SIR WALTER SCOTT
[Coleridge and Sir Walter Scott met at least three times during their
lives, once in 1807,[107] once in 1820, and again in 1828. Sir Walter
was cognizant of the genius of Coleridge both as the author of
_Christabel_ and of the translation of _Wallenstein_, which he praised
highly; and he had on the last occasion of their meeting to acknowledge
Coleridge's extraordinary colloquial power. His tribute to the genius of
Coleridge is well known to readers of Lockhart's _Life of Scott_. The
next letter to Allsop contains Coleridge's estimate of Scott. No greater
contrast than Scott and Coleridge as literary men, the two greatest,
with the exception of Goethe, of their generation, could be conceived.
Scott, successful, the darling of the hour, reaping thousands of pounds
for his literary output and almost unable to keep pace with the demand
for his creations; Coleridge, always unable to obtain anything like
remuneration for his more profound and original work, and never the
possessor in advance of £50 which he could call his own. And yet, both
were the victims of a fate which seemed to brood over them; and, after
all, it is difficult to say from a worldly point of view which was
really the more successful, the creator of a whole gallery of characters
known throughout Anglo-Saxondom as household beings, or the other the
disseminator of the most fruitful ideas in all departments of human
thought.
LETTER 180. TO ALLSOP
Highgate, April 8th, 1820.[108]
My dear Friend,
It is not the least advantage of friendship, that by communicating our
thoughts to another, we render them distinct to ourselves, and reduce
the subjects of our sorrow and anxiety to their just magnitude for our
own contemplation.
As long as we inly brood over a misfortune (there being no divisions or
separate circumscriptions in things of mind, no _proper_ beginning nor
ending to any thought, on the one hand; and, on the other, the
confluence of our recollections being determined far more by sameness or
similarity of the feelings that have been produced by them, than by any
positive resemblance or connection between the things themselves that
are thus recalled to our attention) we establish a centre, as it were, a
sort of nucleus in the reservoir of the soul; and toward this, needle
shoots after needle, cluster points on cluster points, from all parts of
contained fluid, and in all directions, till the mind with its best
faculties is locked up in one ungenial frost. I cannot adequately
express the state of feeling in which I wrote my last letter; the letter
itself, I doubt not, bore evidence of its _nest_ and mode of incubation,
as certain birds and lizards drag along with them part of the egg-shells
from which they had forced their way. Still one good end was answered. I
had made a clearance, so far as to have my head in light and my eyes
open; and your answer, every way worthy of you, has removed the rest.
But before I enter on this subject, permit me to refer to some points of
_comparative_ indifference, lest I should forget them altogether. I
occasioned you to misconceive me respecting Sir Walter Scott. My purpose
was to bring proofs of the energetic or inenergetic state of the minds
of men, induced by the excess and unintermitted action of stimulating
events and circumstances,--revolutions, battles, _newspapers_, mobs,
sedition and treason trials, public harangues, meetings, dinners; the
necessity in every individual of ever increasing activity and anxiety in
the improvement of his estate, trade, etc., in proportion to the
decrease of the actual value of money, to the multiplication of
competitors, and to the almost compulsory expedience of expense, and
prominence, even as the means of obtaining or retaining competence; the
consequent craving after amusement as proper _relaxation_, as _rest_
freed from the tedium of vacancy; and, again, after such knowledge and
such acquirements as are _ready coin_, that will pass _at once_,
unweighed and unassayed; to the unexampled facilities afforded for this
end by reviews, magazines, etc., etc. The theatres, to which few go to
see _a play_, but to see Master Betty or Mr. Kean, or some one
individual in some _one_ part: and the single fact that our neighbour,
Mathews, has taken more, night after night, than both the regular
theatres conjointly, and when the best comedies or whole plays have been
acted at each house, and those by excellent comedians, would have
yielded a striking instance, and illustration of my position. But I
chose an example in literature, as more in point for the subject of my
particular remarks, and because every man of genius, who is born for his
age, and capable of acting _immediately_ and widely on that age, must of
necessity _reflect_ the age in the first instance, though as far as he
is a man of genius, he will doubtless be himself reflected by it
reciprocally. Now I selected Scott for the very reason, that I do hold
him for a man of _very extraordinary_ powers; and when I say that I
have read the far greater part of his novels twice, and several three
times over, with undiminished pleasure and interest; and that, in my
reprobation of the _Bride of Lammermoor_ (with the exception, however,
of the almost Shakspearian old witch-wives at the funeral) and of the
_Ivanhoe_, I mean to imply the grounds of my admiration of the others,
and the permanent nature of the interest which they excite. In a word, I
am far from thinking that _Old Mortality_ or _Guy Mannering_ would have
been less admired in the age of Sterne, Fielding, and Richardson, than
they are in the present times; but only that Sterne, etc., would not
have had the same _immediate_ popularity in the present day as in their
own less stimulated and, therefore, less languid reading world.
Of Sir Walter Scott's poems I cannot speak so highly, still less of the
Poetry in his _Poems_; though even in these the power of presenting the
most numerous figures, and figures with the most complex movements, and
under rapid succession, in _true picturesque unity_, attests true and
peculiar genius. You cannot imagine with how much pain I used, many
years ago, to hear ----'s contemptuous assertions respecting Scott; and
if I mistake not, I have yet the fragments of the rough draft of a
letter written by me so long ago as my first lectures at the London
Philosophical Society, Fetter Lane, and on the backs of the unused
admission tickets.
One more remark. My criticism was _confined_ to the one point of the
higher degree of intellectual activity implied in the reading and
admiration of Fielding, Richardson, and Sterne;--in moral, or, if that
be too high and inwardly a word, in _mannerly_ manliness of taste the
present age and its _best_ writers have the decided advantage, and I
sincerely trust that Walter Scott's readers would be as little disposed
to relish the stupid lechery of the courtship of Widow Wadman, as Scott
himself would be capable of presenting it. And, that though I cannot
pretend to have found in any of these novels a character that even
approaches in genius, in truth of conception, or boldness and freshness
of execution, to Parson Adams, Blifil, Strap, Lieutenant Bowling, Mr.
Shandy, Uncle Toby and Trim, and Lovelace; and though Scott's _female_
characters will not, even the very best, bear a comparison with Miss
Byron, Clementina Emily, in Sir Charles Grandison; nor the comic ones
with Tabitha Bramble, or with Betty (in Mrs. Bennet's _Beggar Girl_);
and though, by the use of the Scotch dialect, by Ossianic mock-highland
motley-heroic, and by extracts from the printed sermons, memoirs, etc.,
of the fanatic preachers, there is a good deal of _false effect_ and
stage trick: still the number of characters _so good_ produced by one
man, and in so rapid a succession, must ever remain an illustrious
phenomenon in literature, after all the subtractions for those borrowed
from English and German sources, or compounded by blending two or three
of the old drama into one--_ex. gr._ the Caleb in the _Bride of
Lammermoor_.
Scott's great merit, and, at the same time, his _felicity_, and the true
solution of the long-sustained _interest_ novel after novel excited, lie
in the nature of the subject; not merely, or even chiefly, because the
struggle between the Stuarts and the Presbyterians and sectaries, is
still in lively memory, and the passions of the adherency to the former,
if not the adherency itself, extant in our own fathers' or grandfathers'
times; nor yet (though this is of great weight) because the language,
manners, etc., introduced are sufficiently different from our own for
_poignancy_, and yet sufficiently near and similar for sympathy; nor yet
because, for the same reason, the author, speaking, reflecting, and
descanting in his own person, remains still (to adopt a painter's
phrase) in sufficient _keeping_ with his subject matter, while his
characters can both talk and feel interesting to _us_ as men, without
recourse to _antiquarian_ interest, and nevertheless without moral
anachronism (in all which points the _Ivanhoe_ is so wofully the
contrary, for what Englishman cares for Saxon or Norman, both brutal
invaders, more than for Chinese and Cochin-Chinese?)--yet great as all
these causes are, the essential wisdom and happiness of the subject
consists in this,--that the contest between the loyalists and their
opponents can never be _obsolete_, for it is the contest between the two
great moving principles of social humanity; religious adherence to the
past and the ancient, the desire and the admiration of permanence, on
the one hand; and the passion for increase of knowledge, for truth, as
the offspring of reason--in short, the mighty instincts of _progression_
and _free agency_, on the other. In all subjects of deep and lasting
interest, you will detect a struggle between two opposites, two polar
forces, both of which are alike necessary to our human well-being, and
necessary each to the continued existence of the other. Well, therefore,
may we contemplate with intense feelings those whirlwinds which are for
free agents the appointed means, and the only possible condition of that
equilibrium in which our moral Being subsists; while the disturbance of
the same constitutes our sense of life. Thus in the ancient Tragedy, the
lofty struggle between irresistible fate, and unconquerable free will,
which finds its equilibrium in the Providence and the future retribution
of Christianity. If, instead of a contest between Saxons and Normans, or
the Fantees and Ashantees,--a mere contest of indifferents! of minim
surges in a boiling fish-kettle,--Walter Scott had taken the struggle
between the men of arts and the men of arms in the time of Becket, and
made us feel how much to claim our well-wishing there was in the cause
and character of the priestly and papal party, no less than in those of
Henry and his knights, he would have opened a new mine, instead of
translating into Leadenhall Street Minerva Library sentences, a cento of
the most common incidents of the stately self-congruous romances of
D'Urfe, Scuderi, etc. N.B. I have not read the _Monastery_, but I
suspect that the thought or element of the faery work is from the
German. I perceive from that passage in the _Old Mortality_, where
Morton is discovered by old Alice in consequence of calling his dog
Elphin, that Walter Scott has been reading Tieck's _Phantasies_ (a
collection of faery or witch tales), from which both the incident and
name is borrowed.
I forget whether I ever mentioned to you, that some eighteen months ago
I had planned and half collected, half manufactured and invented a work,
to be entitled _The Weather_-BOUND _Traveller_; or, Histories, Lays,
Legends, Incidents, Anecdotes, and Remarks, contributed during a
detention in one of the Hebrides, recorded by their Secretary, Lory
McHaroldson, Senachy in the Isle of ----.
The principle of the work I had thus expressed in the first
chapter:--"Though not _fact_, must it needs be false? These things have
a truth of their own, if we but knew how to look for it. There is a
_humanity_ (meaning by this word whatever contradistinguishes man),
there is a humanity common to all periods of life, which each _period_
from childhood has its own way of representing. Hence, in whatever laid
firm hold of us in early life, there lurks an interest and a charm for
our maturest years,[109] but which _he_ will never draw forth, who,
content with mimicking the unessential, though natural defects of
thought and expression, has not the skill to remove the _childish_, yet
leave the _childlike_ untouched. Let each of us then relate that which
has left the deepest impression on his mind, at whatever period of his
life he may have seen, heard, or read it; but let him tell it in
accordance with the _present state_ of his intellect and feelings, even
as he has, perhaps (Alnaschar-like), acted it over again by the parlour
fire-side of a rustic inn, with the fire and the candles for his only
companions."
On the hope of my Lectures answering, I had intended to have done this
work out of hand, dedicating the most genial hours to the completion of
_Christabel_, in the belief that in the former I should be rekindling
the feeling, and recalling the state of mind, suitable to the
latter.--But the Hope was vain.
In stating the names and probable size of my works, I by no means meant
any reference to the mode of their publication; I merely wished to
communicate to you the amount of my labours. In two moderate volumes it
was my intention to comprise all those more prominent and systematic
parts of my lucubrations on Shakspeare as should be published (in the
first instance at least, in the form of books), and having selected and
arranged them, to send the more particular illustrations and analysis to
some respectable magazine. In like manner, I proposed to include the
philosophical critiques on Dante, Milton, Cervantes, etc., in a series
of Letters entitled _The Reviewer in Exile, or Critic confined to an Old
Library_. Provided the truths (which are, I dare affirm, original, and
all tending to the same principles, and proving the endless fertility of
true principle, and the decision and power of growth which it
communicates to all the faculties of the mind) are but in existence, and
to be read by such as might wish to read, I have no choice as to the
mode; nay, I should prefer that mode which most multiplied the
chances.--So too as to the order.--For _many_ reasons, it had been my
wish to commence with the _Theological Letters_: one, and not the least,
is the strong desire I have to put you and Hartley and Derwent Coleridge
in full possession of my whole Christian creed, with the grounds of
reason and authority on which it rests; but especially to unfold the
true "glorious liberty of the Gospel," by showing the distinction
between doctrinal faith and its sources and historical belief, with
their reciprocal action on each other; and thus, on the one hand, to do
away (with) the servile superstition which makes men _Bibliolators_, and
yet hides from them the proper excellences, the one continued revelation
of the Bible documents, which they idolise; and, on the other hand, to
expose, in its native worthlessness, the so-called evidences of
Christianity first brought into _toleration_ by Arminius, and into
fashion by Grotius and the Socinian divines; for as such I consider all
those who preach and teach in the spirit of Socinianism, though even in
the outward form of a defence of the thirty-nine articles.
I have been interrupted by the arrival of my sons, Hartley and Derwent,
the latter of whom I had not seen for so dreary a time. I promise myself
great pleasure in introducing him to you. Hartley you have already met.
Indeed, I am so desirous of this, that I will defer what I have to add,
that I may put this letter in the post, time enough for you to receive
it this evening; saying only, that it was not my purpose to have had any
further communication on the subject but with Mr. Frere, and with him
only as a counsellor. Let me see you as soon as you can and as often. I
shall be better able hereafter to talk with you than to write to you on
the contents of your last.
Your very affectionate friend,
S. T. COLERIDGE.[110]
T. Allsop, Esq.
* * * * *
Hartley Coleridge had been sent by the generosity of his uncles and
Poole, and other friends, to Oxford, and had gained a Fellowship at
Oriel in 1819; but at the close of his probationary year forfeited his
fellowship on the ground of intemperance. This calamity fell upon
Coleridge with great severity. The following letters refer to it.
LETTER 181. TO ALLSOP
31st July, 1820.
My very dear Friend,
Before I opened your letter, or rather before I gave it to my best
sister, and, under God, best comforter, to open, a very heavy affliction
came upon me with all the aggravations of surprise, sudden as a peal of
thunder from a cloudless sky.[111]
* * * * *
* * * * *
* * * * *
* * * * *
Alas! both Mr. and Mrs. Gillman had spoken to him with all the
earnestness of the fondest parents; his cousins had warned him, and I
(long ago) had written to him, conjuring him to reflect with what a
poisoned dagger it would arm my enemies: yea, and the phantoms that,
half-_counterfeiting_, half-expounding the conscience, would persecute
my sleep. My conscience indeed bears me witness, that from the time I
quitted Cambridge, no human being was more indifferent to the pleasures
of the table than myself, or less needed any stimulation to my spirits;
and that by a most unhappy quackery, after having been almost bedrid for
six months with swollen knees and other distressing symptoms of
disordered digestive functions, and through that most pernicious form of
ignorance, medical half-knowledge, I was _seduced_ into the use of
narcotics, not secretly, but (such was my ignorance) openly and
exultingly, as one who had discovered and was never weary of
recommending, a grand panacea and saw not the truth till my _body_ had
contracted a habit and a necessity; and that, even to the latest, my
responsibility is for cowardice, and defect of fortitude, not for the
least craving after gratification or pleasurable sensation of any sort,
but for yielding to pain, terror, and haunting bewilderment. But this I
say to _man_ only, who knows only what has been yielded not what has
been resisted: before God I have but one voice--"Mercy! mercy! woe is
me."--This was the sin of his nature, and this has been fostered by the
culpable indulgence, at least non-interference, on my part; while, in a
different quarter, contempt of the self-_interest_ he saw seduced him
unconsciously into _selfishness_.
Pray for me, my dear friend, that I may not pass such another night as
the last. While I am awake and retain my reasoning powers, the pang is
gnawing, but I am, except for a fitful moment or two, tranquil; it is
the howling wilderness of sleep that I dread.
I am most reluctant thus to transplant the thorns from my own pillow to
yours, but sooner or later you must know it, and how else could I
explain to you the incapability I am under of answering your letter? For
the present (my late visitation and sorrow out of the question) my
anxiety is respecting your health. Mr. Gillman feels satisfied that
there is nothing in your case symptomatic of aught more dangerous than
irritable, and at present disordered, organs of digestion, requiring
indeed great care, but by no means incompatible with comfortable health
on the whole. Would to God! that your uncle lived near Highgate, or that
we were settled near Clapham. Most anxious am I--(for I am sure I do not
_over_rate Gillman's medical skill and sound medical good sense, and
have had every possible opportunity of satisfying myself on this head,
_comparatively_ as well as positively, from my intimate acquaintance
with so many medical men in the course of my life)--I am most anxious
that you should not apply to any medical practitioner at Clapham, till
you have consulted some physician recommended by Gillman, and with whom
our friend might have some confidential conversation.--The next earnest
petition I make to you,--for should I lose _you_ from this world, I fear
that religious terrors would shake my strength of mind, and to how many
are you, must you be, very dear,--is that you would stay in the country
as long as is _morally_ practicable. Let nothing but _coercive_ motives
have weight with you; a month's tranquillity in pure air (O! that I
could spend that month with you, with no greater efforts of mental or
bodily exercise than would exhilarate both body and mind) might save you
many months' interrupted and half-effective labour.
If any thoughts occur to you at Clapham on which it would amuse or
gratify you to have my notions, write to me, and I shall be served by
having something to think and write about not connected with myself.
But, at all events, write as often as you can, and as much as (but not a
syllable more than) you ought. Need I say how unspeakably dear you are
to your, you must not refuse me to say in heart,
S. T. COLERIDGE.
T. Allsop, Esq.
LETTER 182. TO ALLSOP
August 8th, 1820.
My very Dear Friend,
Neither indolence nor procrastination have had any place among the
causes of my silence, least of all either yourself, or the subject of
your letter, or the purpose of answering it, having been absent from my
thoughts. You may with almost literal truth attribute it to want of
time, from the number, quantity, and quality of my engagements, the
necessity of several journeys _to_ and (still worse) _in_ town being
the largest waster of time and spirits. At length I have settled J. for
the next six or eight weeks with Mr. Montague, where he is engaged on an
_Essay on the Principles of Taste in relation to Metre and Rhythm_,
containing, first, a new scheme of prosody, as applied to the choral and
lyrical stanzas of the Greek drama; secondly, the possibility of
improving and enriching our English versification by digging in the
original mines, viz.--the tunes of nature and impassioned conversation,
both of which may be illustrated from Mr. Frere's _Aristophanic Poems_.
I have been working hard to bring together for him the notes, etc., that
I had prepared on this subject. E. has been ill, and even now is far
from well. There are some persons--I have known several--who, when they
find themselves uncomfortable, take up the pen and transfer as much
discomfort as they can to their absent friends. But I know only one of
this sort, who, as soon as they take up the pen, instantly become
_dolorous_, however smug, snug, and cheerful the minute before and the
minute after.
Now just such is Mrs. D., God bless her! and she has been writing letter
after letter to E. about J., and every discomfortable recollection and
anticipation that she could conjure up, that she has completely overset
him. _This must not be._ Mr. Gillman, too, has been _out_ of _sorts_,
but at this present we are all better. I at least am as well as I ever
am, and my regular employment, in which Mr. Green is weekly my
amanuensis, the work on the books of the Old and New Testaments
introduced by the assumptions and postulates required as the
pre-conditions of a fair examination of Christianity as a scheme of
doctrines, precepts, and histories, drawn or at least deducible from
these books. And now, in the narrative line, I have only to add that
Mrs. Gillman desires to be affectionately remembered to you, and bids me
entreat you to stay _away as long_ as you possibly can, provided it be
from _London_ as well as from Highgate.
Would to heaven I were with you! In a few days you should see that the
spirit of the mountaineer is not yet utterly extinct in me. Wordsworth
has remarked (in the _Brothers_, I believe),
The thought of death sits light upon the man
That has been bred, and dies among the mountains.
But I fear that this, like some other few of Wordsworth's _many_
striking passages, means less than it seems, or rather promises to mean.
Poets (especially if philosophers too) are apt to represent the effect
made upon themselves as general; the geese of Phœbus are all swans;
and Wordsworth's shepherds and estates men are Wordsworth's, even (as in
old Michael) in the unpoetic traits of character. Whether mountains have
any particular effect on the native inhabitants by virtue of being
mountains exclusively, and what that effect is, would be a difficult
problem. If independent tribes, mountaineers are robbers of the
lowlanders; brave, active, and with all the usual warlike good and bad
qualities that result from habits of adventurous robbery. Add clanship
and the superstitions that are the surviving _precipitate_ of an
established religion, both which are common to the uncivilised Celtic
tribes, in plain no less than in mountain, and you have the Scottish
Highlanders. But where the inhabitants exist as states, or civilised
parts of civilised states, they appear to be in mind and character just
what their condition and employments would render them in level plain,
the same as amid Alpine heights. At least the influence acts indirectly
only, as far as the mountains are the _causa causæ_ or occasion of a
_pastoral_ life instead of an agricultural; thus combining a lax and
common property, possessed by a whole district, with small hereditary
estates sacred to each, while the properties in sheep seem to partake of
both characters. And truly, to this circumstance, aided by the
favourable action of a necessarily scanty population (for _man_ is an
oak that wants room, not a _plantation tree_), we must attribute
whatever superiority the mountaineers of Cumberland and Westmoreland and
of the Swiss and Tyrolese Alps possess, as the shocking contrast of the
Welsh mountaineers too clearly evinces. But this subject I have
discussed, and (if I do not flatter myself) satisfactorily, in the
Literary Life, and I will not conceal from _you_ that this inferred
dependency of the human soul on accidents of birth-place and abode,
together with the vague, misty, rather than mystic, confusion of God
with the world, and the accompanying nature-worship, of which the
asserted dependence forms a part, is the trait in Wordsworth's poetic
works that I most dislike as unhealthful, and denounce as contagious;
while the odd introduction of the popular, almost the vulgar, religion
in his later publications (the popping in, as Hartley says, of the old
man with a beard), suggests the painful suspicion of worldly
prudence--at best a justification of masking truth (which, in fact, is a
falsehood substituted for a truth withheld) on plea of
expediency--carried into religion. At least it conjures up to my fancy a
sort of _Janus_ head of Spinoza and Dr. Watts, or "I and my brother the
dean."
Permit me, then, in the place of the two lines,
The thought of death sits easy on the man,
Who hath been bred, and dies among the mountains,
to say,
The thought of death sits easy on the man,
Whose earnest _will_ hath lived among the deathless.
And I can perhaps build upon this foundation an answer to the question,
which would deeply interest me, by whomever put, and pained me only
because it was put by _you_; _i.e._ because I feared it might be the
inspiration of ill health, and am jealous of any _consenting_ of that
inward will which, with some mysterious germination, moves in the
Bethesda pool of our animal life, to withdraw its resistance. For the
soul, among its other regalia, has an energetic veto against all
undermining of the constitution, and among these, as not the least
insidious, I consider the thoughts and hauntings that tamper with the
love of life.
Do not so! you _would not_, if I could transfer into you, in all its
depth and liveliness, the sense what a hope, promise, impulse, you are
to me in my present efforts to realise my past labours; and by building
up the temple,--the shaped stones, beams, pillars, yea, the graven
ornaments and the connecting clamps of which have been piled up by me,
only in too great abundance,--to enable you and my two (may I not say
other) sons to affirm,--_Vivit, quia non frustra vixit._
In reading an extract in the German Encyclopædia from Dobrizhoffer's
most interesting account of the Abiponenses, a savage tribe in Paraguay,
houseless, yet in person and in morals the noblest of savage tribes;
who, when first known by Europeans, amounted to 100,000 warriors, yet
have a tradition that they were but the relic of a far more numerous
community, and who by wars with other savage tribes, and by intestine
feuds among themselves, are now dwindled to a thousand (men, women, and
children do not exceed five thousand), it struck me with distinct
remembrance--first, that this is the history of _all_ savages tribes;
and, second, that all tribes _are_ savage that have not a positive
religion defecated from witchcraft, and an established priesthood
contra-distinguished from individual conjurers. Nay, the islands of the
Pacific (the Polynesia, which sooner or later the swift and silent
masonry of the coral worms will compact into a rival continent, into a
_fifth quarter_ of the world), blest with all the plenties of nature,
and enjoying an immunity from all the ordinary dangers of savage life,
were many of them utterly dispeopled since their first discovery, and
wholly by their own feuds and vices; nay, that their bread-fruit tree
and their delicious and healthful climate had only made the process of
mutual destruction and self-destruction more hateful, more basely
sensual. This, therefore, I assume as an undoubted fact of history; and
from this, as a portion of the history of _men_, I draw a new (to my
knowledge, at least, a new) series of proofs of several, I _might_ say
of _all_, the positions of pre-eminent importance and interest more than
vital; a series which, taken in harmonious counterpart to a prior series
drawn from _interior_ history (the history of _man_), the documents of
which are to be found only in the archives of each individual's own
consciousness, will form a complete _whole_--a system of evidence,
consisting of two correspondent worlds, as it were, correlative and
mutually potentiating, yet each integral and self-subsistent--having the
same correlation, as the geometry and the observations, or the
metaphysics and the physics, of astronomy. If I can thus demonstrate the
truth of the doctrine of existence after the present life, it is not
improbable that some rays of light may fall on the question, what
_state_ of existence it may be reasonably supposed to be? At all events,
we shall, I trust, be enabled to determine negatively, what it can _not_
be for _any_; and _for whom_ this or that, which does not appear
universally precluded, is yet _for them_ precluded. In plainer words,
what can _not_ be, universally speaking; second, what may be; third,
what the differences may be for different individuals, within the limits
prescribed in No. 2; fourth, what scheme of embodied representation of
the future state (our _reason_ not forbidding the same) is recommended
by the truest analogies; and, fifth, what scheme it is best to combine
with our belief of a hereafter, as most conducive to the growth and
cultivation of our collective faculties in this life, or of each in the
order of its comparative worth, value, and permanence. This I must defer
to another letter, for I cannot let another post pass by, without your
knowing that we are all thinking of and loving you.
S. T. COLERIDGE.
T. Allsop, Esq.
LETTER 183. TO ALLSOP
Highgate, Oct. 11th, 1820.
My dear Friend,
You will think it childish in me, and more savouring of a jealous
boarding-school miss than a friend and a philosopher, when I confess
that the "with great respect, your obliged and grateful...," gave me
pain. But I did not return from Mr. Cooper's, at whose house we all
dined, till near midnight, and did not open the packet till this morning
after getting out of bed; and this you know is the hour in which the
cat-organ of an irritable viscerage is substituted for the brain as the
mind's instrument.
The Cobbett is assuredly a strong and battering production throughout,
and in the best bad style of this political rhinoceros, with his coat
armour of dry and wet mud, and his one horn of brutal strength on the
nose of scorn and hate; not to forget the flaying rasp of his tongue!
There is one article of his invective, however, from which I cannot
withhold my vote of consent: that I mean which respects Mr. Brougham's
hollow complimentary phrases to the ministry and the House of Lords. On
expressing my regret that his poor hoaxed and hunted client had been
lured or terrified into the nets of the revolutionists, and had taken
the topmost perch, as the flaring, screaming _maccaw_, in the clamorous
aviary of faction, Sheriff Williams, who dined with us, premising that
his _wishes_ accorded with mine, declared himself, however fully and
deeply convinced, that, without this alliance, the Queen must have been
overwhelmed, not wholly or even chiefly from the strength of the party
itself, but because, without the activity, enthusiasm, and combination,
peculiar to the reformists, her case, in all its detail and with all its
appendages, would never have had that notoriety so beyond example
universal; which (to translate Sheriff Williams into Poet Coleridge),
with kettle drum reveillée, had echoed through the mine and the
coal-pit, which had lifted the latch of every cottage, and thundered
with no run-away knock at Carlton Palace. I could only reply, that I had
never yet seen, heard, or read of any advantage in the long run,
occurring to a good cause from an unholy alliance with evil passions and
incongruous or alien purposes. It was ever heavy on my heart, that the
people, alike high and low, do perish for lack of knowledge; that both
sheep and shepherd, the Flocks and the Pastors, go astray among swamps
and in desolate places, for want of the _Truth_, the _whole_ Truth, and
nothing but the Truth; and that the sacred motto, which I had adopted
for my first political publication (_The Watchman_), would be the
aspiration of my death-bed--THAT ALL MAY KNOW THE TRUTH; AND THAT THE
TRUTH MAY MAKE US FREE.
I observed farther, that in bodies of men, not accidentally collected
nor promiscuously, but such as our House of Lords, the usual effect of
terror was, first, self-justification as to the worst of their past
violent and unconstitutional measures; and, next, a desperate belief
that their safety would be still more endangered by giving way than by
plunging onward; that, if they must fall, they would fall in that way in
which they might take vengeance on the occasion of the mischief. If the
proposition be either ... or ..., and the latter blank is to be filled
up by _a Civil War_, what shall we put for the former, to make our duty
to submit to it deniable or even doubtful? A Legislature permitted by us
to stand in the eye of the whole civilised World as the representative
of our country, corruptly and ruthlessly pandering to an Individual's
Lust and Hate! Open Hostility to Innocence, and the subversion of
justice, a shameless trampling under foot of the Laws of God and the
Principles of the Constitution, in the name and against the known will
of the Nation! Well! if anything, it must be this! It is a decision,
compared with which the sentence of the elder Brutus were a grief for
which an onion might supply the tears. A dreadful decision! But be it
so!--How much more then are we bound to be careful, that no conduct of
our own, no assent or countenance given by us to the violence of others,
no want of courage and alertness in denouncing the same, should have the
least tendency to bring about an act or event, dire enough to justify a
civil war for its preventive! I produced, as you may suppose, but small
effect; and yet your very note enforces the truth of my reply--for these
very answers of the Queen's conjointly with her plebicolar (or
plebicolous) Clap-Trapperies in the live puppet-show of wicked Punch and
his wife, that has come back again, and the devil on all sides, make it
impossible for me to ask you, as I otherwise should have done,--What
proof, proveably independent of the calumny plot, have we of any want of
delicacy in the Queen? What act or form of demeanour can be adduced on
competent testimony, from which we are forced or entitled to infer
innate Coarseness, if not Grossness? The dire disclosure of the extent
and extremes to which Calumny may be carried--and perhaps the recent
persecution of poor dear ... mixes its workings--makes me credulous in
incredulity; so that I am almost prepared to reverse the proverb, and
think that "what every one says must be a lie!" They put a body up to
the nostrils in the dunghill of reeking slander, and then exclaim: There
is no smoke without some fire!
It is my purpose, God willing! to leave this place on Friday, so as to
take an afternoon coach, if any such there be, or the Oxford mail, as
the dernier resource--and so to be in Oxford by Saturday morning, while
my letter, which is unfortunately a very long one (and I could not make
it otherwise), will reach Dr. Coplestone, if arrived, on Friday morning;
thus giving him a day's preparation for the personal interview. How long
my absence from Highgate may be, I cannot of course predetermine;
certainly not an hour beyond what [Hartley]'s interest requires.
God bless you, my dear friend, and your truly affectionate, and--if it
did not look like a _retort_, how truly might I not add--
Your obliged and grateful friend,
S. T. COLERIDGE.
T. Allsop, Esq.
P.S.--Sheriff Williams is apparently a very worthy, and assuredly a very
entertaining man. He gave us accounts, on his own evidence, of wonderful
things respecting Miss M'Evoy and a Mr. De Vains of Liverpool; so
wonderful as to threaten the stoppage even of my Bank of Faith.
I have just heard from Derwent, who is well; but I have not had time to
decipher his villainous scrawl.
LETTER 184. TO ALLSOP
Oct. 20th, 1820.
My dear Friend,
Doubtless nothing can be more delightful to me, independent of Mrs.
Gillman's kind but unnecessary anxieties, than to go to Oxford with you.
Nay, though it will be but a flight to and fro, with a sojourn but of
two days, if so much, yet I should even ask it of you if I were quite
sure, absolutely sure, that it would not inconvenience you.
But in the fear of this, I could not ask or receive your companionship
without some selfishness which would completely baffle itself.
I have not yet received an answer from Oxford respecting Dr.
Coplestone's return to Oriel.
God bless you, my ever dear friend,
S. T. COLERIDGE.
T. Allsop, Esq.
* * * * *
The visit to Oxford was undertaken to try to get the authorities to
mitigate the sentence on Hartley.
Queen Caroline and her misfortunes had been in his young days the
subject of one of Coleridge's poems, _On a late Connubial Rupture in
High Life_. She still engaged his attention, and he meditated writing on
the matter, from which, however, Gillman dissuaded him.
LETTER 185. TO ALLSOP
Oct. 25th, 1820.
My dearest Friend,
It will please you, though I scarcely know whether the pleasure is worth
the carriage, to know that my own feelings and convictions were, from
the very commencement of this unhappy affair, viz.--the terms proposed
to the Queen by Lord Hutchinson, in coincidence with your present
suggestion, and that I actually began an essay, and proposed a sort of
_diary_, _i.e._ remarks moral and political, according as the events of
the day suggested them. But Mr. Gillman dissuaded me. Again, about five
weeks ago I had written a letter to Conder, the editor of the _Eclectic
Review_ and _ci-devant_ bookseller, offering, and offering to _execute_,
a scheme of publication, "the Queen's case stated _morally_; 2,
judicially; 3, politically." But _again_ Mr. G. earnestly persuaded me
to suppress it. His reasons were, first, that my mind was not
sufficiently tranquil, in consequence of I.'s affair, to enable me to
rely upon going through with the publication; secondly, that it would
probably involve me with certain of my connexions in high life, and be
injurious to Hartley and Derwent, especially the latter; with thirdly,
the small chance of doing any good, people are so guided by their first
notions. To tell you the truth, Mr. G.'s _own dislike_ to it was of more
weight than all his three reasons.
However, we will talk of the publication, if _it be not too late_, and
at all events I will compose the statement.
I pray you make no apologies for doing that which cannot but add to the
esteem and affection with which I am most truly your _friend_,
fraternally and paternally.
We shall soon see you?
S. T. COLERIDGE.
T. Allsop, Esq.
LETTER 186. TO ALLSOP
Nov. 27, 1820.
My very dear Friend,
I have been more than usually unwell, with great depression of spirits,
loss of appetite, frequent sickness, and a harassing pain in my left
knee; and at the same time anxious to preclude, as much as I can, the
ill effects of poor J.'s procrastination--indolence it is not, for he is
busy enough in his own way, and rapidly bringing together materials for
his future credit as a man of letters and a poet, but shrinking from all
things connected with painful associations, and of that morbid
temperament, which I too well understand, that renders what would be
motives for men in general, narcotics for him, in exact proportion to
their strength; and this I could only do by taking on myself as much of
the document writing as was contrivable. Besides this, I have latterly
felt increasingly anxious to avail myself of every moment that ill
health left me, to get forward with my _Logic_ and with my _Assertion of
Religion_.
Nay, foolish though it be, I cannot prevent my mind from being affected
by the alarming state of public affairs, and, as it appears to me, the
want of stable principle even in the chiefs of the party that seem to
feel aright, yet chirrup like crickets in warmth without light.
The consequence of all this is, that I not only have deferred writing
to you, but have played the procrastinator with myself, even in giving
attention to your very interesting letter. For minor things your
kindness and kind remembrances are so habitual, that my acknowledgments
you cannot but take for granted. Mr. Gillman has been ill; Mrs.
Gillman--and this leads me to the particular object of this
letter--expresses aloud and earnestly what I feel no less, her
uneasiness that three weeks have passed, and we have not had the comfort
of seeing you. Do come up when you can, with justice to yourself and
other connections, for it is a _great_ comfort to me; something, I
trust, I shall have to show you. A note of warning from one who has been
a true but unheard prophet to my countrymen for five-and-twenty years.
May God bless you, my dear friend,
S. T. COLERIDGE.
T. Allsop, Esq.
LETTER 187. TO ALLSOP
January, 1821.
My dear young Friend,
The only impression left by you on my mind is an increased desire to see
you again, and at shorter intervals. Were you my son by nature, I could
not hold you dearer, or more earnestly desire to retain you the adopted
of whatever within me will remain, when the dross and alloy of infirmity
shall have been purged away. I feel the most entire confidence that no
prosperous change of my outward circumstances would add to your _faith_
in the sincerity of this assurance; still, however, the average of men
being what it is, and it being neither possible nor desirable to be
fully conscious in our understanding of the habits of thinking and
judging in the world around us, and yet to be wholly impassive and
unaffected by them in our feelings, it would endear and give a new
value to an honourable competence, that I should be able to evince the
true nature and degree of my esteem and attachment beyond the suspicion
even of the sordid, and separate from all that is accidental or
adventitious. But yet the friendship I feel for you is so genial a
warmth, and blends so undistinguishably with my affections, is so
perfectly one of the family in the household of love, that I would not
be otherwise than obliged to you; and God is my witness, that my wish
for an easier and less embarrassed lot is _chiefly_ (I think I might
have said _exclusively_) grounded on the deep conviction, that exposed
to a less bleak aspect I should bring forth flowers and fruits both more
abundant and more worthy of the unexampled kindness of your _faith_ in
me. Interpreting the "wine" and the "ivy garland" as figures of poetry
signifying competence, and the removal of the petty needs of the body
that plug up the pipes of the playing fountain (and such it is too well
known was the intent and meaning of the hardly used poet), and oh! how
often, when my heart has begun to swell from the genial warmth of
thought, as our northern lakes from the (so called) bottom winds, when
all above and around is stillness and sunshine--how often have I
repeated in my own name the sweet stanza of Edmund Spenser:
Thou kenst not, Percie, how the rhyme should rage.
O! if my temples were bedewed with wine,
And girt in garlands of wild ivy twine;
How I could rear the muse on stately stage,
And teach her tread aloft in buskin fine
With queint Bellona in her equipage.[112]
Read what follows as you would a note at the bottom of a page.
But ah! Mecænas is ywrapt in clay, and great Augustus long ago
is dead.
(This is a natural sigh, and natural too is the reflection that
follows.)
And if that any buds of poesy
Yet of the old stock 'gin to shoot again,
'Tis or _self_-lost the worldling's meed to gain,
And with the rest to breathe its ribauldry,
Or as it sprung it wither must again;
Tom Piper makes them better melody.
But though natural, the complaint is not equally philosophical, were it
only on this account,--that I know of no age in which the same has not
been advanced, and with the same grounds. Nay, I retract; there never
was a time in which the _complaint_ would be so little wise, though
perhaps none in which the _fact_ is more prominent. Neither philosophy
nor poetry ever did, nor as long as they are terms of comparative
excellence and contradistinction, ever can be _popular_, nor honoured
with the praise and favour of contemporaries. But, on the other hand,
there never was a time in which either books, that were _held_ for
excellent as poetic or philosophic, had so extensive and rapid a sale,
or men reputed poets and philosophers of a high rank were so much
_looked up_ to in society, or so munificently, almost profusely
rewarded. Walter Scott's poems and novels (except only the two wretched
abortions, _Ivanhoe_ and the _Bride of Ravensmuir_, or whatever its name
may be) supply both instance and solution of the _present_ conditions
and components of popularity, viz. to amuse without requiring any effort
of thought, and without exciting any deep emotion. The age seems _sore_
from excess of stimulation, just as, a day or two after a thorough
debauch and long sustained drinking match, a man feels all over like a
bruise. Even to admire otherwise than _on the whole_, and where "I
admire" is but a synonym for "I remember I _liked_ it very much _when I
was reading it_," is too much an effort, would be too disquieting an
emotion. Compare _Waverley_, _Guy Manner__ing_, and Co., with works
that had an _immediate run_ in the last generation, _Tristram Shandy_,
_Roderick Random_, _Sir Charles Grandison_, _Clarissa Harlowe_, and _Tom
Jones_ (all of which became popular as soon as published, and therefore
instances fairly in point), and you will be convinced that the
difference of taste is real, and not any fancy or croaking of my own.
But enough of these generals. It was my purpose to open myself out to
you in detail. My health, I have reason to believe, is so intimately
connected with the state of my spirits, and these again so dependent on
my thoughts, prospective and retrospective, that I should not doubt the
being favoured with a sufficiency for my noblest undertaking, had I the
ease of heart requisite for the necessary abstraction of the thoughts,
and such a reprieve from the goading of the immediate exigencies as
might make tranquillity possible. But, alas! I know by experience (and
the knowledge is not the less because the regret is not unmixed with
self-blame, and the consciousness of want of exertion and fortitude),
that my health will continue to decline, as long as the pain from
reviewing the barrenness of the past is great in an inverse proportion
to any rational anticipations of the future. As I now am, however, from
five to six hours devoted to actual writing and composition in the day
is the utmost that my strength, not to speak of my nervous system, will
permit; and the invasions on this portion of my time from applications,
often of the most senseless kind, are such and so many as to be almost
as ludicrous even to myself as they are vexatious. In less than a week I
have not seldom received half-a-dozen packets or parcels, of works
printed or manuscript, urgently requesting my candid _judgment_, or my
correcting hand. Add to these, letters from lords and ladies, urging me
to write reviews or puffs of heaven-born geniuses, whose whole merit
consists in being ploughmen or shoemakers. Ditto from actors; entreaties
for money, or recommendations to publishers, from ushers out of place,
etc. etc.; and to _me_, who have neither interest, influence, nor money,
and, what is still more _àpropos_, can neither bring myself to tell
smooth falsehoods nor harsh truths, and, in the struggle, too often do
both in the anxiety to do neither.--I have already the _written_
materials and contents, requiring only to be put together, from the
loose papers and commonplace or memorandum books, and needing no other
change, whether of omission, addition, or correction, than the mere act
of arranging, and the opportunity of seeing the whole collectively bring
with them of course,--I. Characteristics of Shakspeare's Dramatic Works,
with a Critical Review of each Play; together with a relative and
comparative Critique on the kind and degree of the Merits and Demerits
of the Dramatic Works of Ben Jonson, Beaumont and Fletcher, and
Massinger. The History of the English Drama; the accidental advantages
it afforded to Shakespeare, without in the least detracting from the
perfect originality or proper creation of the Shakspearian Drama; the
contradistinction of the latter from the Greek Drama, and its still
remaining _uniqueness_, with the causes of this, from the combined
influences of Shakespeare himself, as man, poet, philosopher, and
finally, by conjunction of all these, dramatic poet; and of the age,
events, manners, and state of the English language. This work, with
every art of compression, amounts to three volumes of about five hundred
pages each.--II. Philosophical Analysis of the Genius and Works of
Dante, Spenser, Milton, Cervantes, and Calderon, with similar, but more
compressed Criticisms on Chaucer, Ariosto, Donne, Rabelais, and others,
during the predominance of the Romantic Poetry.[113] In one large
volume.--These two works will, I flatter myself, form a complete code of
the principles of judgment and feeling applied to Works of Taste; and
not of _Poetry_ only, but of Poesy in all its forms, Painting, Statuary,
Music, etc. etc.--III. The History of Philosophy considered as a
Tendency of the Human Mind to exhibit the Powers of the Human Reason, to
discover by its own Strength the Origin and Laws of Man and the World
from Pythagoras to Locke and Condillac. Two volumes.--IV. Letters on the
Old and New Testament, and on the Doctrine and Principles held in common
by the Fathers and Founders of the Reformation, addressed to a Candidate
for Holy Orders; including Advice on the Plan and Subjects of Preaching,
proper to a Minister of the Established Church.
To the completion of these four works I have literally nothing more to
do than _to transcribe_; but, as I before hinted, from so many scraps
and _Sibylline_ leaves, including margins of books and blank pages,
that, unfortunately, I must be my own scribe, and not done by myself,
they will be all but lost; or perhaps (as has been too often the case
already) furnish feathers for the caps of others; some for this purpose,
and some to plume the arrows of detraction, to be let fly against the
luckless bird from whom they had been plucked or moulted.
In addition to these--of my GREAT WORK, to the preparation of which more
than twenty years of my life have been devoted, and on which my hopes of
extensive and permanent utility, of fame, in the noblest[114] sense of
the word, mainly rest--that, by which I might,
As now by thee, by all the good be known,
When this weak frame lies moulder'd in the grave,
Which self-surviving I might call my own,
Which Folly cannot mar, nor Hate deprave--
The incense of those powers, which, risen in flame,
Might make me dear to Him from whom they came.
Of this work, to which all my other writings (unless I except my Poems,
and these I can exclude in part only) are introductory and preparative;
and the result of which (if the premises be, as I with the most tranquil
assurance, am convinced they are--insubvertible, the deductions
legitimate, and the conclusions commensurate, and only commensurate,
with both), must finally be a revolution of all that has been called
_Philosophy_ or Metaphysics in England and France since the era of the
commencing predominance of the mechanical system at the restoration of
our second Charles, and with this the present fashionable views, not
only of religion, morals, and politics, but even of the modern physics
and physiology. You will not blame the earnestness of my expressions,
nor the high importance which I attach to this work; for how, with less
noble objects, and less faith in their attainment, could I stand
acquitted of folly, and abuse of time, talents, and learning, in a
labour of three-fourths of my _intellectual_ life? Of this work,
something more than a volume has been dictated by me, so as to exist fit
for the press, to my friend and enlightened pupil, Mr. Green; and more
than as much again would have been evolved and delivered to paper, but
that, for the last six or eight months, I have been compelled to break
off our weekly meeting, from the necessity of writing (alas! alas! of
_attempting_ to write) for purposes, and on the subjects of the passing
day.--Of my poetic works, I would fain finish the _Christabel_. Alas!
for the proud time when I planned, when I had present to my mind, the
materials, as well as the scheme, of the Hymns entitled _Spirit_, _Sun_,
_Earth_, _Air_, _Water_, _Fire_, and _Man_: and the Epic Poem on--what
still appears to me the one only fit subject remaining for an Epic
Poem--_Jerusalem besieged and destroyed by Titus_.
And here comes, my dear friend--here comes my sorrow and my weakness, my
grievance and my confession. Anxious to perform the duties of the day
arising out of the wants of the day, these wants, too, presenting
themselves in the most painful of all forms,--that of a debt owing to
those who will not exact it, and yet need its payment, and the delay,
the long (not live-long but _death_-long) behind-hand of my accounts to
friends, whose utmost care and frugality on the one side, and industry
on the other, the wife's management and the husband's assiduity are put
in requisition to make both ends meet, I am at once forbidden to
attempt, and too perplexed earnestly to pursue, the _accomplishment_ of
the works worthy of me, those I mean above enumerated,--even if,
savagely as I have been injured by one of the two influensive Reviews,
and with more effective enmity undermined by the utter silence or
occasional detractive compliments of the other,[115] I had the probable
chance of disposing of them to the booksellers, so as even to liquidate
my mere boarding accounts during the time expended in the transcription,
arrangement, and proof correction. And yet, on the other hand, my heart
and mind are for ever recurring to them. Yes, my conscience forces me to
plead guilty, I have only by fits and starts even prayed. I have not
prevailed on myself to pray to God in sincerity and entireness for the
fortitude that might enable me to resign myself to the abandonment of
all my life's best hopes, to say boldly to myself,--"Gifted with powers
confessedly above mediocrity, aided by an education, of which, no less
from almost unexampled hardships and sufferings than from manifold and
peculiar advantages, I have never yet found a parallel, I have devoted
myself to a life of unintermitted reading, thinking, meditating, and
observing. I have not only sacrificed all worldly prospects of wealth
and advancement, but have in my inmost soul stood aloof from temporary
reputation. In consequence of these toils and this self-dedication, I
possess a calm and clear consciousness, that in many and most
important departments of truth and beauty I have outstrode my
contemporaries--those at least of highest name; that the number of my
printed works bears witness that I have not been idle, and the seldom
acknowledged, but strictly _proveable_, effects of my labours
appropriated to the immediate welfare of my age in the _Morning Post_
before and during the peace of Amiens, in _The Courier_ afterwards, and
in the series and various subjects of my lectures at Bristol and at the
Royal and Surrey Institutions, in Fetter Lane, at Willis's Rooms, and at
the Crown and Anchor (add to which the unlimited freedom of my
communications in colloquial life), may surely be allowed as evidence
that I have not been useless in my generation. But, from circumstances,
the _main_ portion of my harvest is still on the ground, ripe indeed,
and only waiting, a few for the sickle, but a large part only for the
_sheaving_, and carting, and housing; but from all this I must turn
away, must let them rot as they lie, and be as though they never had
been, for I must go and gather blackberries and earth-nuts, or pick
mushrooms and gild oak-apples for the palates and fancies of chance
customers. I must abrogate the name of philosopher and poet, and
scribble as fast as I can, and with as little thought as I can, for
_Blackwood's Magazine_, or as I have been employed for the last days, in
writing MS. sermons for lazy clergymen, who stipulate that the
composition must not be more than respectable, for fear they should be
desired to publish the visitation sermon!" This I have not yet had
courage to do. My soul sickens and my heart sinks; and thus, oscillating
between both, I do neither, neither as it ought to be done, or to any
profitable end. If I were to detail only the various, I might say
capricious, interruptions that have prevented the finishing of this very
scrawl, begun on the very day I received your last kind letter, you
would need no other illustrations.
Now I see but one possible plan of rescuing my permanent utility. It is
briefly this and plainly. For what we struggle with inwardly, we find at
least easiest to _bolt out_ namely--that of engaging from the circle of
those who think respectfully and hope highly of my powers and
attainments a yearly sum, for three or four years, adequate to my actual
support, with such comforts and decencies of appearance as my health and
habits have made necessaries, so that my mind may be unanxious as far as
the present time is concerned; that thus I should stand both enabled and
pledged to begin with some one work of these above mentioned, and for
two-thirds of my whole time to devote myself to this exclusively till
finished, to take the chance of its success by the best mode of
publication that would involve me in no risk, then to proceed with the
next, and so on till the works above mentioned as already in full
material existence should be reduced into formal and actual being;
while in the remaining third of my time I might go on maturing and
completing my great work, and (for if but easy in mind, I have no doubt
either of the re-awakening power or of the kindling inclination), and my
_Christabel_, and what else the happier hour might inspire--and without
inspiration a barrel-organ may be played right deftly; but
All otherwise the state of _poet_ stands;
For lordly want is such a tyrant fell,
That where he rules all power he doth expel.
The vaunted verse a vacant head demands,
Ne wont with crabbed Care the muses dwell:
_Unwisely weaves who takes two webs_ IN HAND![116]
Now Mr. Green has offered to contribute from £30 to £40 yearly, for
three or four years; my young friend and pupil, the son of one of my
dearest old friends, £50; and I think that from £10 to £20 I could rely
upon from another. The sum required would be about £200, to be repaid,
of course, should the disposal or sale, and as far as the disposal and
sale, of my writings produce the means.
I have thus placed before you at large, wanderingly, as well as
diffusely, the statement which I am inclined to send in a compressed
form to a few of those of whose kind dispositions towards me I have
received assurances,--and to their interest and influence I must leave
it--anxious, however, before I do this, to learn from you your very,
very inmost feeling and judgment as to the previous questions. Am I
entitled, have I earned _a right_ to do this? Can I do it without moral
degradation? and, lastly, can it be done without loss of character in
the eyes of my acquaintance, and of my friends' acquaintance, who may
have been informed of the circumstances? That, if attempted at all, it
will be attempted in such a way, and that such persons only will be
spoken to, as will not expose me to indelicate rebuffs to be afterwards
matter of gossip, I know those, to whom I shall entrust the statement,
too well to be much alarmed about.
Pray let me either see or hear from you as soon as possible; for, indeed
and indeed, it is no inconsiderable accession to the pleasure I
anticipate from disembarrassment, that _you_ would have to contemplate
in a more gracious form, and in a more ebullient play of the inward
fountain, the mind and manners of,
My dear friend,
Your obliged and very affectionate friend,
S. T. COLERIDGE.
T. Allsop, Esq.[117]
Coleridge's animadversions on Scott's work are not justifiable. Although
Sir Walter's poetry is not to be compared for literary technique to that
of Coleridge, it has a merit not unlike some parts of Coleridge's own.
Sir Walter may be designated the Poet of Romantic Association; much of
his poetry is founded on the associations of localities celebrated in
history. The _Second Part of Christabel_ and the _Knight's Tomb_ are
clearly of this genre of poetry. A touch of jealousy of the success of
Scott seems to enter into Coleridge's estimate of his brother poet. His
criticism of the novels is of less importance; for Coleridge was always
hostile to the novel as enticing men away from serious study and
reading.]
FOOTNOTES:
[107] [Lockhart's _Life of Scott_, ch. xix, also Memoir of Hartley
Coleridge, xxxv, prefixed to Hartley Coleridge's _Poems_,
1851.]
[108] [The date of this or Letter 179, given by Allsop, must be
wrong, perhaps for 8th read 18th April.]
[109] [An echo of Schiller's
"a deeper import
Lurks in the legend told my infant years
Than lies upon that truth we live to learn," etc.
_The Piccolomini_, Act II, Scene 3.]
[110] [Letter CCXXVIII follows 180.]
[111] Here follows a detail of charges brought against one very
near, and deservedly dear, to the writer, originating with, or
adopted by the present Bishop of Llandaff. These charges were
afterwards, I believe, withdrawn; at all events compensation
was tendered to the party implicated [Allsop]. [This refers to
Hartley.]
[112] _Shepherd's Calendar. October._
[113] [See Coleridge's _Miscellaneous Works_, edited by T. Ashe:
Bohn Library.]
[114] Turn to Milton's _Lycidas_, sixth stanza--
Alas! what boots it with incessant care
To tend the homely slighted shepherd's trade,
And strictly meditate the thankless Muse?
Were it not better done as others use,
To sport with Amaryllis in the shade,
Or with the tangles of Neæra's hair?
Fame is the spur that the clear spirit doth raise
(That last infirmity of noble mind)
To scorn delights and live laborious days;
But the fair guerdon when we hope to find,
And think to burst out into sudden blaze,
Comes the blind Fury with the abhorred shears,
And slits the thin-spun life. But not the praise,
Phœbus replied, and touched my trembling ears;
Fame is no plant that grows on mortal soil,
Nor on the glistering foil
Set off to the world, nor in broad Rumour lies,
But lives and spreads aloft by those pure eyes,
And perfect witness of all-judging Jove;
As he pronounces lastly in each deed,
Of so much fame in heav'n expect thy meed.
The sweetest music does not fall sweeter on my ear than this
stanza on both mind and ear, as often as I repeat it aloud.
[115] Neither my _Literary Life_ (2 vols.), nor _Sibylline Leaves_
(1 vol.) nor _Friend_ (3 vols.), nor _Lay Sermons_, nor
_Zapolya_, nor _Christabel_, has ever been noticed by the
_Quarterly Review_, of which Southey is yet the main support.
[116] [_Shepherd's Calendar: October._]
[117] [Letter CCXXIX follows 173.]