow on other subjects.

The House was crowded again last night, and the Manager told me that they

lost £200 by suspending it on [the] Saturday night that Jack Bannister

came out.

(No signature.)

CXCV. TO THOMAS POOLE.

February 13, 1813.

DEAR POOLE,--Love so deep and so domesticated with the whole being, as

mine was to you, can never cease _to be_. To quote the best and sweetest

lines I ever wrote:[103]--

Alas! they had been Friends in Youth!

But whisp’ring Tongues can poison Truth;

And Constancy lives in Realms above;

And Life is thorny; and Youth is vain;

And to be wroth with one we love

Doth work, like Madness, in the Brain!

And so it chanced (as I divine)

With Roland and Sir Leoline.

Each spake words of high Disdain

And Insult to his heart’s best Brother:

They parted--ne’er to meet again!

But never either found another

To free the hollow Heart from Paining--

They stood aloof, the Scars remaining,

Like Cliffs, which had been rent asunder,

A dreary Sea now flows between!--

But neither Frost, nor Heat, nor Thunder,

Shall wholly do away, I ween,

The marks of that which once hath been!

Stung as I have been with your unkindness to me, in my sore adversity, yet

the receipt of your two heart-engendered lines was sweeter than an

unexpected strain of sweetest music, or, in humbler phrase, it was the

only pleasurable sensation which the _success of the_ “Remorse” has given

me. I have read of, or perhaps only imagined, a punishment in Arabia, in

which the culprit was so bricked up as to be unable to turn his eyes to

the right or the left, while in front was placed a high heap of barren

sand glittering under the vertical sun. Some slight analogue of this, I

have myself suffered from the mere unusualness of having my attention

forcibly directed to a subject which permitted neither sequence of

imagery, or series of reasoning. No grocer’s apprentice, after his first

month’s permitted riot, was ever sicker of figs and raisins than I of

hearing about the “Remorse.” The endless rat-a-tat-tat at our

black-and-blue-bruised door, and my three master-fiends, proof sheets,

letters (for I have a raging epistolophobia), and worse than

these--invitations to large dinners, which I cannot refuse without offence

and imputation of pride, or accept without disturbance of temper the day

before, and a sick, aching stomach for two days after, so that my spirits

quite sink under it.

From what I myself saw, and from what an intelligent friend, more

solicitous about it than myself, has told me, the “Remorse” has succeeded

in spite of bad scenes, execrable acting, and newspaper calumny. In my

compliments to the actors, I endeavoured (such is the lot of this world,

in which our best qualities tilt against each other, _ex. gr._, our good

nature against our veracity) to make a lie edge round the truth as nearly

as possible. Poor Rae (why poor? for Ordonio has almost made his fortune)

did the best in his power, and is a good man ... a moral and affectionate

husband and father. But nature has denied him person and all volume and

depth of voice; so that the blundering coxcomb Elliston, by mere dint of

voice and self-conceit, out-dazzled him. It has been a good thing for the

theatre. They will get £8,000 or £10,000, and I shall get more than all my

literary labours put together; nay, thrice as much, subtracting my heavy

losses in the “Watchman” and “Friend,”--£400 including the copyright.

You will have heard that, previous to the acceptance of “Remorse,” Mr.

Jos. Wedgwood had withdrawn from his share of the annuity![104] Well, yes,

it is well!--for I can now be _sure_ that I loved him, revered him, and

was grateful to him from no selfish feeling. For equally (and may these

words be my final condemnation at the last awful day, if I speak not the

whole truth), equally do I at this moment love him, and with the same

reverential gratitude! To Mr. Thomas Wedgwood I felt, doubtless, love; but

it was mingled with fear, and constant apprehension of his too exquisite

taste in morals. But Josiah! Oh, I ever did, and ever shall, love him, as

a being so beautifully balanced in mind and heart deserves to be!

’Tis well, too, because it has given me the strongest impulse, the most

imperious motive I have experienced, to _prove_ to him that his past

munificence has not been _wasted_!

You perhaps may likewise have heard (_in the Whispering Gallery of the

World_) of the year-long difference between me and Wordsworth (compared

with the sufferings of which all the former afflictions of my life were

less than flea-bites), occasioned (in _great part_) by the wicked folly of

the arch-fool Montagu.

A reconciliation has taken place, but the _feeling_, which I had previous

to that moment, when the (three-fourth) calumny burst, like a thunderstorm

from a blue sky, on my soul, after fifteen years of such religious, almost

superstitious idolatry and self-sacrifice. Oh, no! no! that, I fear, never

can return. All outward actions, all inward wishes, all thoughts and

admirations will be the same--_are_ the same, but--aye, there remains an

immedicable _But_. Had W. said (what he acknowledges to have said) to you,

I should have thought it unkind, and have had a right to say, “Why, why am

I, whose whole being has been like a glass beehive before you for five

years, why do I hear this from a _third_ person for the first time?” But

to such ... as Montagu! just when W. himself had forewarned me! Oh! it cut

me to the heart’s core.

S. T. COLERIDGE.

CHAPTER XII

A MELANCHOLY EXILE

1813-1815

CHAPTER XII

A MELANCHOLY EXILE

1813-1815

CXCVI. TO DANIEL STUART.

September 25, 1813.

DEAR STUART,--I forgot to ask you by what address a letter would best

reach you! Whether Kilburn House, Kilburn? I shall therefore send it, or

leave it at the “Courier” office. I found Southey so _chevaux-de-frized_

and pallisadoed by preëngagements that I could not reach at him till

Sunday sennight, that is, Sunday, October 3, when, if convenient, we

should be happy to wait on you. Southey will be in town till Monday

evening, and you have his brother’s address, should you wish to write to

him (Dr. Southey,[105] 28, Little Queen Anne Street, Cavendish Square).

A curious paragraph in the “Morning Chronicle” of this morning, asserting

with its usual _comfortable_ anti-patriotism the determination of the

Emperor of Austria to persevere in the terms[106] offered to his

son-in-law, in his frenzy of power, even though he should be beaten to the

dust. Methinks there ought to be good authority before a journalist dares

prophesy folly and knavery in union of our Imperial Ally. An excellent

article ought to be written on this subject. In the same paper there is

what I should have called a masterly essay on the causes of the downfall

of the Comic Drama, if I was not perplexed by the distinct recollection of

having _conversed_ the greater part of it at Lamb’s. I wish you would read

it, and tell me what you think; for I seem to remember a conversation with

you in which you asserted the very contrary; that comic genius was the

thing wanting, and not comic subjects--that the watering places, or rather

the characters presented at them, had never been adequately managed, etc.

Might I request you to present my best respects to Mrs. Stuart as those of

an old acquaintance of yours, and, as far as I am myself conscious of, at

all times with hearty affection, your sincere friend,

S. T. COLERIDGE.

P. S. There are some half dozen more books of mine left at the “Courier”

office, Ben Jonson and sundry German volumes. As I am compelled to sell my

library,[107] you would oblige me by ordering the porter to take them to

19, London Street, Fitzroy Square; whom I will remunerate for his trouble.

I should not take this liberty, but that I had in vain written to Mr.

Street, requesting the same favour, which in his hurry of business I do

not wonder that he forgot.

CXCVII. TO JOSEPH COTTLE.[108]

April 26, 1814.

You have poured oil in the raw and festering wound of an old friend’s

conscience, Cottle! but it is _oil of vitriol_! I but barely glanced at

the middle of the first page of your letter, and have seen no more of

it--not from resentment (God forbid!), but from the state of my bodily and

mental sufferings, that scarcely permitted human fortitude to let in a new

visitor of affliction.

[Illustration]

The object of my present reply is to state the case just as it is. First,

that for ten years the anguish of my spirit has been indescribable, the

sense of my danger staring, but the consciousness of my GUILT worse, far

worse than all. I have prayed, with drops of agony on my brow, trembling

not only before the justice of my Maker, but even before the mercy of my

Redeemer. “I gave thee so many talents, what hast thou done with them?”

Secondly, overwhelmed as I am with a sense of my direful infirmity, I have

never attempted to disguise or conceal the cause. On the contrary, not

only to friends have I stated the whole case with tears and the very

bitterness of shame, but in two instances I have warned young men, mere

acquaintances, who had spoken of having taken laudanum, of the direful

consequences, by an awful exposition of the tremendous effects on myself.

Thirdly, though before God I cannot lift up my eyelids, and only do not

despair of His mercy, because to despair would be adding crime to crime,

yet to my fellow-men I may say that I was seduced into the ACCURSED habit

ignorantly. I had been almost bed-ridden for many months with swellings in

my knees. In a medical journal, I unhappily met with an account of a cure

performed in a similar case (or what appeared to me so), by rubbing in of

laudanum, at the same time taking a given dose internally. It acted like a

charm, like a miracle! I recovered the use of my limbs, of my appetite, of

my spirits, and this continued for near a fortnight. At length the unusual

stimulus subsided, the complaint returned, the supposed remedy was

recurred to--but I cannot go through the dreary history.

Suffice it to say, that effects were produced which acted on me by terror

and cowardice, of pain and sudden death, not (so help me God!) by any

temptation of pleasure, or expectation, or desire of exciting pleasurable

sensations. On the very contrary, Mrs. Morgan and her sister will bear

witness, so far as to say, that the longer I abstained the higher my

spirits were, the keener my enjoyment--till the moment, the direful

moment, arrived when my pulse began to fluctuate, my heart to palpitate,

and such a dreadful falling abroad, as it were, of my whole frame, such

intolerable restlessness, and incipient bewilderment, that in the last of

my several attempts to abandon the dire poison, I exclaimed in agony,

which I now repeat in seriousness and solemnity, “I am too poor to hazard

this.” Had I but a few hundred pounds, but £200--half to send to Mrs.

Coleridge, and half to place myself in a private madhouse, where I could

procure nothing but what a physician thought proper, and where a medical

attendant could be constantly with me for two or three months (in less

than that time life or death would be determined), then there might be

hope. Now there is none!! O God! how willingly would I place myself under

Dr. Fox, in his establishment; for my case is a species of madness, only

that it is a derangement, an utter impotence of the volition, and not of

the intellectual faculties. You bid me rouse myself: go bid a man

paralytic in both arms, to rub them briskly together, and that will cure

him. “Alas!” he would reply, “that I cannot move my arms is my complaint

and my misery.”

May God bless you, and your affectionate, but most afflicted,

S. T. COLERIDGE.

CXCVIII. TO THE SAME.

Friday, May 27, 1814.

MY DEAR COTTLE,--Gladness be with you, for your convalescence, and equally

so, at the hope which has sustained and tranquillised you through your

imminent peril. Far otherwise is, and hath been, my state; yet I too am

grateful; yet I cannot rejoice. I feel, with an intensity unfathomable by

words, my utter nothingness, impotence, and worthlessness, in and for

myself. I have learned what a sin is, against an infinite imperishable

being, such as is the soul of man!

I have had more than a glimpse of what is meant by death and outer

darkness, and the worm that dieth not--and that all the _hell_ of the

reprobate is no more inconsistent with the love of God, than the blindness

of one who has occasioned loathsome and guilty diseases, to eat out his

eyes, is inconsistent with the light of the sun. But the consolations, at

least, the sensible sweetness of hope, I do not possess. On the contrary,

the temptation which I have constantly to fight up against is a fear, that

if _annihilation_ and the _possibility_ of _heaven_ were offered to my

choice, I should choose the former.

This is, perhaps, in part, a constitutional idiosyncrasy, for when a mere

boy I wrote these lines:--

O, what a wonder seems the fear of death,

Seeing how gladly we all sink to sleep,

Babes, children, youths, and men,

Night following night, for three-score years and ten![109]

And in my early manhood, in lines descriptive of a gloomy solitude, I

disguised my own sensations in the following words:--

Here wisdom might abide, and here remorse!

Here, too, the woe-worn man, who, weak in soul,

And of this busy human heart aweary,

Worships the spirit of unconscious life

In tree or wild-flower. Gentle lunatic!

If so he might not wholly cease to BE,

He would far rather not be what he is;

But would be something that he knows not of,

In woods or waters, or among the rocks.[110]

My main comfort, therefore, consists in what the divines call the faith of

adherence, and no spiritual effort appears to benefit me so much as the

one earnest, importunate, and often for hours, momently repeated prayers:

“I believe! Lord, help my unbelief! Give me faith, but as a mustard seed,

and I shall remove this mountain! Faith! faith! faith! I believe. Oh, give

me faith! Oh, for my Redeemer’s sake, give me faith in my Redeemer.”

In all this I justify God, for I was accustomed to oppose the preaching of

the terrors of the gospel, and to represent it as debasing virtue by the

admixture of slavish selfishness.

I now see that what is spiritual can only be spiritually apprehended.

Comprehended it cannot.

Mr. Eden gave you a too flattering account of me. It is true, I am

restored as much beyond my expectations almost as my deserts; but I am

exceedingly weak. I need for myself solace and refocillation of animal

spirits, instead of being in a condition of offering it to others. Yet as

soon as I may see you, I will call upon you.

S. T. COLERIDGE.

CXCIX. TO CHARLES MATHEWS.

2, Queen’s Square, Bristol, May 30, 1814.

DEAR SIR,--Unusual as this liberty may be, yet as it is a friendly one,

you will pardon it, especially from one who has had already some

connection with the stage, and may have more. But I was so highly

gratified with my feast of this night, that I feel a sort of restless

impulse to tell you what I felt and thought.

Imprimis, I grieved that you had such miserable materials to deal with as

Colman’s Solomon Grundy,[111] a character which in and of itself (Mathews

and his Variations _ad libitum_ put out of the question) contains no one

element of genuine comedy, no, nor even of fun or drollery. The play is

assuredly the very sediment, the dregs of a noble cask of wine; for such

_was_, yes, in _many_ instances _was_ and has been, and in many more

_might_ have been, _Colman’s_ dramatic genius.

A genius Colman _is_ by _nature_. What he is _not_, or has not been, is

all of his own making. In my humble opinion, he possessed the elements of

dramatic power in a far higher degree than Sheridan: or which of the two,

think you, should pronounce with the deeper sigh of self-reproach,

“_Fuimus_ Troes! and what might we not have been?”

But I leave this to proceed to the really astonishing effect of your

duplicate of Cook in Sir Archy McSarcasm.[112] To say that in some of

your higher notes your voice was rather _thinner_, rather less _substance_

and _thick_ body than poor Cook’s, would be merely to say that A. B. is

not exactly A. A. But, on the whole, it was almost _illusion_, and so very

excellent, that if I were intimate with you, I should get angry and abuse

you for not forming for yourself some _original_ and important character.

The man who could so impersonate Sir Archy McSarcasm might do _anything_

in _profound_ Comedy (that is, that which gives us the passions of men and

their endless modifications and influences on thought, gestures, etc.,

modified in their turn by circumstances of rank, relations, nationality,

etc., instead of mere transitory manners; in short, the inmost man

represented on the superficies, instead of the superficies merely

representing itself). But you will forgive a stranger for a suggestion? I

cannot but think that it would _answer_ for your still increasing fame if

you were either previously to, or as an occasional diversification of Sir

Archy, to study and give that one most incomparable monologue of Sir

Pertinax McSycophant,[113] where he gives his son the history of his rise

and progress in the world. Being in its essence a soliloquy with all the

advantages of a dialogue, it would be a most happy introduction to Sir

Archy McSarcasm, which, I doubt not, will call forth with good reason the

Covent Garden Manager’s thanks to you next season.

I once had the presumption to address this advice to an actor on the

London stage: “_Think_, in order that you may be able to _observe_!

_Observe_, in order that you may have materials to think upon! And

thirdly, keep awake ever the habit of instantly _embodying_ and

_realising_ the results of the two; but always _think_!”

A great actor, comic or tragic, is not to be a mere copy, a _fac simile_,

or but an _imitation_, of Nature. Now an imitation differs from a copy in

this, that it of necessity implies and demands _difference_, whereas a

copy aims at _identity_. What a marble peach on a mantelpiece, that you

take up deluded and put down with pettish disgust, is, compared with a

fruit-piece of Vanhuyser’s, even such is a mere _copy_ of nature compared

with a true histrionic _imitation_. A good actor is Pygmalion’s Statue, a

work of exquisite _art_, animated and gifted with _motion_; but still

_art_, still a species of _poetry_.

Not the least advantage which an actor gains by having secured a high

reputation is this, that those who sincerely admire him may dare tell him

the truth at times, and thus, if he have sensible friends, secure his

progressive improvement; in other words, keep him thinking. For without

thinking, nothing consummate can be effected.

Accept this, dear sir, as it is meant, a small testimony of the high

gratification I have received from you and of the respectful and sincere

kind wishes with which I am

Your obedient

S. T. COLERIDGE.

---- MATHEWS, Esq., to be left at the Bristol Theatre.

CC. TO JOSIAH WADE.

BRISTOL, June 26, 1814.

DEAR SIR,--For I am unworthy to call any good man friend--much less you,

whose hospitality and love I have abused; accept, however, my intreaties

for your forgiveness, and for your prayers.

Conceive a poor miserable wretch, who for many years has been attempting

to beat off pain, by a constant recurrence to the vice that reproduces it.

Conceive a spirit in hell, employed in tracing out for others the road to

that heaven, from which his crimes exclude him! In short, conceive

whatever is most wretched, helpless, and hopeless, and you will form as

tolerable a notion of my state, as it is possible for a good man to have.

I used to think the text in St. James that “he who offended in one point,

offends in all,” very harsh; but I now feel the awful, the tremendous

truth of it. In the one crime of OPIUM, what crime have I not made myself

guilty of!--Ingratitude to my Maker! and to my benefactors--injustice!

_and unnatural cruelty to my poor children!_--self-contempt for my

repeated promise--breach, nay, too often, actual falsehood!

After my death, I earnestly entreat, that a full and unqualified narration

of my wretchedness, and of its guilty cause, may be made public, that at

least some little good may be effected by the direful example.

May God Almighty bless you, and have mercy on your still affectionate, and

in his heart, grateful

S. T. COLERIDGE.

CCI. TO JOHN MURRAY.

Josiah Wade’s, Esq., 2, Queen’s Square, Bristol,

August 23, 1814.

DEAR SIR,--I have heard, from my friend Mr. Charles Lamb, writing by

desire of Mr. Robinson, that you wish to have the justly-celebrated

“Faust”[114] of Goethe translated, and that some one or other of my

partial friends have induced you to consider me as the man most likely to

execute the work adequately, those excepted, of course, whose higher power

(established by the solid and satisfactory ordeal of the wide and rapid

sale of their works) it might seem profanation to employ in any other

manner than in the development of their own intellectual organisation. I

return my thanks to the recommender, whoever he be, and no less to you for

your flattering faith in the recommendation; and thinking, as I do, that

among many volumes of praiseworthy German poems, the “Louisa” of Voss, and

the “Faust” of Goethe, are the two, if not the only ones, that are

emphatically _original_ in their conception, and characteristic of a new

and peculiar sort of thinking and imagining, I should not be averse from

exerting my best efforts in an attempt to import whatever is importable of

either or of both into our own language.

But let me not be suspected of a presumption of which I am not consciously

guilty, if I say that I feel two difficulties: one arising from long

disuse of versification, added to what _I_ know, better than the most

hostile critic could inform me, of my comparative weakness; and the other,

that _any_ work in Poetry strikes me with more than common awe, as

proposed for realization by myself, because from long habits of meditation

on language, as the symbolical medium of the connection of Thought with

Thought, and of Thought as affected and modified by Passion and Emotion, I

should spend days in avoiding what I deemed faults, though with the full

fore-knowledge that their admission would not have offended perhaps three

of all my readers, and might be deemed Beauties by 300--if so many there

were; and this not out of any respect for the Public (_i. e._ the persons

who might happen to purchase and look over the Book), but from a

hobby-horsical, superstitious regard to my own feelings and sense of duty.

Language is the Sacred Fire in this Temple of Humanity, and the Muses are

its especial and vestal Priestesses. Though I cannot prevent the vile

drugs and counterfeit Frankincense, which render its flame at once pitchy,

glowing, and unsteady, I would yet be no voluntary accomplice in the

Sacrilege. With the commencement of a PUBLIC, commences the degradation of

the GOOD and the BEAUTIFUL--both fade and retire before the accidentally

AGREEABLE. “Othello” becomes a hollow lip-worship; and the “CASTLE

SPECTRE” or any more peccant thing of Froth, Noise, and Impermanence, that

may have overbillowed it on the restless sea of curiosity, is the _true_

Prayer of the Praise and Admiration.

I thought it right to state to you these opinions of mine, that you might

know that I think the Translation of the “Faust” a task demanding (from

_me_, I mean) no ordinary efforts--and why? This--that it is painful, very

painful, and even odious to me, to attempt anything of a literary nature,

with any motive of _pecuniary_ advantage; but that I bow to the all-wise

Providence, which has made me a _poor_ man, and therefore compelled me by

other duties inspiring feelings, to bring _even my Intellect to the

Market_. And the finale is this. I should like to attempt the Translation.

If you will mention your terms, at once and irrevocably (for I am an idiot

at bargaining, and shrink from the very thought), I will return an answer

by the next Post, whether in my present circumstances, I can or cannot

undertake it. If I do, I will do it immediately; but I must have all

Goethe’s works, which I cannot procure in Bristol; for to give the “Faust”

without a preliminary critical Essay would be worse than nothing, as far

as regards the PUBLIC. If you were to ask me as a friend whether I think

it would suit _the General Taste_, I should reply that I cannot calculate

on caprice and accident (for instance, some fashionable man or review

happening to take it up favourably), but that otherwise my fears would be

stronger than my hopes. Men of genius will admire it, of necessity. Those

must, who think deepest and most imaginatively. Then “Louisa” would

delight _all_ of good hearts.

I remain, dear sir, with every respect,

S. T. COLERIDGE.

CCII. TO DANIEL STUART.

Mr. Smith’s, Ashley, Box, near Bath,

September 12, 1814.

MY DEAR SIR,--I wrote some time ago to Mr. Smith, earnestly requesting

your address, and entreating him to inform you of the dreadful state in

which I was, when your kind letter must have arrived, during your stay at

Bath.... But let me not complain. I ought to be and I trust I am, grateful

for what I am, having escaped with my intellectual powers, if less

elastic, yet not less vigorous, and with ampler and far more solid

materials to exert them on. We know nothing even of ourselves, till we

know _ourselves_ to be as nothing (a solemn truth, spite of point and

antithesis, in which the thought has chanced to _word_ itself)! From this

_word_ of truth which the sore discipline of a sick bed has compacted into

an indwelling reality, from this article, formerly, of _speculative

belief_, but which [circumstances] have actualised into _practical faith_,

I have learned to counteract calumny by self-reproach, and not only to

rejoice (as indeed from natural disposition, from the very constitution of

my heart, I should have done at all periods of my life) at the temporal

prosperity, and increased and increasing reputation of my old

fellow-labourers in philosophical, political, and poetical literature, but

to bear their neglect, and even their detraction, _as if I had done

nothing at all_, when it would have asked no very violent strain of

recollection for one or two of them to have considered, whether some part

of _their_ most successful _somethings_ were not among the _nothings_ of

my intellectual no-doings. But all strange things are less strange than

the sense of intellectual obligations. Seldom do I ever see a Review, yet

almost as often as that seldomness permits have I smiled at finding myself

attacked in strains of thought which would never have occurred to the

writer, had he not directly or indirectly learned them from myself. This

is among the salutary effects, even of the dawn of actual religion on the

mind, that we begin to reflect on our duties to God and to ourselves as

permanent beings, and not to flatter ourselves by a superficial auditing

of our negative duties to our neighbours, or mere acts _in transitu_ to

the transitory. I have too sad an account to settle between myself that is

and has been, and myself that _can_ not cease to be, to allow me a single

complaint that, for all my labours in behalf of truth against the Jacobin

party, then against military despotism abroad, against weakness and

despondency and faction and factious goodiness at home, I have never

received from those in power even a verbal acknowledgment; though by mere

reference to dates, it might be proved that no small number of fine

speeches in the House of Commons, and elsewhere, originated, directly or

indirectly, in my Essays and conversations.[115] I dare assert, that the

science of reasoning and judging concerning the productions of literature,

the characters and measures of public men, and the events of nations, by a

systematic subsumption of them, under PRINCIPLES, deduced from the nature

of MAN, and that of prophesying concerning the future (in contradiction to

the hopes or fears of the majority) by a careful cross-examination of some

period, the most analogous in past history, as learnt from contemporary

authorities, and the proportioning of the ultimate event to the likenesses

as modified or counteracted by the differences, was as good as unknown in

the public prints, before the year 1795-96. Earl Darnley, on the

appearance of my letters in the “Courier” concerning the Spaniards,[116]

bluntly asked me, whether I had lost my senses, and quoted Lord Grenville

at me. If you should happen to cast your eye over my character of

Pitt,[117] my two letters to Fox, my Essays on the French Empire under

Buonaparte, compared with the Roman, under the first Emperors; that on the

probability of the restoration of the Bourbons, and those on Ireland, and

Catholic Emancipation (which last unfortunately remain for the greater

part in manuscript, Mr. Street not relishing them), and should add to them

my Essays in “The Friend” on Taxation, and the supposed effects of war on

our commercial prosperity; those on international law in defence of our

siege of Copenhagen; and if you had before you the long letter which I

wrote to Sir G. Beaumont in 1806,[118] concerning the inevitableness of a

war with America, and the specific dangers of that war, if not provided

against by specific pre-arrangements; with a list of their Frigates, so

called, with their size, number, and weight of metal, the characters of

their commanders, and the proportion suspected of British seamen.--I have

luckily a copy of it, a rare accident with me.--I dare amuse myself, I

say, with the belief, that by far the better half of all these, would

read to you now, AS HISTORY. And what have I got for all this? What for my

first daring to blow the trumpet of sound philosophy against the

Lancastrian faction? The answer is not complex. Unthanked, and left worse

than defenceless, by the friends of the Government and the Establishment,

to be undermined or outraged by all the malice, hatred, and calumny of its

enemies; and to think and toil, with a patent for all the abuse, and a

transfer to others of all the honours. In the “Quarterly” Review of the

“Remorse” (delayed till it could by no possibility be of the least service

to me, and the compliments in which are as senseless and silly as the

censures; every fault ascribed to it, being either no improbability at

all, or from the very essence and end of the drama no DRAMATIC

improbability, without noticing any one of the REAL faults, and there are

many glaring, and one or two DEADLY sins in the tragedy)--in this Review,

I am abused, and insolently reproved as a man, with reference to my

supposed private habits, for NOT PUBLISHING. Would to heaven I never had!

To this very moment I am embarrassed and tormented, in consequence of the

non-payment of the subscribers to “The Friend.” But I _could_ rebut the

charge; and not merely say, but prove, that there is not a man in England,

whose thoughts, images, words, and erudition have been published in larger

quantities than _mine_; though I must admit, not _by_, or _for_, myself.

Believe me, if I felt any pain from these things, I should not make this

_exposé_; for it is constitutional with me, to _shrink_ from all talk or

communication of what gnaws within me. And, if I felt any real anger, I

should not do what I fully intend to do, publish two long satires, in

Drydenic verse, entitled “Puff and Slander.”[119] But I seem to myself to

have endured the hootings and peltings, and “Go up bald head” (2 Kings,

ch. ii. vs. 23, 24) quite long enough; and shall therefore send forth my

two she-bears, to tear in pieces the most obnoxious of these ragged

CHILDREN in intellect; and to scare the rest of these mischievous little

mud-larks back to their crevice-nests, and lurking holes. While those who

know me best, spite of my many infirmities, love me best, I am determined,

henceforward, to treat my unprovoked enemies in the spirit of the Tiberian

adage, _Oderint modo timeant_.

And now, having for the very first time in my whole life opened out my

whole feelings and thoughts concerning my past fates and fortunes, I will

draw anew on your patience, by a detail of my present operations. My

medical friend is so well satisfied of my convalescence, and that nothing

now remains, but to superinduce _positive_ health on a system from which

disease and its _removable_ causes have been driven out, that he has not

merely consented to, but advised my leaving Bristol, for some rural

retirement. I could indeed pursue nothing uninterruptedly in that city.

Accordingly, I am now joint tenant with Mr. Morgan, of a sweet little

cottage, at Ashley, half a mile from Box, on the Bath road. I breakfast

every morning before nine; work till one, and walk or read till three.

Thence, till tea-time, chat or read some lounge book, or correct what I

have written. From six to eight work again; from eight till bed-time, play

whist, or the little mock billiard called bagatelle, and then sup, and go

to bed. My morning hours, as the longest and most important division, I

keep sacred to my most important Work,[120] which is printing at Bristol;

two of my friends having taken upon themselves the risk. It is so long

since I have conversed with you, that I cannot say, whether the subject

will, or will not be interesting to you. The title is “Christianity, the

one true Philosophy; or, Five Treatises on the Logos, or Communicative

Intelligence, natural, human, and divine.” To which is prefixed a

prefatory Essay, on the laws and limits of toleration and liberality,

illustrated by fragments of AUTO-biography. The _first_ Treatise--Logos

Propaidenticos, or the Science of systematic thinking in ordinary life.

The _second_--Logos Architectonicus, or an attempt to apply the

constructive or Mathematical process to Metaphysics and Natural Theology.

The _third_--Ὁ Λόγος ὁ θεάνθρωπος (the divine logos incarnate)--a full

commentary on the Gospel of St. John, in development of St. Paul’s

doctrine of preaching Christ alone, and Him crucified. The _fourth_--on

Spinoza and Spinozism, with a life of B. Spinoza. This entitled Logos

Agonistes. The _fifth_ and last, Logos Alogos (_i. e._, Logos Illogicus),

or on modern Unitarianism, its causes and effects. The whole will be

comprised in two portly octavos, and the second treatise will be the only

one which will, and from the nature of the subject must, be

unintelligible to the great majority even of well educated readers. The

purpose of the whole is a philosophical defence of the Articles of the

Church, as far as they respect doctrine, as points of faith. If

originality be any merit, this Work will have that, at all events, from

the first page to the last.

The evenings I have employed in composing a series of Essays on the

principles of Genial Criticism concerning the fine Arts, especially those

of Statuary and Painting;[121] and of these four in title, but six or more

in size, have been published in “Felix Farley’s Bristol Journal;” a

strange plan for such a publication; but my motive was originally to serve

poor Allston, who is now exhibiting his pictures at Bristol. Oh! dear sir!

do pray if you have the power or opportunity use your influence with “The

Sun,” not to continue that accursed system of calumny and detraction

against Allston. The articles, by whomever written, were a disgrace to

human nature, and, to my positive knowledge, argued only less ignorance

than malignity. Mr. Allston has been cruelly used. Good God! what did I

not hear Sir George Beaumont say, with my own ears! Nay, he wrote to me

after repeated examination of Allston’s great picture, declaring himself a

complete convert to all my opinions of Allston’s paramount genius as a

historical painter. What did I not hear Mr. West say? After a full hour’s

examination of the picture, he pointed out _one_ thing he thought out of

harmony (and which against my earnest desire Allston altered and had

reason to repent sorely) and then said, “I have shot my bolt. It is as

near perfection as a picture can be!”...

But to return to my Essays. I shall publish no more in Bristol. What they

could do, they have done. But I have carefully corrected and polished

those already published, and shall carry them on to sixteen or twenty,

containing animated descriptions of all the best pictures of the great

masters in England, with characteristics of the great masters from Giotto

to Correggio. The first three Essays were of necessity more austere; for

till it could be determined what _beauty_ was; whether it was beauty

merely because it pleased, or pleased because it was beauty, it would have

been as absurd to talk of general principles of taste, as of tastes. Now

will this series, purified from all accidental, local, or personal

references, tint or serve the “Courier” in the present dearth? I have no

hesitation in declaring them the best compositions _I_ have ever written,

I could regularly supply two Essays a week, and one political Essay. Be so

good as to speak to Mr. Street.[122] I could send him up eight or ten at

once.

Make my best respects to Mrs. Stuart. I shall be very anxious to hear from

you.

Your affectionate and grateful friend,

S. T. COLERIDGE.

CCIII. TO THE SAME.

“October 30, 1814.”

DEAR STUART,--After I had finished the third letter,[123] I thought it the

best I had ever written; but, on re-perusal, I perfectly agree with you.

It is misty, and like most misty compositions, _laborious_,--what the

Italians call FATICOSO. I except the two last paragraphs (“In this guise

my Lord,” to--“aversabitur”). These I still like. Yet what I _wanted_ to

say is very important, because it strikes at the ROOT of all LEGISLATIVE

Jacobinism. The view which our laws take of robbery, and even murder, not

as GUILT of which God alone is presumed to be the Judge, but as CRIMES

depriving the _King_ of one of _his_ subjects, rendering dangerous and

abating the value of the King’s Highways, etc., may suggest some notion of

my meaning. Jack, Tom, and Harry have no existence in the eye of the law,

except as included in some form or other of the PERMANENT PROPERTY of the

realm. Just as, on the other hand, Religion has nothing to do with Ranks,

Estates, or Offices; but exerts itself wholly on what is PERSONAL, viz.,

our souls, consciences, and the MORALITY of our actions, as opposed to

mere legality. Ranks, Estates, Offices, etc., were _made_ for _persons_!

exclaims Major Cartwright[124] and his partizans. Yes, I reply, as far as

the DIVINE administration is concerned, but _human_ jurisprudence, wisely

aware of its own weakness, and sensible how incommensurate its powers are

with so vast an object as the well-being of individuals, as individuals,

reverses the position, and knows nothing of persons, other than as

properties, officiaries, subjects. The preambles of our old statutes

concerning aliens (as foreign merchants) and Jews, are all so many

illustrations of my principle; the strongest instance of opposition to

which, and therefore characteristic of the present age, was the attempt to

legislate for animals by Lord Erskine;[125] that is, not merely

interfering with persons as persons; or with what are called by moralists

the imperfect duties (a very obscure phrase for obligations of conscience,

not capable of being realized (_perfecta_) by legal penalties), but

extending PERSONALITY to _things_.

In saying this, I mean only to designate the general spirit of human law.

Every principle, on its application to practice, must be limited and

modified by circumstances; our reason by our common sense. Still, however,

the PRINCIPLE is most important, as aim, rule, and guide. Guided by this

spirit, our ancestors repealed the Puritan Law, by which adultery was to

be punished with death, and brought it back to a civil damage. So, too,

actions for seduction. Not that the Judge or Legislator did not feel the

guilt of such crimes, but that the _Law_ knows nothing about guilt. So, in

the Exchequer, common debts are sued for on the plea that the creditor is

less able to pay our Lord the King, etc., etc. Now, contrast with this,

the preamble to the first French Constitution, and I think my meaning will

become more intelligible; that the pretence of considering persons not

states, happiness not property, always has ended, and always will end, in

making a new STATE, or corporation, infinitely more oppressive than the

former; and in which the real freedom of persons is as much less, as the

things interfered with are more numerous, and more minute. Compare the

duties, exacted from a United Irishman by the Confederacy, with those

required of him by the law of the land. This, I think, not ill expressed,

in the two last periods of the fourth paragraph. “Thus in order to

sacrifice ... confederation.”

Of course I immediately recognised your hand in the Article concerning the

“Edinburgh Review,” and much pleased I was with it; and equally so in

finding, from your letter, that we had so completely coincided in our

feelings, concerning that wicked Lord Nelson Article.[126] If there be one

thing on earth that can outrage an honest man’s feelings, it is the

assumption of austere morality for the purposes of personal slander. And

the gross ingratitude of the attack! In the name of God what have we to do

with Lord Nelson’s mistresses, or domestic quarrels? Sir A. Ball, himself

exemplary in this respect, told me of his own personal knowledge Lady

Nelson was enough to drive any man wild.... She had no sympathy with his

acute sensibilities, and his alienation was effected, though not shown,

before he knew Lady Hamilton, by being _heart starved_, still more than by

being teased and tormented by her sullenness. Observe that Sir A. Ball

detested Lady Hamilton. To the same enthusiastic sensibilities which made

a fool of him with regard to his Emma, his country owed the victories of

the Nile, Copenhagen, and Trafalgar, and the heroic spirit of all the

officers reared under him.