THE MORGANS, BRISTOL, AND CALNE
[John James Morgan, the joint friend of Coleridge and Southey in their
Pantisocratic days, was the son of a Bristol merchant, and as early as
1795 was acquainted with Coleridge (see Letter 16). It was to the house
of Morgan that Coleridge repaired after his return from Malta, at the
close of 1807, when he felt himself "ill, penniless, and worse than
homeless" (Meteyard's _Group of Englishmen_, p. 325); and in the
_Courier_ of 10th December 1807 appeared a poem, entitled the
_Wanderer's Farewell_, addressed to Mrs. Morgan and Charlotte Brent, her
sister. Morgan was at one time possessed of a fortune of £10,000 to
£15,000 (Southey's _Life and Cor._, iv. 361); but adverse circumstances
had come against him, and he and his family had removed to Hammersmith,
London. After the quarrel with Wordsworth, Coleridge, as we have already
seen, went to the Morgans, and remained off and on with them in the
various places of their abode for the six years between 1810 and 1816.
Not only were the Morgans kind hosts to Coleridge; Mrs. Morgan exercised
a considerable command for good over him, and put compulsory measures in
force when he was indulging in opium.
Although the Morgans were not exactly literary people, they were
discerners and appreciators of the genius of Coleridge; and it was while
staying with them that he produced his greatest contributions to
thinking. The Morgans changed about a good deal. In November 1810 they
were living at 7, Portland Place, Hammersmith; in April 1812 they had
removed to 71, Berners Street: in April 1814 they were at 2, Queen's
Square, Bristol; in September Coleridge and they had taken up quarters
at Ashley, Box, near Bath; on 3rd November they were at Bath; and on
10th November they had removed to Calne, in Wiltshire.
It would make an interesting study to detail in full all the changes of
Coleridge's political creed from the time when he was an ardent
enthusiast for the French Revolution to his gradual evolution into a
conservative whose creed was
The Sensual and the Dark rebel in vain.
As men advance in years they generally believe less in the power of
politics to accomplish what can be achieved only by Religion, Poetry,
Art and Culture. The contemplation of Coleridge's change of view from
Radicalism to temperate Conservatism, registering the natural swing of
the pendulum from Youth to Age, is a most inviting study for the
statesman. Southey and Wordsworth underwent the same change, but their
evolution is not so instructive as that of Coleridge.
A Tory in the strictest sense of the word Coleridge never was; for
he always claimed right to dissent and did at times dissent from the
ministry of the hour. A striking instance of his dissension was given
while living at Calne, when he strongly objected to the imposition
of new corn duties when wheat was selling at 63_s._ a quarter and
the quartern loaf sold at 11_d._ The working people were in a state
of starvation, and Coleridge espoused the cause of the starvers and
got up a Petition against the duties proposed. He even became the
ringleader of the local agitation. He writes to Dr. Brabant of Devizes
(6½ miles away) in the Spring of 1815: "On Wednesday we had a public
meeting in the Market Place, at Calne, to petition Parliament against
the Corn Bill. I drew it up for Mr. Wait, and afterwards mounted on
the butcher's table made a butcherly sort of speech of an hour long to
a very ragged but not butcherly audience, for by their pale faces few
of them seemed to have had more than a very occasional acquaintance
with butcher's meat. Loud were the huzzas, and if it depended on the
inhabitants at large, I believe they would send me up to Parliament"
(_Westminster Review_, 1870, p. 348).
Coleridge and the Morgans themselves were not in a flourishing
condition. They were in straitened circumstances, and Coleridge wrote
the following two letters to Cottle in March 1815.
LETTER 164. TO COTTLE
Calne, March 7, 1815.
Dear Cottle,
You will wish to know something of myself. In health, I am not worse
than when at Bristol I was best; yet fluctuating, yet unhappy! in
circumstances "poor indeed!" I have collected my scattered, and my
manuscript poems, sufficient to make one volume. Enough I have to make
another. But till the latter is finished, I cannot without great loss of
character, publish the former on account of the arrangement, besides the
necessity of correction. For instance, I earnestly wish to begin the
volumes, with what has never been seen by any, however few, such as a
series of Odes on the different sentences of the Lord's Prayer, and more
than all this, to finish my greater work on _Christianity, considered as
Philosophy, and as the only Philosophy_. All the materials I have in no
small part reduced to form, and written, but, oh me! what can I do, when
I am so poor, that in having to turn off every week, from these to some
mean subject for the newspapers, I distress myself, and at last neglect
the greater wholly to do little of the less. If it were in your power to
receive my manuscripts (for instance what I have ready for the press of
my poems) and by setting me forward with _thirty_ or _forty_ pounds,
taking care that what I send, and would make over to you, would more
than secure you from loss, I am sure you would do it. And I would die
(after my recent experience of the cruel and insolent spirit of calumny)
rather than subject myself, as a slave, to a club of subscribers to my
poverty.
If I were to say I am easy in my conscience, I should add to its pains
by a lie; but this I can truly say, that my embarrassments have not been
occasioned by the bad parts, or selfish indulgences of my nature, I am
at present five and twenty pounds in arrear, my expenses being at £2
10_s._ per week. You will say I ought to live for less, and doubtless I
might, if I were to alienate myself from all social affections, and from
all conversation with persons of the same education. Those who severely
blame me, never ask, whether at any time in my life, I had for myself
and my family's wants, £50 beforehand.
Heaven knows of the £300 received, through you, what went to myself.[90]
No! bowed down under manifold infirmities, I yet dare to appeal to God
for the truth of what I say;[91] I have remained poor by always having
been poor, and incapable of pursuing any one great work, for want of a
competence beforehand.
S. T. COLERIDGE.
LETTER 165. TO COTTLE
Calne, Wiltshire, March 10, 1815.
My dear Cottle,
I have been waiting with the greatest uneasiness for a letter from you.
My distresses are impatient rather than myself: inasmuch as for the last
five weeks, I know myself to be a burden on those to whom I am under
great obligations: who would gladly do all for me; _but who have done
all they can!_ Incapable of any exertion in this state of mind, I have
now written to Mr. Hood, and have at length bowed my heart down, to beg
that four or five of those, who I had reason to believe, were interested
in my welfare, would raise the sum I mentioned, between them, should you
not find it convenient to do it. Manuscript poems, equal to one volume
of 230 to 300 pages, being sent to them immediately. If not, I must
instantly dispose of all my poems, fragments and all, for whatever I can
get from the first rapacious bookseller, that will give anything--and
then try to get my livelihood where I am, by receiving, or waiting on
day-pupils, children, or adults, but even this I am unable to wait for
without some assistance: for I cannot but with consummate baseness,
throw the expenses of my lodging and boarding for the last five or six
weeks on those who must injure and embarrass themselves in order to pay
them. The _Friend_ has been long out of print, and its republication has
been called for by numbers.
Indeed from the manner in which it was first circulated, it is little
less than a new work. To make it a complete and circular work, it needs
but about eight or ten papers. This I could and would make over to you
at once in full copyright, and finish it outright, with no other delay
than that of finishing a short and temperate Treatise on the Corn Laws,
and their national and moral effects; which had I even twenty pounds
only to procure myself a week's ease of mind, I could have printed
before the bill had passed the Lords. At all events let me hear by
return of post. I am confident that whether you take the property of my
Poems, or of my Prose Essays, in pledge, you cannot eventually lose the
money.
As soon as I can, I shall leave Calne for Bristol, and if I can procure
any day pupils, shall immediately take cheap lodgings near you. My plan
is to have twenty pupils, ten youths or adults, and ten boys. To give
the latter three hours daily, from eleven o'clock to two, with exception
of the usual school vacations, in the Elements of English, Greek, and
Latin, presenting them exercises for their employment during the rest of
the day, and two hours every evening to the adults (that is from sixteen
and older) on a systematic plan of general knowledge; and I should hope
that £15 a year would not be too much to ask from each, which excluding
Sundays and two vacations, would be little more than a shilling a day,
or six shillings a week, for forty-two weeks.
To this I am certain I could attend with strictest regularity, or indeed
to any thing mechanical.
But composition is no voluntary business. The very necessity of doing it
robs me of the power of doing it. Had I been possessed of a tolerable
competency, I should have been a voluminous writer. But I cannot, as is
feigned of the Nightingale, sing with my breast against a thorn. God
bless you,
S. T. COLERIDGE.[92]
Saturday, Midnight.
* * * * *
To the first of these letters Cottle replied with a five-pound note; but
he now believed that all Coleridge's earnings went to fill what he calls
the "Circean chalice" (_Rem._, 391). He believed that Coleridge was
spending £2 10_s._ a week on opium. It is as likely that Coleridge was
now keeping the home of the Morgans going; although they oftener kept
him than he kept them. We know that he gave them the money received for
the _Christabel_ volume.
From the first letter to Cottle it will be seen that Coleridge had been
collecting his poems with a view to publication, afterwards given to the
world as _Sibylline Leaves_. On 3rd April 1815, he writes to Lady
Beaumont requesting a copy of the Poem to Wordsworth composed on hearing
the Prelude (_Coleorton Mem._, ii, 175). Wordsworth had just published
the _Excursion_, and on 30th May Coleridge wrote to Wordsworth
criticising that poem (Knight's _Life of Wordsworth_, ii, 255) in a long
letter, which, with other notes (_Anima Poetae_) of 1802, contained the
germs of the Critique of the _Biographia Literaria_. The _Biographia_
was at first merely intended as an Introduction to the _Sibylline
Leaves_; but in the writing it swelled so much that it had to be
published as a separate work (see Dykes Campbell's _Life_, pp. 212-14).
Coleridge has been charged with plagiarism from Schelling, in composing
his _Biographia_, by Ferrier in _Blackwood's Magazine_ of 1840, and by
others.[93] Some others complain that Coleridge has no formal scheme of
philosophy of his own. But this is merely saying it was never written
down in its entirety, not that he did not have a philosophy. One of the
features of Coleridge is that he was never without a Philosophy, and
could not speak without betraying the fact that he judged all things
from a standpoint which was the centre of a large planetary system of
dependent and interdependent ideas. Coleridge's philosophy is a
combination of parts of the philosophies of Plato, Plotinus, Giordano
Bruno, Vico, Berkeley, Herder, Kant, Maas, and Schelling; he took
freely from all his predecessors, as every new philosopher is bound to
do, and has done, before him. Nor is he merely eclectic; his borrowings
are fused together into a system. His originality consists not in the
ideas which he entertains in his system, but in the reconstellation of
these ideas. To charge Coleridge with plagiarism for having appropriated
certain trains of thinking from others is on a level with the brilliant
discovery which finds that Shakespeare pilfered some of his plots and
stories from Italian novels, or that Molière took his own where he found
it (_Je prend mon bien où je le trouve_).
The valuable parts of the _Biographia_, however, are not the
philosophical, but the critical and biographical portions. The Critique
on Wordsworth's poetry will always be reckoned as the finest of our
literary criticisms on Wordsworth. We may object to Coleridge's
strictures on _The Daffodils_ or _Alice Fell_, but lovers of Wordsworth
will give general acquiescence to the contentions of Coleridge's
discriminating criticism. Coleridge stands in the front rank of those
great exponents of Poetry and Art who, from Aristotle to Sainte-Beuve,
have guided the taste of the nations.
The contention of the closing paragraph that Faith is but the
continuation of Reason is founded on a saying of his early love, Mary
Evans, that "Faith is only Reason applied to a particular subject"
(_Letters_, 88). It was written in her farewell letter in 1794.
Among the works of Coleridge undertaken at Calne was the drama of
_Zapolya_, in which the character of Sarolta, an offshoot from the
Christabel idea, appears.
These works were composed by Coleridge to tide over the necessities of
the time, but the Morgans and he were unable to hold together, and
Coleridge came once more to London at the beginning of 1816. Morgan fell
into ill health. Mrs. Morgan latterly had to take a situation as teacher
of a charity school; Charles Lamb and Southey got up a subscription
annuity of £25 for Morgan, who did not live long to enjoy it, dying in
1820 (_Southey's Life and Correspondence_, iv, 361); and after 1823
Charlotte Brent disappears from the arena of literary history
(_Letters_, 722).
Coleridge's letters to Dr. Brabant of Devizes, were written between
February 1815, and 5th December 1816, and are published in the
_Westminster Review_ for 1870.]
FOOTNOTES:
[90] This statement requires an explanation, which none now can
give. Was the far larger proportion of this £300 appropriated
to the discharge of Opium debts? This does not seem unlikely,
as Mr. C. lived with friends, and he could contract few other
debts [Cottle]. [This note is most misleading. Coleridge's
receipt for the £300 is dated November 12, 1807 (_De Quincey
Memorials._ I, 132). At this time, and for long after it,
Coleridge never lived with friends except the Morgans, whom he
paid. Cottle's assumption is baseless.]
[91] "Of the truth of what I say."--_Early Recollections._
[92] [Letters CCV-CCVII follow 165.]
[93] [Coleridge gives a general acknowledgment of indebtedness; and
doubtless when he wrote the _Biographia_ he could not always
discriminate in his note-books what was Schelling's and what
was his own.]