"Corston, twelve years in various fortunes fled
Have passed in restless progress o'er my head.
Since in thy vale, beneath the master's rule,
I roamed an inmate of the village school."
The place, he tells us, had been the ample dwelling of the lord of the
manor, but--
"Here now in petty empire o'er the school,
The mighty master held despotic rule;
Trembling in silence, all his deeds we saw,
His look a mandate, and his word a law;
Severe his voice, severe and stern his mien,
And wondrous strict he was, and wondrous wise, I ween.
"Even now, through many a long, long year I trace
The hour when first with awe I viewed his face;
Even now, recall my entrance at the dome,--
'Twas the first day I ever left my home.
Years, intervening, have not worn away
_The deep remembrance of that wretched day_.
"Methinks e'en now the interview I see.
The mistress's kind smile, the master's glee.
Much of my future happiness they said,
Much of the easy life the scholars led;
Of spacious playground, and of wholesome air,
The best instruction, and the tenderest care;
And when I followed to the garden door
My father, till, through tears, I saw no more,--
How civilly they soothed my parting pain,
_And how they never spake so civilly again_."
Bravo! Southey! In these lines how many feelings of how many oppressed
little hearts you have given vent to! Improvement, I do believe, has
found its way, in a great degree, since then into private schools; but
in many of them still, how much remains to be done! How much more may
the spirits of masters and mistresses be humanized! How much more the
law of love be substituted for the law of severity! It can not be too
deeply impressed on the hearts of those who take the charge of
children often at a great distance, that there is no tyranny so
cowardly and mean as that which is exercised, not over grown men, but
over tender children.
Coleridge calls this change, being "first plucked up and
transplanted;" and adds--"Oh, what a change! I was a depressed,
moping, friendless, poor orphan, half-starved;--at that time the
portion of food to the Bluecoats was cruelly insufficient for those
who had no friends to supply them." For those who had friends to
supply them, the distinction set up was of the most detestable kind.
They had luxuries brought in and served up before these poor
half-starved little wretches. Charles Lamb, under the title of Elia,
describes his own case as one of these favored ones. "I remember Lamb
at school, and can well remember that he had some peculiar advantages,
which I and others of his schoolfellows had not. His friends lived in
town and were at hand, and he had the privilege of going to see them
almost as often as he wished, through some invidious distinction which
was denied us. The present treasurer of the Inner Temple can explain
how it happened. He had his tea and hot rolls in the morning, while we
were battening upon our quarter of a penny loaf; our _crug_ moistened
with attenuated small beer in wooden piggins, smacking of the pitched
leathern jack it was poured from. On Mondays, milk porritch, blue and
tasteless, and the pease soup of Saturday, coarse and choking, were
enriched for him with a slice of 'extraordinary bread and butter' from
the hot loaf of the Temple. The Wednesday's mess of millet, somewhat
less repugnant--(we had three banyan to four meat days in the
week)--was endeared to his palate with a lump of double-refined, and a
smack of ginger, or the fragrant cinnamon, to make it go down the more
glibly. In lieu of our _half-pickled_ Sundays, or _quite fresh_ boiled
beef on Thursdays, strong as caro equina, with destestable marigolds
floating in the pail to poison the broth; our scanty mutton crags on
Fridays; and rather more savory, but grudging portions of the same
flesh, rotten-roasted, or rare, on the Tuesdays--the only dish which
excited our appetites, and disappointed our stomachs in almost equal
proportion; he had his hot plate of roast veal, or the more tempting
griskin, exotics unknown to our palates, cooked in the paternal
kitchen."
"I," says Coleridge, giving us the other side of the case, "was a poor
friendless boy; my parents, and those who should have cared for me,
were far away. Those few acquaintances of theirs, which they could
reckon on being kind to me in the great city, after a little forced
notice, which they had the grace to take of me on my first arrival in
town, soon grew tired of my holyday visits. They seemed to them to
recur too often, though I thought them few enough; one after another,
they all failed me, and I felt myself alone among six hundred
playmates. O, the cruelty of separating a poor lad from his early
homestead! The yearnings which I used to have toward it in those
unfledged years! How in my dreams would my native town, far in the
west, come back, with its churches, and trees, and faces! To this late
hour of my life do I trace the impressions left by the painful
recollections of those friendless holydays. The long, warm days of
summer never return but they bring with them a gloom from the haunting
memories of those _whole day's leave_, when, by some strange
arrangement, we were turned out for the live-long day, upon our own
hands, whether we had friends to go to or none. I remember those
bathing excursions to the New river, which Lamb recalls with such
relish, better, I think, than he can, for he was a home-seeking lad,
and did not care for such water parties. How we would sally forth into
the fields, and strip under the first warmth of the sun, and wanton
like young dace in the streams, getting appetites for the noon which
those of us that were penniless had not the means of allaying; while
the cattle, and the birds, and the fishes were at feed about us, and
we had nothing to satisfy our cravings: the very beauty of the day,
the exercise of the pastime, and the sense of liberty, setting a
keener edge upon them! How, faint and languid, finally, we would
return, toward nightfall, to our desired morsel, half-rejoicing,
half-reluctant, that the hours of uneasy liberty had expired!
"It was worse, in the days of winter, to go prowling about the streets
objectless; shivering at cold windows of print-shops, to extract a
little amusement; or, haply, as a last resort, in the hope of a little
novelty, to pay a fifty times repeated visit to the lions in the
Tower, to whose levee, by courtesy immemorial, we had a prescriptive
right of admission, and where our individual faces would be as well
known to the warden as those of his own charges."
What an amount of cruelty may be perpetrated even under the show of
favor! what hard days for the stomach, under the guise of holydays!
Coleridge was, from all accounts, at this time, "a delicate and
suffering boy." His stomach was weak, his feet tender, so that he was
obliged to wear very large, easy shoes. This might be one cause why he
more readily fell into sedentary reading habits. He was to be found
during play hours, often, with the knees of his breeches unbuttoned,
and his shoes down at the heel, walking to and fro, or sitting on a
step, or in a corner, deeply engaged in some book. The future author
of the Ancient Mariner, and translator of Wallenstein, sitting on
door-steps and at corners, with his book on his knee, was a very
interesting object, if the Ancient Mariner and Wallenstein could have
been seen seated in that head of black, cropped hair; as it was, it
did excite attention; and Bowyer, one of those clever brutes who, on
the strength of a good store of Latin and Greek, think themselves
authorized to rain a good store of blows on the poor children in their
power, testified his hopes of Coleridge's progress by continually and
severely punishing him. He was often heard to say that "the lad was so
ordinary a looking lad, with his black head, that he generally gave
him, at the end of a flogging, an extra cut; for, said he, you are
such an ugly fellow."
Books were the poor fellow's solace for the flagellations of the
masters and the neglect of the boys, among whom Lamb was not to be
reckoned, for he was very fond of him and kind to him. "From eight to
fourteen I was a playless day-dreamer," he observes; "a _helluo
librorum_; my appetite for which was indulged by a singular
incident a stranger who was struck by my conversation, made me free of
a circulating library in King-street, Cheapside."
This incident, says Gillman, was indeed singular. Going down the
Strand, in one of his daydreams, fancying himself swimming across the
Hellespont, thrusting his hands before him as in the act of swimming,
one hand came in contact with a gentleman's pocket. The gentleman
seized his hand; turned round, and looked at him with some anger,
exclaiming "What! so young and so wicked!" at the same time accusing
him of an attempt to pick his pocket. The frightened boy sobbed out
his denial of the intention, and explained to him how he thought
himself Leander swimming across the Hellespont. The gentleman was so
struck and delighted with the novelty of the thing, and with the
simplicity and intelligence of the boy, that he subscribed, as before
stated, to the library, in consequence of which Coleridge was further
enabled to indulge his love of reading.
It is stated that at this school he laid the foundation of those
bodily sufferings, which made his life one of sickness and torture,
and occasioned his melancholy resort to opium. He greatly injured his
health, it is said, and reduced his strength by his bathing
excursions; but is it not quite as likely that the deficiency of food,
and those holyday days when he was turned out to starvation, had quite
as much to do with it? On one occasion he swam across the New river in
his clothes, and dried them on his back. This is supposed to have laid
the foundation of his rheumatic pains; but may not that lying out all
night in the rain at a former day have been even a still earlier
predisposing cause? However that might be, he says, that "full half
the time from seventeen to eighteen was passed in the sick-ward of
Christ's Hospital, afflicted with jaundice and rheumatic fever."
At an earlier day he had undergone a medical treatment, which was
oddly enough the cause of his breaking out into verse. He had a
remarkably delicate white skin, which was once the cause of great
punishment to him. His dame had undertaken to cure him of the itch,
with which the boys of his ward had suffered much; but Coleridge was
doomed to suffer more than his comrades, from the use of sulphur
ointment, through the great sagacity of his dame, who with her
extraordinary eyes, aided by the power of glasses, could see the
malady in the skin, deep and out of power of common vision; and
consequently, as often as she employed this miraculous sight, she
found, or thought she found, fresh reason for continuing the friction,
to the prolonged suffering and mortification of her patient. This
occurred when he was about ten years of age, and gave rise to his
first attempt at making a verse, as follows:
"O Lord, have mercy on me!
For I am very sad!
For why, good Lord? I've got the itch,
And eke I've got the _tad_!"
the school name for ringworm.
In classical study Coleridge made wonderful progress, though but
little in mathematics. He read on through the catalogue, folios and
all, of the library in King-street, and was always in a low fever of
excitement. His whole being was, he says, with eyes closed to every
object of present sense, to crumple himself up in a sunny comer, and
read, read, read; fancying himself on Robinson Crusoe's island,
finding a mountain of plum-cake and eating a room for himself, and
then eating out chairs and tables--hunger and fancy!
So little affection had Coleridge for the school, that he greatly
wanted, at fifteen, to put himself apprentice to a shoemaker. It was
of the same class of odd attempts as his future one at soldiering.
"Near the school there resided a worthy and, in their rank of life, a
respectable middle-aged couple. The husband kept a little shop and was
a shoemaker, with whom Coleridge had become intimate. The wife, also,
had been kind and attentive to him, and that was sufficient to
captivate his affectionate nature, which had existed from earliest
childhood, and strongly endeared him to all around him. Coleridge
became exceedingly desirous of being apprenticed to this man, to learn
the art of shoemaking; and in due time, when some of the boys were old
enough to leave the school and be put to trade, Coleridge, being of
the number, tutored his friend Crispin how to apply to the head
master, and not to heed his anger, should he become irate.
Accordingly, Crispin applied at the hour proposed to see Bowyer, who,
having heard the proposal to take Coleridge as an apprentice, and
Coleridge's answer and assent to become a shoemaker, broke forth with
his favorite adjuration:--'Ods my life, man, what d'ye mean?' At the
sound of his angry voice Crispin stood motionless, till the angry
pedagogue, becoming infuriate, pushed the intruder out of the room
with such force that Crispin might have sustained an action at law
against him for the assault. Thus, to Coleridge's mortification and
regret, as he afterward in joke would say, 'I lost the opportunity of
supplying safeguards to the understandings of those who, perhaps, will
never thank me for what I am aiming to do in exercising their
reason.'"
Disappointed in becoming a shoemaker, he was next on fire to become a
surgeon. His brother Luke was now in London, walking the London
hospitals. Here, every Saturday, he got leave and went, delighted
beyond every thing if he were permitted to hold the plasters, or
attend dressings. He now plunged headlong into books of medicine,
Latin, Greek, or English; devoured whole medical dictionaries; then
fell from physic to metaphysics; thence to the writings of infidels;
fell in love, like all embryo poets, and wrote verse. He was, however,
destined neither to make shoes nor set bones, but for the university;
whither he went in 1791, at the age of nineteen, being elected to
Jesus College, Cambridge.
Here his friend Middleton, afterward Bishop of Calcutta, who had been
his most distinguished schoolfellow at Christ's Hospital, had preceded
him, and was an under-graduate at Pembroke College. Their friendship
was revived, and Coleridge used to go to Pembroke College sometimes to
read with him. One day he found Middleton intent on his book, having
on a long pair of boots reaching to the knees, and beside him, on a
chair next to the one he was sitting on, a pistol. Coleridge had
scarcely sat down before he was startled by the report of the pistol.
"Did you see that?" said Middleton, "See what?" said Coleridge. "That
rat I just sent into its hole again. Did you feel the shot? It was to
defend my legs that I put on these boots. I am frightening these rats
from my books, which, without some precaution, I shall have devoured."
Middleton, notwithstanding his hard studies, failed in his contest for
the classical medal, and so in his hopes of a fellowship--a good thing
eventually for him, for it drove him out of college into the world and
a bishopric.
Coleridge came to the university with a high character for talent and
learning; and the Blues, as they are called, or Christ's Hospital
boys, anticipated his doing great honor to their body. This he
eventually did by his poetical fame, and might have done by his
college honors, had he but been as well versed in mathematics as in
the classics. In his first year he contested for the prize for the
Greek ode, and won it. In his second year he stood for the Craven
scholarship, and, of sixteen or eighteen competitors, four were
selected to contend for the prize; these were Dr. Butler, late Bishop
of Lichfield; Dr. Keate, the late head master of Eton; Mr. Bethell,
and Coleridge. Dr. Butler was the successful candidate, and Coleridge
was supposed to stand next. But college honors were contingent on a
good mathematical stand; this Coleridge, who hated mathematics,
despaired of, and determined to quit the university. He was, moreover,
harassed with debts, the most serious of which, it seems, was incurred
immediately on his arrival at Cambridge. He was no sooner at his
college, than a polite upholsterer accosted him, requesting to be
permitted to furnish his rooms. The next question was, "How would you
like to have them furnished?" The answer, prompt and innocent enough,
was, "Just as you please, sir"--thinking the individual employed by
the college. The rooms, were, therefore, furnished according to the
taste of the artisan, and the bill presented to the astonished
Coleridge. On quitting the college, it seems that his debts were about
one hundred pounds--no great matter, but to him as overwhelming as if
they had been a thousand. Cottle, in his account of him, says he had
fallen in love, as well as into debt, with a Mary G----, who rejected
his offer. He made his way to London, and there, of all things in the
world, enlisted for a soldier. The story is very curious, and as
related, both by Cottle and Gillman, who were intimate with him at
different periods of his life, is no doubt true.
In a state of great dejection of mind, he strolled about the streets
of London till night came on, when he seated himself on the steps of a
house in Chancery-lane, speculating on the future. In this situation,
overwhelmed with his own painful thoughts, and in misery himself, he
had now to contend with the misery of others; for he was accosted by
various kinds of beggars importuning him for money, and forcing on him
their real or pretended sorrows. To these applicants he emptied his
pockets of his remaining cash. Walking along Chancery-lane, he noticed
a bill posted on the wall--"Wanted, a few smart lads for the 15th
Elliott's Light Dragoons:" he paused a moment, and said to himself,
"Well, I have had all my life a violent antipathy to soldiers and
horses; the sooner I cure myself of these absurd prejudices the
better; and so I will enlist in this regiment." Forthwith, he went as
directed to the place of enlistment. On his arrival, he was accosted
by an old sergeant, with a remarkably benevolent countenance, to whom
he stated his wish. The old man, looking at him attentively, asked him
if he had been in bed? On being answered in the negative, he desired
him to take his, made him breakfast, and bade him rest himself awhile,
which he did. This feeling sergeant, finding him refreshed in his
body, but still suffering apparently from melancholy, in kind words
begged him to be of good cheer, and consider well the step he was
about to take; gave him half-a-guinea, which he was to repay at his
convenience, desiring him, at the same time, to go to the play, and
shake off his melancholy, and not to return to him. The first part of
the advice Coleridge attended to; but returned, after the play, to the
quarters he had left. At the sight of him, this kind-hearted man burst
into tears. "Then it must be so," said he. This sudden and unexpected
sympathy from an entire stranger deeply affected Coleridge, and nearly
shook his resolution; but still considering that he could not in honor
even to the sergeant retreat, he kept his secret, and, after a short
chat, they retired to rest. In the morning the sergeant mustered his
recruits, and Coleridge, with his new comrades, was marched to
Reading. On his arrival at the quarters of the regiment, the general
of the district inspected the recruits, and looking hard at Coleridge,
with a military air, "What's your name, sir?" He had previously
determined to give one thoroughly Kamtschatkan; but having observed
one somewhere, over a door, Cumberbatch, he thought this sufficiently
outlandish, and therefore gave it with a slight alteration, which
implied a joke on himself as a horseman, Silas Tomken Comberbacke, as
thus it is spelled in the books at the War-office. "What do you come
here for?" said the officer, as if doubting that he had any business
there. "Sir," said Coleridge, "for what most other persons come, to be
made a soldier." "Do you think," said the general, "you can run a
Frenchman through the body?" "I don't know," replied Coleridge, "as I
never tried; but I'll let a Frenchman run me through before I'll run
away." "That will do," said the general, and Coleridge was turned into
the ranks.
Here, in his new capacity, laborious duties devolved on Mr. Coleridge.
He endeavored to think on Cæsar, Epaminondas, and Leonidas, with other
ancient heroes, and composed himself to his fate, remembering that in
every service there must be a commencement; but still he found
confronting him no imaginary difficulties. Perhaps he who had most
cause of dissatisfaction was the drill-sergeant, who thought his
professional character endangered; for, after using his utmost efforts
to bring his raw recruit into any thing like a training, he expressed
the most serious fears, from his unconquerable awkwardness, that he
never should be able to make _a proper soldier of him_. It
appears that he never advanced beyond the awkward squad, and that the
drill-sergeant was obliged continually to warn the members of this
squad by vociferously exclaiming--"Take care of that Comberback! take
care of him, for he will ride over you!" and other such complimentary
warnings.
Coleridge, or Cumberbatch, or Comberback, could never manage to rub
down his own horse. The creature, he said, was a vicious one, and
would return kick or bite for all such attempts; but then in justice
to the poor animal, the awkwardness of the attempts should be taken
into the account. Comberback at this time complained of a pain at the
pit of his stomach, accompanied with sickness, which totally prevented
his stooping, and in consequence he could never rub the heels of his
horse at all. He would very quietly have left his horse unrubbed, but
then he got a good rubbing down himself from the drill-sergeant.
Between sergeant and steed he was in a poor case, for when he mounted
his horse, it, like Gilpin's nag,
"What thing upon its back had got,
Did wonder more and more."
But the same amiable and benevolent conduct which was so interwoven in
his nature, soon made him friends, and his new comrades vied with each
other in their endeavors to be useful to him. They assisted to clean
his horse, and he amply repaid the obligation by writing all their
letters to their sweethearts and wives. Such an amanuensis we may well
affirm no lucky set of soldiers ever had before. Their lasses and good
wives must have wondered at the new burst of affectionate eloquence in
the regiment.
Poor Comberback's skill in horsemanship did not progress. He was
always encountering accidents and troubles. So little did he often
calculate for a due equilibrium, that in mounting on one side
perhaps--the wrong stirrup--the probability was, especially if his
horse moved, that he lost his balance, and if he did not roll back on
this side, came down ponderously on the other! The men, spite of their
liking for him, would burst into a laugh, and say to one another,
"Silas is off again!" Silas had often heard of campaigns, but he never
before had so correct an idea of hard service.
From his inability to learn his exercise, the men considered him a
sort of natural, though of a peculiar kind--a talking natural. This
fancy he stoutly resisted, but no matter--what was it that he could do
cleverly?--therefore a natural he must be.
But now came a change. He had been placed as a sentinel at the door of
a ball-room, or some public place of resort, when two of his officers
passing in, stopped for a moment near Coleridge talking about
Euripides, two lines being quoted by one of them as from that poet. At
the sound of Greek the sentinel instinctively turned his ear, when,
with all deference, touching his cap, he said, "I hope your honor will
excuse me, but the lines you have repeated are not quite accurately
cited. These are the lines;" which he gave in their true form.
"Beside," said Comberback, "instead of being in Euripides they will be
found in the second antistrophe of the OEdipus of Sophocles." "Why,
who the d---l are you?" said the officer, "old Faustus ground young
again?"--"I am only your honor's humble sentinel," said Coleridge,
again touching his cap.
The officers hastened into the room, and inquired about that "odd
fish" at the door; when one of the mess, the surgeon, it is believed,
told them that he had had his eye upon him, but he could neither tell
where he came from, nor any thing about his family of the Comberbacks.
"But," continued he, "instead of an 'odd fish,' I suspect him to be a
'stray bird' from the Oxford or Cambridge aviary." They learned also
the laughable fact that he was bruised all over by frequent falls from
his horse. The officers kindly took pity on the poor scholar, and had
him removed to the medical department, where he was appointed
"assistant" in the regimental hospital. This change was a vast
improvement in Mr. Coleridge's condition; and happy was the day also
on which it took place, for the sake of the sick patients; for Silas
Tomken Comberback's amusing stories, they said, did them more good
than all the doctor's physic. If he began talking to one or two of his
comrades,--for they were all on a perfect equality, except that those
who were clever in their exercise lifted their heads a little above
the awkward squad, of which Comberback was, by acclamation, the
preëminent member,--if he began to talk, however, to one or two,
others drew near, increasing momently, till by and by the sick beds
were deserted, and Comberback formed the center of a large circle.
Many ludicrous dialogues occurred between Coleridge and his new
disciples, particularly with the "geographer."
On one occasion he told them of the Peloponnesian war, which lasted
twenty-seven years. "There must have been famous promotions there,"
said one poor fellow, haggard as a death's head. Another, tottering
with disease, ejaculated, "Can you tell, Silas, how many rose from the
ranks?"
He now still more excited their wonderment by recapitulating the feats
of Archimedes. As the narrative proceeded, one restrained his
skepticism till he was almost ready to burst, and then vociferated,
"Silas, that's a lie!" "D'ye think so?" said Coleridge, smiling, and
went on with his story. The idea, however, got among them that Silas's
fancy was on the stretch, when Coleridge, finding that this would not
do, changed his subject, and told them of a famous general called
Alexander the Great. As by a magic spell, the flagging attention was
revived, and several, at the same moment, to testify their eagerness,
called out, "The general! the general!" "I'll tell you all about him,"
said Coleridge, and impatience marked every countenance. He then told
them who was the father of this Alexander the Great--no other than
Philip of Macedon. "I never heard of him," said one. "I think I have,"
said another, ashamed of being thought ignorant. "Silas, wasn't he a
Cornish man? I knew one of the Alexanders at Truro."
Coleridge now went on, describing to them, in glowing colors, the
valor, the wars, and the conquests of this famous general. "Ah," said
one man, whose open mouth had complimented the speaker for the
preceding half-hour, "Ah," said he, "Silas, this Alexander must have
been as great a man as our colonel!" Coleridge now told them of the
"Retreat of the Ten Thousand." "I don't like to hear of retreat," said
one. "Nor I," said a second; "I'm for marching on." Coleridge now told
of the incessant conflicts of those brave warriors, and of the virtues
of "the square." "They were a parcel of crack men," said one. "Yes,"
said another, "their bayonets fixed, and sleeping on their arms day
and night." "I should like to know," said a fourth, "what rations were
given with all that hard fighting;" on which an Irishman replied, "To
be sure, every time the sun rose, two pounds of good ox beef, and
plenty of whisky."
At another time he told them of the invasion of Xerxes, and his
crossing the _wide_ Hellespont. "Ah!" said a young recruit, a
native of an obscure village in Kent, who had acquired a decent
smattering of geography, knowing well that the earth went round, was
divided into land and water, and that there were more countries on the
globe than England, and who now wished to show off a little before his
comrades--"Silas, I know where that 'Hellspont' is. I think it must be
the mouth of the Thames, for _'tis_ very wide."
Coleridge now told them of the heroes of Thermopylæ; when the
geographer interrupted him by saying, "Silas, I know, too where that
there Moppily is, it's somewhere up in the north." "You are quite
right, Jack," said Coleridge, "it is to the north of the line." A
conscious elevation marked his countenance; and he rose at once five
degrees in the estimation of his friends.
But the days of Comberback were drawing to an end. An officer,
supposed to be Captain Nathaniel Ogle, who sold out of that regiment
toward the end of the same year that Coleridge left it, had, it is
said, had his attention drawn toward this singular private, by finding
the following sentence written on the walls of the stable where
Comberback's horse equipage hung: "_Eheu! quam infortunii miserrimum
est fuisse felicem!_" He showed him particular distinction. When
Captain Ogle walked the streets, Coleridge walked behind him as his
orderly; but when out of town, they walked abreast, to the great
mystification of his comrades, who could not comprehend how a man out
of the awkward squad could merit this honor. It was probably Ogle who
wormed the secret out of Coleridge, and informed his friends where he
was. It has, however, been said to have been through a young man, who
had lately left Cambridge for the army, and, on his road through
Reading to join his regiment, met Coleridge in the street, in his
dragoon's dress, who was about to pass him; on which he said, "No,
Coleridge, this will not do; we have been seeking you this six months.
I must and will converse with you, and have no hesitation in declaring
that I shall immediately inform your friends that I have found you."
Whether owing to one or both of these causes, but as Comberback was
sitting as usual at the foot of a bed, in the hospital, in the midst
of one of his talks, and surrounded by his usual gaping auditors, the
door suddenly opened, and in came two or three gentlemen, his friends,
looking in vain some time for their man, amid the uniform dresses. At
length they pitched on their man, and taking him by the arm, led him
in silence out of the room. As the supposed _deserter_ passed the
door, one of the astonished auditors uttered, with a sigh--"Poor
Silas! I wish they may let him off with a cool five hundred!"
Comberback was no more! but his memory was long and affectionately
preserved among his hospital companions, one of whom he had
volunteered to attend during a most malignant attack of small-pox,
when all others deserted him, and had waited on him, and watched him
for six weeks. To prevent contagion, the patient and his noble-hearted
nurse, and eventual savior, were put into an out-house, where
Coleridge continued all that time, night and day, administering
medicine, guarding him from himself during violent delirium, and when
again capable of listening, sitting by his bed, and reading to him. In
the annals of humanity, that act must stand as one of the truest
heroism.
Connected with this singular passage in Coleridge's life, an old
friend of his told Cottle this anecdote. The inspecting officer of his
regiment, on one occasion, was examining the guns of the men; and
coming to one piece which was rusty, he called out in an authoritative
tone, "Whose rusty gun is this?"--"Is it _very_ rusty, sir?" asked
Coleridge. "Yes, Comberbatch, it is," said the officer, sternly.
"Then, sir," replied Coleridge, "it must be mine!" The oddity of the
reply disarmed the officer, and the "poor scholar" escaped without
punishment.
There are various anecdotes abroad, at once illustrative of
Coleridge's queer horsemanship and happy knack at repartee, of which a
specimen or two may be given here, before we dismiss him as a trooper.
His awkwardness on horseback was so marked that it attracted general
notice. Once riding along the turnpike-road in the county of Durham, a
wag approaching him, noticed his peculiarity, and thought the rider
a fine subject for a little fun. Drawing near, he thus accosted
Coleridge, "I say, young man, did you meet a _tailor_ on the road?"
"Yes," replied Coleridge, "I did, and he told me if I went a little
farther I should meet a _goose_." The goose trotted on, quite
satisfied with what he had got.
Coleridge is represented as being at this time on his way to a
neighboring race-course. That a farmer at whose house he was staying,
knowing his sorry horsemanship, had put him on the least and poorest
animal he had, with old saddle and bridle and rusty stirrups. On this
Rosinante, Coleridge went in a black dress coat, with black breeches,
black silk stockings and shoes. Two other friends, as better horsemen,
were intrusted with better steeds, and soon left him on the road. At
length, reaching the race-ground, and thrusting his way through the
crowd, he arrived at the spot of attraction to which all were
hastening. Here he confronted a barouche and four, filled with smart
ladies and attendant gentlemen. In it was also seated a baronet of
sporting celebrity, steward of the course, and member of the House of
Commons; well known as having been bought and sold in several
parliaments. The baronet eyed the figure of Coleridge, as he slowly
passed the door of the barouche, and thus accosted him: "A pretty
piece of blood, sir, you have there."--"Yes!" answered
Coleridge.--"Rare paces, I have no doubt, sir!"--"Yes," answered
Coleridge, "he brought me here a matter of four miles an hour." He was
at no loss to perceive the honorable baronet's drift, who wished to
show off before the ladies: so he quietly waited the opportunity of a
suitable reply. "What a free hand he has!" continued Nimrod; "how
finely he carries his tail! Bridle and saddle well suited, and
appropriately appointed!"--"Yes!" said Coleridge.--"Will you sell
him?" asked the sporting baronet.--"Yes," was the answer, "if I can
have my price."--"Name your price, then, putting the rider into the
bargain!"--"My price," replied Coleridge, "for _the horse_, sir,
if I sell him, is _one hundred_ guineas; as to the _rider_,
never having been in parliament, and never intending to go, _his_
price is not yet fixed." The baronet sat down more suddenly than he
had risen--the ladies began to titter--while Coleridge quietly now
moved on.
Coleridge returned to Cambridge, but only for a very short time. The
French Revolution, in its early promise, had raised the spirit of
enthusiasm for liberty in the bosom of all generous-natured young men.
This had brought together Coleridge, Southey, and others of the like
temperament. Coleridge now went to visit Southey, at Oxford, where
they hit upon the Pantisocracy scheme, an offshoot from the root of
Rousseau's visions of primitive life. Coleridge is said first to have
broached it, and that it was eagerly adopted by Southey, and a college
friend of his, George Burnet. These young men, soon after, set off to
Bristol, Southey's native place, where they were soon joined by
Coleridge. Here Southey, Coleridge, and Burnet occupied the same
lodging; Robert Lovell, a young Quaker, had adopted this scheme, and
they all concluded to embark for America, where, on the banks of the
Susquehannah, they were to found their colony of peace and perfection,
to follow their own ploughs, harvest their own corn, and show forth to
the world the union of a patriarchal life of labor, with the highest
exercise of intellect and virtue. Luckily for them, the mainspring was
wanting. Without the root of all evil, they could not rear this tree
of all good fruits. They were obliged to borrow cash of Cottle even to
pay for their lodgings; and the shrewd bookseller, while he listened
to their animated descriptions of their future transatlantic Eden,
chuckled to himself on the impossibility of their ever carrying it
out. The dream gradually came to an end. Lovell died unexpectedly,
being carried off by a fever, brought on through a cold, caught on a
journey to Salisbury. Symptoms of jarring had shown themselves among
the friends, which were rather ominous for the permanence of a
pantisocracy. Coleridge had quarreled with Lovell before he died,
because Lovell, who was married to a Miss Fricker, opposed Coleridge's
marriage with her sister till he had better prospects. Coleridge and
Southey quarreled about the pantisocracy afterward. The most important
results to Southey and Coleridge of this pantisocratic coalition were,
that they eventually married the two sisters of Lovell's wife. Both
these young poets, with their minds now fermenting with new schemes of
politics and doctrines of religion, commenced at Bristol as lecturers
and authors. The profits of the lectures were to pay for the voyage to
America; they did not even pay the rent. Coleridge lectured on the
English Rebellion and Charles I., the French Revolution, and on
Religion and Philosophy; Southey, on General History: both displaying
their peculiar talents and characters--Coleridge all imagination,
absence of mind, and impracticability; Southey, with less genius, but
more order, prudence, and worldly tact. Both of those remarkable men
began by proclaiming the most ultra-liberalism in politics and
theology--both came gradually back to the opinions which early
associations and education had riveted on them unknown to themselves,
but with very different degrees of rapidity, and finally with a very
different tone. Coleridge ran through infidelity, unitarianism, the
philosophy of Berkeley, Spinoza, Hartley, and Kant; and came back
finally to good old Church-of-Englandism, but full of love and
tolerance. Southey, more prudent, and notoriously timid, was at once
startled by the horrors of the French committed in the name of
liberty; saw that the way of worldly prosperity was closed for life to
him who was not orthodox, and became at once orthodox. But the
consciousness of that sudden change hung forever upon him. He knew
that reproach would always pursue the suspicious reconversion, and on
that consciousness grew bitterness and intolerance. Coleridge, having
wandered through all opinions himself, was afraid to condemn too
harshly those who differed from him. He contented himself with loving
God, and preaching the true principles of Christianity.
"He prayeth best who _loveth_ best
Both man and beast, both great and small;
For the great God who loveth us
He made and loveth all."
Southey, on the contrary, stalked into the fearful regions of bigotry,
assumed in imagination the throne and thunder-bolts of Deity, and
"Dealt damnation round the land
On all he deemed his foes."
But this was the worst view of Southey's character. He had that lower
class of virtues which Coleridge had not, and out of his prudence and
timidity sprung that worldly substance which Coleridge was never
likely to acquire, and by which he kindly made up for some of
Coleridge's deficiencies. Coleridge could not provide properly for his
family; Southey helped to provide for them, and invited Coleridge's
wife and daughter to his house, where for many years they had a home.
In all domestic relations, Southey was admirable; he failed only in
those which would have given him a name, perhaps, little short of
Milton for glorious patriotism, had he proceeded to the end as he
began.
Of the literary life of Southey, Coleridge, and Wordsworth, who soon
after joined them in the west, I have yet to speak. We must now follow
Coleridge.
The circumstances which had brought Coleridge to Bristol, though they
did not end in pantisocracy, ended in marriage, which for some years
fixed him in that part of the country. Cottle, who, a poet of some
merit himself, saw the great talent of these young men, offered
Southey fifty guineas for his Joan of Arc, and became its publisher.
He also offered Coleridge thirty guineas for a volume of poems, the
cash to be advanced when he pleased from time to time. On this slender
foundation, Coleridge began the world. He took a cottage at Clevedon,
some miles from Bristol, and thither he took his bride. It appears
truly to have been the poetic idea--love in a cottage, for there was
love and little more. Cottle says it had walls, and doors, and
windows, but as for furniture, only such as became a philosopher. This
was not enough even for poetic lovers. Two days after the wedding, the
poet wrote to Cottle to send him the following unpoetical, but very
essential articles:--"A riddle-slice; a candle-box; two ventilators;
two glasses for the wash-hand stand; one tin dust-pan; one small tin
tea-kettle; one pair of candlesticks; one carpet brush; one
flour-dredge; three tin extinguishers; two mats; a pair of slippers; a
cheese-toaster, two large tin spoons; a Bible; a keg of porter;
coffee, raisins, currants, catsup, nutmegs, allspice, rice, ginger,
and mace."
So Coleridge began the world. Cottle, having sent these articles,
hastened after them to congratulate the young couple. This is his
account of their residence. "The situation of the cottage was
peculiarly eligible. It was in the extremity, not in the center of the
village. It had the benefit of being but one story high; and, as the
rent was only five pounds per annum, and the taxes naught, Mr.
Coleridge had the satisfaction of knowing that, by fairly mounting his
Pegasus, he could make as many verses in a week as would pay his rent
for a year. There was also a small garden, with several pretty
flowers, and the 'tallest tree-rose' did not fail to be pointed out,
which 'peeped at the chamber window,' and has been honored with some
beautiful lines."
The cottage is there yet in its garden; but Coleridge did not long
inhabit it. He soon found that even Clevedon was too far out of the
world for books and intellect; and returning to Bristol, took lodgings
on Redcliff-hill. From this abode he soon again departed, being
invited by his friend, Mr. Thomas Poole, of Nether Stowey, to visit
him there. During this visit, he wrote some of his first volume of
poems, including the Religious Musings; he then returned to Bristol,
and started the idea of his Watchman, and made that journey through
the principal manufacturing towns, to obtain subscribers for it, which
he so amusingly describes in his Biographia Literaria. This was a
failure; but about this time, Charles Lloyd, the eldest son of Charles
Lloyd, the banker, of Birmingham, whom Byron has commemorated in the
alliterative line of
"-- -- -- --Lovell, Lamb, and Lloyd,"
was smitten with the admiration of Coleridge's genius, and offered to
come and reside with him. He therefore took a larger house on
Kingsdown, where Lloyd was his inmate. Mr. Poole, of Stowey, however,
was not easy to be without the society of Coleridge; he sent him word
that there was a nice cottage there at liberty, of only seven pounds
per annum rent, and pressed him to come and fix there. Thither
Coleridge went, Lloyd also agreeing to accompany them. Unfortunately,
Lloyd had the germs of insanity, as well as poetry, in him. He was
subject to fits, which agitated and alarmed Coleridge. They eventually
disagreed, and Lloyd left, but was afterward reconciled, well
perceiving that his morbid nervousness had had much to do with the
difference.
This place became for two years Coleridge's home. Here he wrote some
of his most beautiful poetry. "The manhood of Coleridge's true
poetical life," has been observed by a cotemporary, "was in the year
1797." He was yet only twenty-five years of age; but his poetical
faculty had now acquired a wide grasp and a deep power. Here he wrote
his tragedy of Remorse, Christabelle, the Dark Ladie, the Ancient
Mariner, which was published in the Lyrical Ballads jointly with
Wordsworth's first poems, his ode on the Departing Year, and his Fears
in Solitude. These works are at once imbued with the highest spirit of
his poetry, and the noblest sentiments of humanity. Here he was
visited by Charles Lamb, Charles Lloyd, Southey, Hazlitt, De Quincy,
who had previously presented him generously with £300; the two great
potters, the Wedgwoods, and other eminent men. Wordsworth lived near
him at Allfoxden, and was in almost daily intercourse with him. The
foot of Quantock was to Coleridge, says one of his biographers, a
memorable spot. Here his studies were serious and deep. They were
directed not only to poetry, but into the great bulk of theological
philosophy. Here, with his friend, Thomas Poole, a man sympathizing in
all his tastes, and with Wordsworth, he roamed over the Quantock
hills, drinking in at every step new knowledge and impressions of
nature. In his Biographia Literaria, he says, "My walks were almost
daily on the top of Quantock, and among its sloping coombs." He had
got an idea of writing a poem, called THE BROOK, tracing a
stream which he had found, from its source, in the hills, among the
yellow-red moss, and conical glass-shaped tufts of bent, to the first
break, or fall, where its drops become audible, and it begins to form
a channel; thence to the peat and turf barn, itself built of the same
dark masses as it sheltered; to the sheepfold; to the first cultivated
spot of ground; to the lonely cottage, and its bleak garden won from
the heath; to the hamlets, the market-towns, the manufactories, and
the sea-port. It will be seen, that this was not _quite_ on so
fine a scale as Childe Harold, and that Wordsworth has carried out the
idea, in the Sonnets on the river Duddon, not quite so amply as the
original idea itself. He says, when strolling alone, he was always
with book, paper, and pencil in hand, making studies from nature,
whence his striking and accurate transcripts of such things. It will
be noticed, in the article on Wordsworth, that these rambles, in the
ignorant minds of the country people, converted him and Coleridge into
suspicious characters. Coleridge was so open and simple, that they
said, "As to Coleridge, he is a whirlbrain, that talks whatever comes
uppermost; but that Wordsworth! he is a _dark_ traitor. You never
hear _him_ say a syllable on the subject!"
Coleridge himself, in his Biographia Literaria, tells us, that a
certain baronet, in the neighborhood, got government to send down a
spy to watch them. That this spy was a very honest fellow, for a
wonder. That he heard them, he said, at first, talking a deal of
_Spy Nosey_ (Spinosa), and thought they were up to him, as his
nose was none of the smallest; but he soon found that it was all about
books. Coleridge also gives the amusing dialogue between the innkeeper
and the baronet, the innkeeper having been ordered to entertain the
spy, but, like the spy, soon found that the strange gentlemen were
only _poets_, and going to put Quantock into verse.
Many are the testimonies of attachment to this neighborhood, and the
wild Quantock hills, to be found in the poems of Coleridge; and in the
third book of the Excursion, Wordsworth describes the Quantock, and
their rambles, with all the gusto of a fond memory. First, we have a
peep at his own abode. We are conveyed--
"To a low cottage in a sunny bay,
Where the salt sea innocuously breaks,
And the sea breeze as innocently breathes
On Devon's leafy shores; a sheltered hold
In a soft clime, encouraging the soil
To a luxuriant bounty. As our steps
Approach the embowered abode--our chosen seat
See rooted in the earth, her kindly bed
The unendangered myrtle, decked with flowers,
Before the threshold stands to welcome us!
While, in the flowering myrtle's neighborhood,
Not overlooked, but courting no regard,
Those native plants, the holly and the yew.
Give modest intimation to the mind
How willingly their aid they would unite
With the green myrtle, to endear the hours
Of winter, and protect that pleasant place."
This, though placed in Devon instead of Somerset, accurately describes
Wordsworth's pleasant nook there; but the Quantock walks are more
strikingly like.
"Wild were the walks upon those lonely downs,
Track leading into track, how marked, how worn,
Into light verdure, between fern and gorse.
Winding away its never ending line
On their smooth surface, evidence was none;
But, there, lay open to our daily haunt,
A range of unappropriated earth,
Where youth's ambitious feet might move at large;
Whence, unmolested wanderers, we beheld
The shining giver of the day diffuse
His brightness o'er a track of sea and land
Gay as our spirits, free as our desires,
As our enjoyments boundless. From those heights
We dropped at pleasure into sylvan coombs,
Where arbors of impenetrable shade,
And mossy seats detained us side by side,
With hearts at ease, and knowledge in our breasts
That all the grove and all the day was ours."
In Coleridge's poem of Fears in Solitude, a noble-hearted poem, these
hills, and one of these very dells, are described with equal graphic
truth and affection.
"A green and silent spot amid the hills,
A small and silent dell! O'er stiller place
No singing skylark ever poised himself;
The hills are heathy, save that swelling slope,
Which hath a gay and gorgeous covering on,
All golden with the never bloomless furz
Which now blooms most profusely; but the dell
Bathed by the mist is fresh and delicate
As vernal cornfields, or the unripe flax,
When through its half-transparent stalks at eve
The level sunshine glimmers with green light.
Oh! 'tis a quiet, spirit-healing nook!
Which all, methinks, would love: but chiefly he,
The humble man, who, in his youthful years,
Knew just so much of folly as had made
His early manhood more securely wise!
Here might he lie on fern or withered heath,
While from the singing lark, that sings unseen
The minstrelsy that solitude loves best,
And from the sun and from the breezy air,
Sweet influences trembled o'er his frame;
And he with many feelings, many thoughts,
Made up a meditative joy, and found
Religious musings in the forms of nature!
And so his senses gradually wrapped
In a half-sleep, he dreams of better worlds,
And dreaming hears thee still, O singing lark,
That singest like an angel in the clouds."
Here, buried in summer beauty from the world, in this green and
delicious oratory, he lay and poured out those finely human thoughts
on war and patriotism, which enrich this poem; which closes with a
descriptive view of these hills, the wide prospects from them, and of
little quiet Stowey lying at their feet.
"But now the gentle dew-fall sends abroad
The fruit-like perfume of the golden furz;
The light has left the summit of the hill;
Though still a sunny gleam lies beautiful
Aslant the ivied beacon. Now farewell,
Farewell, awhile, O soft and silent spot!
On the green sheep-track, up the heathy hill,
Homeward I wend my way; and lo! recalled
From bodings that have well nigh wearied me,
I find myself upon the brow, and pause
Startled! And after lonely sojourning
In such a quiet and surrounded nook,
This burst of prospect,--here the shadowy main,
Dim-tinted, there the mighty majesty
Of that huge amphitheater of rich
And dewy fields, seems like society
Conversing with the mind, and giving it
A livelier impulse and a dance of thought!
And now, beloved Stowey! I behold
Thy church-tower, and, methinks, the four huge elms
Clustering, which mark the mansion of my friend;
And close behind them, hidden from my view,
Is my own lowly cottage, where my babe,
And my babe's mother, dwell in peace! With light
And quickened footsteps thitherward I tend
Remembering thee, O green and silent dell!
And grateful that, by nature's quietness
And solitary musings, all my heart
Is softened, and made worthy to indulge
Love, and the thoughts that yearn for all mankind."
Stowey, like all other places where remarkable men have lived, even
but a few years ago, impresses us with a melancholy sense of rapid
change, of the swift flight of human life. There is the little town,
there ascend beyond it the green slopes and airy range of the Quantock
hills, scattered with masses of woodland, which give a feeling of deep
solitude. But where is the poet, who used here to live, and there to
wander and think? Where is his friend Poole? All are gone, and village
and country are again resigned to the use of simple and little-informed
people, who take poets for spies and dark traitors. The little town is
vastly like a continental one. It consists of one street, which at
an old market-cross diverges into two others, exactly forming an
old-fashioned letter Y. The houses are, like continental ones, white,
and down the street rolls a little full stream, quite in the fashion
of a foreign village, with broad flags laid across to get at the
houses. It stands in a particularly agreeable, rich, and well wooded
country, with the range of the Quantock hills, at some half-mile
distance, and from them a fine view of the sea and the Welsh coast, on
the other side of the Bristol Channel.
The house in which Thomas Poole used to live, and where Coleridge and
his friend had a second home, is about the center of the village. It
is a large, old-fashioned house, with pleasant garden, and ample
farmyard, with paddocks behind. It is now inhabited by a medical man
and his sister, who do all honor to the memory of Coleridge, and very
courteously allow you to see the house. The lady obligingly took me
round the garden, and pointed out to me the windows of the room
overlooking it, where so many remarkable men used to assemble.
Mr. Poole, who was a bachelor and a magistrate, died a few years ago,
leaving behind him the character of an upright man, and a genuine
friend to the poor. On his monument in the church is inscribed, that
he was the friend of Coleridge and Southey.
The cottage inhabited by Coleridge is the last on the left hand going
out toward Allfoxden. It is now, according to the very common and odd
fate of poets' cottages, a Tom and Jerry shop. Moore's native abode
is a whisky-shop; Burns's native cottage is a little public-house;
Shelley's house at Great Marlowe is a beer-shop; it is said that a
public-house has been built on the spot where Scott was born, since
I was in that city; Coleridge's house here is a beer-shop. Its rent
was but seven pounds a-year, and it could not be expected to be
very superb. It stands close to the road, and has nothing now to
distinguish it from any other ordinary pot-house. Where Coleridge sat
penning the Ode to the Nightingale, with its
"Jug, jug, jug,
And that low note more sweet than all;"
which the printer, by a very natural association, but to his infinite
consternation, converted into
"Jug, jug, jug,
And that low note more sweet than ale;"
sat, when I entered, a number of country fellows, and thought their
ale more sweet than any poet's or nightingale's low notes. Behind the
house, however, there were traces of the past pleasantness, two good,
large gardens, and the old orchard where Coleridge sat on the
apple-tree, "crooked earthward;" and while Charles Lamb and his sister
went to ascend the hills and gaze on the sea, himself detained by an
accident, wrote his beautiful lines, "This Lime-tree Bower, my
prison," including this magnificent picture:--
"Yes, they wander on
In gladness all: but thee, methinks, most glad,
My gentle-hearted Charles! for thou hast pined
And hungered after nature, many a year;
In the great city pent, winning thy way,
With sad yet patient soul, through evil and pain,
And strange calamity! Ah! slowly sink
Behind the western ridge, thou glorious sun!
Shine in the slant beams of the sinking orb,
Ye purple heath flowers! richlier beam, ye clouds!
Live in the yellow light, ye distant groves!
And kindle, thou blue ocean! So my friend,
Struck with deep joy, may stand as I have stood,
Silent with swimming sense: yea, gazing round
On the wide landscape, gaze till all doth seem
Less gross than bodily; and of such hues
As veil the Almighty Spirit when yet he makes
Spirits perceive his presence."
The woman in the house,--her husband was out in the fields,--and her
sister, had neither of them heard of such a thing as a poet. When I
asked leave to see the house and garden, on account of a gentleman who
had once lived there, "Yes," said the landlady, quite a young woman,
"a gentleman called one day, some time ago, and said he wished to
drink a glass of ale in this house, because a great man had lived in
it."
"A great man, did he say? Why, he was a poet."
"A poet, sir! what is that?"
"Don't you know what a poet is?"
"No, sir."
"But you know what a ballad singer is?"
"Oh, yes; to be sure."
"Well, a poet makes ballads and songs, and things of that kind."
"Oh, lauks-o'me! why the gentleman said it was a great man."
"Well, he was just what I tell you--a poet--a ballad maker, and all
that. Nothing more, I assure you."
"Good lauk-a-me! how could the gentleman say it was a great man! Is it
the same man you mean, think you?"
"Oh! no doubt of it. But let me see your garden."
The sister went to show it me. There were, as I have said, two
gardens, lying high above the house, so that you could see over part
of the town, and, in the other direction, the upland slopes and hills.
Behind the garden was still the orchard, in which Coleridge had so
often mused. Returning toward the house, the remains of a fine
bay-tree caught my attention, amid the ruins of the garden near the
house, now defaced with weeds, and scattered with old tubs and empty
beer barrels.
"That," said I, "was once a fine bay-tree."
"Ay, that was here when we came."
"No doubt of it. That poet planted it, as sure as it is there. That is
just one of those people's tricks. Where they go they are always
planting that tree."
"Good Lord! do they? What odd men they must be!" said the young woman.
Such is the intelligence of the common people of the west, and in many
other parts of England. Is it any wonder that the parents of these
people took Coleridge for a spy, and Wordsworth for a dark traitor?
But these young women were very civil, if not very enlightened. As I
returned through the house, the young landlady, evidently desirous to
enter into further discourse, came smiling up, and said, "It's very
pleasant to see relations addicting to the old place." Not knowing
exactly what she meant, but supposing that she imagined I had come to
see the house because the poet was a relation of mine, I said, "Very;
but I was no relation of the poet's."
"No! and yet you come to see the house; and perhaps you have come a
good way?"
"Yes, from London."
"From London! what, on purpose?"
"Yes, entirely on purpose."
Here the amazement of herself, her sister, and the men drinking, grew
astoundingly. "Ah!" I added, "he was a great man--a very great man--he
was a particular friend of Mr. Poole's."
"Oh, indeed!" said they. "Ay, he must have been a gentleman, then, for
Mr. Poole was a very great man, and a justice."
Having elevated the character of Coleridge from that of a poet into
the friend of a justice of the peace, I considered that I had
vindicated his memory, and took my leave.
In September, 1798, Coleridge quitted Stowey and England, in company
with Wordsworth, for a tour in Germany. His two wealthy friends,
Thomas and Josiah Wedgwood, the great Staffordshire potters, had
settled on him £150 a-year, for life, which, with other slight means,
enabled him to undertake this journey, with Wordsworth and his sister.
The Wedgwoods were Unitarians, and now looked on Coleridge as the
great champion of the cause, for he preached at Taunton and other
places in the chapels of that denomination; and in his journey on
account of the Watchman, had done so in most of the large
manufacturing towns, entering the pulpit in a blue coat and white
waistcoat, that not a rag of the woman of Babylon might be seen on
him. These are his own words, in his Biographia Literaria. Thomas
Wedgwood either died long before Coleridge, and so the annuity died
with him, or he might have withdrawn his moiety when Coleridge ceased
to fulfill his religious hopes: it did, however, cease; but the £75
from Josiah Wedgwood was paid punctually to the day of his death.
From this journey to Germany we may date a great change in the tone of
Coleridge's mind. He became more metaphysical, and a thorough Kantist.
From this period, there can be no doubt, on looking over his poems,
that his poetry suffered from the effects of his philosophy. But to
this journey we owe, also, the able translation of Wallenstein, which
was then a new production--the original being published only on the
eve of Coleridge's return to England, September, 1799, and the
translation appearing in 1800. In Coleridge's own account of this
tour, the description of the ascent of the Brocken is one of the most
living and graphic possible. Having gone over the ground myself, the
whole scene, and feeling of the scene, has never since been revived by
any thing which I have read, in any degree, like the account of
Coleridge. In that, too, is to be found the same story of their rude
treatment at an inn in Hesse, which is given in the article on
Wordsworth.
On Coleridge's return to England, he settled in London for a time, and
brought out his translation of Wallenstein, which was purchased by the
Messrs. Longman, on the condition that the English version, and
Schiller's play in German, should be published simultaneously.
Coleridge now engaged to execute the literary and political department
of the Morning Post, to which Southey, Wordsworth, and Lamb were also
contributors. In this situation he was accused by Mr. Fox, under the
broad appellation of the Morning Post, but with allusion to his
articles, of having broken up the peace of Amiens, and renewing the
war. It was a war, said Fox, produced by the Morning Post. His
strictures on Bonaparte occasioned that tyrant to select him for one
of the objects of his vengeance, and to issue an order for his arrest
when in Italy. Coleridge, on quitting the Morning Post, went to reside
near his friends Southey and Wordsworth. He was much at the houses of
each. In 1801, he regularly took a house at Keswick, thinking, like
his two great friends, to reside there permanently. The house, if not
built for him, was expressly finished for him by a then neighbor, Mr.
Jackson; but it was soon found that the neighborhood of the lakes was
too damp for his rheumatic habit. In 1803, his health was so much
worse, that it was considered necessary for him to seek a warmer
climate; and he accepted an invitation from his friend Mr., and since
Sir John Stoddart, to visit him at Malta, which he accepted. Here he
acted for some time as public secretary of the island. In 1805 he
returned, not much benefited by his sojourn. He came back through
Italy, and at Rome saw Allston, the American painter, and Tieck, the
German poet. It was on this occasion that he was warned of the order
of Bonaparte to arrest him; and hastening to Leghorn with a passport
furnished him by the Pope, was carried out to sea by an American
captain. At sea, however, they were chased by a French vessel, which
so alarmed the American that he compelled Coleridge to throw all his
papers overboard, by which all the fruits of his literary labors in
Rome were lost.
On his return to England he again went to the lakes, but this time was
more with Wordsworth than with Southey. Wordsworth was at this time
living at Grasmere, and we have a humorous account of Coleridge, in
his "Stanzas in my pocket copy of Thomson's Castle of Indolence," as
"the noticeable man with large gray eyes." In another place Wordsworth
has, in one line descriptive of him there, given us one of the most
beautiful portraitures of a poet dreamer,--
"The brooding poet with the heavenly eyes."
At Grasmere he planned The Friend, Wordsworth and some other of his
friends furnishing a few contributions. From this period till 1816 he
appears to have been fluctuating between the Lakes, London, and the
west of England. In 1807 we find him at Bristol; and then at Stowey
again, at Mr. Poole's. It was at this time that De Quincey sought an
interview with him. He went to Stowey, did not meet with Coleridge,
but stayed two days with Mr. Poole; and describes him and his house
thus:--"A plain-dressed man, in a rustic, old-fashioned house, amply
furnished with modern luxuries, and a good library. Mr. Poole had
traveled extensively, and had so entirely dedicated himself to his
humbler fellow-countrymen, who resided in his neighborhood, that for
many miles round he was the general arbiter of their disputes, the
guide and counselor of their daily life; beside being appointed
executor and guardian to his children by every third man who died in
or about the town of Nether Stowey."
De Quincey followed Coleridge to Bridgewater, and found him thus:--"In
Bridgewater I noticed a gateway, standing under which was a man,
corresponding to the description given me of Coleridge, whom I shall
presently describe. In height he seemed to be five feet eight inches;
in reality he was about an inch and a half taller, though, in the
latter part of life, from a lateral curvature in the spine, he
shortened gradually from two to three inches. His person was broad and
full, and tended even to corpulence; his complexion was fair, though
not what painters technically style fair, because it was associated
with black hair; his eyes were large and soft in their expression; and
it was by a peculiar appearance of haze or dimness which mixed with
their light, that I recognized my object. This was Coleridge. I
examined him steadily for a moment or more, and it struck me that he
neither saw myself, nor any other object in the street. He was in a
deep revery; for I had dismounted, made two or three trifling
arrangements at the inn door, and advanced close to him, before he
seemed apparently conscious of my presence. The sound of my voice
announcing my name first awoke him. He stared, and for a moment seemed
at a loss to understand my purpose, or his own situation, for he
repeated rapidly a number of words which had no relation to either of
us. There was no _mauvaise honte_ in his manner, but simple
perplexity, and an apparent difficulty in recovering his position
among daylight realities. This little scene over, he received me with
a kindness of manner so marked that it might be called gracious."
Mr. De Quincey then tells us that Coleridge was at this moment
domesticated with a most amiable and enlightened family, descendants
of Chubb, the philosophic writer; and that walking out in the evening
with Coleridge, in the streets of Bridgewater, he never saw a man so
much interrupted by the courteous attentions of young and old.
In 1809 we find him again at the Lakes; in 1810 he left them again
with Mr. Basil Montague, and remained some time at his house. In 1811
he was visiting at Hammersmith with Mr. Morgan, a common friend of
himself and Southey, whose acquaintance they had made at Bristol; and
here he delivered a course of lectures on Shakspeare and Milton. While
still residing with Mr. Morgan, his Tragedy of Remorse was brought
upon the stage at Drury-lane, at the instance of Lord Byron, then one
of the managing committee, with admirable success. After this he
retired to the village of Calne, in Wiltshire, with his friend Morgan,
partly to be near Lisle Bowles; where he arranged and published his
Sibylline Leaves, and wrote the greater part of the Biographia
Literaria. He also dedicated to Mr. Morgan the Zapolya, which was
offered to Mr. Douglas Kinnaird, for Drury-lane, and declined. The
effect of this refusal Coleridge has noticed in some lines at the end
of the Biographia Literaria, quoted from this very play:--
"O we are querulous creatures! Little less
Than all things can suffice to make us happy;
Though little more than nothing is enough
To make us wretched."
In 1816, he took refuge under the roof of Mr. Gillman, the surgeon, at
Highgate, where he continued till his death. The motive for his going
to reside with this gentleman was, that he might exercise a salutary
restraint upon him as it regarded the taking of opium. His rheumatic
pains had first led him to adopt the use of this insidious drug; and
it had, as usual, in time, acquired so much power over him as to
render his life miserable. He became the victim of its worst terrors,
and so much its slave, that all his resolutions and precautions to
break the habit, he regularly himself defeated. At one time, a friend
of his hired a man to attend him everywhere, and to sternly refuse all
his solicitations for, or attempts to get opium; but this man he
cheated at his pleasure. He would send the man on some trifling
errand, while on their walks, turn into a druggist's shop, and secure
a good stock of the article. Mr. Gillman, who had only himself and
wife in his family, was recommended to him as the proper man to
exercise a constant, steady, but kindly authority over him in this
respect. Coleridge, at the first interview, was so much delighted with
the prospect of this house, that he was impatient to get there, and
came very characteristically with Christabel in his hand, to send to
his host. With the Gillmans Coleridge continued till his death; and
his abode here is too well known to need much mention of it. Here he
held a species of soirée, at which numbers of persons were in the
habit of attending to listen to his extraordinary conversations, or
rather monologues. Those who heard him on these occasions used to
declare, that you could form no adequate idea of the intellect of the
man, till you had also heard him. Yet, by some strange neglect, or
some wish of his own, these extraordinary harangues were never taken
down; which, if they merited the praises conferred on them, is a loss
to the world, as well as to his full fame.
The house which Mr. Gillman occupied is now occupied by a Mr. Brendon.
There is nothing remarkable about the house except its view.
Coleridge's room looked upon a delicious prospect of wood and meadow,
with a gay garden full of color under the window. When a friend of
his first saw him there, he said he thought he had taken his
dwelling-place like an abbot. There he cultivated his flowers, and had
a set of birds for his pensioners, who came to breakfast with him. He
might be seen taking his daily stroll up and down near Highgate, with
his black coat and white locks, and a book in his hand; and was a
great acquaintance of the little children. He loved, says the same
authority, to read great folios, and to make old voyages with Purchas
and Marco Polo; the seas being in good visionary condition, and the
vessel well stocked with botargoes.
[Illustration: Residence at Rhyllon]