THOMAS ALLSOP
[Coleridge's lectures and his conversations at the Gillmans brought him
many new friends. Among others was Thomas Allsop, a young London
merchant, whose acquaintance dates from January, 1818; and which, by
December, had ripened into close friendship. Allsop acted as the Boswell
of the later period of Coleridge's life, and by his devotion made up for
the absence of Wordsworth and Poole. He afterwards published the letters
he received from Coleridge, and some of Coleridge's axiomatic sayings
and conversations. Allsop was also a friend of Charles Lamb, and often
visited Highgate in company with Elia, who made Allsop one of his
testamentary trustees (_Ainger_, ii, 82, 85). The following letters to
Allsop indicate the birth of the intimacy between Coleridge and him.
LETTER 170. TO ALLSOP
Jan. 28th, 1818.
Dear Sir,
Your friendly letter was first delivered to me at the lecture-room door
on yesterday evening, ten minutes before the lecture, and my spirits
were so sadly depressed by the circumstance of my hoarseness, that I was
literally incapable of reading it. I now express my acknowledgments, and
with them the regret that I had not received the letter in time to have
availed myself of it.
When I was young I used to laugh at flattery, as, on account of its
absurdity, I now abhor it, from my repeated observations of its
mischievous effects. Amongst these, not the least is, that it renders
honourable natures more slow and reluctant in expressing their real
feelings in praise of the deserving, than, for the interests of truth
and virtue, might be desired. For the weakness of our moral and
intellectual being, of which the comparatively strongest are often the
most, and the most painfully conscious, needs the confirmation derived
from the coincidence and sympathy of the friend, as much as the voice of
honour within us denounces the pretences of the flatterer. Be assured,
then, that I write as I think, when I tell you that, from the style and
thoughts of your letter, I should have drawn a very different conclusion
from that which you appear to have done, concerning both your talents
and the cultivation which they have received. Both the matter and manner
are manly, simple, and correct.
Had I the time in my power, compatibly with the performance of duties of
immediate urgency, I would endeavour to give you, by letter, the most
satisfactory answer to your questions that my reflections and the
experience of my own fortunes could supply. But, at all events, I will
not omit to avail myself of your judicious suggestion in my last
lecture, in which it will form a consistent part of the subject and
purpose of the discourse. Meantime, believe me, with great respect,
Your obliged fellow-student
of the true and the beseeming,
S. T. COLERIDGE.[98]
LETTER 171. TO ALLSOP
Sept. 20th, 1818.
Dear Sir,
Those who have hitherto chosen to take notice of me, as known to them
only by my public character, have for the greater part taken out, not,
indeed, a poetical, but a critical, license, to _make game_ OF me,
instead of sending game TO me. Thank heaven! I am in this respect more
tough than tender. But, to be serious, I heartily thank you for your
polite remembrance; and, though my feeble health and valetudinarian
stomach force me to attach no little value to the present itself, I feel
still more obliged by the kindness that prompted it.
I trust that you will not come within the purlieus of Highgate without
giving me the opportunity of assuring you personally that I am, with
sincere respect,
Your obliged,
S. T. COLERIDGE.
T. Allsop, Esq.
LETTER 172. TO ALLSOP
Nov. 26th, 1818.
Dear Sir,
I take the liberty of addressing a Prospectus to you. Should it be in
your power to recommend either Course among your friends, you will (I
need not add) oblige your sincere, &c.
S. T. COLERIDGE.
_"Prospectus of a Course of Lectures, Historical and Biographical, on
the Rise and Progress, the Changes and Fortunes of Philosophy, from
Thales and Pythagoras to the Present Times; the Lives and Succession
of the distinguished Teachers in each Sect; the connexion of
Philosophy with General Civilisation; and, more especially, its
relations to the History of Christianity, and to the Opinions,
Language, and Manners of Christendom, at different Æras, and in
different Nations._
"BY S. T. COLERIDGE, ESQ.
"Logical subtleties and metaphysical trains of argument form neither
part nor object of the present Plan, which supposes no other
qualification in the auditors of either sex than a due interest in
questions of deepest concern to all, and which every rational
creature, who has arrived at the age of reflection, must be presumed,
at some period or other, to have put to his own thoughts:--What, and
_for_ what am I made? What _can_ I, and what _ought_ I to, make of
myself? and in what relations do I stand to the world and to my fellow
men? Flattering myself with a continuance of the kind and respectful
attention, with which my former courses have been honoured, I have so
little apprehension of not being intelligible throughout, that were it
in my power to select my auditors, the majority would, perhaps,
consist of persons whose acquaintance with the History of Philosophy
would commence with their attendance on the Course of Lectures here
announced. When, indeed, I contemplate the many and close connexions
of the subject with the most interesting periods of History; the
instances and illustrations which it demands and will receive from
Biography, from individuals of the most elevated genius, or of the
most singular character: I cannot hesitate to apply to it as a whole
what has been already said of an important part (I allude to
Ecclesiastical History)--that for every reflecting mind it has a
livelier as well as deeper interest, than that of fable or romance.
Nor can these Lectures be justly deemed superfluous even as a literary
work. We have, indeed, a History of Philosophy, or rather a folio
volume so called, by STANLEY, and ENFIELD'S Abridgment of the massive
and voluminous BRUCKER. But what are they? Little more, in fact, than
collections of sentences and extracts, formed into separate groups
under the several names, and taken (at first or second hand) from the
several writings of individual philosophers, with no _Principle_ of
arrangement, with no _method_, and therefore without unity and without
progress or completion. Hard to be understood as detached passages,
and impossible to be remembered as a whole, they leave at last on the
mind of the most sedulous student but a dizzy recollection of jarring
opinions and wild fancies. Whatever value these works may have as
books of reference, so far from _superseding_, they might seem rather
to _require_, a work like the present, in which the accidental
influences of particular periods and individual genius are by no means
overlooked, but which yet does in the main consider Philosophy
historically, as an essential part of the history of man, and as if it
were the striving of a single mind, under very different circumstances
indeed, and at different periods of its own growth and development;
but so that each change and every new direction should have its cause
and its explanation in the errors, insufficiency or prematurity of the
preceding, while all by reference to a common object is reduced to
harmony of impression and total result. Now this object, which is one
and the same in all the forms of Philosophy, and which alone
constitutes a work _Philosophic_, is--the origin and primary laws (or
efficient causes) either of the WORLD, man included (which is
_Natural_ Philosophy)--or of Human Nature exclusively, and as far only
as it is _human_ (which is _Moral_ Philosophy). If to these we
subjoin, as a third problem, the question concerning the sufficiency
of the human reason to the solution of both or either of the two
former, we shall have a full conception of the sense in which the term
Philosophy is used in this Prospectus and the Lectures corresponding
to it.
The main Divisions will be--1. From Thales and Pythagoras to the
appearance of the Sophists. 2. And of Socrates. The character and
effect of Socrates' life and doctrines, illustrated in the instances
of Xenophon, as his most faithful representative, and of Antisthenes,
or the Cynic sect, as the one partial view of his philosophy, and of
Aristippus, or the Cyrenaic sect, as the other and opposite extreme.
3. Plato and Platonism. 4. Aristotle and the Peripatetic school. 5.
Zeno and Stoicism, Epicurus and Epicureans, with the effects of these
in the Roman republic and empire. 6. The rise of the Eclectic or
Alexandrine Philosophy, the attempt to set up a pseudo-Platonic
Polytheism against Christianity, the degradation of Philosophy itself
into mysticism and magic, and its final disappearance, as Philosophy,
under Justinian. 7. The resumption of the Aristotelian philosophy in
the thirteenth century, and the successive re-appearance of the
different sects from the restoration of literature to our own
times.[99]
The last letter refers to lectures delivered from 19th December 1818 to
April 1819, his tenth course. Another course on Shakespeare was also
being given at the same time, at the Crown and Anchor tavern, Strand
(Dykes Campbell's _Life_, 238), commencing 17th December 1818. No record
has been published of these two series of lectures (see _Lamb's
Letters_, ii, 16). The next letter is about Wordsworth and the
_Edinburgh Review_, and repeats some of Coleridge's strong convictions
against anonymous criticism.
LETTER 173. TO ALLSOP
Dec. 2nd, 1818.
My Dear Sir,
I cannot express how kind I felt your letter. Would to Heaven I had had
many with feelings like yours, "accustomed to express themselves warmly
and (as far as the word is applicable to you, even) enthusiastically."
But, alas! during the prime manhood of my intellect I had nothing but
cold water thrown on my efforts. I speak not now of my systematic and
most unprovoked maligners. On _them_ I have retorted only by pity and by
prayer. These may have, and doubtless _have_, joined with the frivolity
of "the reading public" in checking and almost in preventing the sale of
my works; and so far have done injury to my _purse_. _Me_ they have not
injured. But I have loved with enthusiastic self-oblivion those who have
been so well pleased that I should, year after year, flow with a hundred
nameless rills into _their_ main stream, that they could find nothing
but cold praise and effective discouragement of every attempt of mine
to roll onward in a distinct current of my own; who _admitted_ that the
_Ancient Mariner_, the _Christabel_, the _Remorse_, and some pages of
the _Friend_ were not without merit, but were abundantly anxious to
acquit their judgments of any blindness to the very numerous defects.
Yet they _knew_ that to _praise_, as mere praise, I was
characteristically, almost constitutionally, indifferent. In sympathy
alone I found at once nourishment and stimulus; and for sympathy _alone_
did my heart crave. They knew, too, how long and faithfully I had acted
on the maxim, never to admit the _faults_ of a work of genius to those
who denied or were incapable of feeling and understanding the
_beauties_; not from wilful partiality, but as well knowing that in
_saying_ truth, I should, to such critics, convey falsehood. If, in one
instance, in my literary life, I have appeared to deviate from this
rule, first, it was not till the fame of the writer[100] (which I had
been for fourteen years successively toiling like a second Ali to build
up) had been established; and, secondly and chiefly, with the purpose
and, I may safely add, with the _effect_ of rescuing the necessary task
from Malignant Defamers, and in order to set forth the excellences and
the trifling proportion which the defects bore to the excellences. But
this, my dear sir, is a mistake to which affectionate natures are too
liable, though I do not remember to have ever seen it noticed,--the
mistaking those who are desirous and well pleased to be loved _by_ you,
for those who love you. Add, as a more general cause, the fact that I
neither am nor ever have been of any party. What wonder, then, if I am
left to decide which has been my worse enemy, the broad, pre-determined
abuse of the _Edinburgh Review_, &c., or the cold and brief compliments,
with the warm _regrets_, of the _Quarterly_? After all, however, I have
now but one sorrow relative to the ill success of my literary toils (and
toils they have been, _though not undelightful toils_), and this arises
wholly from the almost insurmountable difficulties which the anxieties
of to-day oppose to my completion of the great work, the form and
materials of which it has been the employment of the best and most
genial hours of the last twenty years to mature and collect.
If I could but have a tolerably numerous audience to my first, or first
and second Lectures on the HISTORY OF PHILOSOPHY, I should entertain a
strong hope of success, because I know that these lectures will be found
by far the most interesting and _entertaining_ of any that I have yet
delivered, independent of the more permanent interests of rememberable
instruction. Few and unimportant would the errors of men be, if they did
but know, first, _what they themselves meant_; and, secondly, what the
_words_ mean by which they attempt to convey their meaning; and I can
conceive no subject so well fitted to exemplify the mode and the
importance of these two points as the History of Philosophy, treated as
in the scheme of these lectures. Trusting that I shall shortly have the
pleasure of seeing you here,
I remain, my dear Sir,
Yours, most sincerely,
S. T. COLERIDGE.[101]
T. Allsop, Esq.
* * * * *
At the close of 1818, Coleridge published his _Essay on Method_, an
introduction to the _Encyclopedia Metropolitana_, which exhibits his
grasping ambitious intellect.
The two following letters to Mr. Britton were written regarding his
lectures. Neither Thomas Ashe nor Dykes Campbell has been able to find
any evidence that Coleridge delivered lectures on Shakespeare seventeen
years before 1819. He must have been labouring under a delusion on this
matter and mistaking the date of his lectures delivered in 1808.
LETTER 174. TO MR. BRITTON
Highgate, 28th Feb., 1819.
Dear Sir,
First permit me to remove a very natural, indeed almost inevitable,
mistake, relative to my lectures; namely, that I _have_ them, or that
the lectures of one place or season are in any way repeated in another.
So far from it, that on any point that I had ever studied (and on no
other should I dare discourse--I mean, that I would not lecture on any
subject for which I had to _acquire_ the main knowledge, even though a
month's or three month's previous time were allowed me; on no subject
that had not employed my thoughts for a large portion of my life since
earliest manhood, free of all outward and particular purpose)--on any
point within my habit of thought, I should greatly prefer a subject I
had never lectured on, to one which I had repeatedly given; and those
who have attended me for any two seasons successively will bear witness,
that the lecture given at the London Philosophical Society, on the
_Romeo and Juliet_, for instance, was as different from that given at
the Crown and Anchor, as if they had been by two individuals who,
without any communication with each other, had only mastered the same
principles of philosophical criticism. This was most strikingly
evidenced in the coincidence between my lectures and those of Schlegel;
such, and so close, that it was fortunate for my moral reputation that I
had not only from five to seven hundred ear witnesses that the passages
had been given by me at the Royal Institution two years before Schlegel
commenced his lectures at Vienna, but that notes had been taken of these
by several men and ladies of high rank. The fact is this; during a
course of lectures, I faithfully employ all the intervening days in
collecting and digesting the materials, whether I have or have not
lectured on the same subject before, making no difference. The day of
the lecture, till the hour of commencement, I devote to the
consideration, what of the mass before me is best fitted to answer the
purposes of a lecture, that is, to keep the audience awake and
interested during the delivery, and to leave a sting behind, that is, a
disposition to study the subject anew, under the light of a new
principle. Several times, however, partly from apprehension respecting
my health and animal spirits, partly from the wish to possess copies
that might afterwards be marketable among the publishers, I have
previously written the lecture; but before I had proceeded twenty
minutes, I have been obliged to push the MS. away, and give the subject
a new turn. Nay, this was so notorious, that many of my auditors used to
threaten me, when they saw any number of written papers on my desk, to
steal them away; declaring they never felt so secure of a good lecture
as when they perceived that I had not a single scrap of writing before
me. I take far, far more pains than would go to the set composition of a
lecture, both by varied reading and by meditation; but for the words,
illustrations, &c., I know almost as little as any of the audience (that
is, those of anything like the same education with myself) what they
will be five minutes before the lecture begins. Such is my way, for such
is my nature; and in attempting any other, I should only torment myself
in order to disappoint my auditors--torment myself during the delivery,
I mean; for in all other respects it would be a much shorter and easier
task to deliver them from writing. I am anxious to preclude any
semblance of affectation; and have therefore troubled you with this
lengthy preface before I have the hardihood to assure you, that you
might as well ask me what my dreams were in the year 1814, as what my
course of lectures was at the Surrey Institution. _Fuimus Troes._
LETTER 175. TO MR. BRITTON
(Feb.-Mch., 1819)
My next Friday's lecture will, if I do not grossly flatter-blind myself,
be interesting, and the points of view not only original, but new to the
audience. I make this distinction, because sixteen or rather seventeen
years ago, I delivered eighteen lectures on Shakespeare, at the Royal
Institution; three-fourths of which appeared at that time startling
paradoxes, although they have since been adopted even by men, who then
made use of them as proofs of my flighty and paradoxical turn of mind;
all tending to prove that Shakespeare's judgment was, if possible, still
more wonderful than his genius; or rather, that the contra-distinction
itself between judgment and genius rested on an utterly false theory.
This, and its proofs and grounds have been--I should not have said
adopted, but produced as their own legitimate children by some, and by
others the merit of them attributed to a foreign writer, whose lectures
were not given orally till two years after mine, rather than to their
countryman; though I dare appeal to the most adequate judges, as Sir
George Beaumont, the Bishop of Durham, Mr. Sotheby, and afterwards to
Mr. Rogers and Lord Byron, whether there is one single principle in
Schlegel's work (which is not an admitted drawback from its merits),
that was not established and applied in detail by me. Plutarch tells us,
that egotism is a venial fault in the unfortunate, and justifiable in
the calumniated, &c.[102]
* * * * *
Mr. Dykes Campbell thinks these letters to Mr. Britton refer to a course
projected to be given at the Russell Institution; but there is no
evidence that another Shakespeare course was delivered after that of
1818-19 (Dykes Campbell's _Life of Coleridge_, p. 240). Coleridge's
indebtedness to Kant, Lessing, Herder, Schiller, Jean Paul Richter, and
Augustus Schlegel is traced by Brandl (_Life of Coleridge_, pp.
296-322). Schlegel's Lectures were delivered in 1808, the same year as
Coleridge's first course. Coleridge did not peruse Schlegel's _Lectures_
till 1811; but as no full record of his Lectures of 1808 exist, the
original indebtedness of Coleridge to Schlegel cannot be determined.
During his stay at Highgate, Coleridge occasionally went to Ramsgate to
enjoy the seaside. The next letter was written on his return from one of
his visits to Ramsgate.
LETTER 176. TO ALLSOP
Highgate, Sept. 30th, 1819.
My dear Sir,
Returned from Ramsgate, I hasten to assure you that, next to seeing you,
I have pleasure in hearing from you: and wish the former in preference,
not merely from the greater mutual enjoyment, but likewise because one
can convey more, and with greater assurance of being understood, in an
hour, than one could write in a day. On the other hand, letters are more
permanent, and an epistolary correspondence more endearing, like all
marks of remembrance in absence.
My sentiments concerning the expediency, and both moral and intellectual
advantages, of a trade or profession, for such as fix their ultimate end
on objects nobler than trades or professions can bestow on the most
favoured of their followers, may be learnt from the eleventh chapter of
my _Literary Life_,[103] which, though addressed to a small and
particular class, yet permits a more general application. To you, my
dear young friend, I should say, temptations and preventives--the
poisons and the antidotes--are pretty evenly dispersed through all the
different accredited paths of life. Nay, those temptations which are
foreknown and foreseen as most appertinent to our particular calling,
are commonly least dangerous, or even cease to be temptations to a mind
forearmed by principles and aspirations like yours. The false step is
more likely to take place in the recoil than the advance; in the neglect
rather than in the too eager pursuit of the means; in under, rather than
over, valuing the advantages of wealth and worldly respectability. The
true plan on which you should regulate your conduct and feelings, (that
at least, which to me appears such) is the following. Propose to
yourself from the present hour such views of action and enjoyment, as
will make the leisure attached to independence, and honourably earned by
previous industry, the fair object of a wise man's efforts and a good
man's desires. Meantime, let the chosen _employments_ of the years in
_hope_ be the _relaxations_ of the time present, of the years devoted to
present duties, and, among these, to the means of realising that hope;
thus you will answer two great ends at once. Your inward trains of
thought, your faculties, and your feelings, will be preserved in a
fitness and, as it were, contempered to a life of ease, and capable of
enjoying leisure, because both able and disposed to _employ_ it.
Secondly, while you thus render future affluence more and more
desirable, you will at the same time prevent all undue impatience, and
disarm the temptation of poisoning the allotted interval by _anxieties_,
and anxious schemes and efforts to get rich _in haste_. There is yet one
other inducement to look on your existing appointment with complacency.
Every improvement in knowledge, and the moral power of wielding and
directing it, will _tell for more_,--have a wider and more benignant
influence,--than the same accomplishment would in a man who belonged to
one of the learned professions. Both your information and your example
will fall where they are most wanted, like the noiseless dews in Malta,
where rain comes seldom and no regular streams are to be met with. As to
your present studies, for such portions of your time as you can
prudently appropriate to reading, without wrong to the claims of health
and _social_ relaxation, there is one department of knowledge, which,
like an ample palace, contains within itself mansions for every other
knowledge; which deepens and extends the interest of every other, gives
it new charms and additional purpose; the study of which, rightly and
_liberally_ pursued, is beyond any other _entertaining_, beyond all
others tends at once to tranquillize and enliven, to keep the mind
elevated and steadfast, the heart humbler and tender: it is _biblical
theology_--the philosophy of religion, the religion of philosophy. I
would that I could refer you to any _book_ in which such a plan of
reading had been sketched out, in detail or even but generally.
Alas! I know of none. But most gladly will I make the attempt to supply
this desideratum by conversation, and then by letter. But of this when I
have next the pleasure of seeing you at Highgate.
You have perhaps heard that my publisher is a bankrupt.
* * * * *
* * * * *
* * * * *
All the profits from the sale of my writings, which I should have had,
and which, in spite of the accumulated disadvantages under which the
works were published, would have been considerable, I have lost; and not
only so, but have been obliged, at a sum larger than all the profits
made by my lectures, to purchase myself my own books and the half
copyrights. Well, I am now _sole_ proprietor, and representing my works
by cyphers, and the author by _I_, my emblem might be 00001. I have
withdrawn them from sale. This is rather hard, but perhaps my comet may
some time or other have its perihelion of popularity, and then the
_tail_, you know, whisks round to the other end; and for 00001, lo! and
behold, 10,000. Meantime, enough for me to thank God that, relatively to
my fellow men at least, I have been "sinned against, not sinning;" and
relatively to my Maker, these afflictions are but penances of mercy,
less than the least of my forfeitures.--I hope you will soon take
pot-luck with us.
Believe me, with esteem and regard, yours,
S. T. COLERIDGE.[104]
T. Allsop, Esq.
* * * * *
The bankrupt publishers referred to were Rest and Fenner, to whom
Coleridge had entrusted the publication of his works. The next letters
are about Cobbett, who was also a friend of Allsop.
LETTER 177. TO ALLSOP
Dec. 13th, 1819.
My dear Sir,
Accept my affectionate thanks; and, in mine, conceive those of my
housemates included. Would to heaven I had more than barren thanks to
offer you. If you, or rather your residence, were nearer to me, and I
could have more of your society, I should feel this the less. It was,
for me at least, unfortunate, that, almost every time you have been
here, I should have been engaged in the only way that I should have
suffered to be a pre-engagement, viz. the duties of friendship. These
are now discharged; and whenever you can give me a day, henceforward, I
shall have nothing to do but to enjoy it. I could not help "winning an
hour from the hard season," as Milton says, the day before yesterday, by
surrendering my reason to the detail of a day dream, as I was going
over, and after I had gone over, a very pretty house, with beautiful
garden and grounds, and a still more lovely prospect, at the moderate
rent of £60 and taxes proportionally low, discussing the question with
myself, as seriously as if it were actually to be decided, how far the
rising at eight, breakfasting, and riding, driving, or staging to
London, and returning by the stage or otherwise, would be advantageous
to your health; and then the ways and means of improving and enjoying
our Sundays, etc. All I can say in excuse of these air-built castles is,
that they bring with them no bills for brick and mortar, no quarrels
with the masons, no indignation at the deceits and lures of the
architects, surveyor, etc., when the final expense is found to treble
the amount of the well-paid and costly calculation: in short, that if
they do no honour to the head, they leave no harm in the heart. And
then, _poeta fuimus_: and the philosopher, though pressing with the
weight of an Etna, cannot prevent the poet from occasionally changing
sides, and manifesting his existence by smoke traversed by electrical
flashes from the crater.
Have you seen Cobbett's last number? It is the most _plausible_ and the
best written of anything I have seen from _his_ pen, and _apparently_
written in a less fiendish spirit than the average of his weekly
effusions. The self-complacency with which he assumes to himself
exclusively, truths which he can call his own only as a horse-stealer
can appropriate a stolen horse, by adding mutilation and deformities to
robbery, is as _artful_ as it is amusing. Still, however, he has given
great additional publicity to weighty truths, as _ex. gr._ the
hollowness of _commercial_ wealth; and from whatever dirty corner or
straw moppet the ventriloquist Truth causes her words to proceed, I not
only listen, but must bear witness that it is Truth talking. His
conclusions, however, are palpably absurd--give to an over-peopled
island the countless back settlements of America, and countless balloons
to carry thither man and maid, wife and brat, beast and baggage--and
then we might rationally expect that a general crash of trade,
manufactures, and credit, might be as mere a summer thunderstorm in
Great Britain as he represents it to be in America.
One deep, most deep, impression of melancholy, did Cobbett's letter to
Lord Liverpool leave on my mind,--the conviction that, wretch as he is,
he is an overmatch in intellect for those, in whose hands Providence, in
its retributive justice, seems to place the destinies of our country;
and who yet rise into respectability, when we compare them with their
parliamentary opponents.
I am commanded to add an especial request, that it may not be long
before you make yourself visible on the banks of Lake Superior.
Ever, my dear sir
Yours faithfully and affectionately,
S. T. COLERIDGE.[105]
T. Allsop, Esq.
LETTER 178. TO ALLSOP
20th March, 1820.
My dear Sir,
You must have thought it strange that I had taken no notice of so kind a
letter from you; but the truth is, I received the little packet
supposing it to contain the Cobbett only, put it in my pocket for my
reading at a leisure hour, and had not opened it until the day before I
last saw you. Within a few days, I hope to lay myself open to you in an
express letter; till when, I can only say, that the affectionate
interest you have taken in my well-being, has been not only a comfort
but a spur, when I needed both, and was almost yielding at times to the
apprehension, that I had sacrificed all that the world holds precious,
without being able to do any effective good in a higher and nobler
kind. I have sent the three volumes of the _Friend_, with my MS.
corrections, and additions. The largest, that towards the end of the
last _philosophical_ essay in the third volume, had a two-fold
object--to guard my own character from the suspicion of pantheistic
opinions, or Spinozism (it _was_ written, though not so much at large,
before the work was printed, and omitted by wilfulness, or such
carelessness as does not fall far short of it); and next, to impress, as
far as I could, the conviction that true philosophy, so far from having
any tendency to unsettle the _principles_ of faith, that may and ought
to be common to all men, does itself actually require them as its
premises; nay, that it supposes them as its ground.--I was highly
gratified to hear, and from such a man too as Mr. John Hookham Frere,
that a man of rank, and of a highly cultivated mind, who had become
reluctantly a sceptic, or something more, respecting the Christian
religion, wholly in consequence of studying Leland, Lardner, Watson,
Paley, and other defenders of the Gospel on the strength of the
_ex_ternal evidences--not of Christianity, but of the miracles with
which its first preaching was accompanied--and of having been taught to
regard the arguments, and mode of proof adopted in the works above
mentioned, as the only rational ones, had read the _Friend_ with great
attention, and when he came to the passage in which I had explained the
nature of miracles, their necessary dependence on a credible religion
for their own credibility, etc., dropped the book (as he himself
informed Mr. Frere), and exclaimed, "Thank God! I can still believe in
the Gospel--I can yet be a Christian." The remark that a miracle,
divested of all connection with a doctrine, is identical with
witchcraft, which in all ages has been regarded with instinctive horror
by the human mind, and the reference to our Lord's own declarations
concerning miracles, were among the passages that particularly impressed
his mind.
I should have sent a corrected copy of the _Sibylline Leaves_; but for a
two-legged little _accident_ having torn out two leaves at the
beginning, and I will no longer delay this parcel, but will transcribe
at another time what I had written in them, and I hope it will not be
long before you let us see you. The people here are occupied in raising
and distributing relief for the poor of the hamlet. On the first day
there were seven hundred and fifty applicants to whom small sums were
given! It would be most un-Christian moroseness not to feel delight in
the unwearied zeal with which every mode and direction of charity is
supported; and I hope that this is a sunshiny spot in our national
character, and that this virtue will suspend the judgments that threaten
the land. But it would, on the other hand, be wilful blindness not to
see that the lower orders become more and more improvident in
consequence, more and more exchange the sentiments of Englishmen for the
feelings of Lazzaroni.
God bless you; and, S. T. COLERIDGE.
P.S.--Charles and Mary Lamb dined with us on Sunday.
When I next see you, that excellent brother and sister will supply me
with half an hour's interesting conversation. When you know the _whole_
of him, you will love him in spite of all oddities and even faults--nay,
I had almost said, _for_ them--_at least_, admire that under his
visitations they were so few and of so little importance. Thank God, his
circumstances are comfortable; and so they ought, for he has been in the
India House since his fourteenth year.
* * * * *
I have subjoined the MS. addition mentioned above, and should wish you
to read it with great care and attention in its proper place; which is,
after the word "vacuum," in page 263, vol. iii of the _Friend_.[106]
If we thoughtfully review the course of argument pursued, we shall
rest in the following as our sum and ultimatum. The dialectic
intellect, by exertion of its own powers exclusively, may enable us to
affirm the reality of an absolute Being, generally. But here it stops.
It can command neither insight nor conviction concerning the existence
(or even the possibility) of the world as distinct and different from
Deity. It finds itself constrained to confound the Creator with the
creation; and then, cutting the knot it cannot solve, merges the
latter in the former, and denies reality to all finite existence. But
here the philosophiser is condemned to meet with his sure confutation
in his own secret dissatisfaction, and is forced at length to shelter
himself from his own importunate queries in the wretched evasion, that
of Nothings no solution can be required. Wretched indeed, and weak as
desperate! Nature herself--his own inevitable Nature--through every
organ of sense, compels his own abused reason to reiterate the demand:
How and whence did this sterile Nothing split or multiply into
_plurality_? Whence this portentous transnihilation of Nothing into
Nothings? What, above all, is that inward mirror, the human mind, in
and for which these Nothings possess at least a relative existence? Or
dost thou wait till, with a more bitter irony, Pain and Anguish and
Remorse ask thee, Are WE too Nothings?
O youthful reader! (for such _The Friend_ dares anticipate), thou,
that in my mind's eye, standest beside me, like my own youth! Fresh
and keen as the morning Hunter in the pursuit of Truth, glad and
restless in the feeling of mental growth! O learn early, that if the
Head be the Light of the Heart, the Heart is the Life of the Head:
yea, that Consciousness itself, that Consciousness of which all
reasoning is the varied modification, is but the Reflex of the
Conscience when most luminous; and too often a fatuous vapour, a
warmthless bewildering mockery of Light, exhaled from its corruption
or stagnation. Mark the inevitable result of all _consequent_
reasoning, when the intellect refuses to acknowledge a higher and
deeper ground than itself can supply, and weens to possess within
itself the centre of its own system! From Zeno the Eleatic to Spinoza,
and from Spinoza to Schelling, Oken, and the German
"_Natur-philosophen_" of the present day, the Result has been, and
ever must be, PANTHEISM, under some one or other of its modes or
disguises: and it is of awful importance to the speculative Inquirer
to be aware, that the seemliest of these modes differs from the most
repulsive, not in its consequences, which in all alike are Atheistic,
but only as far as it evinces the efforts of the individual to hide
these consequences from his own consciousness.
This, then, I again repeat, is our ultimate conclusion. All
_speculative_ disquisition must begin with _Postulates_, authorised
and substantiated by the conscience exclusively. From whatever point
the reason may start, whether from the _Things that are seen_ to the
One Invisible, or from the idea of the ABSOLUTE ONE to the _things
that are seen_, it will in either case find a chasm, which the moral
being, the _spirit_ and the _religion_ of man, can alone fill up or
overbridge. "THE LIFE IS THE LIGHT OF MAN:" and "WE LIVE BY FAITH."
LETTER 179. TO ALLSOP
Highgate, April 10th, 1820.
My dear Friend,
May I venture to obtrude on you what I cannot intrust to a messenger,
much less to the post. Sackville-street is not I hope more than fifteen
or twenty minutes' walk from your house. It is to inquire if Mr.
Caldwell is _in town_; if he be, then to leave the letter, and that is
all; but if not, to learn whether he is at his living, and if so, then
to transfer his present address to the letter, and put it into the
nearest General Post Office box. It is of serious importance to Derwent
that the inclosed should reach Mr. Caldwell with as little delay as
possible, or I need not say that I should not have taxed your time and
kindness merely to make a letter-carrier of you.
On Saturday evening I received a note from Mathews, which I have
inclosed. I took it very kind of him; but to obtrude myself on Walter
Scott, _nolentem volentem_, and within a furlong of my own abode, as he
knows (for Mr. Frere told him my address), was a liberty I had no right
to take; and though it would have highly gratified me to have conversed
with a brother bard, and to have renewed on the mental retina the image
of, perhaps, the most extraordinary man, assuredly the most
_extraordinary_ writer, of his age, yet I dared not purchase the
gratification at so high a price as that of risking the respect which I
trust has not hitherto been forfeited by,
My dear friend,
Your obliged and very affectionate friend,
S. T. COLERIDGE.
T. Allsop, Esq.
P.S. I had not the least expectation, yet I could not suppress a sort of
fluttering hope, that my letter might have reached you on Saturday
night, and that you might be disengaged and turn your walk
Highgate-ward. You will be delighted with the affectionate attachment of
the two brothers to each other, the boyish high spirits with manly
independence of intellect, and, in one word, with the simplicity which
is their nature, and the common _ground_ on which the differences of
their mind and characters (for no two can be more distinct) shoot and
play. When I say that nothing can exceed their fondness for their
father, I need not add that they are impatient to be introduced to you.
And I can offer no better testimony of the rank you hold in my bosom, my
dear Allsop, than the gladness with which I anticipate their becoming
your _friends_, in the noblest sense of the word. Would to Heaven their
dear sister were with us, the cup of paternal joy would be full to the
brim! The rapture with which both Hartley and Derwent talk of her, quite
affects Mrs. Gillman, who has always felt with a sort of lofty yet
refined enthusiasm respecting the relations of an only sister to her
brothers. Of all women I ever knew, Mrs. G. is the woman who seems to
have been framed by Nature for a heroine in that rare species of love
which subsists in a tri-unity of the heart, the moral sense, and the
faculty, corresponding to what Spurzheim calls the organ of _ideality_.
What in other women is _refinement_ exists in her as by implication,
and, _à fortiori_, in a native _fineness_ of character. She often
represents to my mind the best parts of the Spanish Santa Teresa,
ladyhood of nature.
_Vexation!_ and Mrs. Gillman has this moment burnt Mathews' note. The
purport, however, was as follows:--"I have just received a note from
Terry, informing me that Sir Walter Scott will call upon me to-morrow
morning (_i.e._ Sunday) at half-past eleven. Will you contrive to be
here at the same time? Perhaps the promise of your company may induce
Sir Walter to appoint a day on which he will dine with me before he
returns to the north."
Now as Scott had asked Terry for my address on his first arrival in
town, it is not _impossible_, though not very probable, that Terry may
have said--"You will meet Coleridge at Mathews's," though I was not
entitled to presume this. The bottom of all this, my dear friend, is
neither more nor less than as follows:--I seem to feel that I _ought_ to
feel more desire to see an extraordinary man than I really do feel; and
I do not wish to appear to two or three persons (as the Mr. Freres,
William Rose, etc.), as if I cherished any dislike to Scott respecting
the _Christabel_, and generally an increasing dislike to appear out of
the common and natural mode of thinking and acting. All this is, I own,
sad weakness, but I am weary of _dyspathy_.
* * * * *
It will be seen from the postscript of the last letter that Hartley and
Derwent, Coleridge's sons, were on a visit to Highgate.]
FOOTNOTES:
[98] [Letters CCXIX-CCXXI follow 170.]
[99] [Letter CCXXII follows 172.]
[100] [Wordsworth.]
[101] [CCXXIII is our 173, CCXXIV follows.]
[102] [Letter CCXXV follows 175.]
[103] [_Biographia Literaria_.]
[104] [Letter CCXXVI follows 176.]
[105] [Letter CCXXVII follows 177.]
[106] [Bohn Library edition of the _Friend_, p. 344.]