Transcriber's Notes
This is the second volume of Biographia Epistolaris. The index refers to
both volumes. There were a number of minor corrections made, which are
described in the Notes to be found at the end of this text.
The editor of the original text added material for this edition, which
was indicated using square brackets. These, of course, are retained. The
final opening bracket at the beginning of Chapter XXX was not closed.
There are several typographical effects which could only be approximated.
In particular, a small triangle, surrounded by the letters S, G, and N
is indicated here as: [S^G^N].
Words in italic font are presented using _underscore_ characters.
Superscripts are simply dropped in-line ("Dr.", "Revd"). Mixed "small
cap" text is shifted into uppercase here. As described in the end notes,
ellipses are used typographically to elide names from time to time, and
are given as printed.
Footnotes have been gathered at the end of each chapter and renumbered
to be unique.
BIOGRAPHIA
EPISTOLARIS
BEING
THE BIOGRAPHICAL SUPPLEMENT OF
COLERIDGE'S BIOGRAPHIA
LITERARIA
WITH ADDITIONAL LETTERS, ETC., EDITED BY
A. TURNBULL
VOL. II
[Illustration]
LONDON
G. BELL AND SONS, LTD.
1911
CHISWICK PRESS: CHARLES WHITTINGHAM AND CO.
TOOKS COURT, CHANCERY LANE, LONDON.
CONTENTS
PAGE
CHAPTER XI. MALTA AND ITALY II, 1
Letter 130. To J. Tobin. 10 April, 1804 1
CHAPTER XII. HOME AGAIN, ROLLING, RUDDERLESS! THEOLOGY 8
Letter 131. To Cottle. -- -- 1807 9
132. " -- -- 1807 10
133. " -- June, 1807 13
134. George Fricker. -- -- 1807 22
135. Cottle. -- -- 1807 25
CHAPTER XIII. DE QUINCEY 27
Letter 136. To Cottle. 7 October, 1807 28
CHAPTER XIV. FIRST LECTURES 30
Letter 137. To Humphry Davy. 11 Sept. 1807 30
138. Dr. Andrew Bell. 15 April, 1808 35
CHAPTER XV. _THE FRIEND_ 38
Letter 139. To Wade. -- -- 1807-8 38
140. Humphry Davy. -- Dec. 1808 40
141. " 14 Dec. 1808 41
142. " 30 Jany. 1809 45
143. ---- 1 June, 1809 48
144. Southey. 20 Oct. 1809 52
145. R. L. 26 Oct. 1809 57
146. "Cantab." 21 Dec. 1809 63
CHAPTER XVI. QUARREL WITH WORDSWORTH; LECTURES, 1811-12 66
Letter 147. To Godwin. 26 Mch. 1811 68
148. " 29 Mch. 1811 70
149. Dr. Andrew Bell. 30 Nov. 1811 74
CHAPTER XVII. DANIEL STUART AND _THE COURIER_ 76
Letter 150. To Daniel Stuart. 4 June, 1811 79
151. " 8 May, 1816 90
CHAPTER XVIII. MRS. COLERIDGE; LAST STAY AT THE LAKE
DISTRICT 100
CHAPTER XIX. _REMORSE_ 104
Letter 152. To Poole. 13 Feby. 1813 105
CHAPTER XX. COTTLE'S DARK CHAPTER 116
Letter 153. To Wade. 8 Dec. 1813 117
154. Cottle. 5-14 April, 1814 118
155. " -- -- 1814 119
156. " -- -- 1814 120
157. " -- -- 1814 121
158. " 26 April, 1814 126
159. " 26 April, 1814 129
160. " Apl. 1814 130
161. Miss Cottle. 13 May, 1814 131
162. Cottle. 27 May, 1814 132
163. Wade. 26 June,1814 135
CHAPTER XXI. THE MORGANS; BRISTOL AND CALNE 140
Letter 164. To Cottle. 7 March, 1815 142
165. " 10 March, 1815 144
CHAPTER XXII. HIGHGATE; LECTURES OF 1818 149
Letter 166. To Gillman. 13 April, 1816 150
167. -- -- -- 1816 153
168. -- -- -- 1816 154
169. -- -- -- 1816 157
CHAPTER XXIII. THOMAS ALLSOP 158
Letter 170. To Allsop. 28 Jany. 1818 158
171. " 20 Sept. 1818 160
172. " 26 Nov. 1818 160
173. " 2 Dec. 1818 163
174. Mr. Britton. 28 Feby. 1819 166
175. " Feby.-Mch. 1819 168
176. Allsop. 30 Sept. 1819 169
177. " 13 Dec. 1819 172
178. To Allsop. 20 Mch. 1820 174
179. " 10 April, 1820 178
CHAPTER XXIV. SIR WALTER SCOTT 181
Letter 180. To Allsop. 8 or 18 April, 1820 182
181. " 31 July, 1820 190
182. " 8 August, 1820 192
183. " 11 October, 1820 198
184. " 20 October, 1820 201
185. " 25 October, 1820 202
186. " 27 Nov. 1820 203
187. " January, 1821 204
CHAPTER XXV. H.C. ROBINSON 216
CHAPTER XXVI. CHARLES LAMB 218
Letter 188. To Allsop. 1 March, 1821 218
189. " 4 May, 1821 219
190. " 23 June, 1821 226
191. " --- 1821 227
192. " 15 Sept. 1821 227
193. " 24 Sept. 1821 229
194. Mr. Blackwood. -- Oct. 1821 232
195. Allsop. 20 Oct. 1821 238
196. " 2 Nov. 1821 240
197. " 17 Nov. 1821 244
198. " -- 1821 245
199. " 25 Jany. 1822 247
200. " 4 Mch. 1822 249
201. " 22 Mch. 1822 251
202. " 18 April, 1822 255
CHAPTER XXVII. THE GILLMANS 257
Letter 203. To Allsop. 30 May, 1822 257
204. " 29 June, 1822 259
205. " 8 Octr. 1822 261
206. Gillman. 28 Octr.1822 265
207. Allsop. 26 Dec. 1822 266
208. " 10 Dec. 1823 269
209. " 24 Dec. 1823 270
210. Mrs. Allsop. -- 1823 270
211. Mr. and Mrs. Allsop. 8 April, 1824 272
Letter 212. To Allsop. 14 April, 1824 274
213. " 27 April, 1824 274
CHAPTER XXVIII. THE NEW ACADEME 278
Letter 214. To Allsop. 20 Mch. 1825 284
215. " 30 April, 1825 286
216. " 2 May, 1825 287
217. " 10 May, 1825 287
218. " -- 1825 290
CHAPTER XXIX. ALARIC WATTS 292
CHAPTER XXX. THE RHINE TOUR, AND LAST COLLECTED
EDITIONS OF THE POEMS 296
Letter 219. To Adam S. Kennard. 13 July, 1834 302
CHAPTER XXXI. CONCLUSION 305
APPENDIX AND ADDITIONAL NOTES 313
INDEX 327
BIOGRAPHIA EPISTOLARIS
CHAPTER XI
MALTA AND ITALY
[Coleridge set sail from Portsmouth in the "Speedwell" on 9th or 10th
April 1804. He wrote to J. Tobin on the 10th (_Anima Poetae_, p. 68):
LETTER 130. TO J. TOBIN
April 10, 1804.
Men who habitually enjoy robust health have, too generally, the trick,
and a very cruel one it is, of imagining that they discover the secret
of all their acquaintances' ill health in some malpractice or other;
and, sometimes, by gravely asserting this, here, there, and everywhere
(as who likes his penetration hid under a bushel?), they not only do all
they can, without intending it, to deprive the poor sufferer of that
sympathy which is always a comfort and, in some degree, a support to
human nature, but, likewise, too often implant serious alarm and
uneasiness in the minds of the person's relatives and his nearest and
dearest connections. Indeed (but that I have known its inutility, that I
should be ridiculously sinning against my own law which I was
propounding, and that those who are most fond of advising are the least
able to hear advice from others, as the passion to command makes men
disobedient) I should often have been on the point of advising you
against the two-fold rage of advising and of discussing character, both
the one and the other of which infallibly generates presumption and
blindness to our own faults. Nay! more particularly where, from whatever
cause, there exists a slowness to understand or an aptitude to mishear
and consequently misunderstand what has been said, it too often renders
an otherwise truly good man a mischief-maker to an extent of which he is
but little aware. Our friends' reputation should be a religion to us,
and when it is lightly sacrificed to what self-adulation calls a love of
telling the truth (in reality a lust of talking something seasoned with
the cayenne and capsicum of personality), depend upon it, something in
the heart is warped or warping, more or less according to the greater or
lesser power of the counteracting causes. I confess to you, that being
exceedingly low and heart-fallen, I should have almost sunk under the
operation of reproof and admonition (the whole too, in my conviction,
grounded on utter mistake) at the moment I was quitting, perhaps for
ever! my dear country and all that makes it so dear--but the high esteem
which I cherish towards you, and my sense of your integrity and the
reality of your attachment and concern blows upon me refreshingly as the
sea-breeze on the tropic islander. Show me anyone made better by blunt
advice, and I may abate of my dislike to it, but I have experienced the
good effects of the contrary in Wordsworth's conduct toward me; and, in
Poole and others, have witnessed enough of its ill-effects to be
convinced that it does little else but harm both to the adviser and the
advisee.[1]
* * * * *
There is some dubiety as to whether the J. Tobin to whom the above
letter was addressed is John Tobin, the dramatist, or his brother James.
But Coleridge had taken
up quarters with either of the brothers in London before sailing for
Malta (Dykes Campbell's _Life_, p. 141); and the letter is Coleridge's
parting shot for his host's over solicitous advice.
On 16th April he was off Oporto, and wrote a description of the place,
as seen from the sea, for Southey (_Letters_, 469). The "Speedwell" was
convoyed by the "Leviathan," man-of-war of 74 guns. Lisbon and the rest
of the Portuguese coast are described by Coleridge, and on 19th April
the "Speedwell" reached Gibraltar, where Coleridge landed and scrambled
on the rocks among the monkeys, "our poor relations." In his note-books
he describes more fully the scene around the Rock of Gibraltar with its
multitude and discordant complexity of associations--the Pillars of
Hercules, Calpe, and Abyla, the realms of Masinissa, Jugurtha, and
Syphax; Spain, Gibraltar, the Dey of Algiers, dusky Moor, and black
African. "At its feet mighty ramparts establishing themselves in the
sea, with their huge artillery, hollow trunks of iron where Death and
Thunder sleep," and "the abiding things of Nature, great, calm,
majestic, and one!" (_Letters_, pp. 478-9; _Anima Poetae_, pp. 70, 74.)
In the voyage between Gibraltar and Malta they were frequently in long
dead calms--"every rope of the whole ship reflected in the bright soft
blue sea"--an _Ancient Mariner_ touch. They reached Valetta on 18th May,
where Coleridge was the guest of John Stoddart (afterwards Sir John
Stoddart), Attorney-General for Malta. Sir Alexander Ball was then
governor of the Island, and was greatly pleased with Coleridge's
conversation and manners, and appointed him his private secretary. The
public secretary of the Island dying suddenly in January 1805, Coleridge
was made interim Government secretary until the new nominee should
arrive. He held the office for eight months, from 18th January to 6th
September (_Letters_, 494); and he acquitted himself well as a business
man in the post. What De Quincey says to the contrary is a tissue of
unfounded conjectures. Dykes Campbell, one of Coleridge's most
painstaking biographers, admits that there is nothing to show that
Coleridge did not perform the routine work of office well.
While in Malta Coleridge duly entered in his note-books his impressions
of his surroundings and he records his dreamy introspections of the
night watches (_Anima Poetae_). But Coleridge did not spend all his time
in Malta. Dykes Campbell informs us that "early in August, the _demon of
restlessness_ drove him to Sicily" (_Life_, p. 145), which may be rather
interpreted that the proximity of the land of Theocritus was
irresistible. He was away from the middle of August to 7th November
1804. He twice ascended Etna; and, although Dykes Campbell doubts his
having attained to the summit, according to his own account he looked
down the crater (Cottle's _Rem._, 318; Letter, No. 133). Very few of
Coleridge's letters written in Malta are extant; on account of the
precariousness of the mode of despatch in a time of war some of them
never reached their destination.
In the Spring of 1805 Coleridge was regretting that he had accepted the
Public Secretaryship, saying that his profits would be much less than if
he had employed his time and efforts in his own literary pursuits
(_Letters_, 491), another way of grumbling against occupations inferior
to the pursuit of the Permanent. To Daniel Stuart he writes on 20th
April 1805: "In my letter, which will accompany this, I have detailed my
health and all that relates to me. In case, however, that letter should
not arrive, I will simply say, that till within the last two months or
ten weeks my health had improved to the utmost of my hopes, though not
without some intrusion of sickness; but _latterly_ the loss of my
letters to England, the almost entire non-arrival of letters from
England, not a single one from Mrs. Coleridge, or Southey, or you; and
only one from the Wordsworths, and that dated September 1804! my
consequent heart-saddening anxieties, and still, still more, the depths
which Captain John Wordsworth's[2] death sunk into my heart, and which I
heard abruptly, and in the very painfullest way possible in a public
company--all these joined to my disappointment in my expectation of
returning to England by this convoy, and the quantity and variety of my
public occupations from eight o'clock in the morning to five in the
afternoon, having besides the most anxious duty of writing public
letters and memorials which belongs to my talents rather than to my
_pro-tempore_ office; these and some other causes that I cannot mention
relative to my affairs in England, have produced a sad change indeed on
my health; but, however, I hope all will be well. It is my present
intention to return home by Naples, Ancona, Trieste, etc., on or about
the second of next month" (_Letters_, 494-5). To his wife he says, on 21
July 1805: "I have been hoping and expecting to get away for England for
five months past, and Mr. Chapman[3] not arriving, Sir Alexander's
importunities have always overpowered me, though my gloom has increased
at each disappointment. I am determined, however, to go in less than a
month. My office, as Public Secretary, the next civil dignitary to the
Governor, is a very, very busy one, and not to involve myself in the
responsibility of the Treasurer I have but half the salary. I oftentimes
subscribe my name 150 times a day--and administer half as many
oaths--besides which I have the public memorials to write, and, worse
than all, constant matters of irritation. Sir A. Ball is indeed
exceedingly kind to me" (_Letters_, 496-7).
Coleridge did not return by the proposed route of Naples, Ancona,
Trieste, to be continued, to avoid Napoleon's power, by Vienna, Berlin,
Embden, and Denmark (_Letters_, 492). He went, on the contrary,
straight to Naples in company with a gentleman unnamed (Dykes Campbell's
_Life_, 149). Here he remained till the end of January 1806; and then
proceeded to Rome, where he associated with the artists resident in the
Papal capital. He made the acquaintance of Baron W. von Humboldt, then
Prussian Minister at the Papal Court; Ludwig Tieck, the German
translator of Shakespeare; Washington Allston, the best American painter
of his day; Canova, and Washington Irving; (Flagg's _Life of Allston_,
61).
Various accounts have been given about what Coleridge said regarding his
sojourn in Italy and his flight from it. Gillman (179-181), Cottle
(_Rem._, 310-313), and Caroline Fox (_Journals_), all differing as to
particulars. Flagg, the writer of the _Life of Allston_, says: "He had
intended to go by Switzerland and Germany, but being somewhat
apprehensive of danger on account of the movements of the French troops,
took the precautions to ask the advice of Ambassador von Humboldt; he
advised Coleridge to avoid Bonaparte, who was meditating the seizure of
his person, and had already sent to Rome an order for his arrest, which
was withheld from execution by the connivance of the good old Pope, Pius
VII, who sent him a passport, and counselled his immediate flight by way
of Leghorn. Accordingly he hastened to that port, where he found an
American vessel ready to sail for England, and embarked. On the voyage
they were chased by a French sail; the captain, becoming alarmed,
commanded Coleridge to throw his papers, including his notes on Rome,
overboard" (_Life of Allston_, p. 61). This agrees substantially with
what Coleridge says in the _Biographia Literaria_, Chapter X. Cottle
works the matter up into a romance in his own facetious way; and the
other re-narrators mistake the facts somewhat. Caroline Fox, for
instance, locates the embarkation from Genoa, saying: "On reaching
Genoa, he so delighted an American by his conversation, who had never
heard anything like it since he left Niagara, that at all risks, and
with many subtleties, he got him on board, and brought him safe to
England" (_Journals_, I, 123).[4]]
FOOTNOTES:
[1] [Letters CLI-CXLIII follow 130.]
[2] [Drowned 5th February 1805.]
[3] [The new Secretary.]
[4] [It is quite true that he did induce an American captain to
smuggle him on board.]