CHAPTER IX

KESWICK

Coleridge had determined not to live in London; his engagement with

Stuart he regarded as only a temporary shift to clear off some debt

which he had incurred in his visit to Germany. After a short stay with

Lamb ("Ainger", i, 113), and a tour to the North to see Wordsworth (J.

Dykes Campbell's "Life", 113), he returned to Stowey, writing to Godwin

on 21st May.

LETTER 91. TO GODWIN

Wednesday, May 21, 1800.

Dear Godwin,

I received your letter this morning, and had I not, still I am almost

confident that I should have written to you before the end of the week.

Hitherto the translation of the "Wallenstein" has prevented me, not that

it engrossed my time, but that it wasted and depressed my spirits, and

left a sense of wearisomeness and disgust which unfitted me for anything

but sleeping or immediate society. I say this because I ought to have

written to you first; yet, as I am not behind you in affectionate

esteem, so I would not be thought to lag in those outward and visible

signs that both show and verify the inward spiritual grace. Believe me,

you recur to my thoughts frequently, and never without pleasure, never

without my making out of the past a little day-dream for the future. I

left Wordsworth on the 4th of this month; if I cannot procure a suitable

house at Stowey I return to Cumberland and settle at Keswick, in a house

of such prospect that if, according to you and Hume, impressions

constitute our being, I shall have a tendency to become a god, so

sublime and beautiful will be the series of my visual existence. But,

whether I continue here or migrate thither, I shall be in a beautiful

country, and have house-room and heart-room for you, and you must come

and write your next work at my house. My dear Godwin! I remember you

with so much pleasure, and our conversations so distinctly, that, I

doubt not, we have been mutually benefited; but as to your poetic and

physiopathic feelings, I more than suspect that dear little Fanny and

Mary have had more to do in that business than I. Hartley sends his love

to Mary. [1] "What, and not to Fanny?" "Yes, and to Fanny, but I'll

'have' Mary." He often talks about them.

My poor Lamb, how cruelly afflictions crowd upon him! I am glad that you

think of him as I think: he has an affectionate heart, a mind "sui

generis"; his taste acts so as to appear like the unmechanic simplicity

of an instinct; in brief, he is worth an hundred men of mere talents.

Conversation with the latter tribe is like the use of leaden bells--one

wearies by exercise. Lamb every now and then "irradiates", and the beam,

though single and fine as a hair, yet is rich with colours, and I both

see and feel it. In Bristol I was much with Davy, almost all day. He

always talks of you with great affection, and defends you with a

friendly zeal. If I settle at Keswick he will be with me in the fall of

the year, and so must you: and let me tell you, Godwin, that four such

men as you, I, Davy, and Wordsworth, do not meet together in one house

every day in the year--I mean four men so distinct with so many

sympathies. I received yesterday a letter from Southey. He arrived at

Lisbon after a prosperous voyage, on the last day of April; his letter

to me is dated May-Day. He girds up his loins for a great history of

Portugal, which will be translated into Portuguese in the first year of

the Lusitanian Republic.

Have you seen Mrs. Robinson [2] lately--how is she? Remember me in the

kindest and most respectful phrases to her. I wish I knew the

particulars of her complaint; for Davy has discovered a perfectly new

acid by which he has restored the use of limbs to persons who had lost

it for many years (one woman nine years), in cases of supposed

rheumatism. At all events, Davy says, it can do no harm in Mrs.

Robinson's case, and, if she will try it, he will make up a little

parcel and write her a letter of instructions, etc. Tell her, and it is

the truth, that Davy is exceedingly delighted with the two poems in the

"Anthology".

N.B. Did you get my attempt at a tragedy from Mrs. Robinson?

To Mrs. Smith I am about to write a letter, with a book; be so kind as

to inform me of her direction.

Mrs. Inchbald I do not like at all; every time I recollect her I like

her less. That segment of a look at the corner of her eye--O God in

heaven! it is so cold and cunning. Through worlds of wildernesses I

would run away from that look, that "heart-picking" look! 'Tis

marvellous to me that you can like that woman.

I shall remain here about ten days for certain. If you have leisure and

inclination in that time, write; if not, I will write to you where I am

going, or at all events whither I am gone.

God bless you, and

Your sincerely affectionate

S. T. COLERIDGE.

Mr. T. Poole's,

N[ether] Stowey, Bridgwater.

Sara desires to be remembered kindly to you, and sends a kiss to Fanny,

and "dear meek little Mary."

[Footnote 1: Mrs. Shelley.]

[Footnote 2: The celebrated Perdita. She died in the following

December.]

Next month Coleridge wrote to Davy.

LETTER 92. TO HUMPHRY DAVY

Saturday Morning, Mr. T. Poole's, Nether Stowey, Somerset.

My dear Davy,

I received a very kind letter from Godwin, in which he says that he

never thinks of you but with a brother's feeling of love and

expectation. Indeed, I am sure he does not.

I think of translating Blumenbach's Manual of Natural History: it is

very well written, and would, I think, be useful both to students, as an

admirable direction to their studies, and to others it would supply a

general knowledge of the subject. I will state the contents of the book:

1. Of the naturalia in general, and their divisions into three kingdoms.

2. Of organised bodies in general. 3. Of animals in general. 4. Of the

mammalia. 5. Birds. 6. Amphibious. 7. Fishes. 8. Insects. 9. Worms. 10.

Plants. 11. Of minerals in general. 12. Of stones and earthy fossils.

13. Of mineral salts. 14. Combustible minerals. 15. Of metals. 16.

Petrifactions. At the end there is an alphabetical index, so that it is

at once a natural history and a dictionary of natural history. To each

animal, etc., all the European names are given, with of course the

scientific characteristics. I have the last edition, "i.e.", that of

April, 1799. Now, I wish to know from you, whether there is in English

already any work of one volume (this would make 800 pages), that renders

this useless. In short, should I be right in advising Longman to

undertake it? Answer me as soon as you conveniently can. Blumenbach has

been no very great discoverer, though he has done some respectable

things in that way, but he is a man of enormous knowledge, and has an

"arranging" head. Ask Beddoes, if you do not know. When you have

leisure, you would do me a great service, if you would briefly state

your metaphysical system of impressions, ideas, pleasures, and pains,

the laws that govern them, and the reasons which induce you to consider

them as essentially distinct from each other. My motive for this request

is the following:--As soon as I "settle", I shall read Spinoza and

Leibnitz, and I particularly wish to know wherein they agree with, and

wherein differ from you. If you will do this, I promise you to send you

the result, and with it my own creed.

God bless you!

S. T. COLERIDGE.

Blumenbach's book contains references to all the best writers on each

subject. My friend, T. Poole, begs me to ask what, in your opinion, are

the parts or properties in the oak which tan skins? and is cold water a

complete menstruum for these parts or properties? I understand from

Poole that nothing is so little understood as the chemical theory of

tan, though nothing is of more importance in the circle of manufactures;

in other words, does oak bark give out to cold water all those of its

parts which tan?

Coleridge and his family at last settled down at Greta Hall in July,

1800, and he thus writes to Josiah Wedgwood of the event.

LETTER 93. To JOSIAH WEDGWOOD

July 24, 1800.

My dear sir,

I find your letter on my arrival at Grasmere, namely, dated on the 29th

of June, since which time to the present, with the exception of the last

few days, I have been more unwell than I have ever been since I left

school. For many days I was forced to keep my bed, and when released

from that incarceration, I suffered most grievously from a brace of

swollen eyelids, and a head into which, on the least agitation, the

blood was felt as rushing in and flowing back again, like the raking of

the tide on a coast of loose stones. However, thank God, I am now coming

about again.

That Tom receives such pleasure from natural scenery strikes me as it

does you. The total incapability which I have found in myself to

associate any but the most languid feelings, with the God-like objects

which have surrounded me, and the nauseous efforts to impress my

admiration into the service of nature, has given me a sympathy with his

former state of health, which I never before could have had. I wish,

from the bottom of my soul, that he may be enjoying similar pleasures

with those which I am now enjoying with all that newness of sensation;

that voluptuous correspondence of the blood and flesh about me with

breeze and sun-heat, which makes convalescence more than repay one for

disease.

I parted from Poole with pain and dejection, for him, and for myself in

him. I should have given Stowey a decided preference for a residence. It

was likewise so conveniently situated, that I was in the way of almost

all whom I love and esteem. But there was no suitable house, and no

prospect of a suitable house.

* * * These things would have weighed as nothing, could I have remained

at Stowey, but now they come upon me to diminish my regret. Add to this,

Poole's determination to spend a year or two on the continent, in case

of a peace and his mother's death. God in heaven bless her! I am sure

she will not live long. This is the first day of my arrival at Keswick.

My house is roomy, situated on an eminence, a furlong from the town;

before it an enormous garden, more than two-thirds of which is rented as

a garden for sale articles; but the walks are ours. Completely behind

the house are shrubberies, and a declivity planted with flourishing

trees of ten or fifteen years' growth, at the bottom of which is a most

delightful shaded walk, by the river Greta, a quarter of a mile in

length. The room in which I sit commands from one window the

Bassenthwaite lake, woods, and mountains. From the opposite, the

Derwentwater and fantastic mountains of Borrowdale. Straight before is a

wilderness of mountains, catching and streaming lights and shadows at

all times. Behind the house, and entering into all our views, is

Skiddaw.

My acquaintances here are pleasant, and at some distance is Sir Guilfred

Lawson's seat, with a very large and expensive library, to which I have

every reason to hope that I shall have free access. But when I have been

settled here a few days longer, I will write you a minute account of my

situation. Wordsworth lives twelve miles distant. In about a year's time

he will probably settle at Keswick likewise. It is no small advantage

here, that for two-thirds of the year we are in complete retirement. The

other third is alive and swarms with tourists of all shapes, and sizes,

and characters. It is the very place I would recommend to a novelist or

farce writer. Besides, at that time of the year there is always hope

that a friend may be among the number and miscellaneous crowd, whom this

place attracts. So much for Keswick.

Have you seen my translation of "Wallenstein". It is a dull heavy play,

but I entertain hopes that you will think the language for the greater

part, natural, and good common sense English; to which excellence, if I

can lay fair claim in any work of poetry or prose, I shall be a very

singular writer, at least. I am now working at my "Introduction of the

Life of Lessing", which I trust will be in the press before Christmas,

that is, the "Introduction", which will be published first. God bless

you,

S. T. COLERIDGE.

Josiah Wedgwood, Esq.

To Davy Coleridge wrote on the succeeding day.

LETTER 94. TO DAVY

Keswick, Friday Evening, July 25, 1800.

My dear Davy

Work hard, and if success do not dance up like the bubbles in the salt

(with the spirit lamp under it), may the Devil and his dam take success!

My dear fellow! from the window before me there is a great "camp" of

mountains. Giants seem to have pitched their tents there. Each mountain

is a giant's tent, and how the light streams from them. Davy! I "ache"

for you to be with us.

W. Wordsworth is such a lazy fellow, that I bemire myself by making

promises for him: the moment I received your letter, I wrote to him. He

will, I hope, write immediately to Biggs and Cottle. At all events,

those poems must not as yet be delivered up to them, because that

beautiful poem, "The Brothers", which I read to you in Paul Street, I

neglected to deliver to you, and that must begin the volume. I trust,

however, that I have invoked the sleeping bard with a spell so potent,

that he will awake and deliver up that sword of Argantyr, which is to

rive the enchanter "Gaudyverse" from his crown to his foot.

What did you think of that case I translated for you from the German?

That I was a well-meaning sutor who had ultra-crepidated[1] with more

zeal than wisdom!! I give myself credit for that word "ultra-

crepidated," it started up in my brain like a creation. I write to

Tobin by this post. Godwin is gone Irelandward, on a visit to Curran,

says the "Morning Post"; to Grattan, writes C. Lamb.

We drank tea the night before I left Grasmere, on the island in that

lovely lake; our kettle swung over the fire, hanging from the branch of

a fir-tree, and I lay and saw the woods, and mountains, and lake all

trembling, and as it were idealized through the suble smoke, which rose

up from the clear, red embers of the fir-apples which we had collected:

afterwards we made a glorious bonfire on the margin, by some elder

bushes, whose twigs heaved and sobbed in the uprushing column of smoke,

and the image of the bonfire, and of us that danced round it, ruddy,

laughing faces in the twilight; the image of this in a lake, smooth as

that sea, to whose waves the Son of God had said, "Peace!" May God, and

all his sons, love you as I do.

S. T. COLERIDGE.

Sara desires her kind remembrances. Hartley is a spirit that dances on

an aspen leaf; the air that yonder sallowfaced and yawning tourist is

breathing, is to my babe a perpetual nitrous oxide. Never was more

joyous creature born. Pain with him is so wholly transubstantiated by

the joys that had rolled on before, and rushed on after, that oftentimes

five minutes after his mother has whipt him, he has gone up and asked

her to whip him again.[2]

[Footnote 1: "Ne sutor ultra crepidam."]

[Footnote 2: Letter CX follows No. 94.]

Coleridge was now as enamoured of the Lake District as he had been of

Stowey. On 22nd September he wrote to Godwin.

LETTER 95. TO GODWIN

Monday, Sept. 22, 1800.

Dear Godwin,

I received your letter, and with it the enclosed note,[1] which shall be

punctually re-delivered to you on the first of October.

Your tragedy [2] to be exhibited at Christmas! I have, indeed, merely

read through your letter; so it is not strange that my heart continues

beating out of time. Indeed, indeed Godwin, such a stream of hope and

fear rushed in on me, as I read the sentence, as you would not permit

yourself to feel! If there be anything yet undreamt of in our

philosophy; if it be, or if it be possible, that thought can impel

thought out of the usual limit of a man's own skull and heart; if the

cluster of ideas which constitute an identity, do ever connect and unite

into a greater whole; if feelings could ever propagate themselves

without the servile ministrations of undulating air or reflected light;

I seem to feel within myself a strength and a power of desire that might

dart a modifying, commanding impulse on a whole theatre. What does all

this mean? Alas! that sober sense should know no other way to construe

all this, than by the tame phrase, I wish you success! That which Lamb

informed you is founded on truth. Mr. Sheridan sent, through the medium

of Stuart, a request to Wordsworth to present a tragedy to his stage;

and to me a declaration, that the failure of my piece was owing to my

obstinacy in refusing any alteration. I laughed and Wordsworth smiled;

but my tragedy will remain at Keswick, and Wordsworth's is not likely to

emigrate from Grasmere. Wordsworth's drama is, in its present state, not

fit for the stage, and he is not well enough to submit to the drudgery

of making it so. Mine is fit for nothing, except to excite in the minds

of good men the hope "that the young man is likely to do better." In the

first moments I thought of re-writing it, and sent to Lamb for the copy

with this intent. I read an Act, and altered my opinion, and with it my

wish.

Your feelings respecting Baptism are, I suppose, much like mine! At

times I dwell on Man with such reverence, resolve all his follies into

such grand primary laws of intellect, and in such wise so contemplate

them as ever-varying incarnations of the Eternal Life--that the Llama's

dung-pellet, or the cow-tail which the dying Brahmin clutches

convulsively, become sanctified and sublime by the feelings which

cluster round them. In that mood I exclaim, my boys shall be christened!

But then another fit of moody philosophy attacks me. I look at my

doted-on Hartley--he moves, he lives, he finds impulses from within and

from without, he is the darling of the sun and of the breeze. Nature

seems to bless him as a thing of her own. He looks at the clouds, the

mountains, the living beings of the earth, and vaults and jubilates!

Solemn looks and solemn words have been hitherto connected in his mind

with great and magnificent objects only: with lightning, with thunder,

with the waterfall blazing in the sunset. Then I say, shall I suffer him

to see grave countenances and hear grave accents, while his face is

sprinkled? Shall I be grave myself, and tell a lie to him? Or shall I

laugh, and teach him to insult the feelings of his fellow men? Besides,

are we not all in this present hour, fainting beneath the duty of Hope?

From such thoughts I stand up, and vow a book of severe analysis, in

which I shall tell "all" I believe to be truth in the nakedest language

in which it can be told.

My wife is now quite comfortable. Surely you might come and spend the

very next four weeks, not without advantage to both of us. The very

glory of the place is coming on; the local genius is just arraying

himself in his higher attributes. But, above all, I press it because my

mind has been busied with speculations that are closely connected with

those pursuits that have hitherto constituted your utility and

importance: and, ardently as I wish you success on the stage, I yet

cannot frame myself to the thought that you should cease to appear as a

bold moral thinker. I wish you to write a book on the power of words,

and the processes by which human feelings form affinities with them--in

short, I wish you to "philosophize" Horne Tooke's system, and to solve

the great questions--whether there be reason to hold that an action

bearing the semblance of predesigning consciousness may yet be simply

organic, and whether a series of such actions are possible--and close on

the heels of this question would follow the old, "Is logic the essence

of thinking?"--in other words, "Is thinking possible without arbitrary

signs? or how far is the word arbitrary a misnomer? are not words, etc.,

parts and germinations of the plant, and what is the law of their

growth?" In something of this order I would endeavour to destroy the old

antithesis of Words and Things, elevating, as it were, Words into

Things, and living things too. All the nonsense of vibrations, etc., you

would, of course, dismiss.

If what I have here written appear nonsense to you, or common sense in a

harlequinade of "outre" expressions, suspend your judgment till we see

each other.

Yours sincerely,

S. T. COLERIDGE.

I was in the country when "Wallenstein" was published. Longman sent me

down half-a-dozen--the carriage back the book was not worth.

[Footnote 1: A loan often pounds.]

[Footnote 2: "Antonio."]

Coleridge had asked Godwin to stand godfather to his child, which

compliment Godwin declined. Hence the passage in the above letter on

Baptism.

Davy now occupied a large part of Coleridge's attention. On 9th October

he wrote:

LETTER 96. To DAVY

Thursday night, October 9, 1800.

My dear Davy,

I was right glad, glad with a "stagger" of the heart, to see your

writing again. Many a moment have I had all my France and England

curiosity suspended and lost, looking in the advertisement front column

of the "Morning Post Gazetteer", for "Mr. Davy's Galvanic habitudes of

charcoal. ..." Upon my soul, I believe there is not a letter in those

words round which a world of imagery does not circumvolve; your room,

the garden, the cold bath, the moonlight rocks, Barristed, Moore, and

simple-looking Frere, and dreams of wonderful things attached to your

name--and Skiddaw, and Glaramara, and Eagle Crag, and you, and

Wordsworth, and me, on the top of them! I pray you do write to me

immediately, and tell me what you mean by the possibility of your

assuming a new occupation; [1] have you been successful to the extent of

your expectations in your late chemical inquiries?

In your poem,[2] "impressive" is used for "impressible" or passive, is

it not? If so, it is not English; life "diffusive" likewise is not

English. The last stanza introduces "confusion" into my mind, and

despondency--and has besides been so often said by the materialists,

etc., that it is not worth repeating. If the poem had ended more

originally, in short, but for the last stanza, I will venture to affirm

that there were never so many lines which so uninterruptedly combined

natural and beautiful words with strict philosophic truths, "i.e.",

scientifically philosophic. Of the second, third, fourth, fifth, sixth,

and seventh stanzas, I am doubtful which is the most beautiful. Do not

imagine that I cling to a fond love of future identity, but the thought

which you have expressed in the last stanzas might be more grandly, and

therefore more consolingly exemplified. I had forgot to say that

sameness and identity are words too etymologically the same to be placed

so close to each other.

As to myself, I am doing little worthy the relation. I write for Stuart

in the "Morning Post", and I am compelled by the god Pecunia, which was

one name of the supreme Jupiter, to give a volume of letters from

Germany, which will be a decent "lounge" book, and not an atom more. The

"Christabel" was running up to 1,300 lines, and was so much admired by

Wordsworth, that he thought it indelicate to print two volumes with his

name, in which so much of another man's was included; and which was of

more consequence, the poem was in direct opposition to the very purpose

for which the lyrical ballads were published, viz., an experiment to see

how far those passions which alone give any value to extraordinary

incidents were capable of interesting in and for themselves in the

incidents of common life. We mean to publish the "Christabel",

therefore, with a long blank-verse poem of Wordsworth's, entitled "The

Pedlar".[3] I assure you I think very differently of "Christabel". I

would rather have written "Ruth", and "Nature's Lady",[4] than a million

such poems. But why do I calumniate my own spirit by saying I would

rather? God knows it is as delightful to me that they "are" written. I

"know" that at present, and I "hope" that it "will" be so; my mind has

"disciplined" itself into a willing exertion of its powers, without any

reference to their comparative value.

I cannot speak favourably of W.'s health, but indeed he has not done

common justice to Dr. Beddoes's kind prescriptions. I saw his

countenance darken, and all his hopes vanish, when he saw the

"prescriptions"--his "scepticism" concerning medicines! nay, it is not

enough "scepticism"! Yet, now that peas and beans are over, I have hopes

that he will in good earnest make a fair and full trial. I rejoice with

sincere joy at Beddoes's recovery.

Wordsworth is fearful you have been much teazed by the printers on his

account, but you can sympathise with him. The works which I gird myself

up to attack as soon as money concerns will permit me, are the "Life of

Lessing", and the "Essay on Poetry". The latter is still more at my

heart than the former: its title would be an essay on the elements of

poetry--it would in reality be a "disguised" system of morals and

politics.

When you write, and do write soon, tell me how I can get your essay on

the nitrous oxide. If you desired Johnson to have one sent to

Lackington's, to be placed in Mr. Crosthwaite's monthly parcel for

Keswick, I should receive it. Are your galvanic discoveries important?

What do they lead to? All this is "ultra crepidation", but would to

heaven I had as much knowledge as I have sympathy! My wife and children

are well; the baby was dying some weeks ago, so the good people would

have it baptized; his name is Derwent Coleridge, so called from the

river, for fronting our house the Greta runs into the Derwent. Had it

been a girl, the name should have been Greta. By the by, Greta, or

rather Grieta, is exactly the Cocytus of the Greeks; the word, literally

rendered in modern English, is, "The loud Lamenter;" to griet, in the

Cambrian dialect, signifying to roar aloud for grief or pain, and it

does "roar" with a vengeance!

I will say nothing about Spring--a thirsty man tries to think of

anything but the stream when he knows it to be ten miles off!

God bless you! Your most affectionate

S. T. COLERIDGE.[5]

Another letter to Godwin at this time indicates that Coleridge was still

expecting to be able to finish "Christabel", which as a completed poem,

Coleridge, as we have already seen, calculated would run up to 1,300

lines.

[Footnote 1: No doubt the leaving of the Pneumatic for the Royal

Institution.]

[Footnote 2: That entitled, "Written after Recovery from a Dangerous

Illness." It is to be found in the "Memoirs of his Life", vol. i, p.

390. Coleridge's critical remarks apply to it as it was first written;

the words objected to are not to be found in it in its corrected printed

state.]

[Footnote 1: A name changed to "The Excursion".]

[Footnote 2: "Three years she grew in sun and shower."]

[Footnote 5: Letter CXI is our 96.]

LETTER 97. TO GODWIN

Monday, Oct. 13, 1800.

Dear Godwin,

I have been myself too frequently a grievous delinquent in the article

of letter-writing to feel any inclination to reproach my friends when,

peradventure, they have been long silent. But, this out of the question,

I did not expect a speedier answer; for I had anticipated the

circumstances which you assign as the causes of your delay.

An attempt to finish a poem of mine for insertion in the second volume

of the "Lyrical Ballads", has thrown me so fearfully back in my bread

and beef occupations, that I shall scarcely be able to justify myself in

putting you to the expense of the few lines which I may be able to

scrawl in the present paper--but some parts in your letter interested me

deeply, and I wished to tell you so. First, then, you know Kemble, and I

do not. But my conjectural judgments concerning his character lead me to

persuade an absolute passive obedience to his opinion, and this, too,

because I would leave to every man his own trade. "Your" trade has been,

in the present instance, "first" to furnish a wise pleasure to your

fellow-beings in general, and, "secondly", to give Mr. Kemble and his

associates the power of delighting that part of your fellow-beings

assembled in a theatre. As to what relates to the first point, I should

be sorry indeed if greater men than Mr. Kemble could induce you to alter

a "but" to a "yet" contrary to your own convictions. Above all things,

an author ought to be sincere to the public; and, when William Godwin

stands in the title-page, it implies that W. G. approves that which

follows. Besides, the mind and finer feelings are blunted by such

obsequiousness. But in the theatre it is Godwin and Co. "ex professo". I

should regard it in almost the same light as if I had written a song for

Haydn to compose and Mara to sing; I know, indeed, what is poetry, but I

do not know so well as he and she what will suit his notes or her voice.

That actors and managers are often wrong is true, but still their trade

is "their" trade, and the presumption is in favour of their being right.

For the press, I should wish you to be solicitously nice; because you

are to exhibit before a larger and more respectable multitude than a

theatre presents to you, and in a new part, that of a poet employing his

philosophical knowledge practically. If it be possible, come, therefore,

and let us discuss every page and every line.

Now for something which, I would fain believe, is still more important,

namely, the propriety of your future philosophical speculations. Your

second objection, derived from the present "ebb" of opinion, will be

best answered by the fact that Mackintosh and his followers have the

"flow". This is greatly in your favour, for mankind are at present gross

reasoners. They reason in a perpetual antithesis; Mackintosh is an

oracle, and Godwin therefore a fool. Now it is morally impossible that

Mackintosh and the sophists of his school can retain this opinion. You

may well exclaim with Job, "O that my adversary would write a book!"

When he publishes, it will be all over with him, and then the minds of

men will incline strongly to those who would point out in intellectual

perceptions a source of moral progressiveness. Every man in his heart is

in favour of your general principles. A party of dough-baked democrats

of fortune were weary of being dissevered from their fellow rich men.

They want to say something in defence of turning round. Mackintosh puts

that something into their mouths, and for awhile they will admire and

be-praise him. In a little while these men will have fallen back into

the ranks from which they had stepped out, and life is too melancholy a

thing for men in general for the doctrine of unprogressiveness to remain

popular. Men cannot long retain their faith in the Heaven "above" the

blue sky, but a Heaven they will have, and he who reasons best on the

side of the universal wish will be the most popular philosopher. As to

your first objection, that you are a logician, let me say that your

habits are analytic, but that you have not read enough of travels,

voyages, and biography--especially men's lives of themselves--and you

have too soon submitted your notions to other men's censures in

conversation. A man should nurse his opinions in privacy and

self-fondness for a long time, and seek for sympathy and love, not for

detection or censure. Dismiss, my dear fellow, your theory of Collision

of Ideas, and take up that of Mutual Propulsion. I wish to write more,

and state to you a lucrative job, which would, I think, be eminently

serviceable to your own mind, and which you would have every opportunity

of doing here. I now express a serious wish that you would come and look

out for a house. Did Stuart remit you £10. on my account?

S. T. COLERIDGE.

I would gladly write any verses, but to a prologue or epilogue I am

absolutely incompetent.

Coleridge was a tremendous walker and hill climber. The following letter

narrates a curious adventure in a storm among the mountains.

LETTER 98. TO DAVY

October 18, 1800.

My dear Davy,

Our mountains northward end in the mountain Carrock--one huge, steep,

enormous bulk of stones, desolately variegated with the heath plant; at

its foot runs the river Calder, and a narrow vale between it and the

mountain Bowscale, so narrow, that in its greatest width it is not more

than a furlong. But that narrow vale is "so" green, "so" beautiful,

there are moods in which a man might weep to look at it, On this

mountain Carrock, at the summit of which are the remains of a vast Druid

circle of stones, I was wandering, when a thick cloud came on, and

wrapped me in such darkness, that I could not see ten yards before me,

and with the cloud a storm of wind and hail, the like of which I had

never before seen and felt. At the very summit is a cone of stones,

built by the shepherds, and called the Carrock Man. Such cones are on

the tops of almost all our mountains, and they are all called "men". At

the bottom of the Carrock Man I seated myself for shelter, but the wind

became so fearful and tyrannous, that I was apprehensive some of the

stones might topple down upon me, so I groped my way farther down and

came to three rocks, placed on this wise 1/3\2*** each one supported by

the other like a child's house of cards, and in the hollow and screen

which they made, I sate for a long while sheltered, as if I had been in

my own study in which I am now writing: there I sate with a total

feeling worshipping the power and "eternal link" of energy. The darkness

vanished as by enchantment; far off, far, far off to the south, the

mountains of Glaramara and Great Gable and their family appeared

distinct, in deepest, sablest "blue". I rose, and behind me was a

rainbow bright as the brightest. I descended by the side of a torrent,

and passed, or rather crawled (for I was forced to descend on all

fours), by many a naked waterfall, till fatigued and hungry (and with a

finger almost broken, and which remains swelled to the size of two

fingers), I reached the narrow vale, and the single house nestled in ash

and sycamores. I entered to claim the universal hospitality of this

country; but instead of the life and comfort usual in these lonely

houses, I saw dirt, and every appearance of misery--a pale woman sitting

by a peat fire. I asked her for bread and milk, and she sent a small

child to fetch it, but did not rise herself. I ate very heartily of the

black, sour bread, and drank a bowl of milk, and asked her to permit me

to pay her. "Nay," says she, "we are not so scant as that--you are right

welcome; but do you know any help for the rheumatics, for I have been so

long ailing that I am almost fain to die?" So I advised her to eat a

great deal of mustard, having seen in an advertisement something about

essence of mustard curing the most obstinate cases of rheumatism. But do

write me, and tell me some cure for the rheumatism; it is in her

shoulders, and the small of her back chiefly. I wish much to go off with

some bottles of stuff to the poor creature. I should walk the ten miles

as ten yards. With love and honour,

My dear Davy, yours,

S. T. COLERIDGE. [1]

[Footnote 1: Letter CXII is our 98.]

The next letter relates how Coleridge wrote the Second Part of

"Christabel", which had been composed before 4th October (Dorothy

Wordsworth's "Journals", i, 51).

LETTER 99. TO JOSIAH WEDGWOOD

Keswick, Nov. 1, 1800.

My dear Sir,

I would fain believe that the experiment which your brother has made in

the West Indies is not wholly a discouraging one. If a warm climate did

nothing but only prevented him from getting worse, it surely evidenced

some power; and perhaps a climate equally favourable in a country of

more various interest, Italy, or the South of France, may tempt your

brother to make a longer trial. If (disciplining myself into silent

cheerfulness) I could be of any comfort to him by being his companion

and attendant, for two or three months, on the supposition that he

should wish to travel, and was at a loss for a companion more fit, I

would go with him with a willing affection. You will easily see, my dear

friend, that I say this only to increase the range of your brother's

choice--for even in choosing there is some pleasure.

There happen frequently little odd coincidences in time, that recall

momentary faith in the notion of sympathies acting in absence. I heard

of your brother's return, for the first time, on Monday last, the day on

which your letter is dated, from Stoddart. Had it rained on my naked

skin I could not have felt more strangely. The 300 or 400 miles that are

between us seemed converted into a moral distance; and I knew that the

whole of this silence I was myself accountable for; for I ended my last

letter by promising to follow it with a second and longer one, before

you could answer the first. But immediately on my arrival in this

country I undertook to finish a poem which I had begun, entitled

"Christabel", for a second volume of the "Lyrical Ballads". I tried to

perform my promise, but the deep unutterable disgust which I had

suffered in the translation of the accursed "Wallenstein", seemed to

have stricken me with barrenness; for I tried and tried, and nothing

would come of it. I desisted with a deeper dejection than I am willing

to remember. The wind from the Skiddaw and Borrowdale was often as loud

as wind need be, and many a walk in the clouds in the mountains did I

take; but all would not do, till one day I dined out at the house of a

neighbouring clergyman, and some how or other drank so much wine, that I

found some effort and dexterity requisite to balance myself on the

hither edge of sobriety. The next day my verse-making faculties returned

to me, and I proceeded successfully, till my poem grew so long, and in

Wordsworth's opinion so impressive, that he rejected it from his volume,

as disproportionate both in size and merit, and as discordant in its

character. In the mean time I had gotten myself entangled in the old

sorites of the old sophist,--procrastination. I had suffered my

necessary businesses to accumulate so terribly, that I neglected to

write to any one, till the pain I suffered from not writing made me

waste as many hours in dreaming about it as would have sufficed for the

letter writing of half a life. But there is something beside time

requisite for the writing of a letter--at least with me. My situation

here is indeed a delightful situation; but I feel what I have lost--feel

it deeply--it recurs more often and more painfully than I had

anticipated, indeed so much so, that I scarcely ever feel myself

impelled, that is to say, pleasurably impelled to write to Poole. I used

to feel myself more at home in his great windy parlour than in my own

cottage. We were well suited to each other--my animal spirits corrected

his inclination to melancholy; and there was something both in his

understanding and in his affections, so healthy and manly, that my mind

freshened in his company, and my ideas and habits of thinking acquired

day after day more of substance and reality. Indeed, indeed, my dear,

sir, with tears in my eyes, and with all my heart and soul, I wish it

were as easy for us all to meet as it was when you lived at Upcott. Yet

when I revise the step I have taken, I know not how I could have acted

otherwise than I did act. Everything I promised myself in this country

has answered far beyond my expectation. The room in which I write

commands six distinct landscapes--the two lakes, the vale, the river and

mountains, and mists, and clouds and sunshine, make endless

combinations, as if heaven and earth were for ever talking to each

other. Often when in a deep study, I have walked to the window and

remained there looking without seeing; all at once the lake of Keswick

and the fantastic mountains of Borrowdale, at the head of it, have

entered into my mind, with a suddenness as if I had been snatched out of

Cheapside and placed for the first time, in the spot where I stood--and

that is a delightful feeling--these fits and trances of novelty received

from a long known object. The river Greta flows behind our house,

roaring like an untamed son of the hills, then winds round and glides

away in the front, so that we live in a peninsula. But besides this

etherial eye-feeding we have very substantial conveniences. We are close

to the town, where we have respectable and neighbourly acquaintance, and

a most sensible and truly excellent medical man. Our garden is part of a

large nursery garden, which is the same to us and as private as if the

whole had been our own, and thus too we have delightful walks without

passing our garden gates. My landlord who lives in the sister house, for

the two houses are built so as to look like one great one, is a modest

and kind man, of a singular character. By the severest economy he raised

himself from a carrier into the possession of a comfortable

independence. He was always very fond of reading, and has collected

nearly 500 volumes, of our most esteemed modern writers, such as Gibbon,

Hume, Johnson, etc. etc. His habits of economy and simplicity, remain

with him, and yet so very disinterested a man I scarcely ever knew.

Lately, when I wished to settle with him about the rent of our house, he

appeared much affected, told me that my living near him, and the having

so much of Hartley's company were great comforts to him and his

housekeeper, that he had no children to provide for, and did not mean to

marry; and in short, that he did not want any rent at all from me. This

of course I laughed him out of; but he absolutely refused to receive any

rent for the first half-year, under the pretext that the house was not

completely furnished. Hartley quite lives at the house, and it is as you

may suppose, no small joy to my wife to have a good affectionate

motherly woman divided from her only by a wall. Eighteen miles from our

house lives Sir Guilfred Lawson, who has a princely library, chiefly of

natural history--a kind and generous, but weak and ostentatious sort of

man, who has been abundantly civil to me. Among other raree shows, he

keeps a wild beast or two, with some eagles, etc. The master of the

beasts at the Exeter 'Change, sent him down a large bear,--with it a

long letter of directions, concerning the food, etc. of the animal, and

many solicitations respecting other agreeable quadrupeds which he was

desirous to send to the baronet, at a moderate price, and concluding in

this manner: "and remain your honour's most devoted humble servant, J.P.

Permit me, sir Guilfred, to send you a buffalo and a rhinoceros." As

neat a postscript as I ever heard--the tradesmanlike coolness with which

these pretty little animals occurred to him just at the finishing of his

letter! You will in three weeks see the letters on the 'Rise and

Condition of the German Boors'. I found it convenient to make up a

volume out of my journey, etc. in North Germany--and the letters (your

name of course erased) are in the printer's hands. I was so weary of

transcribing and composing, that when I found those more carefully

written than the rest, I even sent them off as they were.

* * * * *

My littlest one is a very stout boy indeed. He is christened by the name

of "Derwent,"--a sort of sneaking affection you see for the poetical and

novellish, which I disguised to myself under the show, that my brothers

had so many children Johns, Jameses, Georges, etc. etc., that a handsome

Christian-like name was not to be had except by encroaching on the names

of my little nephews. If you are at Gunville at Christmas, I hold out

hopes to myself that I shall be able to pass a week with you there. I

mentioned to you at Upcott a kind of comedy that I had committed to

writing in part. This is in the wind.

Wordsworth's second vol. of the 'Lyrical Ballads' will, I hope, and

almost believe, afford you as unmingled pleasure as is in the nature of

a collection of very various poems to afford to one individual mind.

Sheridan has sent to him too--requests him to write a tragedy for Drury

Lane. But W. will not be diverted by anything from the prosecution of

his great work.

Southey's 'Thalaba', in twelve books, is going to the press.

Remember me with great affection to your brother, and present my kindest

respects to Mrs. Wedgwood. Your late governess wanted one thing, which

where there is health is I think indispensable in the moral character of

a young person--a light and cheerful heart. She interested me a good

deal. She appears to me to have been injured by going out of the common

way without any of that imagination, which if it be a Jack o' Lanthorn

to lead us out of our way, is however, at the same time a torch to light

us whither we are going. A whole essay might be written on the danger of

thinking without images. God bless you, my dear sir, and him who is with

grateful and affectionate esteem,

Yours ever,

S. T. COLERIDGE

Josiah Wedgwood.

Coleridge was still in money difficulties, and the following letter is

chiefly about his indebtedness to the Wedgwoods.

LETTER 100. TO JOSIAH WEDGWOOD

November 12, 1800.

My dear sir,

I received your kind letter, with the £20. My eyes are in such a state

of inflammation that I might as well write blindfold, they are so

blood-red. I have had leeches twice, and have now a blister behind my

right ear. How I caught the cold, in the first instance, I can scarcely

guess; but I improved it to its present glorious state, by taking long

walks all the mornings, spite of the wind, and writing late at night,

while my eyes were weak.

I have made some rather curious observations on the rising up of spectra

in the eye, in its inflamed state, and their influence on ideas, etc.,

but I cannot see to make myself intelligible to you. Present my kindest

remembrance to Mrs. W. and your brother. Pray did you ever pay any

particular attention to the first time of your little ones smiling and

laughing? Both I and Mrs. C. have carefully watched our little one, and

noticed down all the circumstances, under which he smiled, and under

which he laughed, for the first six times, nor have we remitted our

attention; but I have not been able to derive the least confirmation of

Hartley's or Darwin's Theory. You say most truly, my dear sir, that a

pursuit is necessary. Pursuit, for even praiseworthy employment, merely

for good, or general good, is not sufficient for happiness, nor fit for

man.

I have not at present made out how I stand in pecuniary ways, but I

believe that I have anticipated on the next year to the amount of Thirty

or Forty pounds, probably more. God bless you, my dear sir, and your

sincerely

Affectionate friend,

S. T. COLERIDGE.

Josiah Wedgwood, Esq.

The publication of the "Wallenstein" had brought on Coleridge the odium

of being an advocate of the German Theatre, at this time identified with

the melo-dramatic sentimentalism of Kotzbue and his school. English

opinion did not then discriminate between a Schiller and a Kotzebue. The

following curious disclaimer appeared in the "Monthly Review" on 18th

November 1800.

LETTER 101. TO THE EDITOR OF THE "MONTHLY REVIEW".

Greta Hall, Keswick,

Nov. 18, 1800.

In the review of my translation of Schiller's "Wallenstein" ("Rev". for

October), I am numbered among the partisans of the German theatre. As I

am confident there is no passage in my preface or notes from which such

an opinion can be legitimately formed, and as the truth would not have

been exceeded if the direct contrary had been affirmed, I claim it of

your justice that in your Answers to Correspondents you would remove

this misrepresentation. The mere circumstance of translating a

manuscript play is not even evidence that I admired that one play, much

less that I am a general admirer of the plays in that language.

I remain, etc.,

S. T. COLERIDGE.

During the latter half of 1800 Dorothy Wordsworth's "Journal" contains

many entries showing that Coleridge and the Wordsworths were in frequent

communication with each other. Coleridge thought nothing of traversing

the dozen miles between Keswick and Dove Cottage by the highway, or over

the hill passes. Wordsworth and Dorothy, too, went often to Keswick, and

occasionally stayed with the Coleridges ("Grasmere Journals", i, 43-60).

Amid these literary and poetic meetings between the poets and their

families, other correspondents were not forgotten by Coleridge. The

following two letters to Davy indicate that the poets were taking some

interest in science.

LETTER 102. TO DAVY

Greta Hall, Tuesday night, December 2, 1800.

My dear Davy,

By an accident I did not receive your letter till this evening. I would

that you had added to the account of your indisposition the probable

causes of it. It has left me anxious whether or no you have not exposed

yourself to unwholesome influences in your chemical pursuits. There are

"few" beings both of hope and performance, but few who combine the "are"

and the "will be." For God's sake, therefore, my dear fellow, do not rip

open the bird that lays the golden eggs. I have not received your book.

I read yesterday a sort of medical review about it. I suppose Longman

will send it to me when he sends down the "Lyrical Ballads" to

Wordsworth. I am solicitous to read the latter part. Did there appear to

you any remote analogy between the case I translated from the German

Magazine and the effects produced by your gas? Did Carlisle[1] ever

communicate to you, or has he in any way published his facts concerning

"pain", which he mentioned when we were with him? It is a subject which

"exceedingly interests" me. I want to read something by somebody

expressly on "pain", if only to give an "arrangement" to my own

thoughts, though if it were well treated, I have little doubt it would

revolutionize them. For the last month I have been trembling on through

sands and swamps of evil and bodily grievance. My eyes have been

inflamed to a degree that rendered reading and writing scarcely

possible; and strange as it seems, the act of metre composition, as I

lay in bed, perceptibly affected them, and my voluntary ideas were every

minute passing, more or less transformed into vivid spectra. I had

leeches repeatedly applied to my temples, and a blister behind my

ear--and my eyes are now my own, but in the place where the blister was,

six small but excruciating boils have appeared, and harass me almost

beyond endurance. In the meantime my darling Hartley has been taken with

a stomach illness, which has ended in the yellow jaundice; and this

greatly alarms me. So much for the doleful! Amid all these changes, and

humiliations, and fears, the sense of the Eternal abides in me, and

preserves unsubdued my cheerful faith, that all I endure is full of

blessings!

At times, indeed, I would fain be somewhat of a more tangible utility

than I am; but so I suppose it is with all of us--one while cheerful,

stirring, feeling in resistance nothing but a joy and a stimulus;

another while drowsy, self-distrusting, prone to rest, loathing our own

self-promises, withering our own hopes--our hopes, the vitality and

cohesion of our being!

I purpose to have 'Christabel' published by itself--this I publish

with confidence--but my travels in Germany come from me now with mortal

pangs. Nothing but the most pressing necessity could have induced

me--and even now I hesitate and tremble. Be so good as to have all that

is printed of 'Christabel' sent to me per post.

Wordsworth has nearly finished the concluding poem. It is of a mild,

unimposing character, but full of beauties to those short-necked men who

have their hearts sufficiently near their heads--the relative distance

of which (according to citizen Tourder, the French translator of

Spallanzani) determines the sagacity or stupidity of all bipeds and

quadrupeds.

There is a deep blue cloud over the heavens; the lake, and the vale, and

the mountains, are all in darkness; only the 'summits' of all the

mountains in long ridges, covered with snow, are bright to a dazzling

excess. A glorious scene! Hartley was in my arms the other evening,

looking at the sky; he saw the moon glide into a large cloud. Shortly

after, at another part of the cloud, several stars sailed in. Says he,

"Pretty creatures! they are going in to see after their mother moon."

Remember me kindly to King. Write as often as you can; but above all

things, my loved and honoured dear fellow, do not give up the idea of

letting me and Skiddaw see you.

God love you!

S. T. COLERIDGE.

Tobin writes me that Thompson [2] has made some lucrative discovery. Do

you know aught about it? Have you seen T. Wedgwood since his return? [3]

[Footnote 1: Afterwards Sir Antony, a distinguished surgeon.]

[Footnote 2: The late Mr. James Thompson, of Clitheroe.]

[Footnote 3: Letter CXIII is our 102; CXIV follows 102]

LETTER 103. TO DAVY

February 3, 1801.

My dear Davy--

I can scarcely reconcile it to my conscience to make you pay postage for

another letter. O, what a fine unveiling of modern politics it would be

if there were published a minute detail of all the sums received by

Government from the Post establishment, and of all the outlets in which

the sums so received flowed out again; and, on the other hand, all the

domestic affections that had been stifled, all the intellectual progress

that would have been, but is not, on account of the heavy tax, etc.,

etc. The letters of a nation ought to be paid for as an article of

national expense. Well! but I did not take up this paper to flourish

away in splenetic politics. A gentleman resident here, his name Calvert,

an idle, good-hearted, and ingenious man, has a great desire to commence

fellow-student with me and Wordsworth in chemistry. He is an intimate

friend of Wordsworth's, and he has proposed to W. to take a house which

he (Calvert) has nearly built, called Windy Brow, in a delicious

situation, scarce half a mile from Greta Hall, the residence of S. T.

Coleridge, Esq., and so for him (Calvert) to live with them, 'i.e.',

Wordsworth and his sister. In this case he means to build a little

laboratory, etc. Wordsworth has not quite decided, but is strongly

inclined to adopt the scheme, because he and his sister have before

lived with Calvert on the same footing, and are much attached to him:

because my health is so precarious and so much injured by wet, and his

health, too, is like little potatoes, no great things, and therefore

Grasmere ("thirteen" miles from Keswick) is too great a distance for us

to enjoy each other's society, without inconvenience, as much as it

would be profitable for us both: and likewise because he feels it more

necessary for him to have some intellectual pursuit less closely

connected with deep passion than poetry, and is of course desirous, too,

not to be so wholly ignorant of knowledge so exceedingly important.

However, whether Wordsworth come or no, Calvert and I have determined to

begin and go on. Calvert is a man of sense and some originality, and is

besides what is well called a handy man. He is a good practical

mechanic, etc., and is desirous to lay out any sum of money that is

necessary. You know how long, how ardently I have wished to initiate

myself in Chemical science, both for its own sake, and in no small

degree likewise, my beloved friend, that I may be able to sympathize

with all that you do and think. Sympathize blindly with it all I do even

"now", God knows! from the very middle of my heart's heart, but I would

fain sympathize with you in the light of knowledge. This opportunity is

exceedingly precious to me, as on my own account I could not afford the

least additional expense, having been already, by long and successive

illnesses, thrown behindhand, so much, that for the next four or five

months, I fear, let me work as hard as I can, I shall not be able to do

what my heart within me "burns" to do, that is, to "concenter" my free

mind to the affinities of the feelings with words and ideas under the

title of "Concerning Poetry, and the nature of the Pleasures derived

from it". I have faith that I do understand the subject, and I am sure

that if I write what I ought to do on it, the work would supersede all

the books of metaphysics, and all the books of morals too. To whom shall

a young man utter "his pride", if not to a young man whom he loves?

I beg you, therefore, my dear Davy, to write to me a long letter when

you are at leisure, informing me:--Firstly, What books it will be well

for me and Calvert to purchase. Secondly, Directions for a convenient

little laboratory. Thirdly, To what amount apparatus would run in

expense, and whether or no you would be so good as to superintend its

making at Bristol. Fourthly, Give me your advice how to "begin". And,

fifthly, and lastly, and mostly, do send a "drop" of hope to my parched

tongue, that you will, if you can, come and visit me in the spring.

Indeed, indeed, you ought to see this country, this beautiful country,

and then the joy you would send into me!

The shape of this paper will convince you with what eagerness I began

this letter; I really did not see that it was not a sheet.

I have been 'thinking' vigorously during my illness, so that I cannot

say that my long, long wakeful nights have been all lost to me. The

subject of my meditations has been the relations of thoughts to

things--in the language of Hume, of ideas to impressions. I may be truly

described in the words of Descartes: I have been "res cogitans, id est,

dubitans, affirmans, negans, pauca intelligens, multa ignorans, volens,

nolens, imaginans etiam, et sentiens." I please myself with believing

that you will receive no small pleasure from the result of these

broodings, although I expect in you (in some points) a determined

opponent, but I say of my mind in this respect: "Manet imperterritus

ille hostem magnanimum opperiens, et mole sua stat." Every poor fellow

has his proud hour sometimes, and this I suppose is mine.

I am better in every respect than I was, but am still 'very feeble'. The

weather has been woefully against me for the last fortnight, having

rained here almost incessantly. I take quantities of bark, but the

effect is (to express myself with the dignity of science) "x" = 0000000,

and I shall not gather strength, or that little suffusion of bloom which

belongs to my healthy state, till I can walk out.

God bless you, my dear Davy! and

Your ever affectionate friend,

S. T. COLERIDGE.

P.S.--An electrical machine, and a number of little nicknacks connected

with it, Mr. Calvert has.--"Write".[1]

[Footnote l: Letter CXV is our 103.]

Josiah Wade, the early Bristol friend of Coleridge, who probably was one

of the three friends who assisted him with funds to start 'The

Watchman', was now intending to travel in Germany. He applied to

Coleridge for advice regarding the mode of travelling, and Coleridge

tendered his counsel in the following characteristic epistle.

LETTER 104. To JOSIAH WADE

March 6, 1801.

My very dear friend,

I have even now received your letter. My habits of thinking and feeling,

have not hitherto inclined me to personify commerce in any such shape,

so as to tempt me to turn pagan, and offer vows to the goddess of our

isle. But when I read that sentence in your letter, "The time will come

I trust, when I shall be able to pitch my tent in your neighbourhood," I

was most potently commanded [1] to a breach of the second

commandment, and on my knees, to entreat the said goddess to touch your

bank notes and guineas with her magical multiplying wand. I could offer

such a prayer for you, with a better conscience than for most men,

because I know that you have never lost that healthy common sense, which

regards money only as the means of independence, and that you would

sooner than most men cry out, enough! enough! To see one's children

secured against want, is doubtless a delightful thing; but to wish to

see them begin the world as rich men, is unwise to ourselves, for it

permits no close of our labours, and is pernicious to them; for it

leaves no motive to their exertions, none of those sympathies with the

industrious and the poor, which form at once the true relish and proper

antidote of wealth.

* * * Is not March rather a perilous month for the voyage from

Yarmouth to Hamburg? Danger there is very little, in the packets, but I

know what inconvenience rough weather brings with it; not from my own

feelings, for I am never sea-sick, but always in exceeding high spirits

on board ship, but from what I see in others. But you are an old sailor.

At Hamburg I have not a shadow of acquaintance. My letters of

introduction produced for me, with one exception, viz., Klopstock, the

brother of the poet, no real service, but merely distant and

ostentatious civility. And Klopstock will by this time have forgotten my

name, which indeed he never properly knew, for I could speak only

English and Latin, and he only French and German. At Ratzeburg, 35

English miles N.E. from Hamburg, on the road to Lubec, I resided four

months; and I should hope, was not unbeloved by more than one family,

but this is out of your route. At Gottingen I stayed near five months,

but here I knew only students, who will have left the place by this

time, and the high learned professors, only one of whom could speak

English; and they are so wholly engaged in their academical occupations,

that they would be of no service to you. Other acquaintance in Germany I

have none, and connexion I never had any. For though I was much

entreated by some of the Literati to correspond with them, yet my

natural laziness, with the little value I attach to literary men, as

literary men, and with my aversion from those letters which are to be

made up of studied sense, and unfelt compliments, combined to prevent me

from availing myself of the offer. Herein, and in similar instances,

with English authors of repute, I have ill consulted the growth of my

reputation and fame. But I have cheerful and confident hopes of myself.

If I can hereafter do good to my fellow-creatures as a poet, and as a

metaphysician, they will know it; and any other fame than this, I

consider as a serious evil, that would only take me from out the number

and sympathy of ordinary men, to make a coxcomb of me.

As to the inns or hotels at Hamburg, I should recommend you to some

German inn. Wordsworth and I were at the "Der Wilde Man," and dirty as

it was, I could not find any inn in Germany very much cleaner, except at

Lubec. But if you go to an English inn, for heaven's sake, avoid the

"Shakspeare," at Altona, and the "King of England," at Hamburg. They are

houses of plunder rather than entertainment. "The Duke of York" hotel,

kept by Seaman, has a better reputation, and thither I would advise you

to repair; and I advise you to pay your bill every morning at breakfast

time: it is the only way to escape imposition. What the Hamburg

merchants may be I know not, but the tradesmen are knaves. Scoundrels,

with yellow-white phizzes, that bring disgrace on the complexion of a

bad tallow candle. Now as to carriage, I know scarcely what to advise;

only make up your mind to the very worst vehicles, with the very worst

horses, drawn by the very worst postillions, over the very worst roads,

and halting two hours at each time they change horses, at the very worst

inns; and you have a fair, unexaggerated picture of travelling in North

Germany. The cheapest way is the best; go by the common post wagons, or

stage coaches. What are called extraordinaries, or post-chaises, are

little wicker carts, uncovered, with moveable benches or forms in them,

execrable in every respect. And if you buy a vehicle at Hamburg, you can

get none decent under thirty or forty guineas, and very probably it will

break to pieces on the infernal roads. The canal boats are delightful,

but the porters everywhere in the United Provinces, are an impudent,

abominable, and dishonest race. You must carry as little luggage as you

well can with you, in the canal boats, and when you land, get

recommended to an inn beforehand, and bargain with the porters first of

all, and never lose sight of them, or you may never see your portmanteau

or baggage again.

My Sarah desires her love to you and yours. God bless your dear little

ones! Make haste and get rich, dear friend! and bring up the little

creatures to be playfellows and school-fellows with my little ones!

Again and again, sea serve you, wind speed you, all things turn out good

to you! God bless you,

S. T. COLERIDGE. [2]

John Stoddart, a friend of Coleridge, visited him while at Keswick in

the month of October, 1800, and saw the Wordsworths at Grasmere (Dorothy

Wordsworth's 'Journal', i, 55)--It was then that Stoddart obtained a

copy of 'Christabel', and read it shortly afterwards [3] to Sir Walter

Scott, then busy with his 'Border Minstrelsy'. The beauty of

'Christabel' touched Sir Walter's romantic imagination, and echoes of

the poem are discernible in the 'Lay of the Last Minstrel' and the

'Bridal of Tryermain'.

But Coleridge, in spite of many attempts, could not complete the piece,

and had to give up the endeavour. In a letter to Godwin of 25th March

1801, Coleridge thus laments what was practically the end of his career

as a poet:

[Footnote 1: "Tempted," E.R., ii, 18.]

[Footnote 2: Letters CXVI-CXVII follow 104.]

[Footnote 3: In 1802.]

LETTER 105. To GODWIN.

Wednesday, March 25, 1801.

Dear Godwin,

I fear your tragedy [1] will find me in a very unfit state of mind to

sit in judgment on it. I have been during the last three months

undergoing a process of intellectual exsiccation. During my long illness

I had compelled into hours of delight many a sleepless painful hour of

darkness by chasing down metaphysical game, and since then I have

continued the hunt, till I found myself, unaware, at the root of pure

mathematics, and up that tall smooth tree, whose few poor branches are

all at the very summit, am I climbing by pure adhesive strength of arms

and thighs, still slipping down, still renewing my ascent. You would not

know me! All sounds of similitude keep at such a distance from each

other in my mind, that I have forgotten how to make a rhyme. I look at

the mountains (that visible God Almighty that looks in at all my

windows)--I look at the mountains only for the curves of their outlines;

the stars, as I behold them, form themselves into triangles; and my

hands are scarred with scratches from a cat, whose back I was rubbing in

the dark in order to see whether the sparks from it were refrangible by

a prism. The Poet is dead in me; my imagination (or rather the Somewhat

that had been imaginative) lies like a cold snuff on the circular rim of

a brass candlestick, without even a stink of tallow to remind you that

it was once clothed and mitred with flame. That is past by. I was once a

volume of gold leaf, rising and riding on every breath of Fancy, but I

have beaten myself back into weight and density, and now I sink in

quicksilver and remain squat and square on the earth amid the hurricane

that makes oaks and straws join in one dance, fifty yards high in the

element.

However I will do what I can. Taste and feeling have I none, but what I

have, give I unto thee. But I repeat that I am unfit to decide on any

but works of severe logic.

I write now to beg that, if you have not sent your tragedy, you may

remember to send 'Antonio' with it, which I have not yet seen, and

likewise my Campbell's 'Pleasures of Hope', which Wordsworth wishes to

see.

Have you seen the second volume of the 'Lyrical Ballads', and the

preface prefixed to the first? I should judge of a man's heart and

intellect precisely according to the degree and intensity of the

admiration with which he read these poems. Perhaps, instead of heart I

should have said Taste; but, when I think of 'The Brothers', of 'Ruth',

and of 'Michael', I recur to the expression and am enforced to say

heart. If I die, and the booksellers will give you anything for ray

life, be sure to say, "Wordsworth descended on him like the [Greek:

Gnothi seauton] from heaven; by showing to him what true poetry was, he

made him know that he himself was no Poet."

In your next letter you will, perhaps, give me some hints respecting

your prose plans.

God bless you, and

S. T. COLERIDGE.

Greta Hall, Keswick.

P.S.--What is a fair price--what might an author of reputation fairly

ask from a bookseller, for one edition, of a thousand copies, of a

five-shilling book?

[I congratulate you on the settlement of Davy in London. I hope that his

enchanting manners will not draw too many idlers about him, to harass

and vex his mornings.]

[Footnote: 1 This tragedy was entitled Abbas.]

PART II

THE PERMANENT

I will write for "The Permanent", or not at all." (Letter to Sir G.

Beaumont, "Coleorton Memorials", ii, 162.) "Woe is me! that at 46 I am

under the necessity of appearing as a lecturer, and obliged to regard

every hour given to "The Permanent", whether as poet or philosopher, an

hour stolen from others as well as from my own maintenance." (Letter to

Mudford, Brandl's "Life of Coleridge", p. 359.)

* * * * *

The conventional view of Coleridge that opium killed the poet in him

does not commend itself to the scientific consciousness. Opium has the

tendency to stimulate rather than to deaden the poetic imagination, as

the history of De Quincey can testify; and one of Coleridge's most

imaginative pieces, "Kubla Khan", is said to have been occasioned by an

overdose of the drug.

The poet in Coleridge was extinguished by a very different thing than

opium. Coleridge's poetic faculty was suspended by the loss of hope and

also by the growth of his intellect, by the development of his reasoning

and philosophic powers, and by the multiplication of the interests which

appealed to him, and the many problems which presented themselves for

his solution. He was, constitutionally, the most comprehensive mind of a

new age, and just because he was its greatest thinker he was perplexed

and attracted by the majority of the problems which arose around him,

and which he himself helped to raise. Poetry, the poetry of the Romantic

Movement, in which he far excelled all his contemporaries, was no longer

capable of grappling with the philosophic, theological, political and

social questions now on the horizon or which Coleridge felt would soon,

by the development of international affinities, be on the horizon of the

English mind. Hence Coleridge's thirst for the new lore of the German

philosophy, which seemed to him to supply a want in the Intellectualism

of his native country.

In spite of this, Coleridge knew that in being deserted by the poetic

spirit, he was leaving a high artistic realm for one of lesser glory;

and hence his letter to Godwin of 25th March 1801, and, later on, his

dirge over himself in "Dejection".

Coleridge, in choosing to follow Wordsworth to the Lake District in

preference to remaining at Nether Stowey with Poole, had experienced

some contrition, for Poole, after all, was a more profound appreciator

of his many-sidedness and the Cervantean vein of his character than

Wordsworth, who appreciated Coleridge only from that side of him which

resembled himself.

Tom Poole regretted, like others, that Coleridge had no permanent

calling, or could not fix upon an undertaking worthy of his powers.

Poole looked upon Coleridge's devotion to journalism while he was

engaged upon the "Morning Post" as a "turning aside of his powers from

higher ends" ("T. Poole and his Friends", ii, 2), and wished him to give

himself up to something more "permanently" useful to society ("T. Poole

and his Friends", ii, 3). The correspondence of Coleridge and Poole from

1800 onwards, often turns upon the subject ("T. Poole and his Friends",

ii, 66, 68, 122, 177, 187, 205, 226, 247); and Coleridge admitted a

"distracting manifoldness" in his objects and attainments ("T. Poole and

his Friends", ii, 122). "You," said Coleridge, "are nobly employed--most

worthy of you. "You" are made to endear yourself to mankind as an

immediate benefactor: I must throw my bread on the waters" ("T. Poole

and his Friends", ii, 122).

While engaged in these argumentations with his best friend, Coleridge

was striving to think out in his deep philosophic and musing mind many

problems of the time; and there arose in his imagination the Idea of the

Permanent. He was henceforth no longer the Poet of Romanticism, whose

significance he had exhausted, but the philosopher of the Permanent,

which presented itself as a splendid possibility in all departments of

human knowledge and activity. In his prose works and letters we find a

continual reference to what Coleridge now calls "The Permanent"--the

permanent principles of Morals, Philosophy, and Religion, and of the

permanent principles of criticism as applied to Poetry and the Fine

Arts. Everything is now adjusted by Coleridge to this idea. Art, morals,

religion, and politics are tried by its standard, to find if they are

founded in the permanent principles of human nature.

It is in the light of this Idea, the ideal of Coleridge's later life,

that we must judge Coleridge and weigh him. To continue to see in opium

the sole or even the principal cause of his failure, is to misjudge him

altogether. To compare him with others of different powers who

accomplished more in one direction in the matter of literary output,

with Sir Walter Scott or Byron, for instance, is misleading. It is the

man of profound genius, who in his own time, is feeling on all sides

into the Future, who is least likely to give forth "finished

productions," as they are called, in which the subjects of which they

treat are often exhausted, and please the ear of the Present. Coleridge

is such a man of genius; nearly all his works are fragmentary,

unfinished, suggestive rather than "complete," just because they verge

upon that Transcendentalism which he was the first to make audible to

English ears in his day. Ill health, and opium in conjunction with ill

health, contributed no doubt to enfeeble his utterance; but to assert

that opium was the cause or the main cause of Coleridge's inability to

do what he wanted himself to do, or what his friends and contemporaries

expected him to do, is a gross perversion of the facts of the case.

Coleridge's inability arose from his multiplicity of motive, his

visionary faculty of seeing in the light of a new principle a host of

problems rise up on all sides, all claiming recognition and solution.

"That is the disease of my mind--it is comprehensive in its conceptions,

and wastes itself in the contemplations of the many things which it

might do." (Letter to Poole, 4th January 1799, "Letters", p. 270). A

greater than Coleridge had felt this tendency before him, and created

as its embodiment "Hamlet"; and Coleridge has been called the Hamlet of

literature.

CHAPTER X

ILL HEALTH; SOUTHEY COMES TO KESWICK

On 13th April 1801 Coleridge wrote to Southey the

following letter, and Southey replied in cordial terms,

from which it will be gathered a reconciliation had been

made since the Lloyd and Lamb quarrel. [1]

[Footnote 1: See "Letters", vol. i, 304.]

LETTER 106. TO ROBERT SOUTHEY, ESQ.

Greta Hall, Keswick; April 13. 1801.

My dear Southey,

I received your kind letter on the evening before last, and I trust that

this will arrive at Bristol just in time to rejoice with them that

rejoice. Alas! you will have found the dear old place sadly "minus"ed by

the removal of Davy. It is one of the evils of long silence, that when

one recommences the correspondence, one has so much to say that one can

say nothing. I have enough, with what I have seen, and with what I have

done, and with what I have suffered, and with what I have heard,

exclusive of all that I hope and all that I intend--I have enough to

pass away a great deal of time with, were you on a desert isle, and I

your "Friday". But at present I purpose to speak only of myself

relatively to Keswick and to you.

Our house stands on a low hill, the whole front of which is one field

and an enormous garden, nine-tenths of which is a nursery garden. Behind

the house is an orchard, and a small wood on a steep slope, at the foot

of which flows the river Greta, which winds round and catches the

evening lights in the front of the house. In front we have a giant's

camp--an encamped army of tent-like mountains, which by an inverted arch

gives a view of another vale. On our right the lovely vale and the

wedge-shaped lake of Bassenthwaite; and on our left Derwentwater and

Lodore full in view, and the fantastic mountains of Borrodale. Behind us

the massy Skiddaw, smooth, green, high, with two chasms and a tentlike

ridge in the larger. A fairer scene you have not seen in all your

wanderings. Without going from our own grounds we have all that can

please a human being. As to books, my landlord, who dwells next door,[1]

has a very respectable library, which he has put with mine; histories,

encyclopaedias, and all the modern gentry. But then I can have, when I

choose, free access to the princely library of Sir Guilfred Lawson,

which contains the noblest collection of travels and natural history of,

perhaps, any private library in England; besides this, there is the

Cathedral library of Carlisle, from whence I can have any books sent to

me that I wish; in short, I may truly say that I command all the

libraries in the county. ...

Our neighbour is a truly good and affectionate man, a father to my

children, and a friend to me. He was offered fifty guineas for the house

in which we are to live, but he preferred me for a tenant at

twenty-five; and yet the whole of his income does not exceed, I believe,

£200 a year. A more truly disinterested man I never met with; severely

frugal, yet almost carelessly generous; and yet he got all his money as

a common carrier[2], by hard labour, and by pennies. He is one instance

among many in this country of the salutary effect of the love of

knowledge--he was from a boy a lover of learning. The house is full

twice as large as we want; it hath more rooms in it than Allfoxden; you

might have a bed-room, parlour, study, etc., etc., and there would

always be rooms to spare for your or my visitors. In short, for

situation and convenience,--and when I mention the name of Wordsworth,

for society of men of intellect,--I know no place in which you and Edith

would find yourselves so well suited.

S. T. C.

[Footnote 1: Greta Hall was at this time divided into two houses, which

were afterwards thrown together.]

[Footnote 2: This person, whose name was Jackson, was the "master" in

Wordsworth's poem of 'The Waggoner', the circumstances of which are

accurately correct.]

The remainder of this letter, as well as another of later date, was

filled with a most gloomy account of his own health, to which Southey

refers in the commencement of his reply.

SOUTHEY TO COLERIDGE

Bristol, July 11, 1801.

Yesterday I arrived, and found your letters; they did depress me, but I

have since reasoned or dreamt myself into more cheerful anticipations. I

have persuaded myself that your complaint is gouty; that good living is

necessary, and a good climate. I also move to the south; at least so it

appears: and if my present prospects ripen, we may yet live under one

roof. ...

You may have seen a translation of "Persius", by Drummond, an M.P. This

man is going ambassador, first to Palermo and then to Constantinople: if

a married man can go as his secretary, it is probable that I shall

accompany him. I daily expect to know. It is a scheme of Wynn's to

settle me in the south, and I am returned to look about me. My salary

will be small--a very trifle; but after a few years I look on to

something better, and have fixed my mind on a consulship. Now, if we go,

you must join us as soon as we are housed, and it will be marvellous if

we regret England. I shall have so little to do, that my time may be

considered as wholly my own: our joint amusements will easily supply us

with all expenses. So no more of the Azores; for we will see the Great

Turk, and visit Greece, and walk up the Pyramids, and ride camels in

Arabia. I have dreamt of nothing else these five weeks. As yet every

thing is so uncertain, for I have received no letter since we landed,

that nothing can be said of our intermediate movements. If we are not

embarked too soon, we will set off as early as possible for Cumberland,

unless you should think, as we do, that Mahomet had better come to the

mountain; that change of all externals may benefit you; and that bad as

Bristol weather is, it is yet infinitely preferable to northern cold and

damp. Meet we must, and will.

You know your old Poems are a third time in the press; why not set forth

a second volume? * * * Your "Christabel", your "Three Graces",[1] which

I remember as the very consummation of poetry. I must spur you to

something, to the assertion of your supremacy; if you have not enough to

muster, I will aid you in any way--manufacture skeletons that you may

clothe with flesh, blood, and beauty; write my best, or what shall be

bad enough to be popular;--we will even make plays "a-la-mode"

Robespierre. * * * Drop all task-work, it is ever unprofitable; the same

time, and one twentieth part of the labour, would produce treble

emolument. For "Thalaba" I received £115; it was just twelve months'

"intermitting" work, and the after-editions are my own. ...

I feel here as a stranger; somewhat of Leonard's feeling. God bless

Wordsworth for that poem![2] What tie have I to England? My London

friends? There, indeed, I have friends. But if you and yours were with

me, eating dates in a garden at Constantinople, you might assert that we

were in the best of all possible places; and I should answer, Amen: and

if our wives rebelled, we would send for the chief of the black eunuchs,

and sell them to the Seraglio. Then should Moses [3] learn Arabic, and we

would know whether there was anything in the language or not. We would

drink Cyprus wine and Mocha coffee, and smoke more tranquilly than ever

we did in the Ship in Small Street.

Time and absence make strange work with our affections; but mine are

ever returning to rest upon you. I have other and dear friends, but none

with whom the whole of my being is intimate--with whom every thought and

feeling can amalgamate. Oh! I have yet such dreams! Is it quite clear

that you and I were not meant for some better star, and dropped, by

mistake, into this world of pounds, shillings, and pence? ...

God bless you!

ROBERT SOUTHEY.

[Footnote 1: "The Three Graves".]

[Footnote 2: "The Brothers" is the title of this poem.]

[Footnote 3: Hartley Coleridge.]

SOUTHEY TO COLERIDGE

July 25.

In about ten days we shall be ready to set forward for Keswick; where,

if it were not for the rains, and the fogs, and the frosts, I should,

probably, be content to winter; but the climate deters me. It is

uncertain when I may be sent abroad, or where, except that the south of

Europe is my choice. The appointment hardly doubtful, and the probable

destination Palermo or Naples. We will talk of the future, and dream of

it, on the lake side. * * * I may calculate upon the next six months at

my own disposal; so we will climb Skiddaw this year, and scale Etna the

next; and Sicilian air will keep us alive till Davy has found out the

immortalising elixir, or till we are very well satisfied to do without

it, and be immortalised after the manner of our fathers. My pocket-book

contains more plans than will ever be filled up; but whatever becomes of

those plans, this, at least, is feasible. * * * Poor H----, he has

literally killed himself by the law: which, I believe, kills more than

any disease that takes its place in the bills of mortality. Blackstone

is a needful book, and my Coke is a borrowed one; but I have one law

book whereof to make an auto-da-fe; and burnt he shall be: but whether

to perform that ceremony, with fitting libations, at home, or fling him

down the crater of Etna directly to the Devil, is worth considering at

leisure.

I must work at Keswick; the more willingly, because with the hope,

hereafter, the necessity will cease. My Portuguese materials must lie

dead, and this embarrasses me. It is impossible to publish any thing

about that country now, because I must one day return there,--to their

libraries and archives; otherwise I have excellent stuff for a little

volume; and could soon set forth a first vol. of my History, either

civil or literary. In these labours I have incurred a heavy and serious

expense. I shall write to Hamilton, and review again, if he chooses to

employ me. * * * It was Cottle who told me that your Poems were

reprint"ing" in a "third" edition: this cannot allude to the "Lyrical

Ballads", because of the number and the participle present. * * * I am

bitterly angry to see one new poem [1] smuggled into the world in the

"Lyrical Ballads", where the 750 purchasers of the first can never get

at it. At Falmouth I bought Thomas Dermody's "Poems", for old

acquaintance sake; alas! the boy wrote better than the man! * * * Pye's

"Alfred" (to distinguish him from Alfred the pious [2]) I have not yet

inspected; nor the wilful murder of Bonaparte, by Anna Matilda; nor the

high treason committed by Sir James Bland Burgess, Baronet, against our

lion-hearted Richard. Davy is fallen stark mad with a play, called the

"Conspiracy of Gowrie", which is by Rough; an imitation of "Gebir", with

some poetry; but miserably and hopelessly deficient in all else: every

character reasoning, and metaphorising, and metaphysicking the reader

most nauseously. By the by, there is a great analogy between hock,

laver, pork pie, and the "Lyrical Ballads",--all have a "flavour", not

beloved by those who require a taste, and utterly unpleasant to

dram-drinkers, whose diseased palates can only feel pepper and brandy. I

know not whether Wordsworth will forgive the stimulant tale of

"Thalaba",--'tis a turtle soup, highly seasoned, but with a flavour of

its own predominant. His are sparagrass (it ought to be spelt so) and

artichokes, good with plain butter, and wholesome.

I look on "Madoc" with hopeful displeasure; probably it must be

corrected, and published now; this coming into the world at seven months

is a bad way; with a Doctor Slop of a printer's devil standing ready for

the forced birth, and frightening one into an abortion. * * * Is there

an emigrant at Keswick, who may make me talk and write French? And I

must sit at my almost forgotten Italian, and read German with you; and

we must read Tasso together.

God bless you!

Yours,

R. S.

[Footnote 1: Coleridge's poem of "Love".]

[Footnote 2: This alludes to Mr. Cottle's "Alfred".]

The next two letters to Davy indicate that Coleridge's health was now of

the worst, and that he was thinking seriously of emigrating for some

time.

LETTER 107. TO DAVY

Monday, May 4, 1801.

My dear Davy,

I heard from Tobin the day before yesterday--nay, it was Friday. From

him I learn that you are giving lectures on galvanism. Would to God I

were one of your auditors! My motive muscles tingled and contracted at

the news, as if you had bared them, and were 'zincifying' their

life-mocking fibres.

When you have leisure and impulse--perfect leisure and a complete

impulse--write to me, but only then. For though there does not exist a

man on earth who yields me greater pleasure by writing to me, yet I have

neither pain nor disquietude from your silence. I have a deep faith in

the guardianship of Nature over you--of the Great Being whom you are

manifesting. Heaven bless you, my dear Davy!

I have been rendered uneasy by an account of the Lisbon packet's

non-arrival, lest Southey should have been on board it. Have you heard

from him lately?

It would seem affectation to write to you and say nothing of my health;

but in truth I am weary of giving useless pain. Yesterday I should have

been incapable of writing you this scrawl, and to-morrow I may be as

bad. "'Sinking, sinking, sinking!' I feel that I am 'sinking'." My

medical attendant says that it is irregular gout, with nephritic

symptoms. 'Gout', in a young man of twenty-nine!! Swollen knees, and

knotty fingers, a loathing stomach, and a dizzy head. Trust me, friend,

I am at times an object of moral disgust to my own mind! But that this

long illness has impoverished me, I should immediately go to St.

Miguels, one of the Azores--the baths and the delicious climate might

restore me--and if it were possible, I would afterwards send over for my

wife and children, and settle there for a few years; it is exceedingly

cheap. On this supposition Wordsworth and his sister have with generous

friendship offered to settle there with me--and happily our dear Southey

would come too. But of this I pray you, my dear fellow, do not say a

syllable to any human being, for the scheme, from the present state of

my circumstances, is rather the thing of a "wish" than of a "hope".

If you write to me, pray in a couple of sentences tell me whether

Herschell's thermometric "spectrum" (in the "Philos. Trans.") will lead

to any revolution in the chemical philosophy. As far as "words" go, I

have become a formidable chemist--having got by heart a prodigious

quantity of terms, etc., to which I attach "some" ideas, very scanty in

number, I assure you, and right meagre in their individual persons. That

which must discourage me in it is, that I find all "power" of vital

attributes to depend on modes of "arrangement", and that chemistry

throws not even a distant rushlight glimmer upon this subject. The

"reasoning", likewise, is always unsatisfactory to me. I am perpetually

saying, probably there are many agents hitherto undiscovered. This

cannot be reasoning: we must have a deep conviction that all the "terms"

have been exhausted. This is saying no more than that (with Dr.

Beddoes's leave) chemistry can never possess the same kind of certainty

with the mathematics--in truth, it is saying nothing. I grow, however,

exceedingly interested in the subject.

God love you, my dear friend! From Tobin's account, I fear that I must

give up a very sweet vision--that of seeing you this summer. The summer

after, my ghost perhaps may be a gas.

Yours affectionately,

S. T. COLERIDGE. [1]

[Footnote 1: Letter CXVIII follows No. 107.]

LETTER 108. TO DAVY

Greta Hall, Keswick, May 20, 1801.

My dear Davy,

Though we of the north must forego you, yet I shall rejoice when I

receive a letter from you from Cornwall. I must believe that you have

made some important discoveries in galvanism, and connected the facts

with other more interesting ones, or I should be puzzled to conceive how

that subject could furnish matter for more than one lecture. If I

recollect aright, you have identified it with electricity, and that

indeed is a wide field. I shall dismiss my 'British Critic' and take in

'Nicholson's Journal', and then I shall know something about you. I am

sometimes apprehensive that my passion for science is scarcely true and

genuine--it is but 'Davyism'! that is, I fear that I am more delighted

at 'your' having discovered facts than at the facts having been

discovered.

My health is better. I am indeed eager to believe that I am really

beginning to recover, though I have had so many short recoveries

followed by severe relapses, that I am at times almost afraid to hope.

But cheerful thoughts come with genial sensations; and hope is itself no

mean medicine.

I am anxious respecting Robert Southey. Why is he not in England?

Remember me kindly to Tobin. As soon as I have anything to communicate I

will write to him. But, alas! sickness turns large districts of time

into dreary uniformity of sandy desolation. Alas, for Egypt--and Menou!

However, I trust the 'English' will keep it, if they take it, and

something will be gained to the cause of human nature.

Heaven bless you!

S. T. COLERIDGE.

The next letter to Godwin renews his complaints about health.

LETTER 109. To GODWIN

Greta Hall, Keswick.

Dear Godwin,

I have had, during the last three weeks, such numerous interruptions of

my "uninterrupted rural retirement," such a succession of visitors, both

indigenous and exotic, that verily I wanted both the time and composure

necessary to answer your letter of the first of June--at present I am

writing to you from my bed. For, in consequence of a very sudden change

in the weather from intense heat to a raw and scathing chillness, my

bodily health has suffered a relapse as severe as it was unexpected....

I have not yet received either "Antonio", or your pamphlet, in answer to

Dr. Parr and the Scotch gentleman [1] (who is to be professor of morals

to the young nabobs at Calcutta, with an establishment of £3,000 a

year!). Stuart was so kind as to send me Fenwick's review of it in a

paper called the "Albion", and Mr. Longman has informed me that, by your

orders, the pamphlet itself has been left for me at his house. The

extracts which I saw pleased me much, with the exception of the

introduction, which is incorrectly and clumsily worded. But, indeed, I

have often observed that, whatever you write, the first page is always

the worst in the book. I wish that instead of six days you had employed

six months, and instead of a half-crown pamphlet, had given us a good

half-guinea octavo. But you may yet do this. It strikes me, that both in

this work, and in the second edition of the "Political Justice", your

retractations have been more injudicious than the assertions or dogmas

retracted. But this is no fit subject for a mere letter. If I had time,

which I have not, I would write two or three sheets for your sole

inspection, entitled "History of the Errors and Blunders of the Literary

Life of William Godwin". To the world it would appear a paradox to say

that you are at all too persuadable, but you yourself know it to be the

truth.