MY DEAR NEPHEW,--I need not tell you that no attention in my power to

offer shall be wanting to Dr. Reich. As a foreigner and a man of letters

he might claim this in his own right; and that he came from you would have

ensured it, even though he had been a Frenchman. But that he is a German,

and that you think him a worthy and deserving man, and that his lot, like

my own, has been cast on the bleak north side of the mountain, make me

reflect with pain on the little influence I possess, and the all but

_zero_ of my direct means, to serve or to assist him. The prejudices

excited against me by Jeffrey, combining with the mistaken notion of my

German Metaphysics to which (I am told) some passages in some biographical

gossip book about Lord Byron[196] have given fresh currency, have rendered

my authority with the _Trade_ worse than nothing. Of the three schemes of

philosophy, Kant’s, Fichte’s, and Schelling’s (as diverse each from the

other as those of Aristotle, Zeno, and Plotinus, though all crushed

together under the name Kantean Philosophy in the English talk) I should

find it difficult to select the one from which I _differed_ the most,

though perfectly easy to determine which of the three _men_ I hold in

highest honour. And Immanuel Kant I assuredly do value most highly; not,

however, as a metaphysician, but as a logician who has completed and

systematised what Lord Bacon had boldly designed and loosely sketched out

in the Miscellany of Aphorisms, his Novum Organum. In Kant’s “Critique of

the Pure Reason” there is more than one fundamental error; but the main

fault lies in the title-page, which to the manifold advantage of the work

might be exchanged for “An Inquisition respecting the Constitution and

Limits of the Human Understanding.” I can not only honestly assert, but I

can satisfactorily prove by reference to writings (Letters, Marginal

Notes, and those in books that have never been in my possession since I

first left England for Hamburgh, etc.) that all the elements, the

_differentials_, as the algebraists say, of my present opinions existed

for me before I had even seen a book of German Metaphysics, later than

Wolf and Leibnitz, or could have read it, if I had. But what will this

avail? A High German Transcendentalist I must be content to remain, and a

young American painter, Leslie (pupil and friend of a very dear friend of

mine, Allston), to whom I have been in the habit for ten years and more of

shewing as cordial regards as I could to a near relation, has, I find,

introduced a portrait of me in a picture from Sir W. Scott’s “Antiquary,”

as Dr. Duster Swivil, or whatever his name is.[197] Still, however, I will

make any attempt to serve Dr. Reich, which he may point out and which, I

am not sure, would dis-serve him! I do not, of course, know what command

he has over the English language. If he wrote it fluently, I should think

that it would answer to any one of our great publishers to engage him in

the translation of the best and cheapest Natural History in existence,

viz., Okens, in three thick octavo volumes, containing the inorganic

world, and the animals from the Πρωτόζωα and animalcula of Infusions, to

man. The Botany was not published two years ago. Whether it is now I do

not know. There is one thin quarto of plates. It is by far the most

entertaining as well as instructive book of the kind I ever saw; and with

a few notes and the omission (or castigation) of one or two of Oken’s

adventurous whimsies, would be a valuable addition to our English

literature. So much for this.

I will not disguise from you, my dearest nephew, that the first certain

information of your having taken the “Quarterly”[198] gave me a pain,

which it required all my confidence in the soundness of your judgement to

counteract. I had long before by conversation with experienced barristers

got rid of all apprehension of its being likely to injure you

professionally. My fears were directed to the _invidiousness_ of the

situation, it being the notion of publishers that without satire and

sarcasm no review can obtain or keep up a sale. Perhaps pride had some

concern in it. _For_ myself I have none, probably because I had time out

of mind given it up as a lost cause, given myself over, I mean, a

predestined author, though without a drop of true _author_ blood in my

veins. But a pride in and for the name of my father’s house I have, and

those with whom I live know that it is never more than a dog-sleep, and

apt to _start up_ on the slight alarms. Now, though very sillily, I felt

pain at the notion of any _comparisons_ being drawn between _you_ (to whom

with your sister my heart pulls the strongest) and Mr. Gifford, even

though they should be [to] your advantage; and still more, the thought

that ... Murray should be or hold himself entitled to have and express an

opinion on the subject. The insolence of one of his proposals to me, viz.,

that he would publish an edition of my Poems, on the condition that a

gentleman in his confidence (Mr. Milman![199] I understand) was to select,

and make such omissions and corrections as should be thought

advisable--this, which offered to myself excited only a smile in which

there was nothing sardonic, might very possibly have rendered me sorer and

more sensitive when I boded even an infinitesimal _ejusdem farinæ_ in

connection with you.

But henceforward I shall look at the thing in a sunnier mood. Mr. Frere is

strongly impressed with the importance and even dignity of the trust, and

on the power you have of gradually giving a steadier and manlier tone to

the feelings and principles of the higher classes. But I hope very soon to

converse with you on this subject, as soon as I have finished my Essay for

the Literary Society, (in which I flatter myself I have thrown some light

on the passages in Herodotus respecting the derivation of the Greek

Mythology from Egypt, and in what respect that paragraph respecting Homer

and Hesiod is to be understood), and have, likewise, got my “Aids to

Reflection” out of the Press. But I have more to do for the necessities of

the day, and which are _Nos non nobis_, than I can well manage so as to go

on with my own works, though I work from morning to night, as far as my

health admits and the loss of my friendly amanuensis. For the slowness

with which I get on with the pen in my own hand contrasts most strangely

with the rapidity with which I dictate. Your kind letter of invitation did

not reach me, but there was one which I ought to have answered long ago,

which came while I was at Ramsgate. We have had a continued succession of

illness in our family here, at one time six persons confined to their

beds. I have been sadly afraid that we should lose Mrs. Gillman, who would

be a loss indeed to the whole neighbourhood, young and old. But she seems,

thank God! to recover strength, though slowly. As I hope to write again in

a few days with my book, I shall now desire my cordial regards to Mrs. J.

Coleridge, and with my affectionate love to the little ones.

With the warmest interest of affection and esteem, I am, my dear John,

your sincere friend,

S. T. COLERIDGE.

J. T. COLERIDGE, Esq., 65, Torrington Square.

CCXL. TO THE REV. EDWARD COLERIDGE.

May 19, 1825.

MY VERY DEAR NEPHEW,--You have left me under a painful and yet genial

feeling of regret, that my lot in life has hitherto so much estranged me

from the children of the sons of my father, that venerable countenance

and name which form my earliest recollections and _make them religious_.

It is not in my power to express adequately so as to convey it to others

what a revolution has taken place in my mind since I have seen your

sister, and John, and Henry, and lastly yourself. Yet revolution is not

the word I want. It is rather the sudden evolution of a seed that had sunk

too deep for the warmth and exciting air to reach, but which a casual

spade had turned up and brought close to the surface, and I now _know_ the

meaning as well as feel the _truth_ of the Scottish proverb, Blood is

thicker than water.

My book will be _out_ on Monday next, and Mr. Hessey hopes that he shall

be able to have a copy ready for me by to-morrow afternoon, so that I may

present it to the Bishop of London, whom (at his own request Lady B. tells

me) with his angel-faced wife and Miss Howley[200] I am to meet at Sir

George’s to-morrow at six o’clock. There are many on whose sincerity and

goodness of heart I can rely. There are several in whose judgement and

knowledge of the world I have greater trust than in my own. And among

these few John Coleridge ranks foremost. It was, therefore, an

indescribable comfort to me to hear from him, that the first draft of my

“Aids to Reflection,” that is, all he had yet seen, had delighted him

_beyond measure_. I can with severest truth declare that half a score

flaming panegyrical reviews in as many works of periodical criticism would

not have given me half the pleasure, nor one quarter the satisfaction.

I dine D. V. on Saturday next in Torrington Square, when doubtless we

shall drink your health with appropriate adjuncts. Yesterday I had to

inflict an hour and twenty-five minutes’ essay full of Greek and

superannuated Metaphysics on the ears of the Royal Society of Literature,

the subject being the Prometheus of Æschylus deciphered in proof and as

instance of the connection of the Greek Drama with the Mysteries.[201]

“Douce take it” (as Charles Lamb says in his Superannuated Man) if I did

not feel remorseful pity for my audience all the time. For, at the very

best, it was a thing to be read, not to read. God bless you or I shall be

too late for the post.

Your affectionate uncle,

S. T. COLERIDGE.

P. S. I went yesterday to the Exhibition, and hastily “thrid” the

labyrinth of the dense huddle, for the sole purpose of seeing our Bishop’s

portrait.[202] My own by the same artist is very much better, though even

in this the smile is exaggerated. But Fanny and your mother were in

raptures with it while they too seemed very cold in their praise of

William’s.

CCXLI. TO DANIEL STUART.

Postmark, July 9, 1825.

MY DEAR SIR,--The bad weather had so far damped my expectations, that,

though I regretted, I did not feel any disappointment at your not coming.

And yet I hope you will remember our Highgate Thursday conversation

evenings on your return to town; because, if you come once, I flatter

myself, you will afterwards be no unfrequent visitor.

At least, I have never been at any of the town conversazioni, literary, or

artistical, in which the conversation has been more miscellaneous without

degenerating into _pinches_, a pinch of this, and a pinch of that, without

the least connection between the subjects, and with as little interest.

You will like Irving as a companion and a converser even more than you

admire him as a preacher. He has a vigorous and (what is always pleasant)

a GROWING mind, and his character is MANLY throughout. There is one thing,

too, that I cannot help considering as a recommendation to our evenings,

that, in addition to a few ladies and pretty lasses, we have seldom more

than five or six in company, and these generally of as many professions or

pursuits. A few weeks ago we had present, two painters, two poets, one

divine, an eminent chemist and naturalist, a major, a naval captain and

voyager, a physician, a colonial chief justice, a barrister, and a

baronet; and this was the most numerous meeting we ever had.

It would more than gratify me to know from you, what the impressions are

which my “Aids to Reflection” make on your judgment. The conviction

respecting the character of the times expressed in the _comment_ on Aph.

vi., page 147, contains the aim and object of the whole book. I venture to

direct your notice particularly to the note, page 204 to 207, to the note

to page 218, and to the sentences respecting common sense in the last

twelve lines of page 252, and the _conclusion_, page 377.

Lady Beaumont writes me that the Bishop of London has expressed a _most_

favourable opinion of the book; and Blanco White was sufficiently struck

with it, as immediately to purchase all my works that are in print, and

has procured from Sir George Beaumont an introduction to me. It is well I

should have some one to speak for it, for I am unluckily ill off ... and

you will easily see what a chance a poor book of mine has in these days.

Such has been the influence of the “Edinburgh Review” that in all

Edinburgh not a single copy of Wordsworth’s works or of any part of them

could be procured a few months ago. The only copy Irving saw in Scotland

belonged to a poor weaver at Paisley, who prized them next to his Bible,

and had all the Lyrical Ballads by heart--a fact which would cut Jeffrey’s

conscience to the bone, if he had any. I give you my honour that Jeffrey

himself told me that _he_ was himself an enthusiastic admirer of

Wordsworth’s poetry, but it was necessary that a Review should have a

character.

Forgive this egotism, and be pleased to remember me kindly and with my

best respects to Mrs. Stuart, and with every cordial wish and prayer for

you and yours, be assured that I am your obliged and affectionate friend,

S. T. COLERIDGE.

Friday, July 8, 1825.

CCXLII. TO JAMES GILLMAN.

[8 Plains of Waterloo, Ramsgate,]

October 10, 1825.

MY DEAR FRIEND,--It is a flat’ning thought that the more we have seen, the

less we have to say. In youth and early manhood the mind and nature are,

as it were, two rival artists both potent magicians, and engaged, like the

King’s daughter and the rebel genii in the Arabian Nights’ Entertainments,

in sharp conflict of conjuration, each having for its object to turn the

other into canvas to paint on, clay to mould, or cabinet to contain. For a

while the mind seems to have the better in the contest, and makes of

Nature what it likes, takes her lichens and weather-stains for types and

printers’ ink, and prints maps and facsimiles of Arabic and Sanscrit MSS.

on her rocks; composes country dances on her moonshiny ripples, fandangos

on her waves, and waltzes on her eddy-pools, transforms her summer gales

into harps and harpers, lovers’ sighs and sighing lovers, and her winter

blasts into Pindaric Odes, Christabels, and Ancient Mariners set to music

by Beethoven, and in the insolence of triumph conjures her clouds into

whales and walruses with palanquins on their backs, and chases the dodging

stars in a sky-hunt! But alas! alas! that Nature is a wary wily

long-breathed old witch, tough-lived as a turtle and divisible as the

polyp, repullulative in a thousand snips and cuttings, _integra et in

toto_. She is sure to get the better of Lady _Mind_ in the long run and to

take her revenge too; transforms our to-day into a canvas dead-coloured to

receive the dull, featureless portrait of yesterday: not alone turns the

mimic mind, the ci-devant sculptress with all her kaleidoscopic freaks and

symmetries! into clay, but _leaves_ it such a _clay_ to cast dumps or

bullets in; and lastly (to end with that which suggested the beginning)

she mocks the mind with its own metaphor, metamorphosing the memory into a

_lignum vitæ_ escritoire to keep unpaid bills and dun’s letters in, with

outlines that had never been filled up, MSS. that never went further than

the title-pages, and proof sheets, and foul copies of Watchmen, Friends,

Aids to Reflection, and other _stationary_ wares that have kissed the

publishers’ shelf with all the tender intimacy of inosculation! Finis! and

what is all this about? Why, verily, my dear friend! the thought forced

itself on me, as I was beginning to put down the first sentence of this

letter, how impossible it would have been fifteen or even ten years ago

for me to have travelled and voyaged by land, river, and sea a hundred and

twenty miles with fire and water blending their souls for my propulsion,

as if I had been riding on a centaur with a sopha for a saddle, and yet to

have nothing more to tell of it than that we had a very fine day and ran

aside the steps in Ramsgate Pier at half-past four exactly, all having

been well except poor Harriet, who during the middle third of the voyage

fell into a reflecting melancholy.... She looked pathetic, but I cannot

affirm that I observed anything sympathetic in the countenances of her

fellow-passengers, which drew forth a sigh from me and a sage remark how

many of our virtues originate in the fear of death, and that while we

flatter ourselves that we are melting in Christian sensibility over the

sorrows of our human brethren and sisteren, we are in fact, though perhaps

unconsciously, moved at the prospect of our own end. For who ever

sincerely pities seasickness, toothache, or a fit of the gout in a lusty

good liver of fifty?

What have I to say? We have received the snuff, for which I thank your

providential memory.... To Margate, and saw the caverns, as likewise smelt

the same, called on Mr. Bailey, and got the Novum Organum. In my hurry, I

scrambled up the Blackwood instead of a volume of Giovanni Battista Vico,

which I left on the table in my room, and forgot my sponge and sponge-bag

of oiled silk. But perhaps when I sit down to work, I may have to request

something to be sent, which may come with them. I therefore defer it till

then....

God bless you, my dear friend! You will soon hear again from

S. T. COLERIDGE.

CCXLIII. TO THE REV. EDWARD COLERIDGE.

December 9, 1825.

MY DEAR EDWARD,--I write merely to tell you, that I have secured Charles

Lamb and Mr. Irving to meet you, and wait only to learn the day for the

endeavour to induce Mr. Blanco White to join us. Will you present Mr. and

Mrs. Gillman’s regards to your brothers Henry and John, and that they

would be most happy if both or either would be induced to accompany you?

I have had a very interesting conversation with Irving this evening on the

present condition of the Scottish Church, the spiritual life of which,

yea, the very core he describes as in a state of ossification. The greater

part of the Scottish clergy, he complains, have lost the _unction_ of

their own church without acquiring the erudition and accomplishments of

ours. Their sermons are all dry theological arguing and disputing,

lifeless, pulseless,--a rushlight in a fleshless skull.

My kindest love to your sister, and kisses, prayers, and blessings for the

little one.

[S. T. COLERIDGE.]

Thursday midnight.

I almost despair of John’s coming; but do persuade Henry if you can. I

quite long to see him again.

CCXLIV. TO MRS. GILLMAN.

May 3, 1827.

MY DEAR FRIEND,--I received and acknowledge your this morning’s present

both as plant and symbol, and with appropriate thanks and correspondent

feeling. The rose is the pride of summer, the delight and the beauty of

our gardens; the eglantine, the honeysuckle, and the jasmine, if not so

bright or so ambrosial, are less transient, creep nearer to us, clothe our

walls, twine over our porch, and haply peep in at our chamber window, with

the crested wren or linnet within the tufts wishing good morning to us.

Lastly the geranium passes the door, and in its hundred varieties

imitating now this now that leaf, odour, blossom of the garden, still

steadily retains its own _staid_ character, its own sober and refreshing

hue and fragrance. It deserves to be the inmate of the house, and with due

attention and tenderness will live through the winter grave yet cheerful,

as an old family friend, that makes up for the departure of gayer

visitors, in the leafless season. But none of these are the _myrtle_![203]

In none of these, nor in all collectively, will the _myrtle_ find a

substitute. All together and joining with them all the aroma, the spices,

and the balsams of the hot-house, yet would they be a sad exchange for the

_myrtle_! Oh, precious in its sweetness is the _rich_ innocence of its

snow-white blossoms! And dear are they in the remembrance; but these may

pass with the season, and while the myrtle plant, our own myrtle plant

remains unchanged, its blossoms are remembered the more to endear the

faithful bearer; yea, they survive invisibly in every _more than_ fragrant

leaf. As the flashing strains of the nightingale to the yearning murmurs

of the dove, so the myrtle to the rose! He who has once possessed and

prized a genuine _myrtle_ will rather _remember_ it under the cypress tree

than seek to _forget_ it among the rose bushes of a paradise.

God bless you, my dearest friend, and be assured that if death do not

suspend memory and consciousness, death itself will not deprive you of a

faithful participator in all your hopes and fears, affections and

solicitudes, in your unalterable

S. T. COLERIDGE.

[Illustration]

CCXLV. TO THE REV. GEORGE MAY COLERIDGE.

Monday, January 14, 1828.

MY DEAR NEPHEW,--An interview with your cousin Henry on Saturday and a

note received from him last night had enabled me in some measure to

prepare my mind for the awful and _humanly_ afflicting contents of your

letter, and I rose to the receiving of it from earnest suplication to “the

Father of Mercies and God of all Comfort”--that He would be strong in the

weakness of His faithful servant, and his effectual helper in the last

conflict. My first impulse on reading your letter was to set off

immediately, but on a re-perusal, I doubt whether I shall not better

comply with your suggestion by waiting for your next. Assuredly, if God

permit I will not forego the claim, which my heart and conscience justify

me in making, to be one among the mourners who ever truly loved and

honoured your father. Allow me, my dear nephew, in the swelling grief of

my heart to say, that if ever man morning and evening and in the watches

of the night had earnestly intreated through his Lord and Mediator, that

God would shew him his sins and their sinfulness, I, for the last ten

years at least of my life, have done so! But, in vain, have I tried to

recall any one moment since my quitting the University, or any one

occasion, in which I have either thought, felt, spoken, or intentionally

acted of or in relation to my brother, otherwise than as one who loved in

him father and brother in one, and who independent of the fraternal

relation and the remembrance of his manifold goodness and kindness to me

from boyhood to early manhood should have chosen him above all I had known

as the friend of my inmost soul. Never have man’s feeling and character

been more cruelly misrepresented than mine. Before God have I sinned, and

I have not hidden my offences before him; but He too knows that the belief

of my brother’s alienation and the grief that I was a stranger in the

house of my second father has been the secret wound that to this hour

never closed or healed up. Yes, my dear nephew! I do grieve, and at this

moment I have to struggle hard in order to keep my spirit in tranquillity,

as one who has long since referred his cause to God, through the grief at

my little communication with my family. Had it been otherwise, I might

have been able to shew myself, my _whole_ self, for evil and for good to

my brother, and often have said to myself, “How fearful an attribute to

sinful man is Omniscience!” and yet have I earnestly wished, oh, how many

times! that my brother could have seen my inmost heart, with every thought

and every frailty. But his reward is nigh: in the light and love of his

Lord and Saviour he will soon be all light and love, and I too shall have

his prayers before the throne. May the Almighty and the Spirit the

Comforter dwell in your and your mother’s spirit. I must conclude. Only,

if I come and it should please God that your dear father shall be still

awaiting his Redeemer’s final call, I shall be perfectly satisfied in all

things to be directed by you and your mother, who will judge best whether

the knowledge of my arrival though without seeing him would or would not

be a satisfaction, would or would not be a disturbance to him.

Your affectionate uncle,

S. T. COLERIDGE.

Grove, Highgate.

Rev. GEORGE MAY COLERIDGE,

Warden House, Ottery St. Mary, Devon.

CCXLVI. TO GEORGE DYER.[204]

June 6, 1828.

My dear long known, and long loved friend,--Be assured that neither Mr.

Irving nor any other person, high or low, gentle or simple, stands higher

in my esteem or bears a name endeared to me by more interesting

recollections and associations than yourself; and if gentle man or gentle

woman, taking too literally the partial portraiture of a friend, has a

mind to see the old lion in his sealed cavern, no more potent “Open,

Sesame, Open” will be found than an introduction from George Dyer, my

elder brother under many titles--brother Blue, brother Grecian, brother

Cantab, brother Poet, and last best form of fraternity, a man who has

never in his long life, by tongue or pen, uttered what he did not believe

to be the truth (from any motive) or concealed what he did conceive to be

such from other motives than those of tenderness for the feelings of

others, and a conscientious fear lest what was truly said might be falsely

interpreted,--in all these points I dare claim brotherhood with my old

friend (not omitting grey hairs, which are venerable), but in one point,

the long toilsome life of inexhaustible, unsleeping benevolence and

beneficence, that slept only when there was no form or semblance of

sentient life to awaken it, George Dyer must stand alone! He may have a

few second cousins, but no full brother.

Now, with regard to your friends, I shall be happy to see them on any day

they may find to suit their or your convenience, from twelve (I am not

ordinarily visible before, or if the outward man were forced to make his

appearance, yet from sundry bodily infirmities, my soul would present

herself with unwashed face) till four, that is, after Monday next,--we

having at present a servant ill in bed, you must perforce be content with

a sandwich lunch or a glass of wine.

But if you could make it suit you to take your tea, an early tea, at or

before six o’clock, and spend the evening, a long evening, with us on

Thursday next, Mr. and Mrs. Gillman will be most happy to see you and Mrs.

Dyer, with your friends, and you will probably meet some old friend of

yours. On Thursday evening, indeed, at any time, between half-past five

and eleven, you may be sure of finding us at home, and with a very fair

chance of Basil Montagu taking you and Mrs. Dyer back in his coach.

I have long owed you a letter, and should have long since honestly paid my

debt; but we have had a house of sickness. My own health, too, has been

very crazy and out of repair, and I have had so much work accumulated on

me that I have been like an overtired man roused from insufficient sleep,

who sits on his bedside with one stocking on and the other in his hand,

doing nothing, and thinking what a deal he has to do.

But I am ever, sick or well, weary or lively, my dear Dyer, your sincere

and affectionate friend,

S. T. COLERIDGE.

CCXLVII. TO GEORGE CATTERMOLE.[205]

GROVE, HIGHGATE, Thursday, August 14, 1828.

MY DEAR SIR,--I have but this moment received yours of the 13th, and

though there are but ten minutes in my power, if I am to avail myself of

this day’s post, I will rather send you a very brief than not an immediate

answer. I shall be much gratified by standing beside the baptismal font as

one of the sponsors of the little pilgrim at his inauguration into the

rights and duties of Immortality, and he shall not want my prayers, nor

aught else that shall be within my power, to assist him in _becoming_ that

of which the Great Sponsor who brought light and immortality into the

world has declared him an emblem.

There are one or two points of character belonging to me, so, at least, I

believe and trust, which I would gladly communicate with the

name,--earnest love of Truth for its own sake, and steadfast convictions

grounded on faith, not fear, that the religion into which I was baptised

is the Truth, without which all other knowledge ceases to merit the

appellation. As to other things, which yet I most sincerely wish for him,

a more promising augury might be derived from other individuals of the

Coleridge race.

_Any_ day, that you and your dear wife (to whom present my kindest

remembrances and congratulations) shall find convenient, will suit me, if

only you will be so good as to give me two or three days’ knowledge of it.

Believe me, my dear sir, with sincere respect and regard,

Your obliged

S. T. COLERIDGE.

P. S. I returned from my seven weeks’ Continental tour with Mr. Wordsworth

and his daughter this day last week. We saw the Rhine as high up as

Bingen, Holland, and the Netherlands.

CCXLVIII. TO J. H. GREEN.

GROVE, HIGHGATE, June 1, 1830.

MY DEAR FRIEND,--Do you happen among your acquaintances and connections to

know any one who knows any one who knows Sir Francis Freeling of the Post

Office sufficiently to be authorised to speak a recommendatory word to

him? Our Harriet,[206] whose love and willing-mindedness to _me_-ward

during my long chain of bodily miserablenesses render it my duty no less

than my inclination to shew to her that I am not insensible of her humbly

affectionate attentions, has applied to me in behalf of her brother, a

young man who can have an excellent character, from Lord Wynford and

others, for sobriety, integrity, and discretion, and who is exceedingly

ambitious to get the situation of a postman or deliverer of letters to the

General Post Office. Perhaps, before I see you next, you will be so good

as to tumble over the names of your acquaintances, and if any connection

of Sir Francis’ should turn up, to tell me, and if it be right and proper,

to make my request and its motive.

Dr. Chalmers with his daughter and his very pleasing wife honoured me with

a call this morning, and spent an hour with me, which the good doctor

declared on parting to have been “_a refreshment_” such as he had not

enjoyed for a long season.[207] N. B.--There were no sandwiches; only Mrs.

Aders was present, who is most certainly a _bonne bouche_ for both eye and

ear, and who looks as bright and sunshine-showery as if nothing had ever

ailed her. The main topic of our discourse was Mr. Irving and his unlucky

phantasms and phantis(ms). I was on the point of telling Dr. Chalmers, but

fortunately recollected there were ladies and _Scotch_ ladies present,

that, while other Scotchmen were content with brimstone for the itch,

Irving had a rank itch for brimstone, new-sublimated by addition of fire.

God bless you and your

Ever obliged and affectionate friend,

S. T. COLERIDGE.

30 May? or 1 June? at all events.

Monday night, 11 o’clock.

P. S.--Kind remembrances to Mrs. Green. I continue pretty well, on the

whole, _considering_, save the soreness across the base of my chest.

CCXLIX. TO THOMAS POOLE.

1830.

MY DEAR POOLE,--Mr. Stutfield Junr.[208] has been so kind as to inform me

of his father’s purposed journey to Stowey, and to give me this

opportunity of writing; though in fact I have little _pleasant_ to say,

except that I am advancing regularly and steadily towards the completion

of my Opus Magnum on Revelation and Christianity, the Reservoir of my

reflections and reading for twenty-five years past, and in health not

painfully worse. I do not know, however, that I should have troubled you

with a letter merely to convey this piece of information, but I have a

great favour to request of you; that is, that, supposing you to have still

in your possession the two letters of the biography of my own childhood

which I wrote at Stowey for you, and a copy of the letter from Germany

containing the account of my journey to the Harz and my ascent of Mount

Brocken, you would have them transcribed, and send me the transcript

addressed to me, James Gillman’s Esq., Highgate, London.

O that riches would but make wings for me instead of for itself, and I

would fly to the seashore at Porlock and Lynmouth, making a good halt at

dear, ever fondly remembered Stowey, of which, believe me, your image and

the feelings and associations connected therewith constitute four fifths,

to, my dear Poole,

Your obliged and affectionate friend,

S. T. COLERIDGE.

CCL. TO MRS. GILLMAN.

1830.

DEAR MRS. GILLMAN,--Wife of the friend who has been more than a brother to

me, and who have month after month, yea, hour after hour, for how many

successive years, united in yourself the affections and offices of an

anxious friend and tender sister to me-ward!

May the Father of Mercies, the God of Health and all Salvation, be your

reward for your great and constant love and loving-kindness to me, abiding

with you and within you, as the Spirit of guidance, support, and

consolation! And may his Grace and gracious Providence bless James and

Henry for your sake, and make them a blessing to you and their father! And

though weighed down by a heavy presentiment respecting my own sojourn

here, I not only hope but have a steadfast faith that God will be your

reward, because your love to me from first to last has begun in, and been

caused by, what appeared to _you_ a translucence of the love of the good,

the true, and the beautiful from within me,--as a relic of glory gleaming

through the turbid shrine of my mortal imperfections and infirmities, as a

Light of Life seen within “the body of this Death,”--because in loving me

you loved our Heavenly Father reflected in the gifts and influences of His

Holy Spirit!

S. T. COLERIDGE.

CCLI. TO J. H. GREEN.

December 15, 1831.

MY DEAR FRIEND,--It is at least a fair moiety of the gratification I feel,

that it will give _you_ so much pleasure to hear from me, that I _tacked_

about on Monday, continued in smooth water during the whole day, and with

exceptions of about an hour’s _muttering_, as if a storm was coming, had a

comfortable night. I was still better on Tuesday, and had no relapse

yesterday. I have so repeatedly given and suffered disappointment, that I

cannot even communicate this gleam of convalescence without a little

fluttering distinctly felt at my heart, and a sort of cloud-shadow of

dejection flitting over me. God knows with what aims, motives, and

aspirations I pray for an interval of ease and competent strength! One of

my present wishes is to form a better nomenclature or terminology. I have

long felt the exceeding inconvenience of the many different meanings of

the term _objective_,--sometimes equivalent to apparent or sensible,

sometimes in opposition to it,--_ex. gr._ “The objectivity is the rain

drops and the reflected light, the iris, is but an appearance.” Thus,

sometimes it means real and sometimes unreal, and the worst is, that it

forms an obstacle to the fixation of the great truth, that the perfect

reality is predicable only where actual and real are terms of identity,

that is, where there is no _potential_ being, and that this alone is

absolute reality; and further, of that most fundamental truth, that the

_ground_ of _all_ reality, the objective no less than of the subjective,

is the _Absolute Subject_. How to get out of the difficulty I do not know,

save that some other term must be used as the antithet to phenomenal,

perhaps noumenal.

James Gillman has passed an unusually strict and long examination for

ordination with great credit, and was selected by the bishop to read the

lessons in the service. The parents are, of course, delighted, and now, my

dear friend, with affectionate remembrances to Mrs. Green, may God bless

you and

S. T. COLERIDGE.

CCLII. TO HENRY NELSON COLERIDGE.[209]

THE GROVE, February 24, 1832.

My dear Nephew, and by a higher tie, Son, I thank God I have this day been

favoured with such a mitigation of the disease as amounts to a reprieve,

and have had ease enough of sensation to be able to think of what you said

to me from Lockhart, and the result is a wish that you should--that is, if

it appears right to you, and you have no objection of feeling--write for

me to Professor Wilson, offering the Essays, and the motives for the wish

to have them republished, with the authority (if there be no breach of

confidence) of Mr. Lockhart. I cannot with propriety offer them to

_Fraser_, having for a series of years received “Blackwood’s Magazine” as

a free gift to me, _until_ I have made the offer to Blackwood. Of course,

my whole and only object is the desire to see them put into the

possibility of becoming useful. But, oh! this is a faint desire, my dear

Henry, compared with that of seeing a fair abstract of the principles I

have advanced respecting the National Church and its revenue, and the

National Clerisy as a coördinate of the State, in the minor and antithetic

sense of the term State!

I almost despair of the Conservative Party, too truly, I fear, and most

ominously, self-designated _Tories_, and of course half-truthmen! One main

omission both of senators and writers has been, ὡς ἔμοιγε δοκεῖ, that they

have forgotten to level the axe of their argument at the root, the true

root, yea, trunk of the delusion, by pointing out the true nature and

operation and _modus operandi_ of the taxes in the first instance, and

_then_ and not till then the utter groundlessness, the absurdity of the

presumption that any House of Commons formed otherwise, and consisting of

other men of other ranks, other views or with other interests, than the

present has been for the last twenty years at least, would or could (from

any imaginable cause) have a deeper interest or a stronger desire to

diminish the taxes, as far as the abolition of this or that tax would

increase the ability to pay the remainder. For what are taxes but one of

the forms of circulation? Some a nation must have, or it is no nation. But

he that takes ninepence from me instead of a shilling, but at the same

time and by this very act prevents sixpence from coming into my

pocket,--am I to thank him? Yet such are the only thanks that Mr. Hume and

the Country Squires, his cowardly back-clapping flatterers, can fairly

claim. In my opinion, Hume is an incomparably more mischievous being than

O’Connell and the gang of agitators. They are mere symptomatic and

significative effects, the roars of the inwardly agitated mass of the

popular sea. But Hume is a fermenting virus. But I must end my scrawl. God

bless my dear Sara. Give my love to Mrs. C. and kiss the baby for

S. T. COLERIDGE.

H. N. COLERIDGE, Esq., 1, New Court, Lincoln’s Inn.

CCLIII. TO MISS LAWRENCE.[210]

March 22, 1832.

MY DEAR MISS LAWRENCE,--You and _dear, dear_ Mrs. Crompton are among the

few sunshiny images that endear my past life to me, and I never think of

you without heartfelt esteem, without affection, and a _yearning_ of my

better being toward you. I have for more than eighteen months been on the

brink of the grave, the object of my wishes, and only not of my prayers,

because I commit myself, poor dark creature, to an Omniscient and

All-merciful, in whom are the issues of life and death,--content, yea,

most thankful, if only His Grace will preserve within me the blessed faith

that He _is_ and is a God that heareth prayers, abundant in forgiveness,

and _therefore_ to be feared, no _fate_, no God as imagined by the

Unitarians, a sort of, I know not what _law-giving_ Law of Gravitation, to

whom prayer would be as idle as to the law of gravity, if an undermined

wall were falling upon me; but “a God that made the eye, and therefore

shall _He_ not see? who made the ear, and shall He not hear?” who made the

heart of man to love Him, and shall He not love the creature whose

ultimate end is to love Him?--a God who _seeketh_ that which was lost, who

calleth back that which had gone astray; who calleth through His own Name;

Word, Son, from everlasting the Way and the _Truth_; and who became man

that for poor fallen mankind he might _be_ (not merely announced but _be_)

the _Resurrection_ and the _Life_,--“Come unto me, all ye that are weary

and heavy-laden, and _I_ will give you rest!” Oh, my dear Miss Lawrence!

prize above all earthly things the faith. I trust that no sophistry of

shallow infra-socinians has quenched it within you,--that God is a God

that heareth prayers. If varied learning, if the assiduous cultivation

of the reasoning powers, if an accurate and minute acquaintance with all

the arguments of controversial writers; if an intimacy with the doctrines

of the Unitarians, which can only be obtained by one who for a year or two

in his early life had been a convert to them, yea, a zealous and by

themselves deemed powerful supporter of their opinions; lastly, if the

utter absence of any imaginable worldly interest that could sway or warp

the mind and affections,--if all these combined can give any weight or

authority to the opinion of a fellow-creature, they will give weight to my

adjuration, sent from my sickbed to you in kind love. O trust, O trust, in

your Redeemer! in the coeternal _Word_, the Only-begotten, the living

_Name_ of the Eternal I AM, Jehovah, Jesus!

[Illustration]

I shall endeavour to see Mr. Hamilton.[211] I doubt not his scientific

attainments. I have had proofs of his taste and feeling as a poet, but

believe me, my dear Miss Lawrence! that, should the cloud of distemper

pass from over me, there needs no other passport to a cordial welcome from

me than a line from you importing that he or she possesses your esteem and

regard, and that you wish I should shew attention to them. I cannot make

out your address, which I read “The Grange;” but where that is I know not,

and fear that the Post Office may be as ignorant as myself. I must

therefore delay the direction of my letter till I see Mr. Hamilton; but in

all places, and independent of place, I am, my dear Miss Lawrence, with

most affectionate recollections,

Your friend,

S. T. COLERIDGE.

Miss S. LAWRENCE, The Grange, nr. Liverpool.

CCLIV. TO THE REV. H. F. CARY.

GROVE, HIGHGATE, April 22, 1832.

MY DEAR FRIEND,--For I am sure by my love for you that you love me too

well to have suffered my very rude and uncourteous vehemence of

contradiction and reclamation respecting your advocacy of the Catilinarian

Reform Bill, when we were last together, to have cooled, much less

alienated your kindness; even though the interim had not been a weary,

weary time of groaning and life-loathing for me. But I hope that this

fearful night-storm is subsiding, as you will have heard from Mr. Green or

dear Charles Lamb. I write now to say, that if God, who in His Fatherly

compassion and through His love wherewith He hath beheld and loved me in

Christ, in whom alone He can love the world, hath worked almost a miracle

of grace in and for me by a sudden emancipation from a thirty-three years’

fearful slavery,[212] if God’s goodness should in time and so far perfect

my convalescence as that I should be capable of resuming my literary

labours, I have a thought by way of a light _prelude_, a sort of

unstiffening of my long dormant joints and muscles, to give a reprint as

nearly as possible, except in quality of the paper, a facsimile of John

Asgill’s tracts with a life and copious notes,[213] to which I would

affix Pastilla et Marginalia. See my MSS. notes, blank leaf and marginal,

on Southey’s “Life of Wesley,” and sundry other works. Now can you

direct me to any source of information respecting John Asgill, a

prince darling of mine, the most honest of all Whigs, whom at the

close of Queen Anne’s reign the scoundrelly Jacobite Tories twice

expelled from Parliament, under the pretext of his incomparable, or

only-with-Rabelais-to-be-compared argument against the base and cowardly

custom of ever dying? And this tract is a very treasure, and never more

usable as a medicine for our clergy, at least all such as the Bishop of

London, Archbishops of Canterbury and of Dublin, the Paleyans and

Mageeites,[214] any one or all of whom I would defy to answer a single

paragraph of Asgill’s tract, or unloose a single link from the chain of

logic. I have no biographical dictionary, and never saw one but in a

little sort of one-volume thing. If you can help me in this, do. I give my

kindest love to Mrs. Cary.

Yours, with unutterable and unuttered love and regard, in all (but as to

the accursed Reform Bill! that _mendacium ingens_ to its own preamble (to

which no human being can be more friendly than I am), that huge tapeworm

_lie_ of some threescore and ten yards) entire sympathy of heart and soul,

Your affectionate

S. T. COLERIDGE.

CCLV. TO JOHN PEIRSE KENNARD.[215]

GROVE, HIGHGATE, August 13, 1832.

MY DEAR SIR,--Your letter has announced to me a loss too great, too awful,

for common grief, or any of its ordinary forms and outlets. For more than

an hour after, I remained in a state which I can only describe as a state

of deepest mental silence, neither prayer nor thanksgiving, but a

prostration of absolute faith, as if the Omnipresent were present to me by

a more special intuition, passing all sense and all understanding. Whether

Death be but the cloudy Bridge to the Life beyond, and Adam Steinmetz has

been wafted over it without suspension, or with an immediate resumption of

self-conscious existence, or whether his Life be hidden in God, in the

eternal only-begotten, the Pleroma of all Beings and the _Habitation_ both

of the Retained and the Retrieved, therein in a blessed and most divine

Slumber to grow and evolve into the perfected Spirit,--for sleep is the

appointed season of all growth here below, and God’s ordinances in the

earthly may shadow out his ways in the Heavenly,--in either case our

friend is _in God_ and _with God_. Were it possible for me even to _think_

otherwise,[216] the very grass in the fields would turn black before my

eyes, and nature appear as a skeleton fantastically mossed over beneath

the weeping vault of a charnel house!

Deeply am I persuaded that for every man born on earth there is an

appointed task, some remedial process in the soul known only to the

Omniscient; and, this through divine grace fulfilled, the sole question is

whether it be needful or expedient for the church that he should still

remain: for the individual himself “to depart and to be with Christ” must

needs be GREAT gain. And of my dear, my filial friend, we may with a

strong and most consoling assurance affirm that he was eminently one

Who, being innocent, did even for _that_ cause

Bestir him in good deeds!

Wise Virgin He, and wakeful kept his Lamp

Aye trimm’d and full; and thus thro’ grace he liv’d

In this bad World as in a place of Tombs,

And touch’d not the Pollutions of the Dead.

And yet in Christ only did he build a hope. Yea, he blessed the emptiness

that made him capable of his Lord’s fullness, gloried in the blindness

that was a receptive of his Master’s light, and in the nakedness that

asked to be cloathed with the wedding-garment of his Redeemer’s

Righteousness. Therefore say I unto you, my young friend, Rejoice! and

again I say, Rejoice!

The effect of the event communicated in your letter has been that of awe

and sadness on our whole household. Mrs. Gillman mourns as for a son, but

with that grief which is felt for a departed saint. Even the servants felt

as if an especially loved and honoured member of the family had been

suddenly taken away. When I announced the sad tidings to Harriet, an

almost _unalphabeted_ but very sensible woman, the tears swelled in her

eyes, and she exclaimed, “Ah sir! how many a Thursday night, after Mr.

Steinmetz was gone, and I had opened the door for him, I have said to them

below, ‘That dear young man is too amiable to live. God will soon have him

back.’” These were her very words. Nor were my own anticipations of his

recall less distinct or less frequent. Not once or twice only, after he

had shaken hands with me on leaving us, I have turned round with the tear

on my cheek, and whispered to Mrs. Gillman, “Alas! there is _Death_ in

that dear hand.”[217]

My dear sir! if our society can afford any comfort to _you_, as that of so

dear a friend of Adam Steinmetz cannot but be to _us_, I beseech you in my

own name, and am intreated by Mr. and Mrs. Gillman to invite you, to be

his representative for us, and to take his place in our circle. And I must

further request that you do not confine yourself to any particular evening

of the week (for which there is now no reason), but that you consult your

own convenience and opportunities of leisure. At whatever hour he comes,

the fraternal friend of Adam Steinmetz will ever be dear and most welcome

to

S. T. COLERIDGE.

CHAPTER XV

THE BEGINNING OF THE END

1833-1834

CHAPTER XV

THE BEGINNING OF THE END

1833-1834

CCLVI. TO J. H. GREEN.

Sunday night, April 8, 1833.

It is seldom, my dearest friend, that I find myself differing from you in

judgements of any sort. It is more than seldom that I am left in doubt and

query on any judgement of yours of a _practical_ nature, for on the good

ground of some sixteen or more years’ experience I feel a take-for-granted

faith in the dips and pointings of the needle in every decision of your

_total_ mind. But in the instance you spoke of this afternoon, viz., your

persistent rebuttal of the Temperance Society Man’s Request, though I do

not feel _sure_ that you are not in the right, yet I do feel as if I

should have been more delighted and more satisfied if you had intimated

your compliance with it. I feel that in this case I should have had _no_

doubt; but that my mind would have leapt forwards with content, like a key

to a loadstone.

Assuredly you might, at least you would, have a very promising chance of

effecting considerable _good_, and you might have commenced your address

with your own remark of the superfluity of any light of information

afforded to an habitual dram-drinker respecting the unutterable evil and

misery of his thraldom. As wisely give a physiological lecture to convince

a man of the pain of burns, while he is lying with his head on the bars of

the fire-grate, instead of snatching him off. But in stating this, you

might most effectingly and preventively for others describe the misery of

that condition in which the impulse waxes as the motive wanes. (Mem. There

is a striking passage in my “Friend” on this subject,[218] and a no less

striking one in a schoolboy theme of mine[219] now in Gillman’s

possession, and in my own hand, written when I was fourteen, with the

simile of the treacherous current of the Maelstrom.) But this might give

occasion for the suggestion of one new charitable institution, under

authority of a legislative act, namely, a _Maison de Santé_ (what do the

French call it?) for lunacy and idiocy of the _will_, in which, with the

full consent of, or at the direct instance of the patient himself, and

with the concurrence of his friends, such a person under the certificate

of a physician might be placed under medical and moral coercion. I am

convinced that London would furnish a hundred volunteers in as many days

from the gin-shops, who would swallow their glass of poison in order to

get courage to present themselves to the hospital in question. And a

similar institution might exist for a higher class of will-maniacs or

impotents. Had such a house of health been in existence, I know who would

have entered himself as a patient some five and twenty years ago.

Second class. To the persons still capable of self-cure; and lastly, to

the young who have only begun, and not yet begun--[add to this] the

urgency of connecting the Temperance Society with the Christian churches

of all denominations,--the _classes_ known to each other, and deriving

strength from _religion_. This is a beautiful part, or might have been

made so, of the Wesleyan Church.

These are but raw hints, but unless the mercy of God should remove me from

my sufferings earlier than I dare hope or pray for, we will talk the

subject over again; as well as the reason _why_ spirits in any form as

such are so much more dangerous, morally and in relation to the forming a

habit, than beer or wine. Item: if a government were truly fraternal, a

healthsome and sound beer would be made universal; aye, and for the lower

half of the middle classes wine might be imported, good and generous, from

sixpence to eightpence per quart.

God bless you and your ever affectionate

S. T. COLERIDGE.

CCLVII. TO MRS. ADERS.[220]

[1833.]

MY DEAR MRS. ADERS,--By my illness or oversight I have occasioned a very

sweet vignette to have been made in vain--except for its own beauty. Had I

sent you the lines that were to be written on the upright tomb, you and

our excellent Miss Denman would have, first, seen the dimension requisite

for letters of a distinctly visible and legible size; and secondly, that

the homely, plain _Church-yard Christian_ verses would not be in keeping

with a Muse (though a lovelier I never wooed), nor with a lyre or harp or

laurel, or aught else _Parnassian_ and allegorical. A rude old yew-tree,

or a mountain ash, with a grave or two, or any other characteristic of a

village rude church-yard,--such a hint of a landscape was all I meant; but

if any figure, rather that of an elderly man

Thoughtful, with quiet tears upon his cheek.

(Tombless Epitaph. See “Sibylline Leaves.”)

But I send the lines, and you and Miss Denman will form your own opinion.

Is one of Wyville’s proofs of my face worth Mr. Aders’ acceptance? I wrote

under the one I sent to Henry Coleridge the line from Ovid, with the

translation, thus:

S. T. COLERIDGE, ÆTAT. SUÆ 63.

Not / handsome / was / but / was / eloquent /

“Non formosus erat, sed erat facundus Ulysses.”

_Translation._

“In truth, he’s no Beauty!” cry’d Moll, Poll, and Tab;

But they all of them own’d He’d the gift of the Gab.

My best love to Mr. Aders, and believe that as I have been, so I ever

remain your affectionate and trusty friend,

S. T. COLERIDGE.

P. S. _I_ like the tombstone very much.

[Illustration]

The lines when printed would probably have on the preceding page the

advertisement--

EPITAPH ON A POET LITTLE KNOWN, YET BETTER KNOWN BY THE INITIALS OF HIS

NAME THAN BY THE NAME ITSELF.

S. T. C.

Stop, Christian Passer-by! Stop, Child of God!

And read with gentle heart. Beneath this sod

A Poet lies: or that, which once seem’d He.

O lift one thought in prayer for S. T. C.

That He, who many a year with toilsome breath

Found Death in Life, may here find Life in Death.

Mercy for Praise--_to be forgiven_ for Fame

He ask’d, and hoped thro’ Christ. DO THOU the Same.

CCLVIII. TO JOHN STERLING.[221]

GROVE, HIGHGATE, October 30, 1833.

MY DEAR SIR,--I very much regret that I am not to see you again for so

many months. Many a fond dream have I amused myself with, of your

residing near me or in the same house, and of preparing, with your and Mr.

Green’s assistance, my whole system for the press, as far as it exists in

writing in any _systematic_ form; that is, beginning with the Propyleum,

On the power and use of Words, comprising Logic, as the canons of

_Conclusion_, as the criterion of _Premises_, and lastly as the discipline

and evolution of Ideas (and then the Methodus et Epochee, or the

Disquisition on God, Nature, and Man), the two first grand divisions of

which, from the Ens super Ens to the _Fall_, or from God to Hades, and

then from Chaos to the commencement of living organization, containing the

whole scheme of the Dynamic Philosophy, and the deduction of the Powers

and Forces, are complete; as is likewise a third, _composed_ for the

greater part by Mr. Green, on the “Application of the Ideas, as the

_Transcendents_ of the Truths, Duties, Affections, etc., in the Human

Mind.” If I could once publish these (but, alas! even these could not be

compressed in less than three octavo volumes), I should then have no

objection to print my MS. papers on “Positive Theology, from Adam to

Abraham, to Moses, the Prophets, Christ and Christendom.” But this is a

dream! I am, however, very seriously disposed to employ the next two

months in preparing for the press a metrical translation (if I find it

practicable) of the Apocalypse, with an introduction on the “Use and

Interpretation of Scriptures.” I am encouraged to this by finding how much

of _original_ remains in my views after I have subtracted all I have in

common with Eichhorn and Heinrichs. I write now to remind you, or to beg

you to recall to my memory the name of the more recent work (Lobeck?)

which you mentioned to me, and whether you can procure it for me, or

rather the loan of it. Likewise, whether you know of any German

translation and commentary on Daniel, that is thought highly of? I find

Gesenius’ version exceedingly interesting, and look forward to the

Commentaries with delight. You mentioned some works on the numerical

Cabbala, the Gematria (I think) they call it. But I must not scribble away

your patience, and after I have heard from you from Cambridge I will try

to write to you more to the purpose (for I did not begin this scrawl till

the hour had passed that ought to have found me in bed).

With sincere regard, your obliged friend,

S. T. COLERIDGE.

CCLIX. TO MISS ELIZA NIXON.[222]

July 9, 1834.

MY DEAR ELIZA,--The three volumes of Miss Edgeworth’s “Helen” ought to

have been sent in to you last night, and are marked as having been _so

sent_. And indeed, knowing how much noise this work was making and the

great interest it had excited, I should not have been so selfish as to

have retained them on my own account. But Mrs. Gillman is very anxious

that I should read it, and has made me promise to write my remarks on it,

and such reflections as the contents may suggest, which, in awe of the

precisians of the Book Society, I shall put down on separate paper. The

young people were so eager to read it, that with my slow and interrupted

style of reading, it would have been cruel not to give them the priority.

Mrs. Gillman flatters me that you and your sisters will think a copy of my

remarks some compensation for the delay.

God bless you, my dear young friend. You, I know, will be gratified to

learn, and in my own writing, the still timid but still strengthening and

brightening dawn of convalescence with the last eight days.

S. T. COLERIDGE.

July 9, 1834.

The two volumes[223] that I send you are making a rumour, and are highly

and I believe justly extolled. They are written by a friend of mine,[224]

a remarkably handsome young man whom you may have seen on one of our

latest Thursday evening conversazioni. I have not yet read them, but keep

them till I send in “Helen,” and longer, if you should not have finished

them.

CCLX. TO ADAM STEINMETZ KENNARD.

GROVE, HIGHGATE, July 13, 1834.

MY DEAR GODCHILD,--I offer up the same fervent prayer for you now as I did

kneeling before the altar when you were baptized into Christ, and solemnly

received as a living member of His spiritual body, the church. Years must

pass before you will be able to read with an understanding heart what I

now write. But I trust that the all-gracious God, the Father of our Lord

Jesus Christ, the Father of mercies, who by His only-begotten Son (all

mercies in one sovereign mercy!) has redeemed you from evil ground, and

willed you to be born out of darkness, but into light; out of death, but

into life; out of sin, but into righteousness; even into “the Lord our

righteousness,”--I trust that He will graciously hear the prayers of your

dear parents, and be with you as the spirit of health and growth, in body

and in mind. My dear godchild, you received from Christ’s minister at the

baptismal font, as your Christian name, the name of a most dear friend of

your father’s, and who was to me even as a son,--the late Adam Steinmetz,

whose fervent aspirations and paramount aim, even from early youth, was to

be a Christian in thought, word, and deed; in will, mind, and affections.

I, too, your godfather, have known what the enjoyment and advantages of

this life are, and what the more refined pleasures which learning and

intellectual power can give; I now, on the eve of my departure, declare to

you, and earnestly pray that you may hereafter live and act on the

conviction, that health is a great blessing; competence, obtained by

honourable industry, a great blessing; and a great blessing it is, to have

kind, faithful, and loving friends and relatives; but that the greatest of

all blessings, as it is the most ennobling of all privileges, is to be

indeed a Christian. But I have been likewise, through a large portion of

my later life, a sufferer, sorely affected with bodily pains, languor,

and manifold infirmities; and for the last three or four years have, with

few and brief intervals, been confined to a sick-room, and at this moment,

in great weakness and heaviness, write from a sickbed, hopeless of

recovery, yet without prospect of a speedy removal. And I thus, on the

brink of the grave, solemnly bear witness to you, that the Almighty

Redeemer, most gracious in His promises to them that truly seek Him, is

faithful to perform what He has promised; and has reserved, under all

pains and infirmities, the peace that passeth all understanding, with the

supporting assurance of a reconciled God, who will not withdraw His spirit

from me in the conflict, and in His own time will deliver me from the evil

one. Oh, my dear godchild! eminently blessed are they who begin _early_ to

seek, fear, and love their God, trusting wholly in the righteousness and

mediation of their Lord, Redeemer, Saviour, and everlasting High Priest,

Jesus Christ. Oh, preserve this as a legacy and bequest from your unseen

godfather and friend,

S. T. COLERIDGE.

INDEX

Abergavenny, 410.

Abergavenny, Earl of, wreck of the, 494 n.;

495 n.

Abernethy, Dr. John, 525;

C. determines to place himself under the care of, 564, 565.

Achard, F. C., 299 and note.

Acland, Sir John, 523 and note.

Acting, 621-623.

Acton, 184, 186-188, 191.

Adams, Dr. Joseph, 442 and note.

Addison’s _Spectator_, studied by C. in connection with _The Friend_,

557, 558.

_Address on the Present War, An_, 85 n.

_Address to a Young Jackass and its Tethered Mother_, 119 and note, 120.

Aders, Mrs., 701 n., 702 n., 752;

letters from C., 701, 769.

Adscombe, 175, 184, 188.

Advising, the rage of, 474, 475.

Adye, Major, 493.

_Æschylus, Essay on the Prometheus of_, 740 and note.

_Aids to Reflection_, 688 n.;

preparation and publication of, 734 n., 738;

C. calls Stuart’s attention to certain passages in, 741;

favourable opinions of, 741;

756 n.

Ainger, Rev. Alfred, 400 n.

Akenside, Mark, 197.

Albuera, the Battle of, C.’s articles on, 567 and note.

Alfoxden, 10 n.;

Wordsworth settles at, 224, 227;

326, 515.

Alison’s _History of Europe_, 628 n.

Allen, Robert, 41 and note, 45, 47, 50;

extract from a letter from him to C., 57 n.;

63, 75, 83, 126;

appointed deputy-surgeon to the Second Royals, 225 and note;

letter to C., 225 n.

Allsop, Mrs., 733 n.

Allsop, Thomas, friendship and correspondence with C., 695, 696;

publishes C.’s letters after his death, 696;

his _Letters, Conversations, and Recollections of S. T. Coleridge_,

41 n., 527 n., 675 n., 696 and note, 698 n., 721 n.;

711;

C.’s letter of Oct. 8, 1822, 721 n.;

letter from C., 696.

Allston, Washington, 523;

his bust of C., 570 n., 571;

his portraits of C., 572 and note;

his art and moral character, 573, 574;

581, 633;

his genius and his misfortunes, 650;

695 and notes;

letter from C., 498.

Ambleside, 335;

Lloyd settles at, 344;

577, 578.

America, proposed emigration of C. and other pantisocrats to, 81, 88-91,

98, 101-103, 146;

prospects of war with England, 91;

241;

progress of religious deism in, 414;

C.’s letter concerning the inevitableness of a war with, 629.

Amtmann of Ratzeburg, the, 264, 268, 271.

_Amulet, The_, 257.

_Ancient Mariner, The_, 81 n.;

written in a dream or dreamlike reverie, 245 n.;

696.

_Animal Vitality, Essay on_, by Thelwall, 179, 212.

_Annual Anthology_, the, edited by Southey, 207 n., 226 n., 295 n., 298

n.;

C. suggests a classification of poems in, 313, 314, 317;

318, 320, 322 and note, 330, 331, 748 n.

_Annual Review_, 488, 489, 522.

_Anti-Jacobin, The Beauties of the_, its libel on C., 320 and note.

_Antiquary, The_, by Scott, C.’s portrait introduced into an

illustration for, 736 and note.

_Ants, Treatise on_, by Huber, 712.

_Ardinghello_, by Heinse, 683 and note.

Arnold, Mr., 602, 603.

Arrochar, 432 and note.

Arthur’s Crag, 439.

A-seity, 688 and note.

Asgill, John, and his Treatises, 761 and note.

Ashburton, 305 n.

Ashe, Thomas, his _Miscellanies, Æsthetic and Literary_, 633 n.

Ashley, C. with the Morgans at, 631.

Ashley, Lord, and the Ten Hours Bills, 689 n.

Ashton, 140 and note.

_As late I roamed through Fancy’s shadowy vale_, a sonnet, 116 n., 118.

Atheism, 161, 162, 167, 199, 200.

_Athenæum, The_, 206 n., 536 n., 753 n.

_Atlantic Monthly_, 206 n.

Autobiographical letters from C. to Thomas Poole, 3-21.

Baader, Franz Xavier von, 683 and note.

Babb, Mr., 422.

Bacon, Lord, his _Novum Organum_, 735.

Badcock, Mr., 21.

Badcock, Harry, 22.

Badcock, Sam, 22.

Bala, 79.

Ball, Lady, 494 n., 497.

Ball, Sir Alexander John, 484, 487, 496, 497;

mutual regard of C. and, 508 n.;

524, 554;

C.’s narrative of his life, 579 n.;

his opinions of Lady Nelson and Lady Hamilton, 637.

_Ballad of the Dark Ladie, The_, 375.

Bampfylde, John Codrington Warwick, his genius, originality, and

subsequent lunacy, 309 and note;

his _Sixteen Sonnets_, 309 n.

Banfill, Mr., 306.

Barbauld, Anna Lætitia, 317 n.

_Barbou Casimir, The_, 67 and notes, 68.

Barlow, Caleb, 38.

Barr, Mr., his children, 154.

Barrington, Hon. and Rt. Rev. John Shute, Bishop of Durham, 582 and note.

Bassenthwaite Lake, 335, 376 n.;

sunset over, 384.

_Beard, On Mrs. Monday’s_, 9 n.

Beaumont, Lady, 459, 573, 580, 592, 593;

procures subscribers to C.’s lectures, 599;

644, 645, 739, 741;

letter from C., 641.

Beaumont, Sir George, 440 n., 462;

his affection for C. preceded by dislike, 468;

493;

extract from a letter from Wordsworth on John Wordsworth’s death, 494

n.;

496;

lends the Wordsworths his farmhouse near Coleorton, 509 n.;

579-581;

C. explains the nature of his quarrel with Wordsworth to, 592, 593;

595 n., 629;

on Allston as an historical painter, 633;

739, 741;

letter from C., 570.

_Beauties of the Anti-Jacobin, The_, its libel on C., 320 and note.

Becky Fall, 305 n.

Beddoes, Dr. Thomas, 157, 211, 338;

C.’s grief at his death, 543 and note, 544 and note;

his advice and sympathy in response to C.’s confession, 543 n.;

his character. 544.

Bedford, Grosvenor, 400 n.

Beet sugar, 299 and note.

Beguines, the, 327 n.

Bell, Rev. Andrew, D. D., 575, 582 and note, 605;

his _Origin, Nature, and Object of the New System of Education_, 581

and note, 582.

_Bell, Rev. Andrew, Life of_, by R. and C. C. Southey, 581 n.

Bellingham, John, 598 n.

Bell-ringing in Germany, 293.

Belper, Lord (Edward Strutt), 215 n.

Bennett, Abraham, his electroscope, 218 n., 219 n.

Bentley’s Quarto Edition of Horace, 68 and note.

Benvenuti, 498, 499.

_Benyowski, Count, or the Conspiracy of Kamtschatka, a Tragi-comedy_, by

Kotzebue, 236 and note.

Berdmore, Mr., 80, 82.

Bernard, Sir Thomas, 579 and notes, 580, 582, 585, 595 n., 599.

_Betham, Matilda, To. From a Stranger_, 404 n.

_Bible, The_, as literature, C.’s opinion of, 200;

slovenly hexameters in, 398.

Bibliography, Southey’s proposed work, 428-430.

_Bibliotheca Britannica, or an History of British Literature_, a

proposed work, 425-427, 429, 430.

Bigotry, 198.

Billington, Mrs. Elizabeth Weichsel, 368.

Bingen, 751.

_Biographia Literaria_, 3, 68 n., 74 n., 152 n., 164 n., 174 n., 232 n.,

257, 320 n., 498 n., 607 n., 669 n., 670 n.;

C. ill-used by the printer of, 673, 674;

679, 756 n.

Birmingham, 151, 152.

Bishop’s Middleham, 358 and note, 360.

_Blackwood’s Magazine_, 756.

Blake, William, as poet, painter, and engraver, 685 n., 686 n.;

C.’s criticism of his poems and their accompanying illustrations,

686-688;

his _Songs of Innocence and Experience_, 686 n.

Bloomfield, Robert, 395.

Blumenbach, Prof., 279, 298.

_Book of the Church, The_, 724.

Books, C.’s early taste in, 11 and note, 12;

in later life, 180, 181.

Booksellers, C.’s horror of, 548.

Borrowdale, 431.

Borrowdale mountains, the, 370.

_Botany Bay Eclogues_, by Robert Southey, 76 n., 116.

Bourbons, C.’s Essay on the restoration of the, 629 and note.

Bourne, Sturges, 542.

Bovey waterfall, 305 n.

Bowdon, Anne, marries Edward Coleridge, 53 n.

Bowdon, Betsy, 18.

Bowdon, John (C.’s uncle), C. goes to live with, 18, 19.

Bowdons, the, C.’s mother’s family, 4.

Bowles, the surgeon, 212.

_Bowles, To_, 111.

Bowles, Rev. William Lisle, C.’s admiration for his poems, 37, 42, 179;

63 n., 76 and note;

C.’s sonnet to, 111 and note;

115;

his sonnets, 177;

his _Hope, an Allegorical Sketch_, 179, 180;

196, 197, 211;

his translation of Dean Ogle’s Latin Iambics, 374 and note;

school life at Winchester, 374 n.;

C.’s, Southey’s, and Sotheby’s admiration of, and its effect on their

poems, 396;

borrows a line from a poem of C.’s, 396;

his second volume of poems, 403, 404;

637, 638, 650-652.

Bowscale, the mountain, 339.

Box, 631.

Boyce, Anne Ogden, her _Records of a Quaker Family_, 538 n.

Boyer, Rev. James, 61, 113, 768 n.

Brahmin creed, the, 229.

Brandes, Herr von, 279.

Brandl’s _Samuel Taylor Coleridge and the English Romantic School_, 258,

674 n., 740 n.

Bratha, 394, 535.

Bray, near Maidenhead, 69, 70.

Brazil, Emperor of, an enthusiastic student and admirer of C., 696.

Bread-riots, 643 n.

Brecon, 410, 411.

Bremhill, 650.

Brent, Mr., 598, 599.

Brent, Miss Charlotte, 520, 524-526;

C.’s affection for, 565;

577, 585, 600, 618, 643, 722 n.;

letter from C., 722.

_See_ Morgan family, the.

Brentford, 326, 673 n.

Bridgewater, 164.

Bright, Henry A., 245 n.

Bristol, C.’s bachelor life in, 133-135;

138, 139, 163 n., 166, 167, 184, 326, 414, 520, 572 n., 621, 623, 624.

_Bristol Journal_, 633 n.

_British Critic_, the, 350.

Brookes, Mr., 80, 82.

_Brothers, The_, by Wordsworth, the original of Leonard in, 494 n.;

C. accused of borrowing a line from, 609 n.

Brown, John, printer and publisher of _The Friend_, 542 n.

Brun, Frederica, C.’s indebtedness to her for the framework of the _Hymn

before Sunrise in the Vale of Chamouni_, 405 n.

Bruno, Giordano, 371.

Brunton, Miss, 86 and note, 87, 89;

verses to, 94.

Brunton, Elizabeth, 86 n.

Brunton, John, 86 n., 87.

Brunton, Louisa, 86 n.

Bryant, Jacob, 216 n., 219.

Buchan, Earl of, 139.

Buclé, Miss, 136.

_See_ Cruikshank, Mrs. John.

Buller, Sir Francis (Judge), 6 n.;

obtains a Christ’s Hospital Presentation for C., 18.

Buonaparte, 308, 327 n., 329 and note;

his animosity against C., 498 n.;

530 n.;

C.’s cartoon and lines on, 642.

Burdett, Sir Francis, 598.

Burke, Edmund, C.’s sonnet to, 116 n., 118;

his _Letter to a Noble Lord_, 157 and note;

Thelwall on, 166;

177.

Burnett, George, 74, 121, 140-142, 144-151, 174 n., 325, 467.

Burns, Robert, 196;

C.’s poem on, 206 and note, 207.

Burton, 326.

Burton’s _Anatomy of Melancholy_, 428.

Busts of C., 570 n., 571, 695 n.

Butler, Samuel (afterwards Head Master of Shrewsbury and Bishop of

Lichfield), 46 and note.

Buttermere, 393.

Byron, Lord, his _Childe Harold_, 583;

666, 694, 726.

_Byron, Lord, Conversations of_, by Capt. Thomas Medwin, 735 and note.

Cabriere, Miss, 18.

Caermarthen, 411.

Caldbeck, 376 n., 724.

Calder, the river, 339.

Caldwell, Rev. George, 25 and note, 29, 71, 82.

Calne, Wiltshire, C.’s life at, 641-653.

Calvert, Raisley, 345 n.

Calvert, William, proposes to study chemistry with C. and Wordsworth,

345;

his portrait in a poem of Wordsworth’s, 345 n.;

proposes to share his new house near Greta Hall with Wordsworth and

his sister, 346;

his sense and ability, 346;

347, 348.

Cambridge, description of, 39;

137, 270.

_Cambridge, Reminiscences of_, by Henry Gunning, 24 n., 363 n.

_Cambridge Intelligencer, The_, 93 n., 218 n.

Cambridge University, C.’s life at, 22-57, 70-72, 81-129;

C. thinks of leaving, 97 n.;

137.

Cameos and intaglios, casts of, 703 and note.

Campbell, James Dykes, 251 n., 337 n.;

his _Samuel Taylor Coleridge_, 269 n., 527 n., 572 n., 600 n., 631 n.,

653 n., 666 n., 667 n., 674 n., 681 n., 684 n., 698 n., 752 n.,

753 n., 772 n.

Canary Islands, 417, 418.

Canning, George, 542, 674.

Canova, Antonio, on Allston’s modelling, 573.

Cape Esperichel, 473.

Carlisle, Sir Anthony, 341 and note.

Carlton House, 392.

Carlyle, Thomas, his portrait of C. in the _Life of Sterling_, 771 n.

Carlyon, Clement, M. D., his _Early Years and Late Recollections_, 258,

298 n.

Carnosity, Mrs., 472.

Carrock, the mountain, a tempest on, 339, 340.

Carrock man, the, 339.

Cartwright, Major John, 635 and note.

Cary, Rev. Henry, his _Memoir of H. F. Cary_, 676 n.

_Cary, H. F., Memoir of_, by Henry Cary, 676 n.

Cary, Rev. H. F., his translation of the _Divina Commedia_, 676, 677 and

note, 678, 679;

C. introduces himself to, 676 n.;

685, 699;

letters from C., 676, 677, 731, 760.

_Casimir, the Barbou_, 67 and notes, 68.

Castlereagh, Lord, 662.

_Castle Spectre, The_, a play by Monk Lewis, C.’s criticism of, 236 and

note, 237, 238;

626.

Catania, 458.

Cat-serenades in Malta, 483 n., 484 n.

Catherine II., Empress of Russia, 207 n.

Cathloma, 51.

Catholic Emancipation, C.’s Letters to Judge Fletcher on, 629 and note,

634 and note, 635, 636, 642.

Catholicism in Germany, 291, 292.

Catholic question, the, letters in the _Courier_ on, 567 and note;

C. proposes to again write for the _Courier_ on, 660, 662;

arrangements for the proposed articles on, 664, 665.

Cattermole, George, 750 n.;

letter from C., 750.

Cattermole, Richard, 750 n.

Cattle, disposal of dead and sick, in Germany, 294.

Chalmers, Rev. Thomas, D. D., calls on C., 752 and note.

Chantrey, Mr. (afterwards Sir) Francis, R. A., C.’s impressions of, 699;

727.

Chapman, Mr., appointed Public Secretary of Malta, 491, 496.

_Character, A_, 631 n.

_Charity_, 110 n.

_Chatterton, Monody on the Death of_, 110 n., 158 n.;

C.’s opinion of it in 1797, 222, 223;

620 n.

Chatterton, Thomas, unpopularity of his poems, 221, 222;

Southey’s exertions in aid of his sister, 221, 222.

Chemistry, C. proposes to study, 345-347.

Chepstow, 139, 140 n.

Chester, John, accompanies C. to Germany, 259;

265, 267, 269 n., 272, 280, 281, 300.

_Childe Harold_, by Byron, 583.

Childhood, memory of, in old age, 428.

Children in cotton factories, legislation as to the employment of, 689

and note.

Christ, both God and man, 710.

_Christabel_, written in a dream or dreamlike reverie, 245 n.;

310, 313, 317, 337 and note, 342, 349;

Conclusion to Part II., 355 and note, 356 n.;

Part II., 405 n.;

a fine edition proposed, 421, 422;

437 n., 523;

C. quotes from, 609, 610;

the broken friendship commemorated in, 609 n.;

the copyright of, 669;

the _Edinburgh Review’s_ unkind criticism of, 669 and note, 670;

Mr. Frere advises C. to finish, 674;

696.

_Christianity, the one true Philosophy_ (C.’s _magnum opus_), outline

of, 632, 633;

fragmentary remains of, 632 n.;

the sole motive for C.’s wish to live, 668;

J. H. Green helps to lay the foundations of, 679 n.;

694, 753;

plans for, 772, 773.

_Christian Observer_, 653 n.

_Christmas Carol, A_, 330.

_Christmas Indoors in North Germany_, 257, 275 n.

_Christmas Out of Doors_, 257.

Christmas-tree, the German, 289, 290.

Christ’s Hospital, C.’s life at, 18-22;

173 n.

_Christ’s Hospital Five and Thirty Years Ago_, by Charles Lamb, 20 n.

_Christ’s Hospital, List of Exhibitioners, from 1566-1885_, 41 n.

_Chronicle, Morning_, 111 n., 114, 116 n., 119 n., 126, 162, 167, 505,

506, 606 n., 615, 616.

Chubb, Mr., of Bridgwater, 231.

_Church, The Book of the_, by Southey, 724.

Church, the English, 135, 306, 651-653, 676, 757.

Church, the Scottish, in a state of ossification, 744, 745.

Church, the Wesleyan, 769.

Cibber, Colley, and his son, Theophilus, 693.

Cibber, Theophilus, his reply to his father, 693.

Cintra, Wordsworth’s pamphlet on the Convention of, 534 and note, 543

and note;

C.’s criticism of, 548-550.

Clagget, Charles, 70 and note.

Clare, Lord, 638.

Clarke, Mrs., the notorious, 543 n.

Clarkson, Mrs., 592.

Clarkson, Thomas, 363, 398;

his _History of the Abolition of the Slave Trade_, 527 and note,

528-530;

his character, 529, 530;

C.’s review of his book, 535, 536;

538 n., 547, 548;

on the second rupture between C. and Wordsworth, 599 n.

Clement, Mr., a bookseller, 548.

Clergyman, an earnest young, 691.

Clevedon, C.’s honeymoon at, 136.

Clock, a motto for a market, 553 and note, 554 n.

Coates, Matthew, 441 n.;

his belief in the impersonality of the deity, 444;

letter from C., 441.

Coates, Mrs. Matthew, 442, 443.

Cobham, 673 n.

Cole, Mrs., 271.

_Coleorton, Memorials of_, 369 n., 440.

Coleorton Farmhouse, C.’s visit to the Wordsworths at, 509-514.

Coleridge, Anne (sister--usually called “Nancy”), 8 and note, 21, 26.

Coleridge, Berkeley (son), birth of, 247 and note, 248, 249;

taken with smallpox, 259 n., 260 n.;

262, 267, 272;

death of, 247 n., 282-287, 289.

Coleridge, David Hartley (son--usually called “Hartley”), birth of, 169;

176, 205, 213, 220, 231, 245, 260-262, 267 n., 289, 296, 305, 318;

his talkativeness and boisterousness at the age of three, 321;

his theologico-astronomical hypothesis as to stars, 323;

a pompous remark by, 332;

illness, 342, 343;

early astronomical observations, 342, 343;

an extraordinary creature, 343, 344;

345 n., 355, 356 n., 359;

a poet in spite of his low forehead, 395;

408, 413, 416, 421;

at seven years, 443;

plans for his education, 461, 462;

468, 508;

visits the Wordsworths at Coleorton Farmhouse with his father, 509-514;

as a traveller, 509;

his character at ten years, 510, 512;

511;

under his father’s sole care for four or five months, 511 n.;

spends five or six weeks with his father and the Wordsworths at Basil

Montagu’s house in London, 511 n.;

portraits of, 511 n.;

521;

his appearance, behavior, and mental acuteness at the age of thirteen,

564;

at fifteen, 576, 577;

at Mr. Dawes’s school, 576 and note, 577;

583 n.;

friendly relations with his cousins, 675 and note;

C. asks Poole to invite him to Stowey, 675;

visits Stowey, 675 n.;

684, 721, 726;

letter of advice from S. T. C., 511.

Coleridge, Derwent (son of S. T. C. and father of the editor), birth

baptism of, 338 and note;

344, and 355, 359;

learns his letters, 393, 395;

408, 413, 416;

at three years, 443;

462, 468, 521;

at nine years, 564;

at eleven years, 576, 577;

at Mr. Dawes’s school, 576 and note, 577;

580, 605 n., 671 n.;

John Hookham Frere’s assistance in sending him to Cambridge, 675 and

note;

707, 711.

Coleridge, Miss Edith, 670 n.

Coleridge, Edward (brother), 7, 53-55, 699 n.

Coleridge, Rev. Edward (nephew), 724 n.;

letters from C., 724, 738, 744.

Coleridge, Frances Duke (niece), 726 and note, 740.

Coleridge, Francis Syndercombe (brother), 8, 9, 11, 12, 13;

his boyish quarrel with S. T. C., 13, 14;

becomes a midshipman, 17;

dies, 53 and note.

Coleridge, Frederick (nephew), 56.

Coleridge, Rev. George (brother), 7, 8;

his character and ability, 8;

12, 21 n., 25 n.;

his lines to Genius, _Ibi Hæc Incondita Solus_, 43 n.;

59;

his self-forgetting economy, 65;

extract from a letter from J. Plampin, 70 n.;

95, 97 n., 98 and note, 261;

visit from S. T. C. and his wife, 305 n., 306;

467, 498 n., 512;

disapproves of S. T. C.’s intended separation from his wife and

refuses to receive him and his family into his house, 523 and note;

699 n.;

approaching death of, 746-748;

S. T. C.’s relations with, 747, 748;

letters from S. T. C., 22, 23, 42, 53, 55, 59, 60, 62-70, 103, 239.

_Coleridge, the Rev. George, To_, a dedication, 223 and note.

Coleridge, Rev. George May (nephew), his friendly relations with Hartley

C., 675 and note;

letter from C., 746.

_Coleridge, Hartley, Poems of_, 511 n.

Coleridge, Henry Nelson (nephew and son-in-law), 3, 553 n., 570 n., 579

n., 744-746;

sketch of his life, 756 n.;

letter from S. T. C., 756.

Coleridge, Mrs. Henry Nelson (Sara Coleridge), 9 n., 163 n.;

extract from a letter from Mrs. Wordsworth, 220 n.;

320 n., 327 n., 572 n.

Coleridge, James, the younger, (nephew), his narrow escape, 56.

Coleridge, Colonel James (brother), 7, 54, 56, 61, 306, 724 n., 726 n.;

letter from S. T. C., 61.

Coleridge, Mrs. James (sister-in-law), 740.

Coleridge, John (brother), 7.

Coleridge, John (grandfather), 4, 5.

Coleridge, Mrs. John (mother), 5 n., 7, 13-17, 21 n., 25, 56;

letter from S. T. C., 21.

Coleridge, Rev. John (father), 5 and note, 6, 7, 10-12, 15, 16;

dies, 17, 18;

his character, 18.

Coleridge, John Duke, Lord Chief-Justice (great-nephew), 572 n., 699 n.,

745 n.

Coleridge, Sir John Taylor (nephew), his friendly relations with Hartley

C., 675 and note;

editor of _The Quarterly Review_, 736 and note, 737;

his judgment and knowledge of the world, 739;

delighted with _Aids to Reflection_, 739;

740 n., 744, 745;

letter from S. T. C., 734.

Coleridge, Luke Herman (brother), 8, 21, 22.

COLERIDGE, SAMUEL TAYLOR, his autobiographical letters to Thomas Poole,

3-18;

ancestry and parentage, 4-7;

birth, 6, 9 and note;

his brothers and sister, 7-9;

christened, 9;

infancy and childhood, 9-12;

learns to read, 10;

early taste in books, 11 and note, 12;

his dreaminess and indisposition to bodily activity in childhood, 12;

boyhood, 12-21;

has a dangerous fever, 12-13;

quarrels with his brother Frank, runs away, and is found and brought

back, 13-15;

his imagination developed early by the reading of fairy tales, 16;

a Christ’s Hospital Presentation procured for him by Judge Buller, 18;

visits his maternal uncle, Mr. John Bowdon, in London, 18, 19;

becomes a Blue-Coat boy, 19;

his life at Christ’s Hospital, 20-22;

enters Jesus College, Cambridge, 22, 23;

becomes acquainted with the Evans family, 23 and note, 24;

writes a Greek Ode, for which he obtains the Browne gold medal for

1792, 43 and note;

is matriculated as pensioner, 44 and note;

his examination for the Craven Scholarship, 45 and note, 46;

his temperament, 47;

takes violin lessons, 49;

enlists in the army, 57 and note;

nurses a comrade who is ill of smallpox in the Henley workhouse, 58

and note;

his enlistment disclosed to his family, 57 n., 58, 59;

remorse, 59-61, 64, 65;

arrangements resulting in his discharge, 61-70;

his religious beliefs at twenty-one, 68, 69;

returns to the university and is punished, 70, 71;

drops his gay acquaintances and settles down to hard work, 71;

makes a tour of North Wales with Mr. J. Hucks, 72-81;

falls in love with Miss Sarah Fricker, 81;

proposes to go to America with a colony of pantisocrats, 81, 88-91,

101-103;

his interest in Miss Fricker cools and his old love for Mary Evans

revives, 89;

his indolence, 103, 104;

on his own poetry, 112;

considers going to Wales with Southey and others to found a colony of

pantisocrats, 121, 122;

his love for Mary Evans proves hopeless, 122-126;

in lodgings in Bristol after having left Cambridge without taking his

degree, 133-135;

marries Miss Sarah Fricker and spends the honeymoon in a cottage at

Clevedon, 136;

breaks with Southey, 136-151;

happiness in early married life, 139;

his tour to procure subscribers for the _Watchman_, 151 and note,

152-154;

poverty, 154, 155;

receives a communication from Mr. Thomas Poole that seven or eight

friends have undertaken to subscribe a certain sum to be paid

annually to him as the author of the monody on Chatterton, 158 n.;

discontinues the _Watchman_, 158;

takes Charles Lloyd into his home, 168-170;

birth of his first child, David Hartley, 169;

considers starting a day school at Derby, 170 and note;

has a severe attack of neuralgia for which he takes laudanum, 173-176;

early use of opium and beginning of the habit, 173 n., 174 n.;

selects twenty-eight sonnets by himself, Southey, Lloyd, Lamb, and

others and has them privately printed, to be bound up with

Bowles’s sonnets, 177, 206 and note;

his description of himself in 1796, 180, 181;

his personal appearance as described by another, 180 n., 181 n.;

anxious to take a cottage at Nether Stowey and support himself by

gardening, 184-194;

makes arrangements to carry out this plan, 209;

his partial reconciliation with Southey, 210, 211;

in the cottage at Nether Stowey, 213;

his engagement as tutor to the children of Mrs. Evans of Darley Hall

breaks down, 215 n.;

his visit at Mrs. Evans’s house, 216;

daily life at Nether Stowey, 219, 220;

visits Wordsworth at Racedown, 220 and note, 221;

secures a house (Alfoxden) for Wordsworth near Stowey, 224;

visits him there, 227;

finishes his tragedy, _Osorio_, 231;

suspected of conspiracy with Wordsworth and Thelwall against the

government, 232 n.;

accepts an annuity of £150 for life from Josiah and Thomas Wedgwood,

234 and note, 235 and note;

declines an offer of the Unitarian pastorate at Shrewsbury, 235 and

note, 236;

writes Joseph Cottle in regard to a third edition of his poems, 239;

rupture with Lloyd, 238, 245 n., 246;

first recourse to opium to relieve distress of mind, 245 n.;

birth of a second child, Berkeley, 247;

temporary estrangement from Lamb caused by Lloyd, 249-253;

goes to Germany with William Wordsworth, Dorothy Wordsworth, and John

Chester, for the purpose of study and observation, 258-262;

life _en pension_ with Chester in the family of a German pastor at

Ratzeburg, after parting from the Wordsworths at Hamburg, 262-278;

learning the German language, 262, 263, 267, 268;

writes a poem in German, 263;

proposes to proceed to Göttingen, 268-270;

proposes to write a life of Lessing, 270;

travels by coach from Ratzeburg to Göttingen, passing through Hanover,

278-280;

enters the University, 281;

receives word of the death of his little son, Berkeley, 282-287;

learns the Gothic and Theotuscan languages, 298;

reconciliation with Southey, after the return from Germany, 303, 304;

with his wife and child he visits the Southeys at Exeter, 305 and note;

accompanies Southey on a walking-tour in Dartmoor, 305 and note;

makes a tour of the Lake Country, 312 n., 313;

in London, writing for the _Morning Post_, 315-332;

life at Greta Hall, near Keswick, 335-444;

proposes to write an essay on the elements of poetry, 338, 347;

proposes to study chemistry with William Calvert as a fellow-student,

345-347;

proposes to write a book on the originality and merits of Locke,

Hobbes, and Hume, 349, 350;

spends a week at Scarborough, riding and bathing for his health,

361-363;

divides the winter of 1801-1802 between London and Nether Stowey,

365-368;

domestic unhappiness, 366;

writes the _Ode to Dejection_, addressing it to Wordsworth, 378-384;

discouraged about his poetic faculty, 388;

a separation from his wife considered and harmony restored, 389, 390;

makes a walking-tour of the Lake Country, 393 and note, 394;

makes a tour of South Wales with Thomas and Sarah Wedgwood, 410-414;

his regimen at this time, 412, 413, 416, 417;

birth of his daughter Sara, 416;

with Charles and Mary Lamb in London, 421, 422;

takes Mary Lamb to the private madhouse at Hugsden, 422;

his tour in Scotland, 431-441;

love for and delight in his children, 443;

visits Wordsworth at Grasmere and is taken ill there, 447, 448;

his rapid recovery, 451;

plans and preparations for going abroad, 447-469;

his mental attitude towards his wife, 468;

voyage to Malta, 469-481;

dislike of his own first name, 470, 471;

life in Malta, 481-484;

a Sicilian tour, 485 and note, 486 and note, 487;

in Malta again, 487-497;

his duties as Acting Public Secretary at Malta, 487, 491, 493, 494 and

note, 495-497;

his grief at Captain John Wordsworth’s death, 494 and note, 495 and

note, 497;

in Italy, 498-502;

returns to England, 501;

remains in and about London, writing political articles for the

_Courier_, 505-509;

invited to deliver a course of lectures at the Royal Institution, 507;

visits the Wordsworths at Coleorton Farmhouse with his son Hartley,

509-514;

spends five or six weeks with Hartley in the company of the Wordsworths

at Basil Montagu’s house in London, 511 n.;

outlines his course of lectures at the Royal Institution, 515, 516,

522;

begins his lectures, 525;

a change for the better in health, habits, and spirits, the result of

his placing himself under the care of a physician, 533 and note,

543 n.;

with the Wordsworths at Grasmere, devoting himself to the publication

of _The Friend_, 533-559;

in London, 564;

determines to place himself under the care of Dr. John Abernethy, 564,

565;

visits the Morgans in Portland Place, Hammersmith, 566-575;

life-masks, death-mask, busts, and portraits, 570 and note, 572 and

notes;

last visit to Greta Hall and the Lake Country, 575-578;

misunderstanding with Wordsworth, 576 n., 577, 578, 586-588;

visits the Morgans at No. 71 Berners Street, 579-612;

preparations for another course of lectures, 579, 580, 582, 585;

writes Wordsworth letters of explanation, 588-595;

his Lectures on the Drama at Willis’s Rooms, 595 and notes, 596, 597,

599;

reconciled with Wordsworth, 596, 597, 599;

second rupture with Wordsworth, 599 n., 600 n.;

Josiah’s half of the Wedgwood annuity withdrawn on account of C.’s

abuse of opium, 602, 611 and note;

successful production of his tragedy, _Remorse_ (_Osorio_ rewritten),

at Drury Lane Theatre, 602-611;

sells a part of his library, 616 and note;

anguish and remorse from the abuse of opium, 616-621, 623, 624;

at Bristol, 621-626;

proposes to translate _Faust_ for John Murray, 624 and note, 625, 626;

convalescent, 631;

with the Morgans at Ashley, near Box, 631;

writing at his projected great work, _Christianity, the one true

Philosophy_, 632 and note, 633;

with the Morgans at Mr. Page’s, Calne, Wilts, 641-653;

resolves to free himself from his opium habit and arranges to enter

the house of James Gillman, Esq., a surgeon, in Highgate (an

arrangement which ends only with his life), 657-659;

submits his drama _Zapolya_ to the Drury Lane Committee, and, after

its rejection, publishes it in book form, 666 and note, 667-669;

publishes _Sibylline Leaves_ and _Biographia Literaria_, 673;

disputes with his publishers, Fenner and Curtis, 673, 674 and note;

proposes a new Encyclopædia, 674;

his reputation as a critic, 677 n.;

visits Joseph Henry Green, Esq., at St. Lawrence, near Maldon, 690-693;

his snuff-taking habits, 691, 692 and note;

his friendship and correspondence with Thomas Allsop, 695, 696;

delivers a course of Lectures on the History of Philosophy at the

Crown and Anchor, Strand, 698 and note;

criticises his portrait by Thomas Phillips, 699, 700;

at the seashore, 700, 701;

a candidate for associateship in the Royal Society of Literature, 726,

727;

elected as a Royal Associate, 728;

at Ramsgate, 729-731;

prepares and publishes _Aids to Reflection_, 734 n., 738;

reads an _Essay on the Prometheus of Æschylus_ before the Royal

Society of Literature, 739, 740;

another visit to Ramsgate, 742-744;

takes a seven weeks’ continental tour with Wordsworth and his

daughter, 751;

illness, 754-756, 758;

convalescence, 760, 761;

begins to see a new edition of his poetical works through the press,

769 n.;

writes a letter to his godchild from his deathbed, 775, 776.

_Coleridge, Early Recollections of_, by Joseph Cottle, 139 n., 140 n.,

151 n., 219 n., 232 n., 251 n., 616 n., 617 n., 633 n.

_Coleridge, Life of_, by James Gillman, 3, 20 n., 23 n., 24 n., 45 n.,

46 n., 171 n., 257, 680 n., 761 n.

_Coleridge, Samuel Taylor_, by James Dykes Campbell, 269 n., 527 n.,

572 n., 600 n., 631 n., 653 n., 666 n., 667 n., 674 n., 681 n.,

684 n., 698 n., 752 n., 753 n., 772 n.

_Coleridge, Samuel Taylor, and the English Romantic School_, by Alois

Brandl, 258, 674 n., 740 n.

_Coleridge, S. T., Letters, Conversations, and Recollections of_, by

Thomas Allsop, 41 n., 527 n., 675 n.;

the publication of, regarded by C.’s friends as an act of bad faith,

696 and note, 721 n.;

698 n.

_Coleridge, S. T., Spiritual Philosophy, founded on the Teaching of_, by

J. H. Green, 680 n.

_Coleridge’s Logic_, article in _The Athenæum_, 753 n.

_Coleridge and Southey, Reminiscences of_, by Joseph Cottle, 268 n., 269

n., 417, 456 n., 617 n.

Coleridge, Mrs. Samuel Taylor (Sarah Fricker, afterwards called “Sara”),

edits the second edition of _Biographia Literaria_, 3;

136, 145, 146, 150, 151;

illness and recovery of, 155, 156;

168;

birth of her first child, David Hartley, 169;

174 n., 181, 188-190, 205, 213, 214, 216, 224, 245;

birth of her second child, Berkeley, 247-249;

257, 258, 259 n.;

extract from a letter to S. T. C., 263 n.;

extract from a letter to Mrs. Lovell, 267 n.;

271, 297, 312 n., 313, 318, 321, 325, 326, 332;

birth and baptism of her third child, Derwent, 338 and note;

her devotion saves his life, 338 n.;

387;

fears of a separation from her husband operate to restore harmony,

389, 390;

her faults as detailed by S. T. C., 389, 390;

392, 393 n., 395, 396;

birth of a daughter, Sara, 416;

418, 443, 457, 467, 490, 491, 521;

extract from a letter to Poole, 576 n.;

578;

John Kenyon a kind friend to, 639 n.;

letters from S. T. C., 259-266, 271, 277, 284, 288, 367, 410, 420,

431, 460, 467, 480, 496, 507, 509, 563, 579, 583, 602;

letter to S. T. C. after her little Berkeley’s death, 282 n.

Coleridge, Sara (daughter), her birth, 416;

in infancy, 443;

at the age of nine, 575, 576;

580, 724;

marries her cousin, Henry Nelson C., 756 n.

_See_ Coleridge, Mrs. Henry Nelson.

_Coleridge, Sara, Memoir and Letters of_, 461 n., 758 n.

Coleridge, the Hundred of, in North Devon, 4 and note.

Coleridge, the Parish of, 4 n.

Coleridge, William (brother), 7.

Coleridge, William Hart (nephew, afterwards Bishop of Barbadoes),

befriends Hartley C., 675 n.;

707;

his portrait by Thomas Phillips, R. A., 740 and note.

Coleridge, William Rennell, 699 n.

Coleridge family, origin of, 4 n.

Collier, John Payne, 575 n.

Collins, William, his _Ode on the Poetical Character_, 196;

his _Odes_, 318.

Collins, William, A. R. A. (afterward, R. A.), letter from C., 693.

Colman, George, the younger, genius of, 621;

his _Who wants a Guinea?_, 621 n.

Columbus, the, a vessel, 730.

Combe Florey, 308 n.

Comberbacke, Silas Tomkyn, C.’s assumed name, 62.

Comic Drama, the downfall of the, 616.

_Complaint of Ninathoma, The_, 51.

_Concerning Poetry_, a proposed book, 347, 386, 387.

_Conciones ad Populum_, 85 n., 161 n., 166, 454 n., 527 n.

_Confessions of an Enquiring Spirit_, originally addressed to Rev.

Edward Coleridge, 724 n.;

756 n.

Coniston, 394.

_Connubial Rupture, On a late_, 179 n.

Consciousness of infants, 283.

Conservative Party in 1832, the, 757.

Consolation, a note of, 113.

_Consolations and Comforts, etc._, a projected book, 452, 453.

Constant, Benjamin, his tract _On the Strength of the Existing

Government of France, and the Necessity of supporting it_, 219

and note.

Contempt, C.’s definition of, 198.

_Contentment, Motives of_, by Archdeacon Paley, 47.

Conversation, C.’s, 181, 752 and note;

C.’s maxims of, 244.

Conversation evenings at the Gillmans’, 740, 741, 774.

Cookson, Dr., Canon of Windsor and Rector of Forncett, Norfolk, 311 and

note.

Copland, 400.

Cordomi, a pseudonym of C.’s, 295 n.

_Cornhill Magazine_, 345 n.

Cornish, Mr., 66.

Corry, Right Hon. Isaac, 390 and note.

Corsham, 650, 652 n.

Corsica, 174 n.

Corsican Rangers, 554.

Cote House, Josiah Wedgwood’s residence, C. visits, 416;

455 n.

Cottle, Joseph, agrees to pay C. a fixed sum for his poetry, 136;

137;

his _Early Recollections of Coleridge_, 139 n., 140 n., 151 n., 219

n., 232 n., 251 n., 616 n., 617 n., 633 n.;

144, 184, 185, 191, 192, 212;

his _Reminiscences of Coleridge and Southey_, 268 n., 269 n., 417,

456 n., 617 n.;

his financial difficulties, 319;

358;

his _Malvern Hill_, 358;

his publication of C.’s letters of confession and remorse deeply

resented by C.’s family and friends, 616 n., 617 n.;

convalescent after a dangerous illness, 619;

letters from C., 133, 134, 154, 218 n., 220, 238, 251 n., 616, 619.

_Courier_, the, 230;

C. writes for, 505, 506, 507 n., 520;

534 and note, 543;

its conduct during the investigation of the charges against the Duke

of York universally extolled, 545;

articles and recommendations for, 567 and notes, 568;

C. as a candidate for the place of auxiliary to, 568-570;

568 n.;

C. breaks with, 574;

598, 629 and notes, 634 and note;

change in the character of, 660-662, 664;

C. proposes to write on the Catholic question for, 660, 662;

arrangements for the proposed articles, 664, 665.

_Courier_ office, C. lodges at the, 505, 520.

Cowper, William, “the divine chit-chat of,” 197 and note;

his _Task_, 242 n.

Craven, Countess of, 86 n.

Craven Scholarship, C.’s examination for the, 45 and note, 46.

Crediton, 5 n., 11.

_Critical Review_, 185, 489.

Criticism welcome to true poets, 402.

Crompton, Dr., of Derby, 215;

letter from Thelwall on the Wedgwood annuity, 234 n.

Crompton, Mrs., of Derby, 215.

Crompton, Mrs., of Eaton Hall, 758.

Crompton, Dr. Peter, of Eaton Hall, 359 and note, 758 n.

Cruikshank, Ellen, 165.

Cruikshank, John, 136, 177, 184, 188.

Cruikshank, Mrs. John (Anna), 177;

lines to, 177 n.;

213.

_See_ Buclé, Miss.

Cryptogram, C.’s, 597 n.

Cunningham, Rev. J. W., his _Velvet Cushion_, 651 and note.

_Cupid turned Chymist_, 54 n., 56.

Currie, James, 359 and note.

_Curse of Kehama, The_, by Southey, 684.

Curtis, Rev. T., partner of Fenner, C.’s publisher, his ill-usage of

C., 674.

Cuxhaven, 259.

Dalton, John, 457 and note.

Damer, Hon. Mrs., 368.

Dana, Miss R. Charlotte, 572 n.

Dante and his _Divina Commedia_, 676, 677 and note, 678, 679, 731 n.,

732.

Danvers, Charles, his kindness of heart, 316.

_Dark Ladie, The Ballad of the_, 375.

Darnley, Earl, 629.

Dartmoor, a walking-tour in, 305 and note.

Dartmouth, 305 and note.

Darwin, Dr. Erasmus, C.’s conversation with, 152, 153;

his philosophy of insincerity, 161;

C.’s opinion of his poems, 164;

211;

the first literary character in Europe, and the most original-minded

man, 215;

386, 648.

Dash Beck, 375 n., 376 n.

Davy, Sir Humphry, 315-317, 321, 324, 326, 344, 350, 357, 365, 379 n.,

448;

a Theo-mammonist, 455;

456;

C. attends his lectures, 462 and note, 463;

C.’s esteem and admiration for, 514;

his successful efforts to induce C. to give a course of lectures at

the Royal Institution, 515, 516;

seriously ill, 520, 521;

hears from C. of his improvement in health and habits, 533 n.;

673 n.;

letters from C., 336-341, 345, 514.

_Davy, Sir Humphry, Fragmentary Remains of_, edited by Dr. Davy, 343 n.,

533 n.

Dawe, George, R. A., his life-mask and portrait of C., 572 and note;

his funeral and C.’s epigram thereon, 572 n.;

immortalized by Lamb, 572 n.;

engaged on a picture to illustrate C.’s poem, _Love_, 573;

his admiration for Allston’s modelling, 573;

his character and manners, 581;

a fortunate grub, 605.

Dawes, Rev. John, teacher of Hartley and Derwent C., 576 and note, 577.

Death, fear of, responsible for many virtues, 744;

the nature of, 762, 763.

Death and life, meditations on, 283-287.

Death-mask of C., a, 570 n.

_Death of Mattathias, The_, by Robert Southey, 108 and note.

Deism, religious, 414.

_Dejection: An Ode_, 378 and note, 379 and note, 380-384, 405 n.

Della Cruscanism, 196.

Democracy, C. disavows belief in, 104-105;

134, 243.

_See_ Republicanism _and_ Pantisocracy.

Denbigh, 80, 81.

Denman, Miss, 769, 770.

Dentist, a French, 40.

De Quincey, Thomas, 405 n., 525;

revises the proofs and writes an appendix for Wordsworth’s pamphlet

_On the Convention of Cintra_, 549, 550 n.;

563, 601, 772 n.

Derby, 152;

proposal to start a school in, 170 and note;

188;

the people of, 215 and note, 216.

Derwent, the river, 339.

Descartes, René, 351 and note.

_Destiny of Nations, The_, 278 n., 178 n.

_Deutschland in seiner tiefsten Erniedrigung_, by John Philip Palm, C.’s

translation of, 530.

De Vere, Aubrey, extract from a letter from Sir William Rowan Hamilton

to, 759 n.

_Devil’s Thoughts, The_, by Coleridge and Southey, 318.

Devock Lake, 393.

Devonshire, 305 and note.

_Devonshire, Georgiana, Duchess of, Ode to_, 320 and note, 330.

Dibdin, Mr., stage-manager at Drury Lane Theatre, 666.

_Disappointment, To_, 28.

_Dissuasion from Popery_, by Jeremy Taylor, 639.

_Divina Commedia_, C. praises the Rev. H. F. Cary’s translation of, 676,

677 and note, 678, 679;

Gabriele Rossetti’s essay on the mechanism and interpretation of, 732.

_Doctor, The_, 583 n., 584 n.

Döring, Herr von, 279.