Miss Cruikshanks has favored me with a letter of Mr. Coleridge to
herself, explanatory of his political principles, when he had receded in
a good measure from the sentiments pervading his "Conciones ad Populum."
This letter was written at a later period, but is made to follow the
preceding, to preserve a continuity of subject.
Miss C. it appears, had lent the first edition of Mr. Coleridge's poems
to Lady Elizabeth Perceval,[25] in some parts of which volume the
sentiments of an earlier day were rather too prominently displayed. To
counteract the effect such parts were calculated to produce, Mr.
Coleridge wrote the following letter, in the hope that by being shown to
her ladyship, it might efface from her mind any unfavorable impression
she might have received. In this letter he also rather tenderly refers to
his American scheme.
(No date, supposed to be 1803.)
"My dear Miss Cruikshanks,
With the kindest intentions, I fear you have done me some little
disservice, in borowing the first edition of my poems from Miss B--. I
never held any principles indeed, of which, considering my age, I have
reason to be ashamed. The whole of my public life may be comprised in
eight or nine months of my 22nd year; and the whole of my political sins
during that time, consisted in forming a plan of taking a large farm in
common, in America, with other young men of my age. A wild notion indeed,
but very harmless.
As to my principles, they were, at all times, decidedly anti-jacobin and
anti-revolutionary, and my American scheme is a proof of this. Indeed at
that time, I seriously held the doctrine of passive obedience, though a
violent enemy of the first war. Afterwards, and for the last ten years of
my life, I have been fighting incessantly in the good cause, against
French ambition, and Trench principles; and I had Mr. Addington's
suffrage, as to the good produced by my Essays, written in the Morning
Post, in the interval of the peace of Amiens, and the second war,
together with my two letters to Mr. Fox.[26]
Of my former errors, I should be no more ashamed, than of my change of
body, natural to increase of age; but in that first edition, there was
inserted (without my consent!) a Sonnet to Lord Stanhope, in direct
contradiction, equally, to my _then_, as to my present principles. A
Sonnet written by me in ridicule and mockery of the bloated style of
French Jacobinical declamation, and inserted by Biggs, (the fool of a
printer,) in order forsooth, that he might send the book, and a letter to
Earl Stanhope; who, to prove that he was not mad in all things, treated
both book and letter with silent contempt.[27] I have therefore sent Mr.
Poole's second edition, and if it be in your power, I could wish you to
read the 'dedication to my brother,' at the beginning, to Lady E.
Perceval, to obtain whose esteem, so far at least as not to be confounded
with the herd of vulgar mob flatterers, I am not ashamed to confess
myself solicitous.
I would I could be with you, and your visitors. Penelope, you know, is
very high in my esteem. With true warmth of heart, she joins more
strength of understanding; and, to steady principle, more variety of
accomplishments, than it has often been my lot to meet with among the
fairer sex. When I praise one woman to another I always mean a compliment
to both. My tenderest regards to your dear mother, whom I really long to
spend a few hours with, and believe me with sincere good wishes, Yours,
&c.