My father was a Dissenting Minister at W--m in Shropshire; and in the year
1798 (the figures that compose that date are to me like the "dreaded name
of Demogorgon)" Mr. Coleridge came to Shrewsbury, to succeed Mr. Rowe in
the spiritual charge of a Unitarian Congregation there. He did not come
till late on the Saturday afternoon before he was to preach; and Mr. Rowe,
who himself went down to the coach in a state of anxiety and expectation,
to look for the arrival of his successor, could find no one at all
answering the description but a round-faced man in a short black coat
(like a shooting jacket) which hardly seemed to have been made for him,
but who seemed to be talking at a great rate to his fellow-passengers. Mr.
Rowe had scarce returned to give an account of his disappointment, when
the round-faced man in black entered, and dissipated all doubts on the
subject, by beginning to talk. He did not cease while he staid; nor has he
since, that I know of. He held the good town of Shrewsbury in delightful
suspense for three weeks that he remained there, "fluttering the _proud
Salopians_ like an eagle in a dove-cote;" and the Welch mountains that
skirt the horizon with their tempestuous confusion, agree to have heard no
such mystic sounds since the days of
"High-born Hoel's harp or soft Llewellyn's lay!"
As we passed along between W--m and Shrewsbury, and I eyed their blue tops
seen through the wintry branches, or the red rustling leaves of the
sturdy oak-trees by the road-side, a sound was in my ears as of a Siren's
song; I was stunned, startled with it, as from deep sleep; but I had no
notion then that I should ever be able to express my admiration to others
in motley imagery or quaint allusion, till the light of his genius shone
into my soul, like the sun's rays glittering in the puddles of the road. I
was at that time dumb, inarticulate, helpless, like a worm by the
way-side, crushed, bleeding, lifeless; but now, bursting the deadly bands
that "bound them,
"With Styx nine times round them,"
my ideas float on winged words, and as they expand their plumes, catch the
golden light of other years. My soul has indeed remained in its original
bondage, dark, obscure, with longings infinite and unsatisfied; my heart,
shut up in the prison-house of this rude clay, has never found, nor will
it ever find, a heart to speak to; but that my understanding also did not
remain dumb and brutish, or at length found a language to express itself,
I owe to Coleridge. But this is not to my purpose.
My father lived ten miles from Shrewsbury, and was in the habit of
exchanging visits with Mr. Rowe, and with Mr. Jenkins of Whitchurch (nine
miles farther on) according to the custom of Dissenting Ministers in each
other's neighbourhood. A line of communication is thus established, by
which the flame of civil and religious liberty is kept alive, and
nourishes its smouldering fire unquenchable, like the fires in the
Agamemnon of AEschylus, placed at different stations, that waited for ten
long years to announce with their blazing pyramids the destruction of
Troy. Coleridge had agreed to come over to see my father, according to the
courtesy of the country, as Mr. Rowe's probable successor; but in the
meantime I had gone to hear him preach the Sunday after his arrival. A
poet and a philosopher getting up into a Unitarian pulpit to preach the
Gospel, was a romance in these degenerate days, a sort of revival of the
primitive spirit of Christianity, which was not to be resisted.
It was in January, 1798, that I rose one morning before day-light, to walk
ten miles in the mud, and went to hear this celebrated person preach.
Never, the longest day I have to live, shall I have such another walk as
this cold, raw, comfortless one, in the winter of the year 1798.--_Il y a
des impressions que ni le tems ni les circonstances peuvent effacer.
Dusse-je vivre des siecles entiers, le doux tems de ma jeunesse ne peut
renaitre pour moi, ni s'effacer jamais dans ma memoire._ When I got there,
the organ was playing the 100th psalm, and, when it was done, Mr.
Coleridge rose and gave out his text, "And he went up into the mountain to
pray, HIMSELF, ALONE." As he gave out this text, his voice "rose like a
steam of rich distilled perfumes," and when he came to the two last words,
which he pronounced loud, deep, and distinct, it seemed to me, who was
then young, as if the sounds had echoed from the bottom of the human
heart, and as if that prayer might have floated in solemn silence through
the universe. The idea of St. John came into my mind, "of one crying in
the wilderness, who had his loins girt about, and whose food was locusts
and wild honey." The preacher then launched into his subject, like an
eagle dallying with the wind. The sermon was upon peace and war; upon
church and state--not their alliance, but their separation--on the spirit
of the world and the spirit of Christianity, not as the same, but as
opposed to one another. He talked of those who had "inscribed the cross of
Christ on banners dripping with human gore." He made a poetical and
pastoral excursion,--and to shew the fatal effects of war, drew a striking
contrast between the simple shepherd boy, driving his team afield, or
sitting under the hawthorn, piping to his flock, "as though he should
never be old," and the same poor country-lad, crimped, kidnapped, brought
into town, made drunk at an alehouse, turned into a wretched drummer-boy,
with his hair sticking on end with powder and pomatum, a long cue at his
back, and tricked out in the loathsome finery of the profession of blood.
"Such were the notes our once-lov'd poet sung."
And for myself, I could not have been more delighted if I had heard the
music of the spheres. Poetry and Philosophy had met together, Truth and
Genius had embraced, under the eye and with the sanction of Religion. This
was even beyond my hopes. I returned home well satisfied. The sun that was
still labouring pale and wan through the sky, obscured by thick mists,
seemed an emblem of the _good cause_; and the cold dank drops of dew that
hung half melted on the beard of the thistle, had something genial and
refreshing in them; for there was a spirit of hope and youth in all
nature, that turned everything into good. The face of nature had not then
the brand of JUS DIVINUM on it:
"Like to that sanguine flower inscrib'd with woe."
On the Tuesday following, the half-inspired speaker came. I was called
down into the room where he was, and went half-hoping, half-afraid. He
received me very graciously, and I listened for a long time without
uttering a word. I did not suffer in his opinion by my silence. "For those
two hours," he afterwards was pleased to say, "he was conversing with W.
H.'s forehead!" His appearance was different from what I had anticipated
from seeing him before. At a distance, and in the dim light of the
chapel, there was to me a strange wildness in his aspect, a dusky
obscurity, and I thought him pitted with the small-pox. His complexion was
at that time clear, and even bright--
"As are the children of yon azure sheen."
His forehead was broad and high, light as if built of ivory, with large
projecting eyebrows, and his eyes rolling beneath them like a sea with
darkened lustre. "A certain tender bloom his face o'erspread," a purple
tinge as we see it in the pale thoughtful complexions of the Spanish
portrait-painters, Murillo and Velasquez. His mouth was gross, voluptuous,
open, eloquent; his chin good-humoured and round; but his nose, the rudder
of the face, the index of the will, was small, feeble, nothing--like what
he has done. It might seem that the genius of his face as from a height
surveyed and projected him (with sufficient capacity and huge aspiration)
into the world unknown of thought and imagination, with nothing to support
or guide his veering purpose, as if Columbus had launched his adventurous
course for the New World in a scallop, without oars or compass. So at
least I comment on it after the event. Coleridge in his person was rather
above the common size, inclining to the corpulent, or like Lord Hamlet,
"somewhat fat and pursy." His hair (now, alas! grey) was then black and
glossy as the raven's, and fell in smooth masses over his forehead. This
long pendulous hair is peculiar to enthusiasts, to those whose minds tend
heavenward; and is traditionally inseparable (though of a different
colour) from the pictures of Christ. It ought to belong, as a character,
to all who preach _Christ crucified_, and Coleridge was at that time one
of those!
It was curious to observe the contrast between him and my father, who was
a veteran in the cause, and then declining into the vale of years. He had
been a poor Irish lad, carefully brought up by his parents, and sent to
the University of Glasgow (where he studied under Adam Smith) to prepare
him for his future destination. It was his mother's proudest wish to see
her son a Dissenting Minister. So if we look back to past generations (as
far as eye can reach) we see the same hopes, fears, wishes, followed by
the same disappointments, throbbing in the human heart; and so we may see
them (if we look forward) rising up for ever, and disappearing, like
vapourish bubbles, in the human breast! After being tossed about from
congregation to congregation in the heats of the Unitarian controversy,
and squabbles about the American war, he had been relegated to an obscure
village, where he was to spend the last thirty years of his life, far from
the only converse that he loved, the talk about disputed texts of
Scripture and the cause of civil and religious liberty. Here he passed his
days, repining but resigned, in the study of the Bible, and the perusal of
the Commentators,--huge folios, not easily got through, one of which would
outlast a winter! Why did he pore on these from morn to night (with the
exception of a walk in the fields or a turn in the garden to gather
brocoli-plants or kidney beans of his own rearing, with no small degree of
pride and pleasure)?--Here were "no figures nor no fantasies,"--neither
poetry nor philosophy--nothing to dazzle, nothing to excite modern
curiosity; but to his lack-lustre eyes there appeared, within the pages of
the ponderous, unwieldy, neglected tomes, the sacred name of JEHOVAH in
Hebrew capitals: pressed down by the weight of the style, worn to the last
fading thinness of the understanding, there were glimpses, glimmering
notions of the patriarchal wanderings, with palm-trees hovering in the
horizon, and processions of camels at the distance of three thousand
years; there was Moses with the Burning Bush, the number of the Twelve
Tribes, types, shadows, glosses on the law and the prophets; there were
discussions (dull enough) on the age of Methuselah, a mighty speculation!
there were outlines, rude guesses at the shape of Noah's Ark and of the
riches of Solomon's Temple; questions as to the date of the creation,
predictions of the end of all things; the great lapses of time, the
strange mutations of the globe were unfolded with the voluminous leaf, as
it turned over; and though the soul might slumber with an hieroglyphic
veil of inscrutable mysteries drawn over it, yet it was in a slumber
ill-exchanged for all the sharpened realities of sense, wit, fancy, or
reason. My father's life was comparatively a dream; but it was a dream of
infinity and eternity, of death, the resurrection, and a judgment to come!
No two individuals were ever more unlike than were the host and his guest.
A poet was to my father a sort of nondescript: yet whatever added grace to
the Unitarian cause was to him welcome. He could hardly have been more
surprised or pleased, if our visitor had worn wings. Indeed, his thoughts
had wings; and as the silken sounds rustled round our little wainscoted
parlour, my father threw back his spectacles over his forehead, his white
hairs mixing with its sanguine hue; and a smile of delight beamed across
his rugged cordial face, to think that Truth had found a new ally in
Fancy![143] Besides, Coleridge seemed to take considerable notice of me,
and that of itself was enough. He talked very familiarly, but agreeably,
and glanced over a variety of subjects. At dinner-time he grew more
animated, and dilated in a very edifying manner on Mary Wolstonecraft and
Mackintosh. The last, he said, he considered (on my father's speaking of
his _Vindiciae Gallicae_ as a capital performance) as a clever scholastic
man--a master of the topics,--or as the ready warehouseman of letters, who
knew exactly where to lay his hand on what he wanted, though the goods
were not his own. He thought him no match for Burke, either in style or
matter. Burke was a metaphysician, Mackintosh a mere logician. Burke was
an orator (almost a poet) who reasoned in figures, because he had an eye
for nature: Mackintosh, on the other hand, was a rhetorician, who had only
an eye to common-places. On this I ventured to say that I had always
entertained a great opinion of Burke, and that (as far as I could find)
the speaking of him with contempt might be made the test of a vulgar
democratical mind. This was the first observation I ever made to
Coleridge, and he said it was a very just and striking one. I remember the
leg of Welsh mutton and the turnips on the table that day had the finest
flavour imaginable. Coleridge added that Mackintosh and Tom. Wedgwood (of
whom, however, he spoke highly) had expressed a very indifferent opinion
of his friend Mr. Wordsworth, on which he remarked to them--"He strides on
so far before you, that he dwindles in the distance!" Godwin had once
boasted to him of having carried on an argument with Mackintosh for three
hours with dubious success; Coleridge told him--"If there had been a man
of genius in the room, he would have settled the question in five
minutes." He asked me if I had ever seen Mary Wolstonecraft, and I said, I
had once for a few moments, and that she seemed to me to turn off Godwin's
objections to something she advanced with quite a playful, easy air. He
replied, that "this was only one instance of the ascendancy which people
of imagination exercised over those of mere intellect." He did not rate
Godwin very high[144] (this was caprice or prejudice, real or affected)
but he had a great idea of Mrs. Wolstonecraft's powers of conversation,
none at all of her talent for book-making. We talked a little about
Holcroft. He had been asked if he was not much struck _with_ him, and he
said, he thought himself in more danger of being struck by him. I
complained that he would not let me get on at all, for he required a
definition of every the commonest word, exclaiming, "What do you mean by a
_sensation_, Sir? What do you mean by an _idea_?" This, Coleridge said,
was barricadoing the road to truth: it was setting up a turnpike-gate at
every step we took. I forget a great number of things, many more than I
remember; but the day passed off pleasantly, and the next morning Mr.
Coleridge was to return to Shrewsbury. When I came down to breakfast, I
found that he had just received a letter from his friend, T. Wedgwood,
making him an offer of 150 _l._ a-year if he chose to wave his present
pursuit, and devote himself entirely to the study of poetry and
philosophy. Coleridge seemed to make up his mind to close with this
proposal in the act of tying on one of his shoes. It threw an additional
damp on his departure. It took the wayward enthusiast quite from us to
cast him into Deva's winding vales, or by the shores of old romance.
Instead of living at ten miles distance, of being the pastor of a
Dissenting congregation at Shrewsbury, he was henceforth to inhabit the
Hill of Parnassus, to be a Shepherd on the Delectable Mountains. Alas! I
knew not the way thither, and felt very little gratitude for Mr.
Wedgwood's bounty. I was presently relieved from this dilemma; for Mr.
Coleridge, asking for a pen and ink, and going to a table to write
something on a bit of card, advanced towards me with undulating step, and
giving me the precious document, said that that was his address, _Mr.
Coleridge, Nether-Stowey, Somersetshire_; and that he should be glad to
see me there in a few weeks' time, and, if I chose, would come half-way to
meet me. I was not less surprised than the shepherd-boy (this simile is to
be found in Cassandra) when he sees a thunderbolt fall close at his feet.
I stammered out my acknowledgments and acceptance of this offer (I thought
Mr. Wedgwood's annuity a trifle to it) as well as I could; and this mighty
business being settled, the poet-preacher took leave, and I accompanied
him six miles on the road. It was a fine morning in the middle of winter,
and he talked the whole way. The scholar in Chaucer is described as going
----"Sounding on his way."
So Coleridge went on his. In digressing, in dilating, in passing from
subject to subject, he appeared to me to float in air, to slide on ice. He
told me in confidence (going along) that he should have preached two
sermons before he accepted the situation at Shrewsbury, one on Infant
Baptism, the other on the Lord's Supper, shewing that he could not
administer either, which would have effectually disqualified him for the
object in view. I observed that he continually crossed me on the way by
shifting from one side of the foot-path to the other. This struck me as an
odd movement; but I did not at that time connect it with any instability
of purpose or involuntary change of principle, as I have done since. He
seemed unable to keep on in a strait line. He spoke slightingly of Hume
(whose Essay on Miracles he said was stolen from an objection started in
one of South's sermons--_Credat Judaeus Appella_!) I was not very much
pleased at this account of Hume, for I had just been reading, with
infinite relish, that completest of all metaphysical _choke-pears_, his
_Treatise on Human Nature_, to which the _Essays_, in point of scholastic
subtlety and close reasoning, are mere elegant trifling, light
summer-reading. Coleridge even denied the excellence of Hume's general
style, which I think betrayed a want of taste or candour. He however made
me amends by the manner in which he spoke of Berkeley. He dwelt
particularly on his _Essay on Vision_ as a masterpiece of analytical
reasoning. So it undoubtedly is. He was exceedingly angry with Dr. Johnson
for striking the stone with his foot, in allusion to this author's Theory
of Matter and Spirit, and saying, "Thus I confute him, Sir." Coleridge
drew a parallel (I don't know how he brought about the connection) between
Bishop Berkeley and Tom Paine. He said the one was an instance of a
subtle, the other of an acute mind, than which no two things could be more
distinct. The one was a shop-boy's quality, the other the characteristic
of a philosopher. He considered Bishop Butler as a true philosopher, a
profound and conscientious thinker, a genuine reader of nature and of his
own mind. He did not speak of his _Analogy_, but of his _Sermons at the
Rolls' Chapel_, of which I had never heard. Coleridge somehow always
contrived to prefer the _unknown_ to the _known_. In this instance he was
right. The _Analogy_ is a tissue of sophistry, of wire-drawn, theological
special-pleading; the _Sermons_ (with the Preface to them) are in a fine
vein of deep, matured reflection, a candid appeal to our observation of
human nature, without pedantry and without bias. I told Coleridge I had
written a few remarks, and was sometimes foolish enough to believe that I
had made a discovery on the same subject (the _Natural Disinterestedness
of the Human Mind_)--and I tried to explain my view of it to Coleridge,
who listened with great willingness, but I did not succeed in making
myself understood. I sat down to the task shortly afterwards for the
twentieth time, got new pens and paper, determined to make clear work of
it, wrote a few meagre sentences in the skeleton-style of a mathematical
demonstration, stopped half-way down the second page; and, after trying in
vain to pump up any words, images, notions, apprehensions, facts, or
observations, from that gulph of abstraction in which I had plunged myself
for four or five years preceding, gave up the attempt as labour in vain,
and shed tears of helpless despondency on the blank unfinished paper. I
can write fast enough now. Am I better than I was then? Oh no! One truth
discovered, one pang of regret at not being able to express it, is better
than all the fluency and flippancy in the world. Would that I could go
back to what I then was! Why can we not revive past times as we can
revisit old places? If I had the quaint Muse of Sir Philip Sidney to
assist me, I would write a _Sonnet to the Road between W--m and
Shrewsbury_, and immortalise every step of it by some fond enigmatical
conceit. I would swear that the very milestones had ears, and that
Harmer-hill stooped with all its pines, to listen to a poet, as he passed!
I remember but one other topic of discourse in this walk. He mentioned
Paley, praised the naturalness and clearness of his style, but condemned
his sentiments, thought him a mere time-serving casuist, and said that
"the fact of his work on Moral and Political Philosophy being made a
text-book in our Universities was a disgrace to the national character."
We parted at the six-mile stone; and I returned homeward pensive but much
pleased. I had met with unexpected notice from a person, whom I believed
to have been prejudiced against me. "Kind and affable to me had been his
condescension, and should be honoured ever with suitable regard." He was
the first poet I had known, and he certainly answered to that inspired
name. I had heard a great deal of his powers of conversation, and was not
disappointed. In fact, I never met with any thing at all like them, either
before or since. I could easily credit the accounts which were circulated
of his holding forth to a large party of ladies and gentlemen, an evening
or two before, on the Berkeleian Theory, when he made the whole material
universe look like a transparency of fine words; and another story (which
I believe he has somewhere told himself) of his being asked to a party at
Birmingham, of his smoking tobacco and going to sleep after dinner on a
sofa, where the company found him to their no small surprise, which was
increased to wonder when he started up of a sudden, and rubbing his eyes,
looked about him, and launched into a three-hours' description of the
third heaven, of which he had had a dream, very different from Mr.
Southey's Vision of Judgment, and also from that other Vision of Judgment,
which Mr. Murray, the Secretary of the Bridge-street Junto, has taken into
his especial keeping!
On my way back, I had a sound in my ears, it was the voice of Fancy: I had
a light before me, it was the face of Poetry. The one still lingers there,
the other has not quitted my side! Coleridge in truth met me half-way on
the ground of philosophy, or I should not have been won over to his
imaginative creed. I had an uneasy, pleasurable sensation all the time,
till I was to visit him. During those months the chill breath of winter
gave me a welcoming; the vernal air was balm and inspiration to me. The
golden sun-sets, the silver star of evening, lighted me on my way to new
hopes and prospects. _I was to visit Coleridge in the spring._ This
circumstance was never absent from my thoughts, and mingled with all my
feelings. I wrote to him at the time proposed, and received an answer
postponing my intended visit for a week or two, but very cordially urging
me to complete my promise then. This delay did not damp, but rather
increase my ardour. In the mean time, I went to Llangollen Vale, by way of
initiating myself in the mysteries of natural scenery; and I must say I
was enchanted with it. I had been reading Coleridge's description of
England, in his fine _Ode on the Departing Year_, and I applied it, _con
amore_, to the objects before me. That valley was to me (in a manner) the
cradle of a new existence; in the river that winds through it, my spirit
was baptised in the waters of Helicon!
I returned home, and soon after set out on my journey with unworn heart
and untired feet. My way lay through Worcester and Gloucester, and by
Upton, where I thought of Tom Jones and the adventure of the muff. I
remember getting completely wet through one day, and stopping at an inn (I
think it was at Tewkesbury) where I sat up all night to read Paul and
Virginia. Sweet were the showers in early youth that drenched my body, and
sweet the drops of pity that fell upon the books I read! I recollect a
remark of Coleridge's upon this very book, that nothing could shew the
gross indelicacy of French manners and the entire corruption of their
imagination more strongly than the behaviour of the heroine in the last
fatal scene, who turns away from a person on board the sinking vessel,
that offers to save her life, because he has thrown off his clothes to
assist him in swimming. Was this a time to think of such a circumstance? I
once hinted to Wordsworth, as we were sailing in his boat on Grasmere
lake, that I thought he had borrowed the idea of his _Poems on the Naming
of Places_ from the local inscriptions of the same kind in Paul and
Virginia. He did not own the obligation, and stated some distinction
without a difference, in defence of his claim to originality. Any the
slightest variation would be sufficient for this purpose in his mind; for
whatever _he_ added or omitted would inevitably be worth all that any one
else had done, and contain the marrow of the sentiment.--I was still two
days before the time fixed for my arrival, for I had taken care to set out
early enough. I stopped these two days at Bridgewater, and when I was
tired of sauntering on the banks of its muddy river, returned to the inn,
and read Camilla. So have I loitered my life away, reading books, looking
at pictures, going to plays, hearing, thinking, writing on what pleased me
best. I have wanted only one thing to make me happy; but wanting that,
have wanted every thing!
I arrived, and was well received. The country about Nether Stowey is
beautiful, green and hilly, and near the sea-shore. I saw it but the other
day, after an interval of twenty years, from a hill near Taunton. How was
the map of my life spread out before me, as the map of the country lay at
my feet! In the afternoon, Coleridge took me over to All-Foxden, a
romantic old family-mansion of the St. Aubins, where Wordsworth lived. It
was then in the possession of a friend of the poet's, who gave him the
free use of it. Somehow that period (the time just after the French
Revolution) was not a time when _nothing was given for nothing_. The mind
opened, and a softness might be perceived coming over the heart of
individuals, beneath "the scales that fence" our self-interest. Wordsworth
himself was from home, but his sister kept house, and set before us a
frugal repast; and we had free access to her brother's poems, the _Lyrical
Ballads_, which were still in manuscript, or in the form of _Sybilline
Leaves_. I dipped into a few of these with great satisfaction, and with
the faith of a novice. I slept that night in an old room with blue
hangings, and covered with the round-faced family-portraits of the age of
George I. and II. and from the wooded declivity of the adjoining park that
overlooked my window, at the dawn of day, could
----"hear the loud stag speak."
In the outset of life (and particularly at this time I felt it so) our
imagination has a body to it. We are in a state between sleeping and
waking, and have indistinct but glorious glimpses of strange shapes, and
there is always something to come better than what we see. As in our
dreams the fulness of the blood gives warmth and reality to the coinage of
the brain, so in youth our ideas are clothed, and fed, and pampered with
our good spirits; we breathe thick with thoughtless happiness, the weight
of future years presses on the strong pulses of the heart, and we repose
with undisturbed faith in truth and good. As we advance, we exhaust our
fund of enjoyment and of hope. We are no longer wrapped in _lamb's-wool_,
lulled in Elysium. As we taste the pleasures of life, their spirit
evaporates, the sense palls; and nothing is left but the phantoms, the
lifeless shadows of what _has been_!
That morning, as soon as breakfast was over, we strolled out into the
park, and seating ourselves on the trunk of an old ash-tree that stretched
along the ground, Coleridge read aloud with a sonorous and musical voice,
the ballad of _Betty Foy_. I was not critically or sceptically inclined. I
saw touches of truth and nature, and took the rest for granted. But in the
_Thorn_, the _Mad Mother_, and the _Complaint of a Poor Indian Woman_, I
felt that deeper power and pathos which have been since acknowledged,
"In spite of pride, in erring reason's spite,"
as the characteristics of this author; and the sense of a new style and a
new spirit in poetry came over me. It had to me something of the effect
that arises from the turning up of the fresh soil, or of the first welcome
breath of Spring,
"While yet the trembling year is unconfirmed."
Coleridge and myself walked back to Stowey that evening, and his voice
sounded high
"Of Providence, foreknowledge, will, and fate,
Fix'd fate, free-will, foreknowledge absolute,"
as we passed through echoing grove, by fairy stream or waterfall, gleaming
in the summer moonlight! He lamented that Wordsworth was not prone enough
to belief in the traditional superstitions of the place, and that there
was a something corporeal, a _matter-of-fact-ness_, a clinging to the
palpable, or often to the petty, in his poetry, in consequence. His genius
was not a spirit that descended to him through the air; it sprung out of
the ground like a flower, or unfolded itself from a green spray, on which
the gold-finch sang. He said, however (if I remember right), that this
objection must be confined to his descriptive pieces, that his philosophic
poetry had a grand and comprehensive spirit in it, so that his soul seemed
to inhabit the universe like a palace, and to discover truth by intuition,
rather than by deduction. The next day Wordsworth arrived from Bristol at
Coleridge's cottage. I think I see him now. He answered in some degree to
his friend's description of him, but was more gaunt and Don Quixote-like.
He was quaintly dressed (according to the _costume_ of that unconstrained
period) in a brown fustian jacket and striped pantaloons. There was
something of a roll, a lounge in his gait, not unlike his own Peter Bell.
There was a severe, worn pressure of thought about his temples, a fire in
his eye (as if he saw something in objects more than the outward
appearance) an intense high narrow forehead, a Roman nose, cheeks furrowed
by strong purpose and feeling, and a convulsive inclination to laughter
about the mouth, a good deal at variance with the solemn, stately
expression of the rest of his face. Chantrey's bust wants the marking
traits; but he was teazed into making it regular and heavy: Haydon's head
of him, introduced into the _Entrance of Christ into Jerusalem_, is the
most like his drooping weight of thought and expression. He sat down and
talked very naturally and freely, with a mixture of clear gushing accents
in his voice, a deep guttural intonation, and a strong tincture of the
northern _burr_, like the crust on wine. He instantly began to make havoc
of the half of a Cheshire cheese on the table, and said triumphantly that
"his marriage with experience had not been so unproductive as Mr.
Southey's in teaching him a knowledge of the good things of this life." He
had been to see the _Castle Spectre_ by Monk Lewis, while at Bristol, and
described it very well. He said "it fitted the taste of the audience like
a glove." This _ad captandum_ merit was however by no means a
recommendation of it, according to the severe principles of the new
school, which reject rather than court popular effect. Wordsworth, looking
out of the low, latticed window, said, "How beautifully the sun sets on
that yellow bank!" I thought within myself, "With what eyes these poets
see nature!" and ever after, when I saw the sun-set stream upon the
objects facing it, conceived I had made a discovery, or thanked Mr.
Wordsworth for having made one for me! We went over to All-Foxden again
the day following, and Wordsworth read us the story of Peter Bell in the
open air; and the comment upon it by his face and voice was very different
from that of some later critics! Whatever might be thought of the poem,
"his face was as a book where men might read strange matters," and he
announced the fate of his hero in prophetic tones. There is a _chaunt_ in
the recitation both of Coleridge and Wordsworth, which acts as a spell
upon the hearer, and disarms the judgment. Perhaps they have deceived
themselves by making habitual use of this ambiguous accompaniment.
Coleridge's manner is more full, animated, and varied; Wordsworth's more
equable, sustained, and internal. The one might be termed more _dramatic_,
the other more _lyrical_. Coleridge has told me that he himself liked to
compose in walking over uneven ground, or breaking through the straggling
branches of a copse wood; whereas Wordsworth always wrote (if he could)
walking up and down a strait gravel-walk, or in some spot where the
continuity of his verse met with no collateral interruption. Returning
that same evening, I got into a metaphysical argument with Wordsworth,
while Coleridge was explaining the different notes of the nightingale to
his sister, in which we neither of us succeeded in making ourselves
perfectly clear and intelligible. Thus I passed three weeks at Nether
Stowey and in the neighbourhood, generally devoting the afternoons to a
delightful chat in an arbour made of bark by the poet's friend Tom Poole,
sitting under two fine elm-trees, and listening to the bees humming round
us, while we quaffed our _flip_. It was agreed, among other things, that
we should make a jaunt down the Bristol-Channel, as far as Linton. We set
off together on foot, Coleridge, John Chester, and I. This Chester was a
native of Nether Stowey, one of those who were attracted to Coleridge's
discourse as flies are to honey, or bees in swarming-time to the sound of
a brass pan. He "followed in the chace, like a dog who hunts, not like one
that made up the cry." He had on a brown cloth coat, boots, and corduroy
breeches, was low in stature, bow-legged, had a drag in his walk like a
drover, which he assisted by a hazel switch, and kept on a sort of trot by
the side of Coleridge, like a running footman by a state coach, that he
might not lose a syllable or sound, that fell from Coleridge's lips. He
told me his private opinion, that Coleridge was a wonderful man. He
scarcely opened his lips, much less offered an opinion the whole way: yet
of the three, had I to chuse during that journey, I would be John Chester.
He afterwards followed Coleridge into Germany, where the Kantean
philosophers were puzzled how to bring him under any of their categories.
When he sat down at table with his idol, John's felicity was complete; Sir
Walter Scott's or Mr. Blackwood's, when they sat down at the same table
with the King, was not more so. We passed Dunster on our right, a small
town between the brow of a hill and the sea. I remember eyeing it
wistfully as it lay below us: contrasted with the woody scene around, it
looked as clear, as pure, as _embrowned_ and ideal as any landscape I have
seen since, of Gaspar Poussin's or Domenichino's. We had a long day's
march--(our feet kept time to the echoes of Coleridge's tongue)--through
Minehead and by the Blue Anchor, and on to Linton, which we did not reach
till near midnight, and where we had some difficulty in making a lodgment.
We however knocked the people of the house up at last, and we were repaid
for our apprehensions and fatigue by some excellent rashers of fried bacon
and eggs. The view in coming along had been splendid. We walked for miles
and miles on dark brown heaths overlooking the channel, with the Welsh
hills beyond, and at times descended into little sheltered valleys close
by the sea-side, with a smuggler's face scowling by us, and then had to
ascend conical hills with a path winding up through a coppice to a barren
top, like a monk's shaven crown, from one of which I pointed out to
Coleridge's notice the bare masts of a vessel on the very edge of the
horizon and within the red-orbed disk of the setting sun, like his own
spectre-ship in the _Ancient Mariner_. At Linton the character of the
sea-coast becomes more marked and rugged. There is a place called the
_Valley of Rocks_ (I suspect this was only the poetical name for it)
bedded among precipices overhanging the sea, with rocky caverns beneath,
into which the waves dash, and where the sea-gull for ever wheels its
screaming flight. On the tops of these are huge stones thrown transverse,
as if an earthquake had tossed them there, and behind these is a fretwork
of perpendicular rocks, something like the _Giant's Causeway_. A
thunderstorm came on while we were at the inn, and Coleridge was running
out bareheaded to enjoy the commotion of the elements in the _Valley of
Rocks_, but as if in spite, the clouds only muttered a few angry sounds,
and let fall a few refreshing drops. Coleridge told me that he and
Wordsworth were to have made this place the scene of a prose-tale, which
was to have been in the manner of, but far superior to, the _Death of
Abel_, but they had relinquished the design. In the morning of the second
day, we breakfasted luxuriously in an old-fashioned parlour, on tea,
toast, eggs, and honey, in the very sight of the bee-hives from which it
had been taken, and a garden full of thyme and wild flowers that had
produced it. On this occasion Coleridge spoke of Virgil's Georgics, but
not well. I do not think he had much feeling for the classical or elegant.
It was in this room that we found a little worn-out copy of the _Seasons_,
lying in a window-seat, on which Coleridge exclaimed, "_That_ is true
fame!" He said Thomson was a great poet, rather than a good one; his style
was as meretricious as his thoughts were natural. He spoke of Cowper as
the best modern poet. He said the _Lyrical Ballads_ were an experiment
about to be tried by him and Wordsworth, to see how far the public taste
would endure poetry written in a more natural and simple style than had
hitherto been attempted; totally discarding the artifices of poetical
diction, and making use only of such words as had probably been common in
the most ordinary language since the days of Henry II. Some comparison was
introduced between Shakspeare and Milton. He said "he hardly knew which to
prefer. Shakspeare appeared to him a mere stripling in the art; he was as
tall and as strong, with infinitely more activity than Milton, but he
never appeared to have come to man's estate; or if he had, he would not
have been a man, but a monster." He spoke with contempt of Gray, and with
intolerance of Pope. He did not like the versification of the latter. He
observed that "the ears of these couplet-writers might be charged with
having short memories, that could not retain the harmony of whole
passages." He thought little of Junius as a writer; he had a dislike of
Dr. Johnson; and a much higher opinion of Burke as an orator and
politician, than of Fox or Pitt. He however thought him very inferior in
richness of style and imagery to some of our elder prose-writers,
particularly Jeremy Taylor. He liked Richardson, but not Fielding; nor
could I get him to enter into the merits of _Caleb Williams_.[145] In
short, he was profound and discriminating with respect to those authors
whom he liked, and where he gave his judgment fair play; capricious,
perverse, and prejudiced in his antipathies and distastes. We loitered on
the "ribbed sea-sands," in such talk as this, a whole morning, and I
recollect met with a curious sea-weed, of which John Chester told us the
country name! A fisherman gave Coleridge an account of a boy that had been
drowned the day before, and that they had tried to save him at the risk of
their own lives. He said "he did not know how it was that they ventured,
but, Sir, we have a _nature_ towards one another." This expression,
Coleridge remarked to me, was a fine illustration of that theory of
disinterestedness which I (in common with Butler) had adopted. I broached
to him an argument of mine to prove that _likeness_ was not mere
association of ideas. I said that the mark in the sand put one in mind of
a man's foot, not because it was part of a former impression of a man's
foot (for it was quite new) but because it was like the shape of a man's
foot. He assented to the justness of this distinction (which I have
explained at length elsewhere, for the benefit of the curious) and John
Chester listened; not from any interest in the subject, but because he was
astonished that I should be able to suggest any thing to Coleridge that he
did not already know. We returned on the third morning, and Coleridge
remarked the silent cottage-smoke curling up the valleys where, a few
evenings before, we had seen the lights gleaming through the dark.
In a day or two after we arrived at Stowey we set out, I on my return
home, and he for Germany. It was a Sunday morning, and he was to preach
that day for Dr. Toulmin of Taunton. I asked him if he had prepared any
thing for the occasion? He said he had not even thought of the text, but
should as soon as we parted. I did not go to hear him,--this was a
fault,--but we met in the evening at Bridgewater. The next day we had a
long day's walk to Bristol, and sat down, I recollect, by a well-side on
the road, to cool ourselves and satisfy our thirst, when Coleridge
repeated to me some descriptive lines from his tragedy of Remorse; which I
must say became his mouth and that occasion better than they, some years
after, did Mr. Elliston's and the Drury-lane boards,--
"Oh memory! shield me from the world's poor strife,
And give those scenes thine everlasting life."
I saw no more of him for a year or two, during which period he had been
wandering in the Hartz Forest in Germany; and his return was cometary,
meteorous, unlike his setting out. It was not till some time after that I
knew his friends Lamb and Southey. The last always appears to me (as I
first saw him) with a common-place book under his arm, and the first with
a _bon-mot_ in his mouth. It was at Godwin's that I met him with Holcroft
and Coleridge, where they were disputing fiercely which was the best--_Man
as he was, or man as he is to be_. "Give me," says Lamb, "man as he is
_not_ to be." This saying was the beginning of a friendship between us,
which I believe still continues.--Enough of this for the present.
"But there is matter for another rhyme,
And I to this may add a second tale."