CHAPTER I

Jonathan Ingram, Clytie Siddall

and the Online Distributed Proofreading Team

Samuel Taylor Coleridge's

BIBLIOGRAPHIA EPISTOLARIS

comprising 33 letters

and being

the Biographical Supplement of

Coleridge's BIOGRAPHIA LITERARIA

with additional letters etc., edited by

A. TURNBULL

Vol. 1.

"On the whole this was surely the mightiest genius since Milton. In

poetry there is not his like, when he rose to his full power; he was

a philosopher, the immensity of whose mind cannot be gauged by

anything he has left behind; a critic, the subtlest and most

profound of his time. Yet these vast and varied powers flowed away

in the shifting sands of talk; and what remains is but what the few

land-locked pools are to the receding ocean which has left them

casually behind without sensible diminution of its

waters."

Academy, 3d October, 1903.

PREFACE

The work known as the Biographical Supplement of the Biographia

Literaria of S. T. Coleridge, and published with the latter in 1847, was

begun by Henry Nelson Coleridge, and finished after his death by his

widow, Sara Coleridge. The first part, concluding with a letter dated

5th November 1796, is the more valuable portion of the Biographical

Supplement. What follows, written by Sara Coleridge, is more

controversial than biographical and does not continue, like the first

part, to make Coleridge tell his own life by inserting letters in the

narrative. Of 33 letters quoted in the whole work, 30 are contained in

the section written by Henry Nelson Coleridge. Of these 11 were drawn

from Cottle's Early Recollections, seven being letters to Josiah Wade,

four to Joseph Cottle, and the remainder are sixteen letters to Poole,

one to Benjamin Flower, one to Charles E Heath, and one to Henry Martin.

From this I think it is evident that Henry Nelson Coleridge intended

what was published as a Supplement to the Biographia Literaria to be a

Life of Coleridge, either supplementary to the Biographia Literaria or

as an independent narrative, in which most of the letters published by

Cottle in 1837 and unpublished letters to Poole and other correspondents

were to form the chief material. Sara Coleridge, in finishing the

fragment, did not attempt to carry out the original intention of her

husband. A few letters in Cottle were perhaps not acceptable to her

taste, and in rejecting them she perhaps resolved to reject all

remaining letters in Cottle. She thus finished the fragmentary Life of

Coleridge left by her husband in her own way.

But Henry Nelson Coleridge had begun to build on another plan. His

intention was simply to string all Coleridge's letters available on a

slim biographical thread and thus produce a work in which the poet would

have been made to tell his own life. His beginning with the five

Biographical Letters to Thomas Poole is a proof of this. He took these

as his starting point; and, as far as he went, his "Life of Coleridge"

thus constructed is the most reliable of all the early biographies of

Coleridge.

This edition of the Biographical Supplement is meant to carry out as far

as possible the original project of its author. The whole of his

narrative has been retained, and also what Sara Coleridge added to his

writing; and all the non-copyright letters of Coleridge available from

other sources have been inserted into the narrative, and additional

biographical matter, explanatory of the letters, has been given. [1] By

this retention of authentic sources I have produced as faithful a

picture of the Poet-Philosopher Coleridge as can be got anywhere, for

Coleridge always paints his own character in his letters. Those desirous

of a fuller picture may peruse, along with this work, the letters

published in the Collection of 1895, the place of which in the narrative

is indicated in footnotes.

[Footnote: What has been added is enclosed in square brackets.]

The letters are drawn from the following sources:

"Biographical Supplement", 1847 ............................................ 33

Cottle's "Reminiscences", 1847 ............................................. 78

The original "Friend", 1809 ................................................. 5

"The Watchman", 1796 ........................................................ 1

Gillman's "Life of Coleridge", 1838 ......................................... 7

Allsop's "Letters, Conversations, etc., of S. T. C"., 1836 (1864) .......... 45

"Essays on his Own Times", 1850 ............................................. 1

"Life and Correspondence of R. Southey", 1850 ............................... 7

Editorials of Poems, etc .................................................... 8

"Literary Remains of S. T. C., 1836, etc" ................................... 3

"Blackwood's Magazine", October, 1821 ....................................... 1

"Fragmentary Remains of Humphry Davy", 1858 ................................ 15

"Macmillan's Magazine", 1864 (Letters to W. Godwin) ......................... 9

Southey's "Life of Andrew Bell", 3 vols., 1844 .............................. 2

"Charles Lamb and the Lloyds", by E. V. Lucas ............................... 3

"Anima Poetae", by E. H. Coleridge, 1895 .................................... 1

The letters of Coleridge have slowly come to light. Coleridge was always

fond of letter-writing, and at several periods of his career he was more

active in letter-writing than at others. He commenced the publication of

his letters himself. The epistolary form was as dear to him in prose as

the ballad or odic form in verse. From his earliest publications we can

see he loved to launch a poem with "A letter to the Editor," or to the

recipient, as preface. The "Mathematical Problem", one of his juvenile

facetiae in rhyme, was thus heralded with a letter addressed to his

brother George explaining the import of the doggerel. His first printed

poem, "To Fortune" (Dykes Campbell's Edition of the "Poems", p. 27), was

also prefaced by a short letter to the editor of the "Morning

Chronicle". Among Coleridge's letters are several of this sort, and each

affords a glimpse into his character. Those with the "Raven" and

"Talleyrand to Lord Grenville" are characteristic specimens of his

drollery and irony.

Coleridge's greatest triumphs in letter-writing were gained in the field

of politics. His two letters to Fox, his letters on the Spaniards, and

those to Judge Fletcher, are his highest specimens of epistolary

eloquence, and constitute him the rival of Rousseau as an advocate of

some great truth in a letter addressed to a public personage. In

clearness of thought and virile precision of language they surpass the

most of anything that Coleridge has written. They never wander from the

point at issue; the evolution of their ideas is perfect, their idiom the

purest mother-English written since the refined vocabulary of Hooker,

Jeremy Taylor, and Harrington was coined.

Besides the political letters, Coleridge published during his lifetime

four important letters of great length written during his sojourn in

Germany. Three of these appeared in the "Friend" of 1809, and indeed

were the finest part of that periodical; and one was first made public

in the "Amulet" of 1829. Six letters published in "Blackwood's Magazine"

of 1820-21, and a few others of less importance, brought up the number

of letters published by Coleridge to 46. The following is a list of them:

7th Nov. 1793, "To Fortune," Ed. "Morning Chronicle" ................ 1

22nd Sept. 1794, Dedication to "Robespierre," to H. Martin ........... 1

1st April 1796, Letter to "Caius Gracchus," "The Watchman" ........... 1

26th Dec. 1796, Dedication to the "Ode to the Departing Year,"

to T. Poole ........... 1

1798, Ed. "Monthly Magazine, re Monody on Chatterton"................. 1

1799, Ed. "Morning Post," with the "Raven" ........................... 1

21 Dec. 1799, Ed. "Morning Post," with "Love" ........................ 1

10th Jan. 1800, Ed. "Morning Post, Talleyrand to Lord Grenville" ..... 1

18th Nov. 1800, "Monthly Review," on "Wallenstein" ................... 1

1834, To George Coleridge, with "Mathematical Problem" ............... 1

Political Letters to the "Morning Post" and "Courier" ................ 21

1809, Letters of Satyrane, etc., in the "Friend" ..................... 8

1820-21, Letters to "Blackwood's Magazine" ........................... 6

1829, "The Amulet," "Over the Brocken" .............................. 1

--

46

The "Literary Remains," published in 1836, added ..................... 4

Allsop, in his "Letters, Conversations, etc.", gave to the world ..... 46

Cottle followed in 1837, with his "Early Recollections", in which .... 84

letters or fragments of letters made their appearance

Gillman in 1838 published 11 letters or fragments, 4 of which had

already appeared in the works of Allsop and Cottle and in the

"Friend", leaving a contribution of ................................. 7

The "Gentleman's Magazine" followed in 1838

with letters to Daniel Stuart ........................................17

Cottle, in 1847, re-cast his "Early Recollections", and called his

work "Reminiscences of Coleridge and Southey", and added the

splendid Wedgwood series of 19 letters, and a few others of less

importance, in all ...................................................25

The "Biographical Supplement" to the 1847 edition of the "Biographia

Literaria" contained 33 letters, 11 of which were from Cottle;

leaving a contribution of ............................................22

In 1850, Coleridge's "Essays on his Own Times", consisting of his

magazine and newspaper articles, contained in the Preface (p. 91),

a fragment of a letter to Poole .......................................1

Making ..............................................................252

published up to 1850 by Coleridge himself and his three early

biographers; and these continued to be quoted and alluded to by writers

on Coleridge until 1895, when Mr. E. H. Coleridge gave to the world a

collection of 260 letters.

Meantime, numerous biographies, memoirs, and magazines continued to

throw in a contribution now and then. The following, as far as I have

been able to ascertain, is the number of letters or fragments of letters

contributed by the various works enumerated:

1836-8, Lockhart's "Life of Sir Walter Scott" 1

1841, "Life of Charles Mathews" 1

" "The Mirror", Letter to George Dyer 1

1844, Southey's "Life of Dr. Andrew Bell" 5

1847, "Memoir of Carey" (Translator of Dante) 1

1848, "Memoir of William Collins, R.A." 1

1849, "Life and Correspondence of R. Southey" 7

1851, "Memoirs of W. Wordsworth" 8

1858, "Fragmentary Remains of Sir H. Davy" 15

1860, "Autobiography of C. R. Leslie" 1

1864, "Macmillan's Magazine" (Letters to Win. Godwin) 9

1869, "H. Crabb Robinson's Diary" 5

1870, "Westminster Review" (Letters to Dr. Brabant) 11

1871, Meteyard's "Group of Englishmen" 2

1873, Sara Coleridge's "Memoirs" 1

1874, "Lippincott's Magazine" 10

1876, "Life of William Godwin", by C. Regan Paul (16,

less 7 of those which appeared in "Macmillan's

Magazine", 1864) 9

1878, "Fraser's Magazine" (letters to Matilda Betham) 5

1880, Macmillan's Edition of "Coleridge's Poems" 1

1882, "Journals of Caroline Fox" 1

1884, "Life of Alaric Watts" 5

1886, Brandl's "Life of Coleridge" 10

1887, "Memorials of Coleorton" 20

1888, "Thomas Poole and his Friends" (Mrs. Sandford) 75

1889, Professor Knight's "Life of Wordsworth" 12

1889, "Rogers and his Contemporaries" 1

1890, "Memoir of John Murray" 4

1891, "De Quincey Memorials" 4

1893, "Life of Washington Allston" (Flagg) 4

" "Friends' Quarterly Magazine" 1

" "Illustrated London News" 19

1893, J. Dykes Campbell's Edition of "Coleridge's Poems" 8

1894, " " " Life of Coleridge" (fragments) 36

1894, "The Athenaeum" (3 letters to Wrangham) 3

1895, "Letters" of S. T. Coleridge (edited by E. H.

Coleridge) 174

" "Anima Poetae" (E. H. C.), Letter to J. Tobin. 1

" "The Gillmans of Highgate" (A. W. Gillman) 3

" "Athenaeum" of 18 May, 1895 1

1897, "William Blackwood and his Sons", by Mrs. Oliphant 6

1898, "Charles Lamb and the Lloyds" (E. V. Lucas) 3

1899, "J. H. Frere and his Friends" 7

1903, "Tom Wedgwood", by R. B. Litchfield 1

1907, "Christabel", edited by E. H. Coleridge 1

1910, "The Bookman", May 1

Total 747

Besides these there are privately printed letters and letters not yet

published to be taken account of. The chief collection of these is

"Letters from the Lake Poets" (edited by E. H. Coleridge), containing 87

letters to Daniel Stuart, some of which are republished in the

"Letters", 1895. The remainder of letters not published, from the

information given by Mr. E. H. Coleridge in his Preface, I make out to

be about 300.

Nor does this exhaust the list of letters written by Coleridge. In

Ainger's Collection of the Letters of Charles Lamb are 62 letters by

Lamb to Coleridge, most of which are in answer to letters received. We

may therefore estimate the letters of Coleridge to Lamb at not less than

62. In Dorothy Wordsworth's "Grasmere Journal" there are no less than 32

letters to the Wordsworths[1] mentioned as having been received during

the period 1800-1803, not represented among the letters in Professor

Knight's "Life of Wordsworth". The total number of letters known to have

been written by Coleridge is therefore between 1,100 and 1,200. Other

correspondents of Coleridge not appearing among the recipients of

letters in publications are probably as follows:

V. Le Grice.

Sam. Le Grice.

T. F. Middleton.

Robert Allen.

Robert Lovell.

Ch. Lloyd, Jr.

John Cruickshank.

Dr. Beddoes.

Edmund Irving.

Mr. Clarkson.

Mrs. Clarkson (except one small fragment in "Diary of H. C. Robinson").

[Footnote 1:

The letters to Lamb and Miss Wordsworth do not now exist.]

The letters of Coleridge, taken as a whole, are one of the most

important contributions to English Letter-writing. They are gradually

coming to light, and with every letter or group of letters put forth,

the character and intellectual development of Coleridge is becoming

clearer. His poems and prose works, great as these are, are not

comprehensible without a study of his letters, which join together the

"insulated fragments" of that grand scheme of truth which he called his

"System" ("Table Talk", 12th Sept. 1831, and 26th June 1834).

Coleridge, in his letters, has written his own life, for his life, after

all, was a life of thought, and his finest thoughts and his most

ambitious aspirations are given expression to in his letters to his

numerous friends; and the true biography of Coleridge is that in which

his letters are made the main source of the narrative. A Biographia

Epistolaris is what we want of such a man.

Coleridge's letters are often bizarre in construction and quite

regardless of the conventions of style, and abound in the most curious

freaks of emphasis and imagery. They resemble the letters of Cowper in

that they were not written for publication; and, like Cowper's, they

have a character of their own. But they far surpass the epistles of the

poet of Olney in spiritual vision and intellectuality. The eighteenth

century, from Pope and Swift down to Cowper, is extremely

rich in

letter-writing. Bolingbroke, Lord Chesterfield, Lady Mary Wortley

Montagu, Gray, Mason, Johnson, Beattie, Burns, and Gibbon, among

literary personages, have contributed to the great Epistolick Art, as

Dr. Johnson called it; and this list does not include the letters of the

politicians, Horace Walpole, Junius, and others. The eighteenth century,

in fact, was a letter-writing age; and while the bulk of the poetry of

its 300 poets, with the exception of a few masterpieces of monumental

quality, has gradually gone out of fashion, its letters have risen into

greater repute. Even among the poets whose verse is still read there is

a hesitation in public opinion as to whether the verses or letters are

superior. There are readers not a few who would not scruple to place

Cowper's letters above his poems, who believe that Gray's letters are

much more akin to the modern spirit than the "Elegy" and the "Ode

to Eton College", and who think that Swift's fly-leaves to his

friends will outlive the fame of "Gulliver" and the "Tale of a

Tub".

Coleridge, who stands between the eighteenth and the nineteenth

centuries, was, like the poets of the former age, a multiform

letter-writer. He was often seized with letter-writing when unable to

write poetry or execute those unpublished masterpieces in the

composition of some of which he was engaged.

Coleridge's letters are of the utmost importance as a part of the

literature of the opening of the nineteenth century. It is in the

letters that we see better than elsewhere the germs of the speculations

which afterwards came to fruition between 1817 and 1850, when the

poetical and critical principles of the Lake School gradually took the

place of the Classicism of the eighteenth century, and the theology of

Broad Churchism began to displace the old theology, and the school of

Paley in Evidences and Locke in Philosophy gave way before the inroad of

Transcendentalism.

As the record of the phases of an intellectual development the letters

of Coleridge stand very high; and, indeed, I do not know anything equal

to them except it be the "Journal of Amiel".

The resemblance between Coleridge and Amiel is very striking. Both

valetudinarians and barely understood by the friends with whom they came

into contact, they took refuge in the inner shrine of introspection, and

clothed the most abstruse ideas in the most beautiful forms of language

and imagery that is only not poetry because it is not verse. While one

wrote the story of his own intellectual development in secret and

retained the record of it hidden from all eyes, the other scattered his

to the winds in the shape of letters, which thus, widely distributed,

kept his secret until they were gathered together by later hands. The

letters of Coleridge as a collection is one of the most engaging

psychological studies of the history of an individual mind.

The text of the letters in the present volume is reproduced from the

original sources, the "Biographical Supplement", Cottle, Gillman,

Allsop, and the "Life and Correspondence of Robert Southey". Fuller

texts of some of the letters will be found in "Letters of S. T. C." of

1895, Litchfield's "Tom Wedgwood", and other recent publications. One of

the objects of the present work is to preserve the text of the letters

as presented in these authentic sources of the life of Coleridge.

Letters Nos. 44, 45, and 46, from "Charles Lamb and the Lloyds", by Mr.

E. V. Lucas (Smith, Elder and Co.); No. 130 from "Anima Poetae" (W.

Heinemann), are printed here by arrangement with the poet's grandson,

Ernest Hartley Coleridge, Esq., to whom my sincere thanks are also due

for his kindness in reading the proofs. Mr. Coleridge, of course, is not

responsible for any of the opinions expressed in this work; but he has

taken great pains in putting me right regarding certain views of others

who had written on Coleridge, and also on some of the mistakes made by

Henry Nelson Coleridge and Sara Coleridge, who had insufficient data on

the matters on which they wrote, and definite information on which,

indeed, could not be ascertainable in 1847. Coming from Mr.

Coleridge--the chief living authority on the life, letters, and

published and unpublished writings of S. T. Coleridge--the corrections

in the footnotes and elsewhere may be taken as authoritative; and I have

to acknowledge my indebtedness to him accordingly,

ARTHUR TURNBULL.

KIRKCALDY,

31st January, 1911.

WORKS RELATING TO COLERIDGE

"Early Years and Late Reflections". By Clement Carlyon, M.D. 4 vols.

1836-1858.

"Letters, Conversations, and Recollections of S. T. Coleridge". With a

Preface by the Editor. Moxon, 1836. 2 vols. Second Edition. By Thomas

Allsop. 1858. Third Edition, 1864.

"Early Recollections, chiefly relating to the late S. T. Coleridge

during his long residence in Bristol". By Joseph Cottle. 2 vols. 1837.

"The Letters of Charles Lamb with a Sketch of his Life". By Sir Thomas

Noon Talfourd, 1837; and "Final Memorials", 1848.

"Reminiscences of S. T. Coleridge and Robert Southey". By Joseph Cottle.

1847. 1 vol.

"Biographia Literaria, or Biographical Sketches of my Literary Life and

Opinions". By S. T. Coleridge. Second Edition, prepared for publication

in part by the late H. N. Coleridge: completed and published by his

widow. 2 vols. 1847.

"The Life and Correspondence of Robert Southey". 6 vols. 1849-1850.

"Essays on his own Times". By Samuel Taylor Coleridge. Edited by his

daughter. London: William Pickering. 3 vols. 1850.

"Memoirs of William Wordsworth". By Christopher Wordsworth, D.D. 2 vols.

1851.

"The Complete Works of Samuel Taylor Coleridge". New York: Harper and

Brothers. 7 vols. 1853.

"Oxford and Cambridge Essays". Professor Hort on Coleridge. 1856.

"Selections from the Letters of Robert Southey". 4 vols. 1856.

"Fragmentary Remains, literary and scientific, of Sir Humphry Davy,

Bart." Edited by his brother, John Davy, M.D. 1858.

"Dissertations and Discussions". John Stuart Mill. 4 vols. 1859-1875.

"Autobiographical Recollections by the late Charles Robert Leslie, R.A."

Edited by Tom Taylor. 2 vols. 1860.

"Beaten Paths". By T. Colley Grattan 2 vols. 1862.

"Studies in Poetry and Philosophy". By J. C. Shairp. 1868.

"Diary, Reminiscences, and Correspondence of Henry Crabb Robinson".

Selected and Edited by Thomas Sadler, Ph.D. 3 vols. 1869.

"A Group of Englishmen (1795-1815) being records of the younger

Wedgwoods and their Friends". By Eliza Meteyard, 1 vol. 1871.

"Memoir and Letters of Sara Coleridge", 1 vol. 1873.

"Life of William Godwin". By C. Kegan Paul. 2 vols. 1876.

"Journals and Letters of Caroline Fox". 2 vols. 1884.

"Life and Works of William Wordsworth". By William Knight, LL.D. 11

vols. 1882-1889.

"Prose Works of Samuel Taylor Coleridge". Bohn Library. 6 vols. (various

dates).

"Memorials of Coleorton". Edited by William Knight, University of St.

Andrews. 2 vols. 1887.

"The Letters of Charles Lamb". Edited by Alfred Ainger. 2 vols. 1888.

"Thomas Poole and his Friends". By Mrs. Henry Sandford. 2 vols. 1888.

"Appreciations". By Walter Pater. 1889.

"De Quincey Memorials". Edited by Alexander H. Japp, LL.D., F.R.S.E. 2

vols. 1891.

"Posthumous Works of De Quincey". Edited by Alexander H. Japp, LL.D.,

F.R.S.E. Vol. II. 1893.

"The Life of Washington Allston". By Jared B. Flagg. 1893.

"The Works of Thomas De Quincey". Edited by Professor Masson. Vols.

I-III. 1896.

"Illustrated London News", 1893. Letters of S. T. C. edited by E. H.

Coleridge.

"Anima Poetae: From the unpublished note-books of Samuel Taylor

Coleridge". Edited by Ernest Hartley Coleridge. 1895.

"The Gillmans of Highgate". By Alexander W. Gillman. 1895.

"Letters of Samuel Taylor Coleridge". Edited by Ernest Hartley

Coleridge. 2 vols. 1895. (Referred to in present volume as "Letters".}

"The Journals of Dorothy Wordsworth". Edited by William Knight. 2 vols.

1897.

"The Early Life of William Wordsworth", 1770-1798, "A Study of the

Prelude". By Emile Legouis; translated by J. W. Matthews. 1897.

"Charles Lamb and the Lloyds". Edited by E. V. Lucas. 1898.

"Bibliography of S. T. Coleridge". R. Heine Shepherd and Colonel

Prideaux. 1900.

"The German Influence on Coleridge". By John Louis Haney. 1902.

"A Bibliography of Samuel Taylor Coleridge". By John Louis Haney. 1903.

"Tom Wedgwood, the First Photographer". By R. B. Litchfield. 1903.

"Christabel, by Samuel Taylor Coleridge; illustrated by a Facsimile of

the Manuscript and by Textual and other notes". By Ernest Hartley

Coleridge, Hon. F.R.S.L. Published under the direction of the Royal

Society of Literature: London, Henry Frowde. 1907. (The Facsimile is

that of the MS. presented by Coleridge to Sarah Hutchinson.)

BIOGRAPHIES OF COLERIDGE

John Thomas Cox. Memoir prefixed to Edition of the Poems of S. T.

Coleridge. 1836.

Life of Coleridge prefixed to Edition of the Poems by Milner and

Sowerby. (No date.)

James Gillman. "Life of S. T. Coleridge". Vol. I. 1838.

Biographical Supplement to the Second Edition of the "Biographia

Literaria". By Henry Nelson Coleridge and Sara Coleridge. 1847.

F. Freiligrath. Memoir to the "Tauchnitz Edition" of the Poems of S. T.

Coleridge. 1860.

E. H. Norton. Poetical and Dramatic Works, with Life of the Author. 3

vols. Boston, 1864.

Derwent Coleridge, Introductory Essay to Poems of S. T. C. Moxon and

Sons. 1870.

W. M. Rossetti. Critical Memoir to the Edition of Poems of S. T. C. in

Moxon's "Popular Poets." 1872.

William Bell Scott. Introduction to Edition of the Poems in "Routledge's

Poets."

Memoir prefixed to the Edition of the Poems of S. T. C. in "Lansdown"

Poets. F. Warne and Co. 1878.

R. Herne Shepherd. Life of S. T. C. prefixed to Macmillan's Edition of

the Poems of S. T. C. 4 vols. 1877-1880.

Memoir prefixed to the "Landscape Edition" of the Poems of S. T.

Coleridge. Edinburgh, 1881.

"Life of S. T. Coleridge". By H. Traill, "English Men of Letters

Series." 1884.

Thomas Ashe. "Life of S. T. Coleridge" prefixed to the "Aldine Edition"

of the Poems of S. T. C. 2 vols. 1885.

Professor Alois Brandl, Prague. "Samuel Taylor Coleridge and the English

Romantic School". English Edition by Lady Eastlake. 1887.

"The Life of S. T. Coleridge". By Hall Caine. "Great Writers Series."

1887.

Introductory Memoir by J. Dykes Campbell, prefixed to "Poetical Works of

S. T. C." Macmillan. 1893.

"Samuel Taylor Coleridge". A narrative of the events of his Life. By

James Dykes Campbell. 1894.

"Coleridge". Bell's "Miniature Series of Great Writers." By Richard

Garnett. 1904.

"La Vie d'un Poete--Coleridge". Par Joseph Aynard. Paris, 1907.

INTRODUCTIONS TO SELECTIONS OF THE POEMS OF S. T. C., 1869-1908

Algernon C. Swinburne. "Christabel and the Lyrical and Imaginative Poems

of S. T. Coleridge" (Sampson Low, and Co.). 1869.

Joseph Skipsey. Prefatory Notice to the "Canterbury Edition" of

Coleridge's Poems (Walter Scott).

Stopford A. Brooke. Introduction to the Golden Book of Coleridge (Dent

and Co.).

Andrew Lang. Introduction to Poems of S. T. C. (Longmans).

Richard Garnett. "The Poetry of Samuel Taylor Coleridge". The "Muses"

Library (Lawrence and Bullen, now Routledge). 1888.

"Coleridge's Select Poems". Edited by Andrew J. George, M. A. (Heath,

publisher.)

"Poems". Edited by E. H. Coleridge (Heinemann).

"Poems". Edited by Alice Meynell. "Red Letter Library" (Blackie).

"Poems of S. T. C." Edited by Professor Knight (Newnes).

"Poems of Coleridge", selected and arranged. Edited by Arthur Symons

(Methuen and Co.).

"The Poems of Coleridge". Illustrated by Gerald Metcalfe. With an

Introduction by E. Hartley Coleridge (John Lane). 1907.

"The Poems of S. T. Coleridge". "The World's Classics" (Frowde). Edited

by T. Quiller-Couch. 1908.

"Poems of Coleridge". "The Golden Poets." With an Introduction by

Professor Edward Dowden, LL.D. (Caxton Publishing Company).

BIOGRAPHICAL APPRECIATIONS

1865. Article in the "North British Review" for December of this year.

1903. "From Ottery to Highgate, the story of the childhood and later

years of Samuel Taylor Coleridge". By Wilfred Brown (Coleberd and Co.,

Ltd., Ottery St. Mary).

CONTENTS

PART I.--POETRY

Page

CHAPTER I. EARLY YEARS I, 3

Letter 1. To Thomas Poole. -- Feby. 1797 5

2. " -- Mch. 1797 7

3. " 9 Oct. 1797 11

4. " 16 Oct. 1797 15

5. " 19 Feby. 1798 19

CHAPTER II. CAMBRIDGE AND PANTISOCRACY 29

Letter 6. To George Coleridge. 31 Mch. 1791 29

7. Robert Southey. 6 July, 1794 34

8. Henry Martin. 22 July, 1794 35

9. Southey. 6 Sept. 1794 42

10. " 18 Sept. 1794 43

11. Charles Heath. -- -- 1794 44

12. Henry Martin. 22 Sept. 1794 46

13. Southey. -- Dec. 1794 47

CHAPTER III. "THE WATCHMAN" 50

Letter 14. To Thomas Poole. 7 Oct. 1795 50

15. Joseph Cottle. -- Dec. 1795 52

16. " 1 Jany. 1796 52

17. Josiah Wade. -- Jany. 1796 55

18. " -- -- 1796 55

19. " -- -- 1796 56

20. " -- -- 1796 58

21. " 7 Jany. 1796 59

22. " -- Jany. 1796 60

23. Cottle. -- Feby. 1796 62

24. " -- -- 1796 62

25. " 22 Feby. 1796 63

26. Poole. 30 Mch. 1796 65

27. Benjamin Flower. 1 April, 1796

28. Caius Gracchus. 1 April, 1796

29. Poole. 11 April, 1796

30. Cottle. 15 April, 1796

31. " -- April, 1796

32. " -- April, 1796

33. Poole. 6 May, 1796

34. " 12 May, 1796

35. " 29 May, 1796

36. " 4 July, 1796

37. " -- Aug. 1796

38. Wade. -- Sept. 1796

39. Poole. 24 Sept. 1796

40. Charles Lamb. 29 Sept. 1796

41. Cottle. 18 Oct. 1796

42. Poole. 1 Nov. 1796

43. " 5 Nov. 1796

44. Charles Lloyd, Senr. 15 Oct. 1796

45. " 14 Nov. 1796

46. " 4 Dec. 1796

47. Poole. 26 Dec. 1796

CHAPTER IV. CONTEMPORARY PORTRAITS OF COLERIDGE

CHAPTER V. STOWEY

Letter 48. To Cottle. Jany. 1797

49. " 3 Jany. 1797

50. " 10 Jany. 1797

51. " Jany. 1797

52. " Jany. --

53. " Jany. --

54. " Feby. or Mch. 1797

55. " May, 1797

56. " -- --

57. " -- --

58. Wade. -- --

59. Cottle. -- --

60. " -- June, 1797

61. " 8 June, 1797

62. " 29 -- --

63. " 3-17 July, 1797

64. Wade. 17-20 July, 1797

Letter 65. To Cottle. --Sept. 1797

66. " 3 Sept. 1797

67. " 10-15 Sept. 1797

68. " 28 Nov. 1797

69. " 2 Dec. 1797

70. " --Jany. 1798

71. Wedgwood. --Jany. 1798

72. Cottle. 24 Jany. 1798

73. the Editor, "Monthly Mag." --Jany. 1798

CHAPTER VI. THE LYRICAL BALLADS AND GERMANY

Letter 74. To Cottle. 18 Feb. 1798

75. the Editor, "Morning Post." 10 Mch. 1798

76. Cottle. 8 Mch. 1798

77. Wade. 21 Mch. 1798

78. Cottle. Mch. or Apl. 1798

79. " 14 April, 1798

80. " --April, 1798

81. " --May, 1798

82. Mrs. Coleridge. 14 Jany. 1799

83. " 23 April, 1799

CHAPTER VII. THE RELIGION OF THE PINEWOODS

Letter 84. To Mrs. Coleridge. 17 May, 1799

CHAPTER VIII. RETURN TO ENGLAND, "WALLENSTEIN", AND

THE "MORNING POST"

Letter 85. To Josiah Wedgwood. 21 May, 1799

86. "the Editor, Morning Post." 21 Dec. 1799

87. " 10 Jany. 1800

88. Thomas Wedgwood. --Jany. 1800

89. Josiah Wedgwood. --Feby. 1800

90. Thomas Poole. --Mch. 1800

CHAPTER IX KESWICK

Letter 91. To William Godwin. 21 May, 1800

92. Humphry Davy. --June, 1800

93. Josiah Wedgwood. 24 July, 1800

94. Davy. 25 July, 1800

95. Godwin. 22 Sept. 1800

96. Davy. 9 Oct. 1800

97. Godwin. 13 Oct. 1800

98. Davy. 18 Oct. 1800

99. Josiah Wedgwood. 1 Nov. 1800

100. " 12 Nov. 1800

101. the Editor, "Monthly Review."18 Nov. 1800

102. Davy. 2 Dec. 1800

103. " 3 Feby. 1801

104. Wade. 6 March, 1801

105. Godwin. 25 March, 1801

PART II.--THE PERMANENT

CHAPTER X. ILL HEALTH; SOUTHEY COMES TO KESWICK

Letter 106. To Southey. 13 April, 1801

107. Davy. 4 May, 1801

108. " 20 May, 1801

109. Godwin. 23 June, 1801

110. Davy. 31 Oct. 1801

111. Thos. Wedgwood. 20 Oct. 1802

112. " 3 Nov. 1802

113. " 9 Jany. l803

114. " 14 Jany. 1803

115. " 10 Feby. 1803

116. " 10 Feby. 1803

117. " 17 Feby. 1803

118. " 17 Feby. 1803

119. Godwin. 4 June, 1803

120. " 10 July, 1803

121. Southey. -- July, 1803

122. Thos. Wedgwood. 16 Sept. 1803

123. Miss Cruikshank. -- -- 1803

124. Thos. Wedgwood. -- Jany. 1804

125. " 28 Jany. 1804

126. Davy. 6 Mch. 1804

127. Sarah Hutchinson. 10 March, 1804

128. Wedgwood. 24 March, 1804

129. Davy. 25 March, 1804

PART I

POETRY

BIOGRAPHIA EPISTOLARIS

CHAPTER I

EARLY YEARS

[1772 to 1791]

While here, thou fed'st upon etherial beams,

As if thou had'st not a terrestrial birth;--

Beyond material objects was thy sight;

In the clouds woven was thy lucid robe!

"Ah! who can tell how little for this sphere

That frame was fitted of empyreal fire!" [1]

Samuel Taylor Coleridge was the youngest child of the Reverend John

Coleridge, Chaplain-Priest and Vicar of the parish of Ottery St. Mary,

in the county of Devon, and Master of the Free Grammar, or King's

School, as it is called, founded by Henry VIII in that town. His

mother's maiden name was Ann Bowdon. He was born at Ottery on the 21st

of October 1772, "about eleven o'clock in the forenoon," as his father,

the Vicar, has, with rather unusual particularity, entered it in the

register.

John Coleridge, who was born in 1719, and finished his education at

Sidney-Sussex College, Cambridge,[2] was a country clergyman and

schoolmaster of no ordinary kind. He was a good Greek and Latin scholar,

a profound Hebraist, and, according to the measure of his day, an

accomplished mathematician. He was on terms of literary friendship with

Samuel Badcock, and, by his knowledge of Hebrew, rendered material

assistance to Dr. Kennicott, in his well known critical works. Some

curious papers on theological and antiquarian subjects appear with his

signature in the early numbers of "The Gentleman's Magazine", between

the years 1745 and 1780; almost all of which have been inserted in the

interesting volumes of Selections made several years ago from that work.

In 1768 he published miscellaneous Dissertations arising from the 17th

and 18th chapters of the Book of Judges; in which a very learned and

ingenious attempt is made to relieve the character of Micah from the

charge of idolatry ordinarily brought against it; and in 1772 appeared a

"Critical Latin Grammar", which his son called "his best work," and

which is not wholly unknown even now to the inquisitive by the proposed

substitution of the terms "prior, possessive, attributive, posterior,

interjective, and quale-quare-quidditive," for the vulgar names of the

cases. This little Grammar, however, deserves a philologer's perusal,

and is indeed in many respects a very valuable work in its kind. He also

published a Latin Exercise book, and a Sermon. His school was

celebrated, and most of the country gentlemen of that generation,

belonging to the south and east parts of Devon, had been his pupils.

Judge Buller was one. The amiable character and personal eccentricities

of this excellent man are not yet forgotten amongst some of the elders

of the parish and neighbourhood, and the latter, as is usual in such

cases, have been greatly exaggerated. He died suddenly in the month of

October 1781, after riding to Ottery from Plymouth, to which latter

place he had gone for the purpose of embarking his son Francis, as a

midshipman, for India. Many years afterwards, in 1797, S. T. Coleridge

commenced a series of Letters to his friend Thomas Poole, of Nether

Stowey, in the county of Somerset, in which he proposed to give an

account of his life up to that time. Five only were written, and

unfortunately they stop short of his residence at Cambridge. This series

will properly find a place here.

[Footnote 1: From a Sonnet To Coleridge by Sir Egerton Brydges--written

16th Feb. 1837. S. C.]

[Footnote 2: He was matriculated at Sidney a sizar on the 18th of March

1748, but does not appear to have taken any degree at the University. S.

C.]

LETTER 1. TO MR. POOLE

My Dear Poole,

I could inform the dullest author how he might write an interesting

book. Let him relate the events of his own life with honesty, not

disguising the feelings that accompanied them. I never yet read even a

Methodist's "Experience" in the Gospel Magazine without receiving

instruction and amusement; and I should almost despair of that man who

could peruse the Life of John Woolman without an amelioration of heart.

As to my Life, it has all the charms of variety,--high life and low

life, vices and virtues, great folly and some wisdom. However, what I am

depends on what I have been; and you, my best friend, have a right to

the narration. To me the task will be a useful one. It will renew and

deepen my reflections on the past; and it will perhaps make you behold

with no unforgiving or impatient eye those weaknesses and defects in my

character, which so many untoward circumstances have concurred in

planting there.

My family on my Mother's side can be traced up, I know not how far. The

Bowdons inherited a good farm and house thereon in the Exmoor country,

in the reign of Elizabeth, as I have been told; and to my knowledge they

have inherited nothing better since that time. My Grandfather was in the

reign of George I a considerable woollen trader in Southmolton; so that

I suppose, when the time comes, I shall be allowed to pass as a

"Sans-culotte" without much opposition. My Father received a better

education than the rest of his family in consequence of his own

exertions, not of his superiour advantages. When he was not quite

sixteen years of age, my grandfather, by a series of misfortunes, was

reduced to great distress. My Father received the half of his last crown

and his blessing, and walked off to seek his fortune. After he had

proceeded a few miles, he sate him down on the side of the road, so

overwhelmed with painful thoughts that he wept audibly. A gentleman

passed by who knew him, and, inquiring into his sorrow, took him home

and gave him the means of maintaining himself by placing him in a

school. At this time he commenced being a severe and ardent student. He

married his first wife, by whom he had three daughters, all now alive.

While his first wife lived, having scraped up money enough, he at the

age of twenty walked to Cambridge, entered himself at Sidney College,

distinguished himself in Hebrew and Mathematics, and might have had a

fellowship if he had not been married. He returned and settled as a

schoolmaster in Southmolton where his wife died. In 1760 he was

appointed Chaplain-Priest and Master of the School at Ottery St. Mary,

and removed to that place; and in August, 1760, Mr. Buller, the father

of the present Judge, procured for him the living from Lord Chancellor

Bathurst. By my Mother, his second wife, he had ten children, of whom I

am the youngest, born October 20th,[1] 1772.

These facts I received from my Mother; but I am utterly unable to fill

them up by any further particulars of times, or places, or names. Here I

shall conclude my first Letter, because I cannot pledge myself for the

accuracy of the accounts, and I will not therefore mingle it with that

for the truth of which, in the minutest parts, I shall hold myself

responsible. You must regard this Letter as a first chapter devoted to

dim traditions of times too remote to be pierced by the eye of

investigation.

Yours affectionately, S. T. COLERIDGE.

Feb. 1797. Monday.

[Footnote 1: A mistake, should be October 21st.]

LETTER 2. To MR. POOLE

My Dear Poole,

My Father (Vicar of, and Schoolmaster at, Ottery St. Mary, Devon) was a

good mathematician, and well versed in the Greek, Latin, and Hebrew

languages. He published, or rather attempted to publish, several

works;--1st, Miscellaneous Dissertations arising from the 17th and 18th

chapters of the Book of Judges; 2d, "Sententiae Excerptcae" for the use

of his own School; and 3d, his best work, a Critical Latin Grammar, in

the Preface to which he proposes a bold innovation in the names of the

cases. My Father's new nomenclature was not likely to become popular,

although it must be allowed to be both sonorous and expressive. "Exempli

gratia", he calls the ablative case "the quare-quale-quidditive case!"

He made the world his confidant with respect to his learning and

ingenuity, and the world seems to have kept the secret very faithfully.

His various works, uncut, unthumbed, were preserved free from all

pollution in the family archives, where they may still be for anything

that I know. This piece of good luck promises to be hereditary; for all

"my" compositions have the same amiable home-staying propensity. The

truth is, my Father was not a first-rate genius; he was, however, a

first-rate Christian, which is much better. I need not detain you with

his character. In learning, goodheartedness, absentness of mind, and

excessive ignorance of the world, he was a perfect Parson Adams.

My Mother was an admirable economist, and managed exclusively. My

eldest brother's name was John. He was a Captain in the East India

Company's service; a successful officer and a brave one, as I have

heard. He died in India in 1786. My second brother William went to

Pembroke College, Oxford. He died a clergyman in 1780, just on the eve

of his intended marriage. My brother James has been in the army since

the age of fifteen, and has married a woman of fortune, one of the old

Duke family of Otterton in Devon. Edward, the wit of the family, went

to Pembroke College, and is now a clergyman. George also went to

Pembroke. He is in orders likewise, and now has the same School, a very

flourishing one, which my Father had. He is a man of reflective mind

and elegant talent. He possesses learning in a greater degree than any

of the family, excepting myself. His manners are grave, and hued over

with a tender sadness. In his moral character he approaches every way

nearer to perfection than any man I ever yet knew. He is worth us all.

Luke Herman was a surgeon, a severe student, and a good man. He died in

1790, leaving one child, a lovely boy still alive. [1] My only sister,

Ann, died at twenty-one, a little after my brother Luke:--

Rest, gentle Shade! and wait thy Maker's will; Then rise unchang'd, and

be an angel still!

Francis Syndercombe went out to India as a midshipman under Admiral

Graves. He accidentally met his brother John on board ship abroad, who

took him ashore, and procured him a commission in the Company's army. He

died in 1792, aged twenty-one, a Lieutenant, in consequence of a fever

brought on by excessive fatigue at and after the siege of Seringapatam,

and the storming of a hill fort, during all which his conduct had been

so gallant that his Commanding Officer particularly noticed him, and

presented him with a gold watch, which my Mother now has. All my

brothers are remarkably handsome; but they were as inferiour to Francis

as I am to them. He went by the name of "the handsome Coleridge." The

tenth and last child was Samuel Taylor, the subject and author of these

Epistles.

From October 1772 to October 1773. Baptized Samuel Taylor, my

Godfather's name being Samuel Taylor, Esquire. I had another called

Evans, and two Godmothers, both named Munday.

From October 1773 to October 1774. In this year I was carelessly left by

my nurse, ran to the fire, and pulled out a live coal, and burned myself

dreadfully. While my hand was being drest by Mr. Young, I spoke for the

first time, (so my Mother informs me) and said, "nasty Dr. Young!" The

snatching at fire, and the circumstance of my first words expressing

hatred to professional men--are they at all ominous? This year I went to

school. My Schoolmistress, the very image of Shenstone's, was named Old

Dame Key. She was nearly related to Sir Joshua Reynolds.

From October 1774 to 1775. I was inoculated; which I mention, because I

distinctly remember it, and that my eyes were bound; at which I

manifested so much obstinate indignation, that at last they removed the

bandage, and unaffrighted I looked at the lancet, and suffered the

scratch. At the close of this year I could read a chapter in the Bible.

Here I shall end, because the remaining years of my life all assisted to

form my particular mind;--the first three years had nothing in them that

seems to relate to it.

God bless you and your sincere S. T. COLERIDGE.

Sunday, March, 1797.

[Footnote 1: William Hart Coleridge, Bishop of Barbadoes and the Leeward

Islands.

(He was appointed to that See in 1824, retired from it in 1842; and

afterwards accepted the Wardenship of St. Augustine's College,

Canterbury. S. C.) [He died in 1849.] ]

A letter from Francis S. Coleridge to his sister has been preserved in

the family, in which a particular account is given of the chance

meeting of the two brothers in India, mentioned shortly in the

preceding Letter. There is something so touching and romantic in the

incident that the Reader will, it is hoped, pardon the insertion of the

original narrative here.

Dear Nancy,

You are very right, I have neglected my absent friends, but do not

think I have forgot them, and indeed it would be ungrateful in me if I

did not write to them.

You may be sure, Nancy, I thank Providence for bringing about that

meeting, which has been the cause of all my good fortune and happiness,

which I now in fulness enjoy. It was an affectionate meeting, and I

will inform you of the particulars. There was in our ship one Captain

Mordaunt, who had been in India before, when we came to Bombay. Finding

a number of his friends there he went often ashore. The day before the

Fleet sailed he desired one Captain Welsh to go aboard with him, who

was an intimate friend of your brother's. "I will," said Welsh, "and

will write a note to Coleridge to go with us." Upon this Captain

Mordaunt, recollecting me, said there was a young midshipman, a

favourite of Captain Hicks, of that name on board. Upon that they

agreed to inform my brother of it, which they did soon after, and all

three came on board. I was then in the lower deck, and, though you

won't believe it, I was sitting upon a gun and thinking of my brother,

that is, whether I should ever see or hear anything of him; when seeing

a Lieutenant, who had been sent to inform me of my brother's being on

board, I got up off the gun: but instead of telling me about my

brother, he told me that Captain Hicks was very angry with me and

wanted to see me. Captain Hicks had always been a Father to me, and

loved me as if I had been his own child. I therefore went up shaking

like an aspen leaf to the Lieutenant's apartments, when a Gentleman

took hold of my hand. I did not mind him at first, but looked round for

the Captain; but the Gentleman still holding my hand, I looked, and

what was my surprise, when I saw him too full to speak and his eyes

full of tears. Whether crying is catching I know not, but I began a

crying too, though I did not know the reason, till he caught me in his

arms, and told me he was my brother, and then I found I was paying

nature her tribute, for I believe I never cried so much in my life.

There is a saying in Robinson Crusoe, I remember very well,

viz.--sudden joy like grief confounds at first. We directly went ashore

having got my discharge, and having took a most affectionate leave of

Captain Hicks, I left the ship for good and all.

My situation in the army is that I am one of the oldest Ensigns, and

before you get this must in all probability be a Lieutenant. How many

changes there have been in my life, and what lucky ones they have been,

and how young I am still! I must be seven years older before I can

properly style myself a man, and what a number of officers do I command,

who are old enough to be my Father already!

LETTER 3. To MR. POOLE

October 9th, 1797.

My Dearest Poole,

From March to October--a long silence! But it is possible that I may

have been preparing materials for future Letters, and the time cannot be

considered as altogether subtracted from you.

From October 1775 to October 1778. These three years I continued at the

Reading School, because I was too little to be trusted among my Father's

schoolboys. After break-fast I had a halfpenny given me, with which I

bought three cakes at the baker's shop close by the school of my old

mistress; and these were my dinner every day except Saturday and Sunday,

when I used to dine at home, and wallowed in a beef and pudding dinner.

I am remarkably fond of beans and bacon: and this fondness I attribute

to my Father's giving me a penny for having eaten a large quantity of

beans on Saturday. For the other boys did not like them, and, as it was

an economic food, my Father thought my attachment to it ought to be

encouraged. He was very fond of me, and I was my Mother's darling: in

consequence whereof I was very miserable. For Molly, who had nursed my

brother Francis, and was immoderately fond of him, hated me because my

Mother took more notice of me than of Frank; and Frank hated me because

my Mother gave me now and then a bit of cake when he had none,--quite

forgetting that for one bit of cake which I had and he had not, he had

twenty sops in the pan, and pieces of bread and butter with sugar on

them from Molly, from whom I received only thumps and ill names.

So I became fretful, and timorous, and a tell-tale; and the schoolboys

drove me from play, and were always tormenting me. And hence I took no

pleasure in boyish sports, but read incessantly. I read through all

gilt-cover little books that could be had at that time, and likewise all

the uncovered tales of Tom Hickathrift, Jack the Giant Killer, and the

like. And I used to lie by the wall, and mope; and my spirits used to

come upon me suddenly, and in a flood;--and then I was accustomed to run

up and down the churchyard, and act over again all I had been reading on

the docks, the nettles, and the rank grass. At six years of age I

remember to have read Belisarius, Robinson Crusoe, and Philip Quarles;

and then I found the Arabian Nights' Entertainments, one tale of which,

(the tale of a man who was compelled to seek for a pure virgin,) made so

deep an impression on me, (I had read it in the evening while my mother

was at her needle,) that I was haunted by spectres, whenever I was in

the dark: and I distinctly recollect the anxious and fearful eagerness,

with which I used to watch the window where the book lay, and when the

sun came upon it, I would seize it, carry it by the wall, and bask, and

read. My father found out the effect which these books had produced, and

burned them.

So I became a dreamer, and acquired an indisposition to all bodily

activity; and I was fretful, and inordinately passionate; and as I could

not play at anything, and was slothful, I was despised and hated by the

boys: and because I could read and spell, and had, I may truly say, a

memory and understanding forced into almost unnatural ripeness, I was

flattered and wondered at by all the old women. And so I became very

vain, and despised most of the boys that were at all near my own age,

and before I was eight years old I was a "character". Sensibility,

imagination, vanity, sloth, and feelings of deep and bitter contempt for

almost all who traversed the orbit of my understanding, were even then

prominent and manifest.

From October 1778 to 1779. That which I began to be from three to six, I

continued to be from six to nine. In this year I was admitted into the

Grammar School, and soon outstripped all of my age. I had a dangerous

putrid fever this year. My brother George lay ill of the same fever in

the next room. My poor brother, Francis, I remember, stole up in spite

of orders to the contrary, and sat by my bedside, and read Pope's Homer

to me. Frank had a violent love of beating me; but whenever that was

superseded by any humour or circumstances, he was always very fond of

me, and used to regard me with a strange mixture of admiration and

contempt. Strange it was not, for he hated books, and loved climbing,

fighting, playing, and robbing orchards, to distraction. My Mother

relates a story of me, which I repeat here, because it must be reckoned

as my first piece of wit.--During my fever, I asked why Lady Northcote,

our neighbour, did not come and see me. My Mother said she was afraid of

catching the fever. I was piqued, and answered, "Ah! Mamma! the four

Angels round my bed a'n't afraid of catching it!" I suppose you know the

old prayer:--

Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John,

Bless the bed that I lie on!--

Four good Angels round me spread,

Two at my feet and two at my head.

This "prayer" I said nightly, and most firmly believed the truth of it.

Frequently have I, (half-awake and half-asleep; my body diseased, and

fevered by my imagination,)--seen armies of ugly things bursting in upon

me, and these four Angels keeping them off.

In my next I shall carry on my life to my Father's death.

God bless you, my dear Poole,

And your affectionate, S.T. COLERIDGE.

In a note written in after life Mr. Coleridge speaks of this period of

his life in the following terms:

"Being the youngest child, I possibly inherited the weakly state of

health of my Father, who died, at the age of sixty-two, before I had

reached my ninth year; and from certain jealousies of old Molly, my

brother Frank's dotingly fond nurse--and if ever child by beauty and

loveliness deserved to be doted on, my brother Francis was that

child--and by the infusion of her jealousies into my brother's mind, I

was in earliest childhood huffed away from the enjoyments of muscular

activity in play, to take refuge at my Mother's side on my little stool,

to read my little book, and to listen to the talk of my elders. I was

driven from life in motion to life in thought and sensation. I never

played except by myself, and then only acted over what I had been

reading or fancying, or half one, half the other, with a stick cutting

down weeds and nettles, as one of the "Seven Champions of Christendom."

Alas! I had all the simplicity, all the docility of the little child,

but none of the child's habits. I never thought as a child, never had

the language of a child." [1]

[Footnote 1: Gillman's "Life of Coleridge", p. 10.]

LETTER 4. TO MR. POOLE

Dear Poole,

From October 1779 to 1781. I had asked my Mother one evening to cut my

cheese entire, so that I might toast it. This was no easy matter, it

being a "crumbly" cheese. My Mother however did it. I went into the

garden for something or other, and in the mean time my brother Frank

minced my cheese, to "disappoint the favourite." I returned, saw the

exploit, and in an agony of passion flew at Frank. He pretended to have

been seriously hurt by my blow, flung himself on the ground, and there

lay with outstretched limbs. I hung over him mourning and in a great

fright; he leaped up, and with a horse-laugh gave me a severe blow in

the face. I seized a knife, and was running at him, when my Mother came

in and took me by the arm. I expected a flogging, and, struggling from

her, I ran away to a little hill or slope, at the bottom of which the

Otter flows, about a mile from Ottery. There I staid; my rage died away,

but my obstinacy vanquished my fears, and taking out a shilling book,

which had at the end morning and evening prayers, I very devoutly

repeated them--thinking at the same time with a gloomy inward

satisfaction--how miserable my Mother must be! I distinctly remember my

feelings, when I saw a Mr. Vaughan pass over the bridge at about a

furlong's distance, and how I watched the calves in the fields beyond

the river. It grew dark, and I fell asleep. It was towards the end of

October, and it proved a stormy night. I felt the cold in my sleep, and

dreamed that I was pulling the blanket over me, and actually pulled over

me a dry thorn-bush which lay on the ground near me. In my sleep I had

rolled from the top of the hill till within three yards of the river,

which flowed by the unfenced edge of the bottom. I awoke several times,

and finding myself wet, and cold, and stiff, closed my eyes again that I

might forget it.

In the meantime my Mother waited about half an hour, expecting my return

when the "sulks" had evaporated. I not returning, she sent into the

churchyard, and round the town. Not found! Several men and all the boys

were sent out to ramble about and seek me. In vain! My Mother was almost

distracted; and at ten o'clock at night I was 'cried' by the crier

in Ottery, and in two villages near it, with a reward offered for me. No

one went to bed;--indeed I believe half the town were up all the night.

To return to myself. About five in the morning, or a little after, I was

broad awake, and attempted to get up, and walk; but I could not move. I

saw the shepherds and workmen at a distance, and cried, but so faintly,

that it was impossible to hear me thirty yards off. And there I might

have lain and died;--for I was now almost given over, the ponds and even

the river, near which I was lying, having been dragged. But

providentially Sir Stafford Northcote, who had been out all night,

resolved to make one other trial, and came so near that he heard me

crying. He carried me in his arms for nearly a quarter of a mile, when

we met my father and Sir Stafford Northcote's servants. I remember, and

never shall forget, my Father's face as he looked upon me while I lay in

the servant's arms--so calm, and the tears stealing down his face; for I

was the child of his old age. My Mother, as you, may suppose, was

outrageous with joy. Meantime in rushed a young lady, crying out--"I

hope you'll whip him, Mrs. Coleridge." This woman still lives at Ottery;

and neither philosophy nor religion has been able to conquer the

antipathy which I feel towards her, whenever I see her. I was put to

bed, and recovered in a day or so. But I was certainly injured; for I

was weakly and subject to ague for many years after.

My Father--who had so little parental ambition in him, that, but for my

Mother's pride and spirit, he would certainly have brought up his other

sons to trades--had nevertheless resolved that I should be a parson. I

read every book that came in my way without distinction; and my Father

was fond of me, and used to take me on his knee, and hold long

conversations with me. I remember, when eight years old, walking with

him one winter evening from a farmer's house, a mile from Ottery; and he

then told me the names of the stars, and how Jupiter was a thousand

times larger than our world, and that the other twinkling stars were

suns that had worlds rolling round them; and when I came home, he showed

me how they rolled round. I heard him with a profound delight and

admiration, but without the least mixture of wonder or incredulity. For

from my early reading of fairy tales and about genii, and the like, my

mind had been habituated "to the Vast"; and I never regarded "my senses"

in any way as the "criteria" of my belief. I regulated all my creeds by

my conceptions, not by my sight, even at that age. Ought children to be

permitted to read romances, and stories of giants, magicians, and genii?

I know all that has been said against it; but I have formed my faith in

the affirmative. I know no other way of giving the mind a love of the

Great and the Whole. Those who have been led to the same truths step by

step, through the constant testimony of their senses, seem to me to want

a sense which I possess. They contemplate nothing but parts, and all

parts are necessarily little, and the universe to them is but a mass of

little things. It is true, the mind may become credulous and prone to

superstition by the former method;--but are not the experimentalists

credulous even to madness in believing any absurdity, rather than

believe the grandest truths, if they have not the testimony of their own

senses in their favour? I have known some who have been rationally

educated, as it is styled. They were marked by a microscopic acuteness;

but when they looked at great things, all became a blank, and they saw

nothing, and denied that anything could be seen, and uniformly put the

negative of a power for the possession of a power, and called the want

of imagination, judgment, and the never being moved to rapture,

philosophy.

Towards the latter end of September 1781, my Father went to Plymouth

with my brother Francis, who was to go out as midshipman under Admiral

Graves, who was a friend of my Father's. He settled Frank as he wished,

and returned on the 4th of October, 1781. He arrived at Exeter about six

o'clock, and was pressed to take a bed there by the friendly family of

the Harts; but he refused; and to avoid their entreaties he told them

that he had never been superstitious, but that the night before he had

had a dream, which had made a deep impression on him. He dreamed that

Death had appeared to him, as he is commonly painted, and had touched

him with his dart. Well, he returned home; and all his family, I

excepted, were up. He told my Mother his dream; but he was in high

health and good spirits; and there was a bowl of punch made, and my

Father gave a long and particular account of his travel, and that he had

placed Frank under a religious Captain, and so forth. At length he went

to bed, very well and in high spirits. A short time after he had lain

down, he complained of a pain in his bowels, to which he was subject,

from wind. My Mother got him some peppermint water, which he took, and

after a pause, he said, "I am much better now, my dear!"--and lay down

again. In a minute my Mother heard a noise in his throat, and spoke to

him, but he did not answer; and she spoke repeatedly in vain. Her shriek

awaked me, and I said--"Papa is dead!" I did not know my Father's

return; but I knew that he was expected. How I came to think of his

death, I cannot tell; but so it was. Dead he was. Some said it was gout

in the heart;--probably it was a fit of apoplexy. He was an Israelite

without guile, simple, generous, and, taking some Scripture texts in

their literal sense, he was conscientiously indifferent to the good and

the evil of this world. God love you and

S.T. COLERIDGE.

He was buried at Ottery on the 10th of October 1781. "O! that I might so

pass away," said Coleridge, thirty years afterwards, "if, like him, I

were an Israelite without guile! The image of my Father, very reverend,

kind, learned, simple-hearted Father is a religion to me."

At his Father's death Coleridge was nearly nine years old. He continued

with his Mother at Ottery till the spring of 1782, when he was sent to

London to wait the appointed time for admission into Christ's Hospital,

to which a presentation had been procured from Mr. John Way through the

influence of his father's old pupil Sir Francis Buller. Ten weeks he

lived in London with an Uncle, and was entered in the books on the 8th

of July 1782.

LETTER 5. TO MR. POOLE

From October 1781 to October 1782. After the death of my Father, we, of

course, changed houses, and I remained with my Mother till the spring of

1782, and was a day scholar to Parson Warren, my Father's successor. He

was not very deep, I believe; and I used to delight my poor Mother by

relating little instances of his deficiency in grammar knowledge--every

detraction from his merits seeming an oblation to the memory of my

Father, especially as Warren did certainly "pulpitize" much better.

Somewhere I think about April 1782, Judge Buller, who had been educated

by my Father, sent for me, having procured a Christ's Hospital

presentation. I accordingly went to London, and was received and

entertained by my Mother's brother, Mr. Bowdon. He was generous as the

air, and a man of very considerable talents, but he was fond, as others

have been, of his bottle. He received me with great affection, and I

staid ten weeks at his house, during which I went occasionally to Judge

Buller's. My Uncle was very proud of me, and used to carry me from

coffee-house to coffee-house, and tavern to tavern, where I drank, and

talked, and disputed as if I had been a man. Nothing was more common

than for a large party to exclaim in my hearing, that I was a prodigy,

and so forth; so that while I remained at my Uncle's, I was most

completely spoilt and pampered, both mind and body.

At length the time came, and I donned the blue coat and yellow

stockings, and was sent down to Hertford, a town twenty miles from

London, where there are about three hundred of the younger Blue-coat

boys. At Hertford I was very happy on the whole, for I had plenty to eat

and drink, and we had pudding and vegetables almost every day. I

remained there six weeks, and then was drafted up to the great school in

London, where I arrived in September, 1782, and was placed in the second

ward, then called Jefferies' Ward, and in the Under Grammar School.

There are twelve wards, or dormitories, of unequal sizes, beside the

sick ward, in the great school; and they contained altogether seven

hundred boys, of whom I think nearly one-third were the sons of

clergymen. There are five schools,--mathematical, grammar, drawing,

reading, and writing--all very large buildings. When a boy is admitted,

if he reads very badly, he is either sent to Hertford, or to the reading

school. Boys are admissible from seven to twelve years of age. If he

learns to read tolerably well before nine, he is drafted into the Lower

Grammar School, if not, into the Writing School, as having given proof

of unfitness for classical studies. If, before he is eleven, he climbs

up to the first form of the Lower Grammar School, he is drafted into the

Head Grammar School. If not, at eleven years of age, he is sent into the

Writing School, where he continues till fourteen or fifteen, and is then

either apprenticed or articled as a clerk, or whatever else his turn of

mind or of fortune shall have provided for him. Two or three times a

year the Mathematical Master beats up for recruits for the King's boys,

as they are called; and all who like the navy are drafted into the

Mathematical and Drawing Schools, where they continue till sixteen or

seventeen years of age, and go out as midshipmen, and schoolmasters in

the Navy. The boys who are drafted into the Head Grammar School, remain

there till thirteen; and then, if not chosen for the University, go into

the Writing School.

Each dormitory has a nurse or matron, and there is a head matron to

superintend all these nurses. The boys were, when I was admitted, under

excessive subordination to each other according to rank in school; and

every ward was governed by four Monitors,--appointed by the Steward, who

was the supreme governor out of school--our temporal lord,--and by four

Markers, who wore silver medals, and were appointed by the Head Grammar

Master, who was our supreme spiritual lord. The same boys were commonly

both Monitors and Markers. We read in classes on Sundays to our Markers,

and were catechised by them, and under their sole authority during

prayers, etc. All other authority was in the Monitors; but, as I said,

the same boys were ordinarily both the one and the other. Our diet was

very scanty. Every morning a bit of dry bread and some bad small beer.

Every evening a larger piece of bread, and cheese or butter, whichever

we liked. For dinner,--on Sunday, boiled beef and broth; Monday, bread

and butter, and milk and water; Tuesday, roast mutton; Wednesday, bread

and butter, and rice milk; Thursday, boiled beef and broth; Friday,

boiled mutton and broth; Saturday, bread and butter, and pease-porridge.

Our food was portioned; and, excepting on Wednesdays, I never had a

belly full. Our appetites were damped, never satisfied; and we had no

vegetables. [1]

[Footnote 1: The above five letters are I-V of Mr. E. H. Coleridge's

"Letters of S. T. C". Letter VI is dated 1785; Letter VII of "Letters"

is dated "before 1790."]

S. T. COLERIDGE.

"O! what a change!" he writes in another note; "depressed, moping,

friendless, poor orphan, half starved; at that time the portion of food

to the Blue-coats was cruelly insufficient for those who had no friends

to supply them." And he afterwards says:--"When I was first plucked up

and transplanted from my birth-place and family, at the death of my dear

Father, whose revered image has ever survived in my mind to make me know

what the emotions and affections of a son are, and how ill a father's

place is likely to be supplied by any other relation, Providence, (it

has often occurred to me,) gave me the first intimation that it was my

lot, and that it was best for me, to make or find my way of life a

detached individual, a "terrae filius", who was to ask love or service

of no one on any more specific relation than that of being a man, and as

such to take my chance for the free charities of humanity."

Coleridge continued eight years at Christ's Hospital. It was a very

curious and important part of his life, giving him Bowyer for his

teacher, and Lamb for his friend. [1]

[Footnote 1: A few particulars of this "most remarkable and amiable

man," the well-known author of "Essays of Elia, Rosamund Gray, Poems",

and other works, will interest most readers of the "Biographia".

He was born on the 18th of February, 1775, in the Inner Temple; died

27th December, 1834, about five months after his friend Coleridge, who

continued in habits of intimacy with him from their first acquaintance

till his death in July of the same year. In "one of the most exquisite

of all the Essays of Elia," "The Old Benchers of the Middle Temple"

("Works", vol. ii, p. 188), Lamb has given the characters of his father,

and of his father's master, Samuel Salt. The few touches descriptive of

this gentleman's "unrelenting bachelorhood"--which appears in the sequel

to have been a persistent mourner-hood--and the forty years' hopeless

passion of mild Susan P.--which very permanence redeems and almost

dignifies, is in the author's sweetest vein of mingled humour and

pathos, wherein the latter, as the stronger ingredient, predominates.

Mr. Lamb never married, for, as is recorded in the Memoir, "on the death

of his parents, he felt himself called upon by duty to repay to his

sister [a] the solicitude with which she had watched over his infancy. To

her, from the age of twenty-one he devoted his existence, seeking

thenceforth no connection which could interfere with her supremacy in

his affections, or impair his ability to sustain and to comfort her."

[[Sub-footnote a: "A word Timidly uttered, for she "lives", the meek,

The self-restraining, the ever kind."

From Mr. Wordsworth's memorial poem to her brother. P. W. V. P. 333.]]

Mr. Coleridge speaks of Miss Lamb, to whom he continued greatly

attached, in these verses, addressed to her brother:

"Cheerily, dear Charles!

Thou thy best friend shall cherish many a year;

Such warm presages feel I of high hope!

For not uninterested the dear maid

I've viewed--her soul affectionate yet wise,

Her polished wit as mild as lambent glories

That play around a sainted infant's head."

(See the single volume of Coleridge's Poems, p. 28.)

Mr. Lamb has himself described his dear and only sister, whose proper

name is Mary Anne, under the title of "Cousin Bridget," in the Essay

called "Mackery End", a continuation of that entitled "My Relations", in

which he has drawn the portrait of his elder brother. "Bridget Elia," so

he commences the former, "has been my housekeeper for many a long year.

I have obligations to Bridget, extending beyond the period of memory. We

house together, old bachelor and maid, in a sort of double singleness;

with such tolerable comfort upon the whole, that I, for one, find in

myself no sort of disposition to go out upon the mountains, with the

rash king's offspring, to bewail my celibacy."--("Works", vol. ii, p.

171.) He describes her intellectual tastes in this essay, but does not

refer to her literary abilities. She wrote "Mrs. Leicester's School",

which Mr. C. used warmly to praise for delicacy of taste and tenderness

of feeling.

Miss Lamb still survives, in the words of Mr. Talfourd, "to mourn the

severance of a life-long association, as free from every alloy of

selfishness, as remarkable for moral beauty, as this world ever

witnessed in brother and sister. "I have felt desirous to place in

relief, as far as might be, such an interesting union--to show how blest

a fraternal marriage may be, and what sufficient helpmates a brother and

sister have been to each other. Marriages of this kind would perhaps be

more frequent but for the want of some pledge or solid warranty of

continuance equivalent to that which rivets wedlock between husband and

wife. Without the vow and the bond, formal or virtual, no society, from

the least to the greatest, will hold together. Many persons are so

constituted that they cannot feel rest or satisfaction of spirit without

a single supreme object of tender affection, in whose heart they are

conscious of holding a like supremacy,--who has common hopes, loves, and

interests with themselves. Without this the breezes do not refresh nor

the sunbeams gladden them. A "share" in ever so many kind hearts does

not suffice to their happiness; they must have the whole of one, as no

one else has any part of it, whatever love of another kind that heart

may still reserve for others. There is no reason why a brother and

sister might not be to each other this second-self--this dearer

half--though such an attachment is beyond mere fraternal love, and must

have something in it "of choice and election," superadded to the natural

tie: but it is seldom found to exist, because the durable cement is

wanting--the sense of security and permanence, without which the body of

affection cannot be consolidated, nor the heart commit itself to its

whole capacity of emotion. I believe that many a brother and sister

spend their days in uncongenial wedlock, or in a restless faintly

expectant-singlehood, who might form a "comfortable couple" could they

but make up their minds early to take each other for better for worse.

Two other poems of Mr. C. besides the one in which his sister is

mentioned, are addressed to Mr. Lamb--"This Lime-tree-bower my Prison",

and the lines "To a Friend, who had declared his intention of writing no

more Poetry".--("Poetical Works", i, p. 201 and p. 205.) In a letter to

the author ("Ainger", i, p. 121), Lamb inveighs against the soft epithet

applied to him in the first of these. He hoped his ""virtues" had done

"sucking""--and declared such praise fit only to be a "cordial to some

greensick sonnetteer."

"Yes! they wander on

In gladness all; but thou, methinks, most glad,

My "gentle-hearted" Charles! for thou hast pined

And hungered after nature, many a year,

In the great city pent, winning thy way

With sad yet patient soul through evil and pain

And strange calamity."

In the next poem he is called "wild-eyed boy." The two epithets,

"wild-eyed" and "gentle-hearted," will recall Charles Lamb to the minds

of all who knew him personally. Mr. Talfourd seems to think that the

special delight in the country, ascribed to him by my father, was a

distinction scarcely merited. I rather imagine that his indifference to

it was a sort of "mock apparel" in which it was his humour at times to

invest himself. I have been told that, when visiting the Lakes, he took

as much delight in the natural beauties of the region as might be

expected from a man of his taste and sensibility. [b]

[[Sub-footnote b:

"Thou wert a scorner of the field, my Friend,

But more in show than truth."

From Mr. W.'s poem "To a good man of most dear memory", quoted in p.

323.]]

Mr. Coleridge's expression, recorded in the "Table Talk", that he

"looked on the degraded men and things around him like moonshine on a

dunghill, that shines and takes no pollution," partly alludes to that

tolerance of moral evil, both in men and books, which was so much

remarked in Charles Lamb, and was, in so good a man, really remarkable.

His toleration of it in books is conspicuous in the view he takes of the

writings of Congreve and Wycherley, in his essay on the artificial

comedy of the last century ("Works", vol. ii, p. 322), and in many of

his other literary criticisms. His toleration of it in men--at least his

faculty of merging some kinds and degrees of it in concomitant good, or

even beholding certain errors rather as objects of interest, or of a

meditative pity and tenderness, than of pure aversion and condemnation,

Mr. Talfourd has feelingly described in his "Memoir" (vol. ii, p.

326-9), "Not only to opposite opinions," he says, "and devious habits of

thought was Lamb indulgent; he discovered the soul of goodness in things

evil so vividly, that the surrounding evil disappeared from his mental

vision." This characteristic of his mind is not to be identified with

the idolizing propensity common to many ardent and imaginative spirits.

He "not only loved his friends in spite of their errors," as Mr.

Talfourd observes, "but loved them, "errors and all";" which implies

that he was not unconscious of their existence. He saw the failings as

plainly as any one else, nay, fixed his gentle but discerning eye upon

them; whereas the idolizers behold certain objects in a bedarkening

blaze of light, or rather of light-confounding brightness, the

multiplied and heightened reflection of whatever is best in them, to the

obscurity or transmutation of all their defects. Whence it necessarily

follows that the world presents itself to their eyes divided, like a

chess-board, into black and white compartments--a moral and intellectual

chequer-work; not that they love to make darkness, but that they

luxuriate too eagerly in light: and their "over-muchness" toward some

men involves an over-littleness towards others, whom they involuntarily

contrast, in all their poor and peccant reality, with gorgeous

idealisms. The larger half of mankind is exiled for them into a

hemisphere of shadow, as dim, cold, and negative as the unlit portion of

the crescent moon. Lamb's general tendency, though he too could warmly

admire, was in a different direction; he was ever introducing streaks

and gleams of light into darkness, rather than drowning certain objects

in floods of it; and this, I think, proceeded in him from indulgence

toward human nature rather than from indifference to evil. To his friend

the disposition to exalt and glorify co-existed, in a very remarkable

manner, with a power of severe analysis of character and poignant

exhibition of it,--a power which few possess without exercising it some

time or other to their own sorrow and injury. The consequence to Mr.

Coleridge was that he sometimes seemed untrue to himself, when he had

but brought forward, one after another, perfectly real and sincere moods

of his mind.

In his fine poem commemorating the deaths of several poets, Mr.

Wordsworth thus joins my father's name with that of his almost life-long

friend:

"Nor has the rolling year twice measured,

From sign to sign, its steadfast course,

Since every mortal power of Coleridge

Was frozen at its marvellous source;

The rapt One of the godlike forehead,

The heaven-eyed creature sleeps in earth;

And Lamb, the frolic and the gentle,

Has vanished from his lonely hearth."

S. C. Footnote 1 ends: main text resumes:]

Numerous retrospective notices by himself and others exist of this

period; but none of his really boyish letters have been preserved. The

exquisite Essay intitled, "Christ's Hospital five and thirty years

ago", by Lamb, is principally founded on that delightful writer's

recollections of the boy Coleridge, and that boy's own subsequent

descriptions of his school days. Coleridge is Lamb's "poor friendless

boy."--"My parents and those who should care for me, were far away.

Those few acquaintances of theirs, which they could reckon upon being

kind to me in the great city, after a little forced notice, which they

had the grace to take of me on my first arrival in town, soon grew tired

of my holiday visits. They seemed to them to recur too often, though I

thought them few enough; and, one after another, they all failed me, and

I felt myself alone among six hundred playmates. O the cruelty of

separating a poor lad from his early homestead! The yearnings which I

used to have toward it in those unfledged years! How, in my dreams would

my native town, far in the west, come back with its church, its trees,

and faces! How I would wake weeping, and in the anguish of my heart

exclaim upon sweet "Calne in Wiltshire!""

Yet it must not be supposed that Coleridge was an unhappy boy. He was

naturally of a joyous temperament, and in one amusement, swimming, he

excelled and took singular delight. Indeed he believed, and probably

with truth, that his health was seriously injured by his excess in

bathing, coupled with such tricks as swimming across the New River in

his clothes, and drying them on his back, and the like. But reading was

a perpetual feast to him. "From eight to fourteen," he writes, "I was a

playless day-dreamer, a "helluo librorum", my appetite for which was

indulged by a singular incident: a stranger, who was struck by my

conversation, made me free of a circulating library in King Street,

Cheapside."--"Here," he proceeds, "I read through the catalogue, folios

and all, whether I understood them, or did not understand them, running

all risks in skulking out to get the two volumes which I was entitled to

have daily. Conceive what I must have been at fourteen; I was in a

continual low fever. My whole being was, with eyes closed to every

object of present sense, to crumple myself up in a sunny comer, and

read, read, read,--fancy myself on Robinson Crusoe's island, finding a

mountain of plum-cake, and eating a room for myself, and then eating it

into the shapes of tables and chairs--hunger and fancy!"--"My talents

and superiority," he continues, "made me for ever at the head in my

routine of study, though utterly without the desire to be so; without a

spark of ambition; and as to emulation, it had no meaning for me; but

the difference between me and my form-fellows, in our lessons and

exercises, bore no proportion to the measureless difference between me

and them in the wide, wild, wilderness of useless, unarranged book

knowledge and book thoughts. Thank Heaven! it was not the age for

getting up prodigies; but at twelve or fourteen I should have made as

pretty a juvenile prodigy as was ever emasculated and ruined by fond and

idle wonderment. Thank Heaven! I was flogged instead of being flattered.

However, as I climbed up the school, my lot was somewhat alleviated."