THE RHINE TOUR, AND LAST COLLECTED
EDITIONS OF THE POEMS
[Coleridge and Wordsworth, who, as we have seen, had had a serious
estrangement in 1810, but gradually drew together again with the
softening of the years, went on tour to the Rhine in 1828; and this was
Coleridge's third time on the Continent. On their way they met Thomas
Colley Grattan, novelist and miscellaneous writer. He gave in his
_Beaten Paths_ some account of the two poets as they appeared at the
time--partly reproduced in Knight's _Life of Wordsworth_. This passage
is the best description of the two poets in their later period and the
most reliable, along with Clement Carlyon's description of Coleridge in
Germany. There is no attempt in Grattan to spin rhetoric out of
Coleridge, such as we find in De Quincey, Hazlitt, and Carlyle. Another
diarist gave a picture of the poets during the Rhine Tour, Julian
Charles Young, who wrote the memoir of his brother, Charles Mayne Young,
an actor of the time. This account is also partly reproduced in Knight's
_Life of Wordsworth_. Grattan says: "He was about five feet five[143]
inches in height, of a full and lazy appearance but not actually stout.
He was dressed in black, and wore short breeches, buttoned and tied at
the knees, and black silk stockings. And in his costume (the same that
he describes to have been worn in his earliest voyages and travels in
the year 1798), he worked along, in public coaches or barges, giving
the idea of his original profession, an itinerant preacher. His face was
extremely handsome, its expression placid and benevolent. His mouth was
particularly pleasing, and his grey eyes, neither large nor prominent,
were full of intelligent softness. His hair, of which he had plenty, was
entirely white. His forehead and cheeks were unfurrowed and the latter
showed a healthy bloom" (_Beaten Paths_, ii, 108-109). On all topics
touched by Coleridge he said something to be remembered. "In almost
everything that fell from Coleridge there was a dash of deep
philosophy--even in the outpourings of his egotism--touches not to be
given without the whole of what they illustrated" (_Beaten Paths_, ii,
113). "Coleridge took evident delight in rural scenes. He was in
ecstasies at a group of haymakers in a field we passed. He said the
little girls, standing with their rakes, the handles resting on the
ground, 'looked like little saints.' Half-a-dozen dust-covered children
going by the roadside, with a garland of roses raised above their heads,
threw him into raptures" (_Beaten Paths_, ii, 115).
Coleridge made a new collection of his Poems in 1828, which added to the
Early Poems and _Sibylline Leaves_ seventeen new pieces. The collection
was published in three volumes by Pickering, and included _Remorse_,
_Zapolya_, and _Wallenstein_. Coleridge made many careful revisions; his
corrections are a study in verse making. Another edition was issued in
1829; and here again Coleridge made alterations in twenty-one of the
poems, the chief of which were in the _Monody on the Death of
Chatterton_. The last edition of Coleridge's Poems prepared during his
life was that of 1834, in three volumes, but though the first volume was
out in May, the third volume was not issued from the press till after
his demise on 25th July. The corrections extend to twenty-three poems.
Some are merely restorations of former readings; but they constitute a
real difference from the text of 1829, and must be accepted as
belonging to the Textus Receptus. Henry Nelson Coleridge superintended
the edition, but it is not likely, as Dykes Campbell supposed, that he
made the alterations, for Coleridge was continually readjusting his
texts.
The remainder of Coleridge's life from 1829 was taken up with visits
from his old friends, in composing a Commentary on the New Testament,
writing marginalia on the English Divines, and holding his Thursday
at-homes. In 1830 he published his noble pamphlet _On the Constitution
of Church and State_. Many new friends flocked round the ageing poet, to
be introduced to whose acquaintance was one of the highest literary
treats of London life. Friendship had been the balm of Coleridge's life;
he had had his estrangements and misunderstandings. But he knew well
that
Friendship is a Sheltering Tree,
the pathos of which line can be appreciated only when we recall to mind
that its writer had been denied the full enjoyment of the deeper
friendship called Love.
A good sized volume could be compiled of all the contemporary accounts
of Coleridge. We have already had some of these. Another we must add by
a young American. Coleridge was highly appreciated on the other side of
the Atlantic; his monument in Westminster Abbey was the gift of an
American; and the late Emperor of Brazil was an admirer and student of
Coleridge. The following account is taken from _The Nation_, an American
literary journal, of 14th July 1910:
"Henry Blake McLellan was born at Maidstone, Essex County, Vt.,
September 16, 1810. He was the son of Isaac and Eliza McLellan of
Boston, and the grandson of Gen. William Hull of Newton, Mass. After a
preparatory course at the Boston Latin School, McLellan entered Harvard
University in 1825, and graduated in 1829. He studied for the ministry
at Andover, 1829-31, and then went on a tour, which included Great
Britain, France, Germany, Italy, and Switzerland. He left America
September 16, 1831; started on his return April 18, 1833, and landed at
Boston June 12. Then came the tragic ending to a bright young life.
Eight weeks after his return he was stricken by typhus, and died four
weeks later, in his twenty-third year.
"Such was the young and ardent spirit who went to see Coleridge in the
filial spirit in which a disciple might have sat at the feet of an
ancient philosopher. He writes this simple and affecting account of the
interview:
"'Saturday, April 27th, 1832.
"'Walked to Highgate to call on Mr. Coleridge. I was ushered into the
parlor while the girl carried up my letter to his room. She presently
returned, and observed that her master was very poorly, but would be
happy to see me, if I would walk up to his room, which I gladly did. He
is short in stature, and appeared to be careless in his dress. I was
impressed with the strength of his expression, his venerable locks of
white, and his trembling frame. He remarked that he had for some time
past suffered much bodily anguish. For many months (thirteen) seventeen
hours each day had he walked up and down his chamber. I inquired whether
his mental powers were affected by such intense suffering; "Not at all,"
said he. "My body and head appear to hold no connexion; the pain of my
body, blessed be God, never reaches my mind." After some further
conversation, and some inquiries respecting Dr. Chalmers, he remarked,
"The Doctor must have suffered exceedingly at the strange conduct of our
once dear brother laborer in Christ, Rev. Mr. Irving. Never can I
describe how much it has wrung my bosom. I had watched with
astonishment and admiration the wonderful and rapid development of his
powers. Never was such unexampled advance in intellect as between his
first and second volume of sermons, the first full of Gallicisms and
Scottisms, and all other cisms, the second discovering all the elegance
and power of the best writers of the Elizabethan age. And then so sudden
a fall, when his mighty energies made him so terrible to sinners." Of
the mind of the celebrated Puffendorf he said, "his mind is like some
mighty volcano, red with flame, and dark with tossing clouds of smoke,
through which the lightnings play and glare most awfully." Speaking of
the state of the different classes of England, he remarked, "We are in a
dreadful state. Care, like a foul hag, sits on us all; one class presses
with iron foot upon the wounded heads beneath, and all struggle for a
worthless supremacy, and all to rise to it move shackled by their
expenses; happy, happy are you to hold your birthright in a country
where things are different; you, at least at present, are in a
transition state; God grant it may ever be so! Sir, things have come to
a dreadful pass with us; we need most deeply a reform, but I fear not
the horrid reform which we shall have. Things must alter; the upper
classes of England have made the lower persons _things_; the people in
breaking from this unnatural state will break from duties also."
"'He spoke of Mr. Allston with great affection and high encomium; he
thought him in imagination and color almost unrivalled (pp.
230-232).'"[144]
* * * * *
The letters of Coleridge written during his last years breathe a pious
and tender melancholy, but they are few, and what have been published
are fragmentary. On 18th March 1833 he wrote to John Sterling, who, in
spite of Carlyle's assertion to the contrary, remained a disciple to the
end: "With grief I tell you I have been, and now am, worse, far worse
than when you left me. God have mercy on me, and not withdraw the
influence of His Spirit from me!" Recommending Mr. Gillman's son for the
Living of Leiston he wrote:
"I have known the Revd James Gillman from his Childhood, as having been
from that time to this a trusted Inmate of the Household of his dear and
exemplary Parents. I have followed his progress at weekly Intervals from
his entrance into the Merchants' Taylors' School, and traced his
continued improvements under the excellent Mr. Bellamy to his Removal,
as Head Scholar, to St. John's College; and during his academic Career
his Vacations were in the main passed under my eye.
"I was myself educated for the Church at Christ's Hospital, and sent
from that honoured and unique Institution to Jesus College, Cambridge,
under the tutorage and discipline of the Revd James Bowyer who has left
an honoured name in the Church for the zeal and ability with which he
formed and trained his Orphan Pupils to the Sacred Ministry, as
Scholars, as Readers, as Preachers, and as sound Interpreters of the
Word. May I add that I was the Junior Schoolfellow in the next place,
the Protegé, and the Friend of the late venerated D^r Middleton, the
first Bishop of Calcutta. And assuredly whatever under such Training and
such Influence I learnt, or thro' a long life mainly devoted to
Scriptural, Theological and Ecclesiastical Studies, I have been
permitted to attain, I have been anxious to communicate to the Son of my
dearest Friends, with little less than paternal Solicitude. And at all
events I dare attest, that the Revd James Gillman is pure and blameless
in morals and unexceptionable in manners, equally impressed with the
importance of the Pastoral Duties as of the Labours of the Desk and the
Pulpit: and that his mind is made up to preach the _whole_ truth in
Christ."[145]
Coleridge was always a lover of children. From his earliest years he was
interested in the weak and small things of the earth, or as he expressed
it at the conclusion of his immortal poem,
All things both great and small,
which embraced more than the babes; and there is an innate connection
between his solicitude for children and that sentimental love of the
"bird and beast" which characterized his poetical period (_Brandl_, p.
102). We have seen how he took notice of the young haymakers on the
Rhine Tour, and how he loved to call the children of his friends by
endearing pet names, Puckinella and the like. The last letter Coleridge
wrote was to a child, not yet able to read, to whom he had stood
godfather.
LETTER 219. TO ADAM STEINMETZ KENNARD
To Adam Steinmetz Kennard,
My dear godchild,--I offer up the same fervent prayer for you now, as I
did kneeling before the altar, when you were baptized into Christ, and
solemnly received as a living member of his spiritual body, the church.
Years must pass before you will be able to read with an understanding
heart what I now write. But I trust that the all-gracious God, the
Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, the Father of mercies, who, by his
only-begotten Son, (all mercies in one sovereign mercy!) has redeemed
you from evil ground, and willed you to be born out of darkness, but
into light; out of death, but into life; out of sin, but into
righteousness; even into "the Lord our righteousness;" I trust that he
will graciously hear the prayers of your dear parents, and be with you
as the spirit of health and growth, in body and in mind. My dear
godchild, you received from Christ's minister, at the baptismal font, as
your Christian name, the name of a most dear friend of your father's,
and who was to me even as a son, the late Adam Steinmetz, whose fervent
aspirations, and paramount aim, even from early youth, was to be a
Christian in thought, word, and deed; in will, mind, and affections. I
too, your godfather, have known what the enjoyment and advantages of
this life are, and what the more refined pleasures which learning and
intellectual power can give; I now, on the eve of my departure, declare
to you, and earnestly pray that you may hereafter live and act on the
conviction, that health is a great blessing; competence, obtained by
honourable industry, a great blessing; and a great blessing it is, to
have kind, faithful, and loving friends and relatives; but that the
greatest of all blessings, as it is the most ennobling of all
privileges, is to be indeed a Christian. But I have been likewise,
through a large portion of my later life, a sufferer, sorely affected
with bodily pains, languor, and manifold infirmities, and for the last
three or four years have, with few and brief intervals, been confined to
a sick room, and at this moment, in great weakness and heaviness, write
from a sick bed, hopeless of recovery, yet without prospect of a speedy
removal. And I thus, on the brink of the grave, solemnly bear witness to
you, that the Almighty Redeemer, most gracious in his promises to them
that truly seek him, is faithful to perform what he has promised; and
has reserved, under all pains and infirmities, the peace that passeth
all understanding, with the supporting assurance of a reconciled God,
who will not withdraw his spirit from me in the conflict, and in his own
time will deliver me from the evil one. O my dear godchild! eminently
blessed are they who begin _early_ to seek, fear, and love, their God,
trusting wholly in the righteousness and mediation of their Lord,
Redeemer, Saviour, and everlasting High Priest, Jesus Christ. Oh,
preserve this as a legacy and bequest from your unseen godfather and
friend,
S. T. COLERIDGE.[146]
July 13th, 1834,
Grove, Highgate.
FOOTNOTES:
[143] [Coleridge in his youth was about five feet ten inches in
height.]
[144] _Journal of a Residence in Scotland and Tour through England,
France, Germany, Switzerland, and Italy._ With a Memoir of the
Author and Extracts from his Religious Papers. Compiled by
Isaac McLellan, jr., Boston, 1834.
[145] [_The Gillmans of Highgate_, p. 28.]
[146] [Letter CCLX of E. H. Coleridge's _Letters_ of S. T. C. is our
No. 219.]