THE NEW ACADEME
[The letters to Allsop gradually lessen in number as we draw away from
the year 1822. This is not necessarily because there was less
communication between the two friends, but more probably because their
meetings were more frequent. The Gillmans, on account of the large
circle of friends who assembled round their guest, had to set aside an
afternoon once a week as a special "at home" day for the convenience of
visitors (_Life of Alaric Watts_, i, 244-45). This was the origin of the
_Table Talk_, edited by Henry Nelson Coleridge, which begins on 29th
December 1822, and continues, with breaks, to the year 1834. Various
accounts have been given of these celebrated Thursdays, the most notable
of which is that of J. Noon Talfourd in the concluding chapter of his
_Final Memorials of Charles Lamb_. The scraps of _Table Talk_, published
by Henry Nelson Coleridge, though reckoned of great value, are, after
all, very isolated; and to any one who has studied Coleridge's prose
works and can comprehend the "grand planetary wheelings" of his logic
they appear insufficient to warrant the accounts of the eulogists of
Coleridge's conversational ability. Doubtless they have the same
relationship to Coleridge's conversation as the shattered fragments of
the great icebergs which come floating down the Gulf Stream and wreck
themselves on the coasts of Iceland have to the icebergs of which they
are the disunited parts.
Many men who afterwards attained to eminence in their several
departments gathered at the Grove to hear Coleridge discourse. Charles
and Mary Lamb, Basil Montagu and his wife, J. Hookham Frere, Henry Crabb
Robinson, John Sterling, Henry Nelson Coleridge, Allsop, and Joseph
Henry Green, may be regarded as the planets who revolved around the
central sun. The planets, too, occasionally brought their satellites.
Joseph Henry Green made Coleridge's acquaintance in 1817. Deeply
interested in philosophy, he imbibed Coleridge's principles, and
afterwards wrote a book on the Logos, published in 1865 as _Spiritual
Philosophy_. Edward Irving also sat at the feet of Coleridge; he brought
Carlyle to Highgate in 1824, who wrote his impressions of Coleridge to
his brother the same year, and twenty years later depicted Coleridge in
colours which will remain beside those of Hazlitt, De Quincey, Noon
Talfourd, Henry Nelson Coleridge, and Clement Carlyon and T. Colley
Grattan, one of the fine gallery of contemporary literary portraits of
Coleridge. Dr. Chalmers came in 1827 and caught occasional glimpses of
meaning, (_Memoir_ by Hanna, ii, 126-27): and Emerson called in 1833,
without, however, any vital feeling of spiritual inter-relationship
springing up between them, (_English Traits_).
During 1824 Coleridge was much engaged with Religious subjects; and then
composed those Letters afterwards published as _Confessions of an
Enquiring Spirit_.
Our next letter refers to the _Aids to Reflection_ which Coleridge was
now having published. The germs of the volume may be found in the long
Theological Letter to Cottle of 1807, in which Coleridge extols Leighton
as the best of the old divines, and in a letter to John Murray of 18th
January 1822 (_Letters_, 717) in which he projected a selection of
_Beauties from Leighton_. Its theory of Atonement also lies in germ in
the play of _Osorio_, 1797, (_Remorse_ of 1813). The _Aids to
Reflection_ not only became the most popular of Coleridge's works; it
helped to forward interest in his other writings.]
The _Aids to Reflection_ first appeared in 1825. The original title was
_Aids to Reflection in the formation of a manly character on the several
grounds of Prudence, Morality, and Religion; illustrated by select
passages from our elder divines, especially from Archbishop Leighton_.
In an advertisement to the first edition, the Author mentions that the
work was proposed and begun as a mere selection from the writings of
Leighton, with a few notes and a biographical preface by the selector,
but underwent a revolution of plan and object. "It would, indeed," he
adds, "be more correct to say, that the present volume owed its
accidental origin to the intention of compiling one of a different
description than to speak of it as the same work." "Still, however, the
selections from Leighton, which will be found in the fundamental and
moral sections of this work, and which I could retain consistently with
its present form and matter, will, both from the intrinsic excellence
and from the characteristic beauty of the passages, suffice to answer
two prominent purposes of the original plan; that of placing in a clear
light the principle which pervades all Leighton's writings--his sublime
view, I mean, of Religion and Morality as the means of reforming the
human soul in the Divine Image (_Idea_); and that of exciting an
interest in the works, and an affectionate reverence for the name and
memory of this severely tried and truly primitive Churchman."
Neither Hume nor Clarendon, I believe, mentions the persecution of
Archbishop Leighton's father by the Prelatical party of his day; and yet
it was one of their worst acts, and that which most excited wrath and
indignation against the Primate--so faithful is their portrait of those
times! Never can I read Mr. Wordsworth's sublime sonnet to Laud,
especially the lines,
Prejudged by foes determined not to spare,
An old weak man for vengeance laid aside,
without thinking of another "old weak man for vengeance laid aside"--of
Laud in the day of his power pulling off his hat and thanking God for
the inhuman sentence that had been passed upon the already wasted
victim[135]--of the miserable den to which the mangled man was committed
for life after that sentence had been executed in all its multiplication
and precision of barbarity--then calling to mind the words of our
Saviour, _They that take the sword shall perish with the sword_, and
_Blessed are the merciful for they shall obtain mercy_. It was not
_mercy_ alone that was violated by these acts--but law and justice; and
if he who instigated and rejoiced in them received neither justice nor
mercy in his turn, is he worthy of the sacred name of _Martyr_? May we
not say that the _vengeance_ which fell upon this persecutor was the
Lord's vengeance, even if it came to pass by evil instruments, and fell
upon a head already bowed down, and in some respects a noble one? Can
the _glory and honour_ of meeting death with firmness,--nay even with
"sublime" piety, cast its beams backward and bathe in one pure luminous
flood a life darkened with such deep shadows, as those that chequer the
sunshine of Laud's career?--the parts really brightened with the light
of heaven? Plainness, sincerity, integrity, learning, munificence to a
cause[136]--can virtues like these outweigh or neutralize such faults of
head, heart, and temper, as lie to the charge of this Bishop in the
church of Christ? As well might we set the cold bright morning dews,
that rest on the stony crown of Vesuvius, against the burning lava that
bursts from its crater, and expect them to quench the fire or reduce it
to a moderate heat. _Some_ abatement must be made from the guilt of his
violences from consideration of the _times_; but to subtract the whole
on that account, or even to make light of it, is surely too much to make
moral good and evil dependent on circumstance. What? Have Arundel,
Bonner, Gardiner little or nothing to answer for? Was there ever yet a
persecutor that persecuted from mere _speculative_ inhumanity? Even
through Clarendon's account we may discern, I think, that Laud's private
passions, in part at least, engaged him in the cause of Intolerance. He
had been exasperated, before he attained power, by Puritan molestations
and oppositions,--he became the persecutor of Puritans after he attained
it; as schoolboys that have been tormented while they were in a low
form, torment in their turn when they get into a high one,--not their
tormentors but unfortunates who represent them to their imagination. An
eminently good and wise man is above his _times_, if not in all, yet in
many things; but Laud was the very impersonation of his times--the
impersonated spirit of his age and his party. (Compare his over
ceremonious consecration of St. Catherine's Church, gloated over by
Hume, with Archdeacon Hare's remarks on his neglect of his diocese, in
_The Mission of the Comforter_.) They who are of that party still, who
would still swathe religion by way of supporting it, and dizen by way of
dressing it, and gaze with fond regretful admiration upon the giant
forms of Spiritual Despotism and Exaggerated Externalism, as they loom
shadowy and magnificent through the vapoury vista of ages, to them no
wonder that he is a giant too. And there are others, far above that or
any other _party_, who in their love and zeal for the Church, abstract
the how and the why of Laud's public warfare, and see him abstractedly
as the Champion of the Church of England. "God knows my heart," says Mr.
Coleridge, (in a marginal note on Mr. Southey's article on the _History
of Dissenters_, in the _Quarterly Review_ of October 1813,) "how
bitterly I abhor _all_ intolerance, how deeply I pity the actors when
there is reason to suppose them deluded; but is it not clear that this
theatrical scene of Laud's death, who was the victim of almost national
indignation, is not to be compared with 'bloody sentences' in the
coolness of secure power? As well might you palliate the horrible
atrocities of the Inquisition, every one of which might be justified on
the same grounds that Southey has here defended Laud, by detailing the
vengeance taken on some of the Inquisitors." I do not see that _here_ my
honoured Uncle _defends_ the Primate: he says, "We are not the
apologists of Laud; in some things he was erroneous, in some imprudent,
in others culpable. Evil, which upon the great scale is ever made
conducive to good, produces evil to those by whom it comes." And how
wise and beautiful is this sentiment a little further on! "It especially
behoves the historian to inculcate charity, and take part with the
oppressed, whoever may have been the oppressors."
As some excuse for my Father's expression, "theatrical scene," I allege
that sentence of Laud's; "Never did man put off mortality with a better
courage, nor look upon his bloody and malicious enemies with more
Christian charity." My Father adds: "I know well how imprudent and
unworldly these my opinions are. The Dissenters will give me no thanks,
because I prefer and extol the _present_ Church of England, and the
partizans of the Church will calumniate me, because I condemn particular
members, and regret particular æras, of the _former_ Church of England.
Would that Southey had written the _whole_ of his review in the spirit
of this beautiful page." (Page 102.) In that very interesting collection
of meditative Sonnets by the late Sir Aubrey de Vere is one upon Laud,
against which I ventured to write, "If _anything_ done in the name of
principle must needs be righteous, then the tortures and long
languishing of Leighton are no impeachment of Laud's righteousness."
There was a second edition of the _Aids_ in 1831, a fifth in 1843.
The little work _On the Constitution of the Church and State, according
to the Idea of each_, first appeared in 1830, and went into a second
edition in the same year. It is now joined with the _Lay Sermons_ in one
volume. To the _Church and State_ are appended _Notes on Taylor's
History of Enthusiasm_, and _A Dialogue between Demosius and Mystes_.
[LETTER 214. TO ALLSOP
March 20th, 1825.
My dearest Friend,
I should have answered your last but for three causes: first, that I had
proofs to correct and a passage of great nicety to add, neither of which
could be deferred without injustice to the Publishers, and the breach of
a definite promise on my part; second, that I was almost incapacitated
from thinking of and doing anything as it ought to be done by poor Mrs.
G.'s restless and interrogating anxieties, which in the first instance
put the whole working Hive of my Thoughts in a whirl and a bur; and
then, when I see her care-worn countenance, and reflect on the state of
her health (and it is difficult to say which of the two, ill-health or
habitual anxiety, is more cause and more effect), a sharp fit of the
Heart-ache follows.
But enough of this Subject. I ought to be ashamed of myself for
troubling you with it; you have enough frets and frictions of your own.
And so I proceed to the third cause, which is that (how far imputable to
the mood of mind I was in, I cannot say) I did not understand your
letter.
Is there any definite service, or any chance of any definite service,
great or small, that I can do or promote, or expedite, by coming to
town? If there be, let me have a line or a monosyllable _Yes_, and
mention the time. I would have set off and taken the chance without
asking the question, but that I have so many irons in the fire at this
present moment,--1, my Preface; 2, my Essay; 3, a Work prepared for the
press by my Hebrew Friend,[137] in which I am greatly interested,
morally and _crumenically_, though not like the Modern Descendants of
Heber, one of a _crumenimulga Natio_, _i.e._ a purse-milking set; and 4,
Revisal, etc., for a friend only less near than yourself.
Mr. Chance, I take it for granted, has written to you. My opinion is,
that he will be a valuable man, not only generally, but _especially_ to
that which alone concerns _me_--_your_ comfort and happiness. He is a
self-satisfied man, but of the very kindest and best sort. Prosperous in
all his concerns, and with peace in his own conscience and family, I
regard such vainness but as the overflow of humanity. I do not like him
the better _for_ it; but I should not like him the better _without_ it.
Meantime he is active, shrewd, a thorough man of business; _sanguine_ I
should think, both by constitution and habitual success: and, under any
sudden emergency, I think that Mr. Chance, not so deeply interested, and
yet (such is his nature) with equal liveliness in feeling, would be a
comfort to you.
I shall miss the post if I do more than add, that whatever really serves
_you_, will (and on his death-pillow quite as much as in his present
garret) delight
Your sincere and affectionate friend,
S. T. COLERIDGE.[138]
T. Allsop, Esq.
LETTER 215. TO ALLSOP
April 30th, 1825.
My dearest Friend,
Having disburdened myself of the main loads of outward obligation at
least that pressed upon me, my Essay for the R. S. L.,[139] and my _Aids
to Reflection_, with other matters not so expressly my own, but having
the same, if not greater, demands on such quantity of time, as bodily
pain and disqualification, with unprecludible interruption, have enabled
me to make use of, I take the _very_ first moment of the Furlough to
tell you that I have been perplexed both by your silence and your
absence. In fact, I had taken for granted you were in Derbyshire, till
this afternoon, when I saw one who had met you yesterday.
Now I cannot recollect anything that can--I am sure, ought to have given
you offence, unless it were my non-performance of the request
communicated to me by Mr. Jameson.
I was ever in the _stifle_ of my _reflected_ anxieties, _i.e._ anxieties
felt by reflection from those of others, and my _Tangle_ of
_Things-to-be-done_, solicitous to see and talk with you. You must not
feel wounded if, loving you so truly as I do, and feeling more and more
every week that nothing is worth living for but the consciousness of
living aright, I was _nervous_ if you will, with regard to the effect of
this undertaking on the frame of your moral and intellectual Being. In
the meantime, you never came near me, so that I might have been able to
rectify my opinions, or rather to form them; and I felt, and still feel,
that I would gladly go into a garret and work from morning to late
night, at any work I could get money by, and more than share my
pittance with you and yours, than see you unhappy with twenty thousand
at your command.
Do not, my dearest friend, therefore let my perplexities, derived in
great measure from my unacquaintance with the facts, and to which my
ever-wakeful affection gave the origin, prevent you from treating, as
you were wont to do,
Your truly sincere
S. T. COLERIDGE.
T. Allsop, Esq.
LETTER 216. TO ALLSOP
Saturday, May 2nd, 1825.
My dear Friend,
I am sure you did not mean that the interest I feel in this undertaking
was one which I was likely to _throw_ off, or one which there was any
chance of my not retaining; but I would fain have you not even speak or
write below that line of friendship and mutual implicit reliance, on
which you and I stand. We are in the world, and obliged to chafe and
chaffer with it; _but we are not of the world, nor will we use its
idioms or adopt its brogue_.
God bless you, and your affectionate Friend,
S. T. COLERIDGE.
T. Allsop, Esq.
LETTER 217. TO ALLSOP
May 10th, 1825.
My dearest Friend,
I have been reflecting earnestly and actively on the subject of a
Metropolitan University, now in agitation, and could conveniently
comprise the results in three Lectures.
On the Histories of Universities generally, the most interesting
Features in the History of the most celebrated Universities in Great
Britain, Germany, France, etc. Reduction of all Universities of any
name, with respect to their construction and constitution, to three
Classes. 2. The Meaning of the Term, University, and the one true and
only adequate Scheme of a University stated and unfolded from the Seed
(_i.e._ the idea) to the full Tree with all its Branches. 3. The
advantages, moral, intellectual, national, developed from reason and
established by proofs of History; and, lastly, a plan (and sketch of the
_means_) of approximating to the Ideal, adapted and applied to this
Metropolis. (N.B. The Plan _in detail_, salaries only not mentioned--the
particular sums, I mean.) The obstacles, the favourable circumstances,
the _pro_ and _con_ regarding the question of Collegiate Universities,
etc. etc. That I could make these subjects not only highly interesting
but even entertaining, I have not the least doubt. But would the subject
excite an interest of _curiosity_? Would the anticipation of what I
might say attract an audience of respectable smallclothes and petticoats
sufficiently large to produce something more than, with the same
exertions of Head and Hand, I might earn in my Garret (to give the
precise Top-ography of my abode) here at Nemorosi, _alias_ Houses in the
Grove. For the expense of coach-hire, the bodily fatigue, and (to borrow
a phrase from poor Charles Lloyd) "_the hot huddle of indefinite
sensations_" that hustle my inward man in the _monster_ city and a Crown
and Anchor Room demand a +, and would an =, after all expenses paid, but
ragged economy, unless I were certain of effecting more good in this
than in a quieter way of industry.
I wrote to Mr. B. Montagu for his advice; but he felt no interest
himself in the subject, and naturally therefore was doubtful of any
number of others feeling any. But he promised to talk with his friend
Mr. Irving about it! On the other hand, I heard from Mr. Hughes and a
Mr. Wilkes (a clever Solicitor-sort of a man who lives in
Finsbury-square, has a great sway with the Slangi yclept the Religious
Public, and, _this I add as a whitewasher_, was a regular attendant on
_my_ lectures), that the subject itself is stirring up the Mud-Pool of
the Public Mind in London with the vivacity of a Bottom wind. If you can
find time, I wish you would talk with Jameson about it, and obtain the
opinion of as many as are likely to think aright; and let me know your
own opinion and anticipation above all, and at all events, and as soon
as possible. We dine on Friday with Mr. Chance. I wish you were with us,
for I am sure he would be glad to see you. Need I say that my thoughts,
wishes, and prayers follow you in all your doings and strivings, for I
am evermore, my dearest friend,
Yours, with a friend and a father's
affection and solicitude,
S. T. COLERIDGE.
T. Allsop, Esq.
My kindest remembrances to Mrs. Allsop, with kisses for little Titania
Puckinella.
_Years have passed since I heard the Nightingales sing as they did this
evening_ in Mr. Robart's Garden Grounds; _so many, and in such full
song, particularly that giddy voluminous whirl of notes which you never
hear but when the Birds feel the temperature of the air voluptuous_.
* * * * *
P.S. If I undertook these Lectures, I should compose the three, and
write them out with as much care and polish as if for the Press, though
I should probably make no use of the MS. in speaking, or at all attempt
to recollect it. It would, relatively to my _vivâ voce_ addresses, be
only a way of premeditating the subject.
LETTER 218. TO ALLSOP
(-- 1825.)
My dearest Friend,
The person to whom I alluded in my last is a Mr. T...,[140] who, within
the last two or three years, has held a situation in the Colonial
Office, but _what_, I do not know. From his age and comparatively recent
initiation into the office, it is probably not a very influensive one;
and, on the other hand, from the rank and character of his friends, he
has occasionally brought up with him to our Thursday evening _conver_-,
or, to mint a more appropriate term, _one_-versazione, it must be a
respectable one. Mr. T... is _Southey's friend_, and more than a
literary acquaintance to _me_, only in consequence of my having had some
friendly intercourse with his uncle during my abode in the north. Of
_him_ personally I know little more than that he is a remarkably
handsome fashionable-looking young man, a little _too deep_ or _hollow
mouthed_ and important in his enunciation, but clever and well read; and
I have no reason to doubt that he would receive any one whom I had
introduced to him as a friend of mine in whose welfare I felt anxious
interest, with kindness and a disposition to forward his object should
it be in his power.
But again, my dearest Friend, you must allow me to express my regret
that I am acting in the dark, without any conviction on my mind that
your present proceeding is not the result of wearied and still agitated
spirits, an impetus of despondency, _that_ fever which accompanies
exhaustion. I can too well sympathise with you; and bitterly do I feel
the unluckiness of my being in such a deplorable state of health just at
the time when for your sake I should be most desirous to have the use
of all my faculties. May God bless you, and your little-able but most
sincere friend,
S. T. COLERIDGE.[141]
T. Allsop, Esq.]
FOOTNOTES:
[135] The particulars of this instance of Star Chamber tyranny I
read in Aikman's _Life of Archbishop Laud_, prefixed to his
works. It is said that when he was taken out of the wretched
cell in Newgate in which he was confined before his sentence,
"_the skin and hair had almost wholly come off his body_."
This was for writing against _Prelacy_, not against
Christianity. Any man may do the like now and not a hair of
his head can be touched; yet _moral_ offences, public or
private, have far less chance of escaping with impunity than
they had then. [S. C.]
[136] Clarendon, _passim_, especially his summary of Laud's
character. [S. C.]
[137] [Hyman Hurwitz, see Aldine Edition of the _Poems_, ii, 248.]
[138] [Letter CCXXXIX follows letter 214.]
[139] [The Essay for the R.S.L. referred to in letter 215 is the
_Disquisition on the Prometheus of Aeschylus_ delivered before
the Royal Society of Literature on 18th May, 1825. It is one
of the most mystical of all Coleridge's productions.]
[140] [Sir Henry Taylor.]
[141] [Letters CCXL-CCLIX follow 218.]