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diff --git a/6916.txt b/6916.txt new file mode 100644 index 0000000..99e34c7 --- /dev/null +++ b/6916.txt @@ -0,0 +1,6874 @@ +Project Gutenberg's English Men of Letters: Coleridge, by H. D. Traill + +This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere in the United States and most +other parts of the world at no cost and with almost no restrictions +whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or re-use it under the terms of +the Project Gutenberg License included with this eBook or online at +www.gutenberg.org. If you are not located in the United States, you'll have +to check the laws of the country where you are located before using this ebook. + +Title: English Men of Letters: Coleridge + +Author: H. D. Traill + +Posting Date: October 15, 2014 [EBook #6916] +Release Date: November, 2004 +First Posted: February 10, 2003 + +Language: English + +Character set encoding: ASCII + +*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK ENGLISH MEN OF LETTERS: COLERIDGE *** + + + + +Produced by Curtis A. Weyant, Charles Franks, and the +Distributed Proofreading Team. + + + + + + + + + + +ENGLISH MEN OF LETTERS + +COLERIDGE + +BY + +H. D. TRAILL + + + + +PREFATORY NOTE. + + +In a tolerably well-known passage in one of his essays De Quincey +enumerates the multiform attainments and powers of Coleridge, and the +corresponding varieties of demand made by them on any one who should +aspire to become this many-sided man's biographer. The description is +slightly touched with the humorous hyperbole characteristic of its +author; but it is in substance just, and I cannot but wish that it were +possible, within the limits of a preface, to set out the whole of it in +excuse for the many inevitable shortcomings of this volume. Having thus +made an "exhibit" of it, there would only remain to add that the +difficulties with which De Quincey confronts an intending biographer of +Coleridge must necessarily be multiplied many-fold by the conditions +under which this work is here attempted. No complete biography of +Coleridge, at least on any important scale of dimensions, is in +existence; no critical appreciation of his work _as a whole_, and as +correlated with the circumstances and affected by the changes of his +life, has, so far as I am aware, been attempted. To perform either of +these two tasks adequately, or even with any approach to adequacy, a +writer should at least have the elbow-room of a portly volume. To +attempt the two together, therefore, and to attempt them within the +limits prescribed to the manuals of this series, is an enterprise which +I think should claim, from all at least who are not offended by its +audacity, an almost unbounded indulgence. + +The supply of material for a _Life_ of Coleridge is fairly plentiful, +though it is not very easily come by. For the most part it needs to be +hunted up or fished up--those accustomed to the work will appreciate +the difference between the two processes--from a considerable variety +of contemporary documents. Completed biography of the poet-philosopher +there is none, as has been said, in existence; and the one volume of +the unfinished _Life_ left us by Mr. Gillman--a name never to be +mentioned with disrespect, however difficult it may sometimes be to +avoid doing so, by any one who honours the name and genius of +Coleridge--covers, and that in but a loose and rambling fashion, no +more than a few years. Mr. Cottle's _Recollections of Southey, +Wordsworth, and Coleridge_ contains some valuable information on +certain points of importance, as also does the _Letters, Conversations, +etc., of S. T. C._ by Mr. Allsop. Miss Meteyard's _Group of Eminent +Englishmen_ throws much light on the relations between Coleridge and +his early patrons the Wedgwoods. Everything, whether critical or +biographical, that De Quincey wrote on Coleridgian matters requires, +with whatever discount, to be carefully studied. _The Life of +Wordsworth,_ by the Bishop of St. Andrews; _The Correspondence of +Southey;_ the Rev. Derwent Coleridge's brief account of his father's +life and writings; and the prefatory memoir prefixed to the 1880 +edition of Coleridge's _Poetical and Dramatic Works_, have all had to +be consulted. But, after all, there remain several tantalising gaps in +Coleridge's life which refuse to be bridged over; and one cannot but +think that there must be enough unpublished matter in the possession of +his relatives and the representatives of his friends and correspondents +to enable some at least, though doubtless not all, of these missing +links to be supplied. Perhaps upon a fitting occasion and for an +adequate purpose these materials would be forthcoming. + + + + +CONTENTS. + + + +_POETICAL PERIOD._ + +CHAPTER I. +[1772-1794.] +Birth, parentage, and early years--Christ's Hospital--Jesus College, +Cambridge. + +CHAPTER II. +[1794-1797.] +The Bristol Lectures--Marriage--Life at Clevedon--The +_Watchman_--Retirement to Stowey--Introduction to Wordsworth. + +CHAPTER III. +[1797-1799.] +Coleridge and Wordsworth--Publication of the _Lyrical Ballads_--The +_Ancient Mariner_--The first part of _Christabel_--Decline of +Coleridge's poetic impulse--Final review of his poetry. + + +_CRITICAL PERIOD._ + +CHAPTER IV. +[1799-1800.] +Visit to Germany--Life at Gottingen--Return--Explores the Lake +country--London--The _Morning Post_--Coleridge as a +journalist--Retirement to Keswick. + +CHAPTER V. +[1800-1804.] +Life at Keswick--Second part of _Christabel_--Failing health--Resort +to opium--The _Ode to Dejection_--Increasing restlessness--Visit to +Malta. + +CHAPTER VI. +[1806-1809.] +Stay at Malta--Its injurious effects--Return to England--Meeting with +De Quincey--Residence in London--First series of lectures. + +CHAPTER VII. +[1809-1810.] +Return to the Lakes--From Keswick to Grasmere--With Wordsworth at +Allan Bank--The _Friend_--Quits the Lake country for ever. + +CHAPTER VIII. +[1810-1816.] +London again--Second recourse to journalism--The _Courier_ articles--The +Shakespeare lectures--Production of _Remorse_--At Bristol again as +lecturer--Residence at Calne--Increasing ill health and +embarrassments--Retirement to Mr. Gillman's. + + +_METAPHYSICAL AND THEOLOGICAL PERIOD._ + +CHAPTER IX. +[1816-1818.] +Life at Highgate--Renewed activity--Publications and republications--The +_Biographia Literaria_--The lectures of 1818--Coleridge as a Shakespearian +critic. + +CHAPTER X. +[1818-1834.] +Closing years--Temporary renewal of money troubles--The _Aids to +Refection_--Growing weakness-Visit to Germany with the Wordsworths--Last +illness and death. + +CHAPTER XI. +Coleridge's metaphysics and theology--_The Spiritual Philosophy_ of +Mr. Green. + +CHAPTER XII. +Coleridge's position in his later years--His discourse--His influence +on contemporary thought--Final review of his intellectual work. + +INDEX. + + + + +COLERIDGE. + + + + + +CHAPTER I. + +Birth, parentage, and early years--Christ's Hospital--Jesus College, +Cambridge. + +[1772-1794.] + + +On the 21st of October 1772 there was added to that roll of famous +Englishmen of whom Devonshire boasts the parentage a new and not its +least illustrious name. SAMUEL TAYLOR COLERIDGE was the son of the Rev. +John Coleridge, vicar of Ottery St. Mary in that county, and head +master of Henry VIII.'s Free Grammar School in the same town. He was +the youngest child of a large family. To the vicar, who had been twice +married, his first wife had borne three children, and his second ten. +Of these latter, however, one son died in infancy; four others, +together with the only daughter of the family, passed away before +Samuel had attained his majority; and thus only three of his brothers, +James, Edward, and George Coleridge, outlived the eighteenth century. +The first of these three survivors became the father of Henry Nelson +Coleridge--who married his cousin Sara, the poet's accomplished +daughter, and edited his uncle's posthumous works--and of the late Mr. +Justice Coleridge, himself the father of the present Lord Chief-Justice +of England. Edward, the second of the three, went, like his eldest +brother William, to Pembroke College, Oxford, and like him took orders; +and George, also educated at the same college and for the same +profession, succeeded eventually to his father's benefice and school. +The vicar himself appears from all accounts to have been a man of more +mark than most rural incumbents, and probably than a good many +schoolmasters of his day. He was a Hebrew scholar of some eminence, and +the compiler of a Latin grammar, in which, among other innovations +designed to simplify the study of the language for "boys just +initiated," he proposed to substitute for the name of "ablative" that +of "quale-quare-quidditive case." The mixture of amiable simplicity and +not unamiable pedantry to which this stroke of nomenclature testifies +was further illustrated in his practice of diversifying his sermons to +his village flock with Hebrew quotations, which he always commended to +their attention as "the immediate language of the Holy Ghost"--a +practice which exposed his successor, himself a learned man, to the +complaint of his rustic parishioners, that for all his erudition no +"immediate language of the Holy Ghost" was ever to be heard from _him_. +On the whole the Rev. John Coleridge appears to have been a gentle and +kindly eccentric, whose combination of qualities may have well entitled +him to be compared, as his famous son was wont in after-life to compare +him, to Parson Adams. + +Of the poet's mother we know little; but it is to be gathered from such +information as has come to us through Mr. Gillman from Coleridge +himself that, though reputed to have been a "woman of strong mind," she +exercised less influence on the formation of her son's mind and +character than has frequently been the case with the not remarkable +mothers of remarkable men. "She was," says Mr. Gillman, "an uneducated +woman, industriously attentive to her household duties, and devoted to +the care of her husband and family. Possessing none even of the most +common accomplishments of her day, she had neither love nor sympathy +for the display of them in others. She disliked, as she would say, your +'harpsichord ladies,' and strongly tried to impress upon her sons their +little value" (that is, of the accomplishments) "in their choice of +wives." And the final judgment upon her is that she was "a very good +woman, though, like Martha, over careful in many things; very ambitious +for the advancement of her sons in life, but wanting, perhaps, that +flow of heart which her husband possessed so largely." Of Coleridge's +boyhood and school-days we are fortunate in being able to construct an +unusually clear and complete idea. Both from his own autobiographic +notes, from the traditionary testimony of his family, and from the no +less valuable evidence of his most distinguished schoolfellow, we know +that his youthful character and habits assign him very conspicuously to +that perhaps somewhat small class of eminent men whose boyhood has +given distinct indications of great things to come. Coleridge is as +pronounced a specimen of this class as Scott is of its opposite. Scott +has shown the world how commonplace a boyhood may precede a maturity of +extraordinary powers. In Coleridge's case a boy of truly extraordinary +qualities was father to one of the most remarkable of men. As the +youngest of ten children (or of thirteen, reckoning the vicar's family +of three by his first wife), Coleridge attributes the early bent of his +disposition to causes the potency of which one may be permitted to +think that he has somewhat exaggerated. It is not quite easy to believe +that it was only through "certain jealousies of old Molly," his brother +Frank's "dotingly fond nurse," and the infusions of these jealousies +into his brother's mind, that he was drawn "from life in motion to life +in thought and sensation." The physical impulses of boyhood, where they +exist in vigour, are not so easily discouraged, and it is probable that +they were naturally weaker and the meditative tendency stronger than +Coleridge in after-life imagined. But to continue: "I never played," he +proceeds, "except by myself, and then only acting over what I had been +reading or fancying, or half one, half the other" (a practice common +enough, it may be remarked, among boys of by no means morbidly +imaginative habit), "cutting down weeds and nettles with a stick, as +one of the seven champions of Christendom. Alas! I had all the +simplicity, all the docility of the little child, but none of the +child's habits. I never thought as a child--never had the language of a +child." So it fared with him during the period of his home instruction, +the first eight years of his life; and his father having, as scholar +and schoolmaster, no doubt noted the strange precocity of his youngest +son, appears to have devoted especial attention to his training. "In my +ninth year," he continues, "my most dear, most revered father died +suddenly. O that I might so pass away, if, like him, I were an +Israelite without guile. The image of my father, my revered, kind, +learned, simple-hearted father, is a religion to me." + +Before he had attained his tenth year a presentation to Christ's +Hospital was obtained for him by that eminent judge Mr. Justice Buller, +a former pupil of his father's; and he was entered at the school on the +18th July 1782. His early bent towards poetry, though it displayed +itself in youthful verse of unusual merit, is a less uncommon and +arresting characteristic than his precocious speculative activity. Many +a raw boy "lisps in numbers, for the numbers come;" but few discourse +Alexandrian metaphysics at the same age, for the very good reason that +the metaphysics as a rule do not "come." And even among those youth +whom curiosity, or more often vanity, induces to dabble in such +studies, one would find few indeed over whom they have cast such an +irresistible spell as to estrange them for a while from poetry +altogether. That this was the experience of Coleridge we have his own +words to show. His son and biographer, the Rev. Derwent Coleridge, has +a little antedated the poet's stages of development in stating that +when his father was sent to Christ's Hospital in his eleventh year he +was "already a poet, and yet more characteristically a metaphysician." +A poet, yes, and a precocious scholar perhaps to boot, but a +metaphysician, no; for the "delightful sketch of him by his friend and +schoolfellow Charles Lamb" was pretty evidently taken not at "this +period" of his life but some years later. Coleridge's own account of +the matter in the _Biographia Literaria_ is clear. [1] "At a very +premature age, even before my fifteenth year," he says, "I had +bewildered myself in metaphysics and in theological controversy. +Nothing else pleased me. History and particular facts lost all interest +in my mind. Poetry (though for a schoolboy of that age I was above par +in English versification, and had already produced two or three +compositions which I may venture to say were somewhat above mediocrity, +and which had gained me more credit than the sound good sense of my old +master was at all pleased with),--poetry itself, yea, novels and +romance, became insipid to me." He goes on to describe how highly +delighted he was if, during his friendless wanderings on leave-days, +"any passenger, especially if he were dressed in black," would enter +with him into a conversation, which he soon found the means of +directing to his favourite subject of "providence, foreknowledge, will, +and fate; fixed fate, freewill, foreknowledge absolute." Undoubtedly it +is to this period that one should refer Lamb's well-known description +of "Samuel Taylor Coleridge, Logician, Metaphysician, Bard." + +"How have I seen the casual passer through the cloisters stand still, +entranced with admiration (while he weighed the disproportion between +the speech and the garb of the young Mirandula), to hear thee unfold in +thy deep and sweet intonations the mysteries of Iamblichus or Plotinus +(for even in those years thou waxedst not pale at such philosophic +draughts), or reciting Homer in the Greek, or Pindar, while the walls +of the old Grey Friars re-echoed with the accents of the _inspired +charity-boy_." + +It is interesting to note such a point as that of the "deep and sweet +intonations" of the youthful voice--its most notable and impressive +characteristic in after-life. Another schoolfellow describes the young +philosopher as "tall and striking in person, with long black hair," and +as commanding "much deference" among his schoolfellows. Such was +Coleridge between his fifteenth and seventeenth year, and such +continued to be the state of his mind and the direction of his studies +until he was won back again from what he calls "a preposterous pursuit, +injurious to his natural powers and to the progress of his education," +by--it is difficult, even after the most painstaking study of its +explanations, to record the phenomenon without astonishment--a perusal +of the sonnets of William Lisle Bowles. Deferring, however, for the +present any research into the occult operation of this converting +agency, it will be enough to note Coleridge's own assurance of its +perfect efficacy. He was completely cured for the time of his +metaphysical malady, and "well were it for me perhaps," he exclaims, +"had I never relapsed into the same mental disease; if I had continued +to pluck the flowers and reap the harvest from the cultivated surface +instead of delving in the unwholesome quicksilver mines of metaphysic +depths." And he goes on to add, in a passage full of the peculiar +melancholy beauty of his prose, and full too of instruction for the +biographer, "But if, in after-time, I have sought a refuge from bodily +pain and mismanaged sensibility in abstruse researches, which exercised +the strength and subtlety of the understanding without awakening the +feelings of the heart, there was a long and blessed interval, during +which my natural faculties were allowed to expand and my original +tendencies to develop themselves--my fancy, and the love of nature, and +the sense of beauty in forms and sounds." This "long and blessed +interval" endured, as we shall see, for some eleven or twelve years. + +His own account of his seduction from the paths of poetry by the wiles +of philosophy is that physiology acted as the go-between. His brother +Luke had come up to London to walk the hospitals, and young Samuel's +insatiable intellectual curiosity immediately inspired him with a +desire to share his brother's pursuit. "Every Saturday I could make or +obtain leave, to the London Hospital trudged I. O! the bliss if I was +permitted to hold the plaisters or attend the dressings.... I became +wild to be apprenticed to a surgeon; English, Latin, yea, Greek books +of medicine read I incessantly. Blanchard's _Latin Medical Dictionary_ +I had nearly by heart. Briefly, it was a wild dream, which, gradually +blending with, gradually gave way to, a rage for metaphysics occasioned +by the essays on Liberty and Necessity in Cato's _Letters_, and more by +theology." [2] At the appointed hour, however, Bowles the emancipator +came, as has been said, to his relief, and having opportunely fallen in +love with the eldest daughter of a widow lady of whose son he had been +the patron and protector at school, we may easily imagine that his +liberation from the spell of metaphysics was complete. "From this +time," he says, "to my nineteenth year, when I quitted school for +Jesus, Cambridge, was the era of poetry and love." + +Of Coleridge's university days we know less; but the account of his +schoolfellow, Charles Le Grice, accords, so far as it goes, with what +would have been anticipated from the poet's school life. Although "very +studious," and not unambitious of academical honours--within a few +months of his entering at Jesus he won the Browne Gold Medal for a +Greek Ode on the Slave Trade [3]--his reading, his friend admits, was +"desultory and capricious. He took little exercise merely for the sake +of exercise, but he was ready at any time to unbend his mind in +conversation, and for the sake of this his room was a constant +rendezvous of conversation-loving friends. I will not call them +loungers, for they did not call to kill time but to enjoy it." From the +same record we gather that Coleridge's interest in current politics was +already keen, and that he was an eager reader, not only of Burke's +famous contributions thereto, but even a devourer of all the pamphlets +which swarmed during that agitated period from the press. The desultory +student, however, did not altogether intermit his academical studies. +In 1793 he competed for another Greek verse prize, this time +unsuccessfully. He afterwards described his ode _On Astronomy_ as "the +finest Greek poem I ever wrote;" [4] but, whatever may have been its +merits from the point of view of scholarship, the English translation +of it, made eight years after by Southey (in which form alone it now +exists), seems hardly to establish its title to the peculiar merit +claimed by its author for his earlier effort. The long vacation of this +year, spent by him in Devonshire, is also interesting as having given +birth to one of the most characteristic of the _Juvenile Poems,_ the +_Songs of the Pixies_, and the closing months of 1793 were marked by +the most singular episode in the poet's earlier career. + +It is now perhaps impossible to ascertain whether the cause of this +strange adventure of Coleridge's was, "chagrin at his disappointment in +a love affair" or "a fit of dejection and despondency caused by some +debts not amounting to a hundred pounds;" but, actuated by some impulse +or other of restless disquietude, Coleridge suddenly quitted Cambridge +and came up, very slenderly provided with money, to London, where, +after a few days' sojourn, he was compelled by pressure of actual need +to enlist, under the name of Silas Titus Comberback (S. T. C.), [5] as +a private in the 15th Light Dragoons. It may seem strange to say so, +but it strikes one as quite conceivable that the world might have been +a gainer if fate had kept Coleridge a little longer in the ranks than +the four months of his actual service. As it was, however, his military +experiences, unlike those of Gibbon, were of no subsequent advantage to +him. He was, as he tells us, an execrable rider, a negligent groom of +his horse, and, generally, a slack and slovenly trooper; but before +drill and discipline had had time to make a smart soldier of him, he +chanced to attract the attention of his captain by having written a +Latin quotation on the white wall of the stables at Reading. This +officer, who it seems was either able to translate the ejaculation, +"Eheu! quam infortunii miserrimum est fuisse felicem," [7] or, at any +rate, to recognise the language it was written in, interested himself +forthwith on behalf of his scholarly recruit. [6] Coleridge's discharge +was obtained at Hounslow on April 10, 1794, and he returned to +Cambridge. + +The year was destined to be eventful for him in more ways than one. In +June he went to Oxford to pay a visit to an old schoolfellow, where an +accidental introduction to Robert Southey, then an undergraduate of +Balliol, laid the foundation of a friendship destined largely to +influence their future lives. In the course of the following August he +came to Bristol, where he was met by Southey, and by him introduced to +Robert Lovell, through whom and Southey he made the acquaintance of two +persons of considerable, if not exactly equal, importance to any young +author--his first publisher and his future wife. Robert Lovell already +knew Mr. Joseph Cottle, brother of Amos Cottle (Byron's "O! Amos +Cottle! Phoebus! what a name"), and himself a poet of some pretensions; +and he had married Mary Fricker, one of whose sisters, Edith, was +already engaged to Southey; while another, Sara, was afterwards to +become Mrs. Coleridge. + +As the marriage turned out on the whole an unhappy one, the present may +be a convenient moment for considering how far its future character was +determined by previously existing and unalterable conditions, and how +far it may be regarded as the result of subsequent events. De Quincey, +whose acute and in many respects most valuable monograph on the poet +touches its point of least trustworthiness in matters of this kind, +declares roundly, and on the alleged authority of Coleridge himself, +that the very primary and essential prerequisite of happiness was +wanting to the union. Coleridge, he says, assured him that his marriage +was "not his own deliberate act, but was in a manner forced upon his +sense of honour by the scrupulous Southey, who insisted that he had +gone too far in his attentions to Miss Fricker for any honourable +retreat." On the other hand, he adds, "a neutral spectator of the +parties protested to me that if ever in his life he had seen a man +under deep fascination, and what he would have called desperately in +love, Coleridge, in relation to Miss F., was that man." One need not, I +think, feel much hesitation in preferring this "neutral spectator's" +statement to that of the discontented husband, made several years after +the mutual estrangement of the couple, and with no great propriety +perhaps, to a new acquaintance. There is abundant evidence in his own +poems alone that at the time of, and for at least two or three years +subsequently to, his marriage Coleridge's feeling towards his wife was +one of profound and indeed of ardent attachment. It is of course quite +possible that the passion of so variable, impulsive, and irresolute a +temperament as his may have had its hot and cold fits, and that during +one of the latter phases Southey may have imagined that his friend +needed some such remonstrance as that referred to. But this is not +nearly enough to support the assertion that Coleridge's marriage was +"in a manner forced upon his sense of honour," and was not his own +deliberate act. It was as deliberate as any of his other acts during +the years 1794 and 1795,--that is to say, it was as wholly inspired by +the enthusiasm of the moment, and as utterly ungoverned by anything in +the nature of calculation on the possibilities of the future. He fell +in love with Sara Fricker as he fell in love with the French Revolution +and with the scheme of "Pantisocracy," and it is indeed extremely +probable that the emotions of the lover and the socialist may have +subtly acted and reacted upon each other. The Pantisocratic scheme was +essentially based at its outset upon a union of kindred souls, for it +was clearly necessary of course that each male member of the little +community to be founded on the banks of the Susquehanna should take +with him a wife. Southey and Lovell had theirs in the persons of two +sisters; they were his friends and fellow-workers in the scheme; and +they had a sympathetic sister-in-law disengaged. Fate therefore seemed +to designate her for Coleridge and with the personal attraction which +she no doubt exerted over him there may well have mingled a dash of +that mysterious passion for symmetry which prompts a man to "complete +the set." After all, too, it must be remembered that, though Mrs. +Coleridge did not permanently retain her hold upon her husband's +affections, she got considerably the better of those who shared them +with her. Coleridge found out the objections to Pantisocracy in a very +short space of time, and a decided coolness had sprung up between him +and Madame la Revolution before another two years had passed. + +The whole history indeed of this latter _liaison_ is most remarkable, +and no one, it seems to me, can hope to form an adequate conception of +Coleridge's essential instability of character without bestowing +somewhat closer attention upon this passage in his intellectual +development than it usually receives. It is not uncommon to see the +cases of Wordsworth, Southey, and Coleridge lumped together +indiscriminately, as interequivalent illustrations of the way in which +the young and generous minds of that era were first fascinated and then +repelled by the French Revolution. As a matter of fact, however, the +last of the three cases differed in certain very important respects +from the two former. Coleridge not only took the "frenzy-fever" in a +more violent form than either Wordsworth or Southey, and uttered wilder +things in his delirium than they, but the paroxysm was much shorter, +the _immediate_ reaction more violent in its effects and brought about +by slighter causes in his case than in theirs. This will appear more +clearly when we come to contrast the poems of 1794 and 1795 with those +of 1797. For the present it must suffice to say that while the history +of Coleridge's relations to the French Revolution is intellectually +more interesting than that of Wordsworth's and Southey's, it plainly +indicates, even in that early period of the three lives, a mind far +more at the mercy of essentially transitory sentiment than belonged to +either of the others, and far less disposed than theirs to review the +aspirations of the moment by the steady light of the practical judgment. + +This, however, is anticipating matters. We are still in the summer of +1794, and we left Coleridge at Bristol with Southey, Lovell, and the +Miss Frickers. To this year belongs that remarkable experiment in +playwriting at high pressure, _The Fall of Robespierre_. It originated, +we learn from Southey, in "a sportive conversation at poor Lovell's," +when each of the three friends agreed to produce one act of a tragedy, +on the subject indicated in the above title, by the following evening. +Coleridge was to write the first, Southey the second, and Lovell the +third. Southey and Lovell appeared the next day with their acts +complete, Coleridge, characteristically, with only a part of his. +Lovell's, however, was found not to be in keeping with the other two, +so Southey supplied the third as well as the second, by which time +Coleridge had completed the first. The tragedy was afterwards published +entire, and is usually included in complete editions of Coleridge's +poetical works. It is an extremely immature production, abounding in +such coquettings (if nothing more serious) with bathos as + + "Now, + Aloof thou standest from the tottering pillar, + And like a frighted child behind its mother, + Hidest thy pale face in the skirts of Mercy." + +and + + "Liberty, condensed awhile, is bursting + To scatter the arch-chemist in the explosion." + +Coleridge also contributed to Southey's _Joan of Arc_ certain lines of +which, many years afterwards, he wrote in this humorously exaggerated +but by no means wholly unjust tone of censure:--"I was really +astonished (1) at the schoolboy, wretched, allegoric machinery; (2) at +the transmogrification of the fanatic Virago into a modern novel-pawing +proselyte of the Age of Reason--a Tom Paine in petticoats; (3) at the +utter want of all rhythm in the verse, the monotony and dead plumb-down +of the pauses, and at the absence of all bone, muscle, and sinew in the +single lines." + +In September Coleridge returned to Cambridge, to keep what turned out +to be his last term at Jesus. We may fairly suppose that he had already +made up his mind to bid adieu to the Alma Mater whose bosom he was +about to quit for that of a more venerable and, as he then believed, a +gentler mother on the banks of the Susquehanna; but it is not +impossible that in any case his departure might have been expedited by +the remonstrances of college authority. Dr. Pearce, Master of Jesus, +and afterwards Dean of Ely, did all he could, records a friend of a +somewhat later date, "to keep him within bounds; but his repeated +efforts to reclaim him were to no purpose, and upon one occasion, after +a long discussion on the visionary and ruinous tendency of his later +schemes, Coleridge cut short the argument by bluntly assuring him, his +friend and master, that he mistook the matter altogether. He was +neither Jacobin, [8] he said, nor Democrat, but a Pantisocrat." And, +leaving the good doctor to digest this new and strange epithet, +Coleridge bade farewell to his college and his university, and went +forth into that world with which he was to wage so painful and variable +a struggle. + + +FOOTNOTES + +1. He tells us in the _Biographia Literaria_ that he had translated the +eight hymns of Synesius from the Greek into English anacreontics +"before his fifteenth year." It is reasonable to suppose, therefore, +that he had more scholarship in 1782 than most boys of ten years. + +2. Footnote: Gillman, pp. 22, 23. + +3. Of this Coleridge afterwards remarked with justice that its "ideas +were better than the language or metre in which they were conveyed." +Porson, with little magnanimity, as De Quincey complains, was severe +upon its Greek, but its main conception--an appeal to Death to come, a +welcome deliverer to the slaves, and to bear them to shores where "they +may tell their beloved ones what horrors they, being men, had endured +from men"--is moving and effective. De Quincey, however, was +undoubtedly right in his opinion that Coleridge's Greek scholarship was +not of the exact order. No exact scholar could, for instance, have died +in the faith (as Coleridge did) that [Greek Text: +epsilon-sigma-tau-eta-sigma-epsilon] (S. T. C.) means "he stood," and +not "he placed." + +4. Adding "that which gained the prize was contemptible"--an expression +of opinion hardly in accordance with Le Grice's statement +("Recollections" in _Gentleman's Magazine_ for 1836) that "no one was +more convinced of the propriety of the decision than Coleridge +himself." Mr. Le Grice, however, bears valuable testimony to +Coleridge's disappointment, though I think he exaggerates its influence +in determining his career. + +5. It is characteristic of the punctilious inaccuracy of Mr. Cottle +(_Recollections_, ii. 54) that he should insist that the assumed name +was "Cumberbatch, not Comberback," though Coleridge has himself fixed +the real name by the jest, "My habits were so little equestrian, that +my horse, I doubt not, was of that opinion." This circumstance, though +trifling, does not predispose us to accept unquestioningly Mr. Cottle's +highly particularised account of Coleridge's experience with his +regiment. + +6. Miss Mitford, in her _Recollections of a Literary Life_, +interestingly records the active share taken by her father in procuring +the learned trooper's discharge. + +7. "In omni adversitate fortunae, infelicissimum genus est infortunii +fuisse felicem."--_Boethius_. + +8. Carrlyon's _Early Years and late Reflections_, vol. i. p. 27. + + + + +CHAPTER II. + +The Bristol Lectures--Marriage--Life at Clevedon--The +_Watchman_--Retirement to Stowey--Introduction to Wordsworth. + +[1794-1797.] + + +The reflections of the worthy Master of Jesus upon the strange reply of +the wayward young undergraduate would have been involved in even +greater perplexity if he could have looked forward a few months into +the future. For after a winter spent in London, and enlivened by those +_noctes conoque Deum_ at the "Cat and Salutation," which Lamb has so +charmingly recorded, Coleridge returned with Southey to Bristol at the +beginning of 1795, and there proceeded to deliver a series of lectures +which, whatever their other merits, would certainly not have assisted +Dr. Pearce to grasp the distinction between a Pantisocrat and a +Jacobin. As a scholar and a man of literary taste he might possibly +have admired the rhetorical force of the following outburst, but, +considering that the "HE" here gibbeted in capitals was no less a +personage than the "heaven-born minister" himself, a plain man might +well have wondered what additional force the vocabulary of Jacobinism +could have infused into the language of Pantisocracy. After summing up +the crimes of the Reign of Terror the lecturer asks: "Who, my brethren, +was the cause of this guilt if not HE who supplied the occasion and the +motive? Heaven hath bestowed on _that man_ a portion of its ubiquity, +and given him an actual presence in the sacraments of hell, wherever +administered, in all the bread of bitterness, in all the cups of +blood." And in general, indeed, the _Conciones ad Populum_, as +Coleridge named these lectures on their subsequent publication, were +rather calculated to bewilder any of the youthful lecturer's +well-wishers who might be anxious for some means of discriminating his +attitude from that of the Hardys, the Horne Tookes, and the Thelwalls +of the day. A little warmth of language might no doubt be allowed to a +young friend of liberty in discussing legislation which, in the +retrospect, has staggered even so staunch a Tory as Sir Archibald +Alison; but Coleridge's denunciation of the Pitt and Grenville Acts, in +the lecture entitled _The Plot Discovered_, is occasionally startling, +even for that day of fierce passions, in the fierceness of its +language. It is interesting, however, to note the ever-active play of +thought and reasoning amid the very storm and stress of political +passion. Coleridge is never for long together a mere declaimer on +popular rights and ministerial tyranny, and even this indignant address +contains a passage of extremely just and thoughtful analysis of the +constituent elements of despotism. Throughout the spring and summer of +1795 Coleridge continued his lectures at Bristol, his head still +simmering--though less violently, it may be suspected, every +month--with Pantisocracy, and certainly with all his kindred political +and religious enthusiasms unabated. + +A study of these crude but vigorous addresses reveals to us, as does +the earlier of the early poems, a mind struggling with its half-formed +and ever-changing conceptions of the world, and, as is usual at such +peculiar phases of an intellectual development, affirming its temporary +beliefs with a fervour and vehemence directly proportioned to the +recency of their birth. Commenting on the _Conciones ad Populum_ many +years afterwards, and invoking them as witnesses to his political +consistency as an author, Coleridge remarked that with the exception of +"two or three pages involving the doctrine of philosophical necessity +and Unitarianism," he saw little or nothing in these outbursts of his +youthful zeal to retract, and, with the exception of "some +flame-coloured epithets" applied to persons, as to Mr. Pitt and others, +"or rather to personifications"--for such, he says, they really were to +him--as little to regret. + +We now, however, arrive at an event, important in the life of every +man, and which influenced that of Coleridge to an extent not the less +certainly extraordinary because difficult, if not impossible, to define +with exactitude. On the 4th of October 1795 Coleridge was married at +St. Mary Redcliffe Church, Bristol, to Sarah (or as he preferred to +spell it Sara) Fricker, and withdrew for a time from the eager +intellectual life of a political lecturer to the contemplative quiet +appropriate to the honeymoon of a poet, spent in a sequestered cottage +amid beautiful scenery, and within sound of the sea. No wonder that +among such surroundings, and with such belongings, the honeymoon should +have extended from one month to three, and indeed that Coleridge should +have waited till his youthful yearnings for a life of action, and +perhaps (though that would have lent itself less gracefully to his poem +of farewell to his Clevedon cottage) his increasing sense of the +necessity of supplementing the ambrosia of love with the bread and +cheese of mortals, compelled him to re-enter the world. No wonder he +should have delayed to do so, for it is as easy to perceive in his +poems that these were days of unclouded happiness as it is melancholy +to reflect by how few others like them his life was destined to be +brightened. The _Aeolian Harp_ has no more than the moderate merits, +with its full share of the characteristic faults, of his earlier +productions; but one cannot help "reading into it" the poet's +after-life of disappointment and disillusion--estrangement from the +"beloved woman" in whose affection he was then reposing; decay and +disappearance of those "flitting phantasies" with which he was then so +joyously trifling, and the bitterly ironical scholia which fate was +preparing for such lines as + + "And tranquil muse upon tranquillity." + +One cannot in fact refrain from mentally comparing the _'olian Harp_ of +1795 with the _Dejection_ of 1803, and no one who has thoroughly felt +the spirit of both poems can make that comparison without emotion. The +former piece is not, as has been said, in a literary sense remarkable. +With the exception of the one point of metrical style, to be touched on +presently, it has almost no note of poetic distinction save such as +belongs of right to any simple record of a mood which itself forms the +highest poetry of the average man's life; and one well knows whence +came the criticism of that MS. note inscribed by S. T. C. in a copy of +the second edition of his early poems, "This I think the most perfect +poem I ever wrote. Bad may be the best perhaps." One feels that the +annotator might just as well have written, "How perfect was the +happiness which this poem recalls!" for this is really all that +Coleridge's eulogium, with its touching bias from the hand of memory, +amounts to. + +It has become time, however, to speak more generally of Coleridge's +early poems. The peaceful winter months of 1795-96 were in all +likelihood spent in arranging and revising the products of those poetic +impulses which had more or less actively stirred within him from his +seventeenth year upwards; and in April 1797 there appeared at Bristol a +volume of some fifty pieces entitled _Poems on Various Subjects, by S. +T. Coleridge, late of Jesus College Cambridge_. It was published by his +friend Cottle, who, in a mixture of the generous with the speculative +instinct, had given him thirty guineas for the copyright. Its contents +are of a miscellaneous kind, consisting partly of rhymed irregular +odes, partly of a collection of _Sonnets on Eminent Characters_, and +partly (and principally) of a blank verse poem of several hundred +lines, then, and indeed for years afterwards, regarded by many of the +poet's admirers as his masterpiece--the _Religious Musings_. [1] + +To the second edition of these poems, which was published in the +following year, Coleridge, at all times a candid critic (to the limited +extent to which it is possible even for the finest judges to be so) of +his own works, prefixed a preface, wherein he remarks that his poems +have been "rightly charged with a profusion of double epithets and a +general turgidness," and adds that he has "pruned the double epithets +with no sparing hand," and used his best efforts to tame the swell and +glitter both of thought and diction. "The latter fault, however, had," +he continues, "so insinuated itself into my _Religious Musings_ with +such intricacy of union that sometimes I have omitted to disentangle +the weed from fear of snapping the flower." This is plain-spoken +criticism, but I do not think that any reader who is competent to +pronounce judgment on the point will be inclined to deprecate its +severity. Nay, in order to get done with fault-finding as soon as +possible, it must perhaps be added that the admitted turgidness of the +poems is often something more than a mere defect of style, and that the +verse is turgid because the feeling which it expresses is exaggerated. +The "youthful bard unknown to fame" who, in the _Songs of the Pixies_, +is made to "heave the gentle misery of a sigh," is only doing a natural +thing described in ludicrously and unnaturally stilted terms; but the +young admirer of the _Robbers_, who informs Schiller that if he were to +meet him in the evening wandering in his loftier mood "beneath some +vast old tempest-swinging wood," he would "gaze upon him awhile in mute +awe" and then "weep aloud in a wild ecstasy," endangers the reader's +gravity not so much by extravagance of diction as by over-effusiveness +of sentiment. The former of these two offences differs from the latter +by the difference between "fustian" and "gush." And there is, in fact, +more frequent exception to be taken to the character of the thought in +these poems than to that of the style. The remarkable gift of +eloquence, which seems to have belonged to Coleridge from boyhood, +tended naturally to aggravate that very common fault of young poets +whose faculty of expression has outstripped the growth of their +intellectual and emotional experiences--the fault of wordiness. Page +after page of the poems of 1796 is filled with what one cannot, on the +most favourable terms, rank higher than rhetorical commonplace; stanza +after stanza falls pleasantly upon the ear without suggesting any image +sufficiently striking to arrest the eye of the imagination, or +awakening any thought sufficiently novel to lay hold upon the mind. The +_Aeolian Harp_ has been already referred to as a pleasing poem, and +reading it, as we must, in constant recollection of the circumstances +in which it was written, it unquestionably is so. But in none of the +descriptions either of external objects or of internal feeling which +are to be found in this and its companion piece, the _Reflections on +having left a Place of Retirement_, is there anything which can fairly +be said to elevate them above the level of graceful verse. It is only +in the region of the fantastic and supernatural that Coleridge's +imagination, as he was destined to show by a far more splendid example +two years afterwards, seems to acquire true poetic distinction. It is +in the _Songs of the Pixies_ that the young man "heaves the gentle +misery of a sigh," and the sympathetic interest of the reader of today +is chilled by the too frequent intrusion of certain abstract ladies, +each preceded by her capital letter and attended by her +"adjective-in-waiting;" but, after all deductions for the +conventionalisms of "white-robed Purity," "meek-eyed Pity," "graceful +Ease," etc., one cannot but feel that the _Songs of the Pixies_ was the +offspring not of a mere abundant and picturesque vocabulary but of a +true poetic fancy. It is worth far more as an earnest of future +achievement than the very unequal _Monody on the Death of Chatterton_ +(for which indeed we ought to make special allowance, as having been +commenced in the author's eighteenth year), and certainly than anything +which could be quoted from the _Effusions_, as Coleridge, unwilling to +challenge comparison with the divine Bowles, had chosen to describe his +sonnets. It must be honestly said indeed that these are, a very few +excepted, among the least satisfactory productions of any period of his +poetic career. The Coleridgian sonnet is not only imperfect in form and +in marked contrast in the frequent bathos of its close to the steady +swell and climax of Wordsworth, but, in by far the majority of +instances in this volume, it is wanting in internal weight. The "single +pebble" of thought which a sonnet should enclose is not only not neatly +wrapped up in its envelope of words, but it is very often not heavy +enough to carry itself and its covering to the mark. When it is so, its +weight, as in the sonnet to Pitt, is too frequently only another word +for an ephemeral violence of political feeling which, whether displayed +on one side or the other, cannot be expected to reproduce its effect in +the minds of comparatively passionless posterity. Extravagances, too, +abound, as when in _Kosciusko_ Freedom is made to look as if, in a fit +of "wilfulness and sick despair," she had drained a mystic urn +containing all the tears that had ever found "fit channel on a +Patriot's furrowed cheek." The main difficulty of the metre, too--that +of avoiding forced rhymes--is rarely surmounted. Even in the three fine +lines in the _Burke_--- + + "Thee stormy Pity and the cherished lure + Of Pomp and proud precipitance of soul, + Wildered with meteor fires"-- + +we cannot help feeling that "lure" is extremely harsh, while the +weakness of the two concluding lines of the sonnet supplies a typical +example of the disappointment which these "effusions" so often prepare +for their readers. + +Enough, however, has been said of the faults of these early poems; it +remains to consider their merits, foremost among which, as might be +expected, is the wealth and splendour of their diction in these +passages, in which such display is all that is needed for the literary +ends of the moment. Over all that wide region of literature, in which +force and fervour of utterance, depth and sincerity of feeling avail, +without the nameless magic of poetry in the higher sense of the word, +to achieve the objects of the writer and to satisfy the mind of the +reader, Coleridge ranges with a free and sure footstep. It is no +disparagement to his _Religious Musings_ to say that it is to this +class of literature that it belongs. Having said this, however, it must +be added that poetry of the second order has seldom risen to higher +heights of power. The faults already admitted disfigure it here and +there. We have "moon blasted Madness when he yells at midnight;" we +read of "eye-starting wretches and rapture-trembling seraphim," and the +really striking image of Ruin, the "old hag, unconquerable, huge, +Creation's eyeless drudge," is marred by making her "nurse" an +"impatient earthquake." But there is that in Coleridge's aspirations +and apostrophes to the Deity which impresses one even more profoundly +than the mere magnificence, remarkable as it is, of their rhetorical +clothing. They are touched with so penetrating a sincerity; they are so +obviously the outpourings of an awe-struck heart. Indeed, there is +nothing more remarkable at this stage of Coleridge's poetic development +than the instant elevation which his verse assumes whenever he passes +to Divine things. At once it seems to take on a Miltonic majesty of +diction and a Miltonic stateliness of rhythm. The tender but low-lying +domestic sentiment of the _Aeolian Harp_ is in a moment informed by it +with the dignity which marks that poem's close. Apart too from its +literary merits, the biographical interest of _Religious Musings_ is +very considerable. "Written," as its title declares, but in reality, as +its length would suggest and as Mr. Cottle in fact tells us, only +_completed_, "on the Christmas eve of 1794," it gives expression to the +tumultuous emotions by which Coleridge's mind was agitated at this its +period of highest political excitement. His revolutionary enthusiasm +was now at its hottest, his belief in the infant French Republic at its +fullest, his wrath against the "coalesced kings" at its fiercest, his +contempt for their religious pretence at its bitterest. "Thee to +defend," he cries, + + "Thee to defend, dear Saviour of mankind! + Thee, Lamb of God! Thee, blameless Prince of Peace! + From all sides rush the thirsty brood of war-- + Austria, and that foul Woman of the North, + The lustful murderess of her wedded lord, + And he, connatural mind! whom (in their songs, + So bards of elder time had haply feigned) + Some Fury fondled in her hate to man, + Bidding her serpent hair in tortuous fold + Lick his young face, and at his mouth imbreathe + Horrible sympathy!" + +This is vigorous poetic invective; and the effect of such outbursts is +heightened by the rapid subsidence of the passion that inspires them +and the quick advent of a calmer mood. We have hardly turned the page +ere denunciations of Catherine and Frederick William give place to +prayerful invocations of the Supreme Being, which are in their turn the +prelude of a long and beautiful contemplative passage: "In the prim'val +age, a dateless while," etc., on the pastoral origin of human society. +It is as though some sweet and solemn strain of organ music had +succeeded to the blast of war-bugles and the roll of drums. In the _Ode +to the Departing Year_, written in the last days of 1796, with its +"prophecy of curses though I pray fervently for blessings" upon the +poet's native country, the mood is more uniform in its gloom; and it +lacks something, therefore, of those peculiar qualities which make the +_Religious Musings_ one perhaps of the most pleasing of all Coleridge's +earlier productions. But it shares with the poems shortly to be noticed +what may be called the autobiographic charm. The fresh natural emotion +of a young and brilliant mind is eternally interesting, and Coleridge's +youthful Muse, with a frankness of self-disclosure which is not the +less winning because at times it provokes a smile, confides to us even +the history of her most temporary moods. It is, for instance, at once +amusing and captivating to read in the latest edition of the poems, as +a footnote to the lines-- + + "Not yet enslaved, not wholly vile, + O Albion! O my mother isle!" + +the words-- + + "O doomed to fall, enslaved and vile--1796." + +Yes; in 1796 and till the end of 1797 the poet's native country _was_ +in his opinion all these dreadful things, but, directly the mood +changes, the verse alters, and to the advantage, one cannot but think, +of the beautiful and often-quoted close of the passage-- + +"And Ocean mid his uproar wild + Speaks safety to his island child. + Hence for many a fearless age + Has social Quiet loved thy shore, + Nor ever proud invader's rage, + Or sacked thy towers or stained thy fields with gore." + +And whether we view him in his earlier or his later mood there is a +certain strange dignity of utterance, a singular confidence in his own +poetic mission, which forbids us to smile at this prophet of +four-and-twenty who could thus conclude his menacing vaticinations:-- + + "Away, my soul, away! + I, unpartaking of the evil thing, + With daily prayer and daily toil + Soliciting for food my scanty soil, + Have wailed my country with a loud lament. + Now I recentre my immortal mind + In the deep Sabbath of meek self-content, + Cleansed from the vaporous passions which bedim + God's image, sister of the Seraphim." + +If ever the consciousness of great powers and the assurance of a great +future inspired a youth with perfect and on the whole well-warranted +fearlessness of ridicule it has surely done so here. + +Poetry alone, however, formed no sufficient outlet for Coleridge's +still fresh political enthusiasm--an enthusiasm which now became too +importunate to let him rest in his quiet Clevedon cottage. Was it +right, he cries in his lines of leave-taking to his home, that he +should dream away the entrusted hours "while his unnumbered brethren +toiled and bled"? The propaganda of Liberty was to be pushed forward; +the principles of Unitarianism, to which Coleridge had become a convert +at Cambridge, were to be preached. Is it too prosaic to add that what +poor Henri Murger calls the "chasse aux piece de cent sous" was in all +probability demanding peremptorily to be resumed? + +Anyhow it so fell out that in the spring of the year 1796 Coleridge +took his first singular plunge into the unquiet waters of journalism, +instigated thereto by "sundry philanthropists and anti-polemists," +whose names he does not record, but among whom we may conjecturally +place Mr. Thomas Poole of Stowey, with whom he had formed what was +destined to be one of the longest and closest friendships of his life. +Which of the two parties--the advisers or the advised--was responsible +for the general plan of this periodical and for the arrangements for +its publication is unknown; but one of these last-mentioned details is +enough to indicate that there could have been no "business head" among +them. Considering that the motto of the _Watchman_ declared the object +of its issue to be that "all might know the truth, and that the truth +might make them free," it is to be presumed that the promoters of the +scheme were not unwilling to secure as many subscribers as possible for +their sheet of "thirty-two pages, large octavo, closely printed, price +only fourpence." In order, however, to exempt it from the stamp-tax, +and with the much less practical object of making it "contribute as +little as possible to the supposed guilt of a war against freedom," it +was to be published on every eighth day, so that the week-day of its +appearance would of course vary with each successive week--an +arrangement as ingeniously calculated to irritate and alienate its +public as any perhaps that the wit of man could have devised. So, +however, it was to be, and accordingly with "a naming prospectus, +'Knowledge is Power,' to cry the state of the political atmosphere," +Coleridge set off on a tour to the north, from Bristol to Sheffield, +for the purpose of procuring customers, preaching Unitarian sermons by +the way in most of the great towns, "as an hireless volunteer in a blue +coat and white waistcoat that not a rag of the woman of Babylon might +be seen on me." How he sped upon his mission is related by him with +infinite humour in the _Biographia Literaria_. He opened the campaign +at Birmingham upon a Calvinist tallow-chandler, who, after listening to +half an hour's harangue, extending from "the captivity of the nations" +to "the near approach of the millennium," and winding up with a +quotation describing the latter "glorious state" out of the _Religious +Musings_, inquired what might be the cost of the new publication. +Deeply sensible of "the anti-climax, the abysmal bathos" of the answer, +Coleridge replied, "Only fourpence, each number to be published every +eighth day," upon which the tallow-chandler observed doubtfully that +that came to "a deal of money at the end of the year." What determined +him, however, to withhold his patronage was not the price of the +article but its quantity, and not the deficiency of that quantity but +its excess. Thirty-two pages, he pointed out, was more than he ever +read all the year round, and though "as great a one as any man in +Brummagem for liberty and truth, and them sort of things, he begged to +be excused." Had it been possible to arrange for supplying him with +sixteen pages of the paper for twopence, a bargain might no doubt have +been struck; but he evidently had a business-like repugnance to +anything in the nature of "over-trading." Equally unsuccessful was a +second application made at Manchester to a "stately and opulent +wholesale dealer in cottons," who thrust the prospectus into his pocket +and turned his back upon the projector, muttering that he was "overrun +with these articles." This, however, was Coleridge's last attempt at +canvassing. His friends at Birmingham persuaded him to leave that work +to others, their advice being no doubt prompted, in part at least, by +the ludicrous experience of his qualifications as a canvasser which the +following incident furnished them. The same tradesman who had +introduced him to the patriotic tallow-chandler entertained him at +dinner, and, after the meal, invited his guest to smoke a pipe with him +and "two or three other _illuminati_ of the same rank." The invitation +was at first declined on the plea of an engagement to spend the evening +with a minister and his friends, and also because, writes Coleridge, "I +had never smoked except once or twice in my lifetime, and then it was +herb-tobacco mixed with Oronooko." His host, however, assured him that +the tobacco was equally mild, and "seeing, too, that it was of a yellow +colour," he took half a pipe of it, "filling the lower half of the +bowl," for some unexplained reason, "with salt." He was soon, however, +compelled to resign it "in consequence of a giddiness and distressful +feeling" in his eyes, which, as he had drunk but a single glass of ale, +he knew must have been the effect of the tobacco. Deeming himself +recovered after a short interval, he sallied forth to fulfil the +evening's engagement; but the symptoms returned with the walk and the +fresh air, and he had scarcely entered the minister's drawing-room and +opened a packet of letters awaiting him there than he "sank back on the +sofa in a sort of swoon rather than sleep." Fortunately he had had time +to inform his new host of the confused state of his feelings and of its +occasion; for "here and thus I lay," he continues, "my face like a wall +that is whitewashing, deathly pale, and with the cold drops of +perspiration running down it from my forehead; while one after another +there dropped in the different gentlemen who had been invited to meet +and spend the evening with me, to the number of from fifteen to twenty. +As the poison of tobacco acts but for a short time, I at length awoke +from insensibility and looked round on the party, my eyes dazzled by +the candles, which had been lighted in the interim. By way of relieving +my embarrassment one of the gentlemen began the conversation with: +'Have you seen a paper to-day, Mr. Coleridge?' 'Sir,' I replied, +rubbing my eyes, 'I am far from convinced that a Christian is permitted +to read either newspapers or any other works of merely political and +temporary interest.'" The incongruity of this remark, with the purpose +for which the speaker was known to have visited Birmingham, and to +assist him in which the company had assembled, produced, as was +natural, "an involuntary and general burst of laughter," and the party +spent, we are told, a most delightful evening. Both then and +afterwards, however, they all joined in dissuading the young projector +from proceeding with his scheme, assuring him "in the most friendly and +yet most flattering expressions" that the employment was neither fit +for him nor he for the employment. They insisted that at any rate "he +should make no more applications in person, but carry on the canvass by +proxy," a stipulation which we may well believe to have been prompted +as much by policy as by good nature. The same hospitable reception, the +same dissuasion, and, that failing, the same kind exertions on his +behalf, he met with at Manchester, Derby, Nottingham, and every other +place he visited; and the result of his tour was that he returned with +nearly a thousand names on the subscription list of the _Watchman_, +together with "something more than a half conviction that prudence +dictated the abandonment of the scheme." Nothing but this, however, was +needed to induce him to persevere with it. To know that a given course +of conduct was the dictate of prudence was a sort of presumptive proof +to him at this period of life that the contrary was the dictate of +duty. In due time, or rather out of due time,--for the publication of +the first number was delayed beyond the day announced for it,--the +_Watchman_ appeared. Its career was brief--briefer, indeed, than it +need have been. A naturally short life was suicidally shortened. In the +second number, records Coleridge, with delightful _naivete_, "an essay +against fast-days, with a most censurable application of a text from +Isaiah [2] for its motto, lost me near five hundred subscribers at one +blow." In the two following numbers he made enemies of all his Jacobin +and democratic patrons by playing Balaam to the legislation of the +Government, and pronouncing something almost like a blessing on the +"gagging bills"--measures he declared which, "whatever the motive of +their introduction, would produce an effect to be desired by all true +friends of freedom, as far as they should contribute to deter men from +openly declaiming on subjects the principles of which they had never +bottomed, and from pleading to the poor and ignorant instead of +pleading for them." At the same time the editor of the _Watchman_ +avowed his conviction that national education and a concurring spread +of the Gospel were the indispensable conditions of any true political +amelioration. We can hardly wonder on the whole that by the time the +seventh number was published its predecessors were being "exposed in +sundry old iron shops at a penny a piece." + +And yet, like everything which came from Coleridge's hand, this +immature and unpractical production has an interest of its own. Amid +the curious mixture of actuality and abstract disquisition of which +each number of the _Watchman_ is made up, we are arrested again and +again by some striking metaphor or some weighty sentence which tells us +that the writer is no mere wordy wielder of a facile pen. The paper on +the slave trade in the seventh number is a vigorous and, in places, a +heart-stirring appeal to the humane emotions. There are passages in it +which foreshadow Coleridge's more mature literary manner--the manner of +the great pulpit orators of the seventeenth century--in a very +interesting way. [3] But what was the use of No. IV containing an +effective article like this when No. III. had opened with an +"Historical Sketch of the Manners and Religion of the Ancient Germans, +introductory to a sketch of the Manners, Religion, and Politics of +present Germany"? This to a public who wanted to read about Napoleon +and Mr. Pitt! No. III. in all probability "choked off" a good +proportion of the commonplace readers who might have been well content +to have put up with the humanitarian rhetoric of No. IV., if only for +its connection with so unquestionable an actuality as West Indian +sugar. It was, anyhow, owing to successive alienations of this kind +that on 13th May 1796 the editor of the _Watchman_ was compelled to bid +farewell to his few remaining readers in the tenth number of his +periodical, for the "short and satisfactory" reason that "the work does +not pay its expenses." "Part of my readers," continues Coleridge, +"relinquished it because it did not contain sufficient original +composition, and a still larger part because it contained too much;" +and he then proceeds with that half-humorous simplicity of his to +explain what excellent reasons there were why the first of these +classes should transfer their patronage to Flower's _Cambridge +Intelligencer_, and the second theirs to the _New Monthly Magazine_. + +It is not, however, for the biographer or the world to regret the short +career of the _Watchman_, since its decease left Coleridge's mind in +undivided allegiance to the poetic impulse at what was destined to be +the period of its greatest power. In the meantime one result of the +episode had been to make a not unimportant addition to his friendships. +Mention has already been made of his somewhat earlier acquaintance with +Mr. Thomas Poole of Nether Stowey, a man of high intelligence and mark +in his time; and it was in the course of his northern peregrinations in +search of subscribers that he met with Charles Lloyd. This young man, +the son of an eminent Birmingham banker, was so struck with Coleridge's +genius and eloquence as to conceive an "ardent desire to domesticate +himself permanently with a man whose conversation was to him as a +revelation from heaven;" and shortly after the decease of the +_Watchman_ he obtained his parents' consent to the arrangement. + +Early, therefore, in the year 1797 Coleridge, accompanied by Charles +Lloyd, removed to Nether Stowey in Somersetshire, where he occupied a +cottage placed at his disposal by Mr. Poole. His first employment in +his new abode appears to have been the preparation of the second +edition of his poems. In the new issue nineteen pieces of the former +publication were discarded and twelve new ones added, the most +important of which was the _Ode to the Departing Year_, which had first +appeared in the _Cambridge Intelligencer_, and had been immediately +afterwards republished in a separate form as a thin quarto pamphlet, +together with some lines of no special merit "addressed to a young man +of fortune" (probably Charles Lloyd), "who abandoned himself to an +indolent and causeless melancholy." To the new edition were added the +preface already quoted from, and a prose introduction to the sonnets. +The volume also contained some poems by Charles Lloyd and an enlarged +collection of sonnets and other pieces by Charles Lamb, the latter of +whom about the time of its publication paid his first visit to the +friend with whom, ever since leaving Christ's Hospital, he had kept up +a constant and, to the student of literature, a most interesting +correspondence. [4] In June 1797 Charles and Mary Lamb arrived at the +Stowey cottage to find their host disabled by an accident which +prevented him from walking during their whole stay. It was during their +absence on a walking expedition that he composed the pleasing lines-- + + "The lime-tree bower my prison," + +in which he thrice applies to his friend that epithet which gave such +humorous annoyance to the "gentle-hearted Charles." [5] + +But a greater than Lamb, if one may so speak without offence to the +votaries of that rare humorist and exquisite critic, had already made +his appearance on the scene. Some time before this visit of Lamb's to +Stowey Coleridge had made the acquaintance of the remarkable man who +was destined to influence his literary career in many ways importantly, +and in one way decisively. It was in the month of June 1797, and at the +village of Racedown in Dorsetshire, that he first met William +Wordsworth. + + +FOOTNOTES + +1. The volume contained also three sonnets by Charles Lamb, one of +which was destined to have a somewhat curious history. + +2. "Wherefore my bowels shall sound like an harp."--Is. xvi. 11. + +3. Take for instance this sentence: "Our own sorrows, like the Princes +of Hell in Milton's Pandemonium, sit enthroned 'bulky and vast;' while +the miseries of our fellow-creatures dwindle into pigmy forms, and are +crowded in an innumerable multitude into some dark corner of the +heart." Both in character of imagery and in form of structure we have +here the germ of such passages as this which one might confidently defy +the most accomplished literary "taster" to distinguish from Jeremy +Taylor: "Or like two rapid streams that at their first meeting within +narrow and rocky banks mutually strive to repel each other, and +intermix reluctantly and in tumult, but soon finding a wider channel +and more yielding shores, blend and dilate and flow on in one current +and with one voice."--_Biog. Lit._ p. 155. + +4. Perhaps a "correspondence" of which only one side exists may be +hardly thought to deserve that name. Lamb's letters to Coleridge are +full of valuable criticism on their respective poetical efforts. +Unfortunately in, it is somewhat strangely said, "a fit of dejection" +he destroyed all Coleridge's letters to him. + +5. Lamb's Correspondence with Coleridge, Letter XXXVII. + + + + +CHAPTER III. + +Coleridge and Wordsworth--Publication of the _Lyrical Ballads_--The +_Ancient Mariner_--The first part of _Christabel_--Decline of +Coleridge's poetic impulse--Final review of his poetry. + +[1797-1799.] + + +The years 1797 and 1798 are generally and justly regarded as the +blossoming-time of Coleridge's poetic genius. It would be scarcely an +exaggeration to say that they were even more than this, and that within +the brief period covered by them is included not only the development +of the poet's powers to their full maturity but the untimely beginnings +of their decline. For to pass from the poems written by Coleridge +within these two years to those of later origin is like passing from +among the green wealth of summer foliage into the well-nigh naked woods +of later autumn. During 1797 and 1798 the _Ancient Mariner_, the first +part of _Christabel_, the fine ode to France, the _Fears in Solitude_, +the beautiful lines entitled _Frost at Midnight_, the _Nightingale_, +the _Circassian Love-Chant_, the piece known as _Love_ from the poem of +the _Dark Ladie_, and that strange fragment _Kubla Khan_, were all of +them written and nearly all of them published; while between the last +composed of these and that swan-song of his dying Muse, the +_Dejection_, of 1802, there is but one piece to be added to the list of +his greater works. This therefore, the second part of _Christabel_ +(1800), may almost be described by the picturesque image in the first +part of the same poem as + + "The one red leaf, the last of its clan, + Hanging so light and hanging so high, + On the topmost twig that looks up at the sky." + +The first to fail him of his sources of inspiration was his +revolutionary enthusiasm; and the ode to France--the _Recantation_, as +it was styled on its first appearance in the _Morning Post_--is the +record of a reaction which, as has been said, was as much speedier in +Coleridge's case than in that of the other ardent young minds which had +come under the spell of the Revolution as his enthusiasm had been more +passionate than theirs. In the winter of 1797-98 the Directory had +plunged France into an unnatural conflict with her sister Republic of +Switzerland, and Coleridge, who could pardon and had pardoned her +fierce animosity against a country which he considered not so much his +own as Pitt's, was unable to forgive her this. In the _Recantation_ he +casts her off for ever; he perceives at last that true liberty is not +to be obtained through political, but only through spiritual +emancipation; that-- + + "The sensual and the dark rebel in vain, + Slaves by their own compulsion! In mad game + They burst their manacles, and wear the name + Of Freedom graven on a heavier chain"; + +and arrives in a noble peroration at the somewhat unsatisfactory +conclusion, that the spirit of liberty, "the guide of homeless winds +and playmate of the waves," is to be found only among the elements, and +not in the institutions of man. And in the same quaintly ingenuous +spirit which half touches and half amuses us in his earlier poems he +lets us perceive a few weeks later, in his _Fears in Solitude_, that +sympathy with a foreign nation threatened by the invader may gradually +develop into an almost filial regard for one's own similarly situated +land. He has been deemed, he says, an enemy of his country. + + "But, O dear Britain! O my mother Isle," + +once, it may be remembered, "doomed to fall enslaved and vile," but +now-- + + "Needs must them prove a name most dear and holy, + To me a son, a brother, and a friend, + A husband and a father! who revere + All bonds of natural love, and find them all + Within the limits of thy rocky shores." + +After all, it has occurred to him, England is not only the England of +Pitt and Grenville, and in that capacity the fitting prey of the +insulted French Republic: she is also the England of Sara Coleridge, +and little Hartley, and of Mr. Thomas Poole of Nether Stowey. And so, +to be sure, she was in 1796 when her downfall was predicted, and in the +spirit rather of the Old Testament than of the New. But there is +something very engaging in the candour with which the young poet +hastens to apprise us of this his first awakening to the fact. + +_France_ may be regarded as the last ode, and _Fears in Solitude_ as +the last blank-verse poem of any importance, that owe their origin to +Coleridge's early political sentiments. Henceforth, and for the too +brief period of his poetic activity, he was to derive his inspiration +from other sources. The most fruitful and important of these was +unquestionably his intercourse with Wordsworth, from whom, although +there was doubtless a reciprocation of influence between them, his much +more receptive nature took a far deeper impression than it made. [1] At +the time of their meeting he had already for some three years been +acquainted with Wordsworth's works as a poet, and it speaks highly for +his discrimination that he was able to discern the great powers of his +future friend, even in work so immature in many respects as the +_Descriptive Sketches_. It was during the last year of his residence at +Cambridge that he first met with these poems, of which he says in the +_Biographia Literaria_ that "seldom, if ever, was the emergence of an +original poetic genius above the literary horizon more evidently +announced;" and the effect produced by this volume was steadily +enhanced by further acquaintance both with the poet and his works. +Nothing, indeed, is so honourably noticeable and even touching in +Coleridge's relation to his friend as the tone of reverence with which, +even in the days of his highest self-confidence and even almost haughty +belief in the greatness of his own poetic mission, he was accustomed to +speak of Wordsworth. A witness, to be more fully cited hereafter, and +whose testimony is especially valuable as that of one who was by no +means blind to Coleridge's early foible of self-complacency, has +testified to this unbounded admiration of his brother-poet. "When," +records this gentleman, "we have sometimes spoken complimentarily to +Coleridge of himself he has said that he was nothing in comparison with +Wordsworth." And two years before this, at a time when they had not yet +tested each other's power in literary collaboration, he had written to +Cottle to inform him of his introduction to the author of "near twelve +hundred lines of blank verse, superior, I dare aver, to anything in our +language which in any way resembles it," and had declared with evident +sincerity that he felt "a little man" by Wordsworth's side. + +His own impression upon his new friend was more distinctively personal +in its origin. It was by Coleridge's total individuality, by the sum of +his vast and varied intellectual powers, rather than by the specific +poetic element contained in them, that Wordsworth, like the rest of the +world indeed, was in the main attracted; but it is clear enough that +this attraction was from the first most powerful. On that point we have +not only the weighty testimony of Dorothy Wordsworth, as conveyed in +her often-quoted description [2] of her brother's new acquaintance, but +the still more conclusive evidence of her brother's own acts. He gave +the best possible proof of the fascination which had been exercised +over him by quitting Racedown with his sister for Alfoxden near Nether +Stowey within a few weeks of his first introduction to Coleridge, a +change of abode for which, as Miss Wordsworth has expressly recorded, +"our principal inducement was Coleridge's society." + +By a curious coincidence the two poets were at this time simultaneously +sickening for what may perhaps be appropriately called the "poetic +measles." They were each engaged in the composition of a five-act +tragedy, and read scenes to each other, and to each other's admiration, +from their respective dramas. Neither play was fortunate in its +immediate destiny. Wordsworth's tragedy, the _Borderers_, was greatly +commended by London critics and decisively rejected by the management +of Covent Garden. As for Coleridge, the negligent Sheridan did not even +condescend to acknowledge the receipt of his manuscript; his play was +passed from hand to hand among the Drury Lane Committee; but not till +many years afterwards did _Osorio_ find its way under another name to +the footlights. + +For the next twelvemonth the intercourse between the two poets was +close and constant, and most fruitful in results of high moment to +English literature. It was in their daily rambles among the Quantock +Hills that they excogitated that twofold theory of the essence and +functions of poetry which was to receive such notable illustration in +their joint volume of verse, the _Lyrical Ballads_; it was during a +walk over the Quantock Hills that by far the most famous poem of that +series, the _Ancient Mariner_, was conceived and in part composed. The +publication of the _Lyrical Ballads_ in the spring of the year 1798 +was, indeed, an event of double significance for English poetry. It +marked an epoch in the creative life of Coleridge, and a no less +important one in the critical life of Wordsworth. In the _Biographia +Literaria_ the origination of the plan of the work is thus described:-- + +"During the first year that Mr. Wordsworth and I were neighbours our +conversation turned frequently on the two cardinal points of poetry, +the power of exciting the sympathy of the reader by a faithful +adherence to the truth of nature, and the power of giving the interest +of novelty by the modifying colours of the imagination. The sudden +charm which accidents of light and shade, which moonlight or sunset +diffused over a known and familiar landscape appeared to represent the +practicability of combining both. These are the poetry of nature. The +thought suggested itself (to which of us I do not recollect) that a +series of poems might be composed of two sorts. In the one the +incidents and agents were to be, in part at least, supernatural; and +the interest aimed at was to consist in the interesting of the +affections by the dramatic truth of such emotions as would naturally +accompany such situations, supposing them real.... For the second +class, subjects were to be chosen from ordinary life; the characters +and incidents were to be such as will be found in every village and its +vicinity where there is a meditative and feeling mind to seek after +them, or to notice them when they present themselves. In this idea +originated the plan of the _Lyrical Ballads_, in which it was agreed +that my endeavours should be directed to persons and characters +supernatural, or at least romantic, yet so as to transfer from our +inward nature a human interest and a semblance of truth sufficient to +procure for these shadows of imagination that willing suspension of +disbelief for the moment which constitutes poetic faith. Mr. +Wordsworth, on the other hand, was to propose to himself, as his +object, to give the charm of novelty to things of everyday, and to +excite a feeling analogous to the supernatural by awakening the mind's +attention from the lethargy of custom and directing it to the +loveliness and the wonders of the world before us; an inexhaustible +treasure, but for which, in consequence of the film of familiarity and +selfish solicitude, we have eyes which see not, ears that hear not, and +hearts which neither feel nor understand." + +We may measure the extent to which the poetic teaching and practice of +Wordsworth have influenced subsequent taste and criticism by noting how +completely the latter of these two functions of poetry has overshadowed +the former. To lend the charm of imagination to the real will appear to +many people to be not one function of poetry merely but its very +essence. To them it is poetry, and the only thing worthy of the name; +while the correlative function of lending the force of reality to the +imaginary will appear at best but a superior kind of metrical +romancing, or clever telling of fairy tales. Nor of course can there, +from the point of view of the highest conception of the poet's office, +be any comparison between the two. In so far as we regard poetry as +contributing not merely to the pleasure of the mind but to its health +and strength--in so far as we regard it in its capacity not only to +delight but to sustain, console, and tranquillise the human +spirit--there is, of course, as much difference between the idealistic +and the realistic forms of poetry as there is between a narcotic potion +and a healing drug. The one, at best, can only enable a man to forget +his burdens; the other fortifies him to endure them. It is perhaps no +more than was naturally to be expected of our brooding and melancholy +age, that poetry (when it is not a mere voluptuous record of the +subjective impressions of sense) should have become almost limited in +its very meaning to the exposition of the imaginative or spiritual +aspect of the world of realities; but so it is now, and so in +Coleridge's time it clearly was _not_. Coleridge, in the passage above +quoted, shows no signs of regarding one of the two functions which he +attributes to poetry as any more accidental or occasional than the +other; and the fact that the realistic portion of the _Lyrical Ballads_ +so far exceeded in amount its supernatural element, he attributes not +to any inherent supremacy in the claims of the former to attention but +simply to the greater industry which Wordsworth had displayed in his +special department of the volume. For his own part, he says, "I wrote +the _Ancient Mariner_, and was preparing, among other poems, the _Dark +Ladie_ and the _Christabel_, in which I should have more nearly +realised my ideal than I had done in my first attempt. But Mr. +Wordsworth's industry had proved so much more successful, and the +number of the poems so much greater, that my compositions, instead of +forming a balance, appeared rather an interpolation of heterogeneous +matter." There was certainly a considerable disparity between the +amount of their respective contributions to the volume, which, in fact, +contained nineteen pieces by Wordsworth and only four by Coleridge. +Practically, indeed, we may reduce this four to one; for, of the three +others, the two scenes from _Osorio_ are without special distinction, +and the _Nightingale_, though a graceful poem, and containing an +admirably-studied description of the bird's note, is too slight and +short to claim any importance in the series. But the one long poem +which Coleridge contributed to the collection is alone sufficient to +associate it for ever with his name. _Unum sed leonem._ To any one who +should have taunted him with the comparative infertility of his Muse he +might well have returned the haughty answer of the lioness in the +fable, when he could point in justification of it to the _Rime of the +Ancient Marinere_. + +There is, I may assume, no need at the present day to discuss the true +place in English literature of this unique product of the human +imagination. One is bound, however, to attempt to correlate and adjust +it to the rest of the poet's work, and this, it must be admitted, is a +most difficult piece of business. Never was there a poem so irritating +to a critic of the "pigeon-holing" variety. It simply defies him; and +yet the instinct which he obeys is so excusable, because in fact so +universal, that one feels guilty of something like disloyalty to the +very principles of order in smiling at his disappointment. Complete and +symmetrical classification is so fascinating an amusement; it would +simplify so many subjects of study, if men and things would only +consent to rank themselves under different categories, and remain +there; it would, in particular, be so inexpressibly convenient to be +able to lay your hand upon your poet whenever you wanted him by merely +turning to a shelf labelled "Realistic" or "Imaginative" (nay, perhaps, +to the still greater saving of labour--Objective or Subjective), that +we cannot be surprised at the strength of the aforesaid instinct in +many a critical mind. Nor should it be hard to realise its revolt +against those single exceptions which bring its generalisations to +nought. When the pigeon-hole will admit every "document" but one, the +case is hard indeed; and it is not too much to say that the _Ancient +Mariner_ is the one document which the pigeon-hole in this instance +declines to admit. If Coleridge had only refrained from writing this +remarkable poem, or if, having done so, he had written more poems like +it, the critic might have ticketed him with a quiet mind, and gone on +his way complacent. As it is, however, the poet has contrived in virtue +of this performance not only to defeat classification but to defy it. +For the weird ballad abounds in those very qualities in which +Coleridge's poetry with all its merits is most conspicuously deficient, +while on the other hand it is wholly free from the faults with which he +is most frequently and justly chargeable. One would not have said in +the first place that the author of _Religious Musings_, still less of +the _Monody on the Death of Chatterton_, was by any means the man to +have compassed triumphantly at the very first attempt the terseness, +vigour, and _naivete_ of the true ballad-manner. To attain this, +Coleridge, the student of his early verse must feel, would have rather +more to retrench and much more to restrain than might be the case with +many other youthful poets. The exuberance of immaturity, the want of +measure, the "not knowing where to stop," are certainly even more +conspicuous in the poems of 1796 than they are in most productions of +the same stage of poetic development; and these qualities, it is +needless to say, require very stern chastening from him who would +succeed in the style which Coleridge attempted for the first time in +the _Ancient Mariner_. + +The circumstances of this immortal ballad's birth have been related +with such fulness of detail by Wordsworth, and Coleridge's own +references to them are so completely reconcilable with that account, +that it must have required all De Quincey's consummate ingenuity as a +mischief-maker to detect any discrepancy between the two. + +In the autumn of 1797, records Wordsworth in the MS. notes which he +left behind him, "Mr. Coleridge, my sister, and myself started from +Alfoxden pretty late in the afternoon with a view to visit Linton and +the Valley of Stones near to it; and as our united funds were very +small, we agreed to defray the expense of the tour by writing a poem to +be sent to the _New Monthly Magazine_. Accordingly we set off, and +proceeded along the Quantock Hills towards Watchet; and in the course +of this walk was planned the poem of the _Ancient Mariner_, founded on +a dream, as Mr. Coleridge said, of his friend Mr. Cruikshank. Much the +greatest part of the story was Mr. Coleridge's invention, but certain +parts I suggested; for example, some crime was to be committed which +should bring upon the Old Navigator, as Coleridge afterwards delighted +to call him, the spectral persecution, as a consequence of that crime +and his own wanderings. I had been reading in Shelvocke's _Voyages_, a +day or two before, that while doubling Cape Horn they frequently saw +albatrosses in that latitude, the largest sort of sea-fowl, some +extending their wings twelve or thirteen feet. 'Suppose,' said I, 'you +represent him as having killed one of these birds on entering the South +Sea, and that the tutelary spirits of these regions take upon them to +avenge the crime.' The incident was thought fit for the purpose, and +adopted accordingly. I also suggested the navigation of the ship by the +dead men, but do not recollect that I had anything more to do with the +scheme of the poem. The gloss with which it was subsequently +accompanied was not thought of by either of us at the time, at least +not a hint of it was given to me, and I have no doubt it was a +gratuitous afterthought. We began the composition together on that to +me memorable evening. I furnished two or three lines at the beginning +of the poem, in particular-- + + "'And listened like a three years' child: + The Mariner had his will.' + +"These trifling contributions, all but one, which Mr. C. has with +unnecessary scrupulosity recorded,[3] slipped out of his mind, as they +well might. As we endeavoured to proceed conjointly (I speak of the +same evening) our respective manners proved so widely different that it +would have been quite presumptuous in me to do anything but separate +from an undertaking upon which I could only have been a clog.... The +_Ancient Mariner_ grew and grew till it became too important for our +first object, which was limited to our expectation of five pounds; and +we began to think of a volume which was to consist, as Mr. Coleridge +has told the world, of poems chiefly on supernatural subjects." Except +that the volume ultimately determined on was to consist only "partly" +and not "chiefly" of poems on supernatural subjects (in the result, as +has been seen, it consisted "chiefly" of poems upon natural subjects), +there is nothing in this account which cannot be easily reconciled with +the probable facts upon which De Quincey bases his hinted charge +against Coleridge in his _Lake Poets_. It was not Coleridge who had +been reading Shelvocke's _Voyages_, but Wordsworth, and it is quite +conceivable, therefore, that the source from which his friend had +derived the idea of the killing of the albatross may (if indeed he was +informed of it at the time) have escaped his memory twelve years +afterwards, when the conversation with De Quincey took place. Hence, in +"disowning his obligations to Shelvocke," he may not by any means have +intended to suggest that the albatross incident was his own thought. +Moreover, De Quincey himself supplies another explanation of the +matter, which we know, from the above-quoted notes of Wordsworth's, to +be founded upon fact. "It is possible," he adds, "from something which +Coleridge said on another occasion, that before meeting a fable in +which to embody his ideas he had meditated a poem on delirium, +confounding its own dream-scenery with external things, and connected +with the imagery of high latitudes." Nothing, in fact, would be more +natural than that Coleridge, whose idea of the haunted seafarer was +primarily suggested by his friend's dream, and had no doubt been +greatly elaborated in his own imagination before being communicated to +Wordsworth at all, should have been unable, after a considerable lapse +of time, to distinguish between incidents of his own imagining and +those suggested to him by others. And, in any case, the "unnecessary +scrupulosity," rightly attributed to him by Wordsworth with respect to +this very poem, is quite incompatible with any intentional denial of +obligations. + +Such, then, was the singular and even prosaic origin of the _Ancient +Mariner_--a poem written to defray the expenses of a tour; surely the +most sublime of "pot-boilers" to be found in all literature. It is +difficult, from amid the astonishing combination of the elements of +power, to select that which is the most admirable; but, considering +both the character of the story and of its particular vehicle, perhaps +the greatest achievement of the poem is the simple realistic force of +its narrative. To achieve this was of course Coleridge's main object: +he had undertaken to "transfer from our inward nature a human interest +and a semblance of truth sufficient to procure for these shadows of +imaginations that willing suspension of disbelief for the moment which +constitutes poetic faith." But it is easier to undertake this than to +perform it, and much easier to perform it in prose than in verse--with +the assistance of the everyday and the commonplace than without it. +Balzac's _Peau de Chagrin_ is no doubt a great feat of the +realistic-supernatural; but no one can help feeling how much the author +is aided by his "broker's clerk" style of description, and by the +familiar Parisian scenes among which he makes his hero move. It is +easier to compass verisimilitude in the Palais-Royal than on the South +Pacific, to say nothing of the thousand assisting touches, out of place +in rhyme and metre, which can be thrown into a prose narrative. The +_Ancient Mariner_, however, in spite of all these drawbacks, is as real +to the reader as is the hero of the _Peau de Chagrin_; we are as +convinced of the curse upon one of the doomed wretches as upon the +other; and the strange phantasmagoric haze which is thrown around the +ship and the lonely voyager leaves their outlines as clear as if we saw +them through the sunshine of the streets of Paris. Coleridge triumphs +over his difficulties by sheer vividness of imagery and terse vigour of +descriptive phrase--two qualities for which his previous poems did not +prove him to possess by any means so complete a mastery. For among all +the beauties of his earlier landscapes we can hardly reckon that of +intense and convincing truth. He seems seldom before to have written, +as Wordsworth nearly always seems to write, "with his eye on the +object;" and certainly he never before displayed any remarkable power +of completing his word-picture with a few touches. In the _Ancient +Mariner_ his eye seems never to wander from his object, and again and +again the scene starts out upon the canvas in two or three strokes of +the brush. The skeleton ship, with the dicing demons on its deck; the +setting sun peering "through its ribs, as if through a dungeon-grate;" +the water-snakes under the moonbeams, with the "elfish light" falling +off them "in hoary flakes" when they reared; the dead crew, who work +the ship and "raise their limbs like lifeless tools"--everything seems +to have been actually _seen_, and we believe it all as the story of a +truthful eye-witness. The details of the voyage, too, are all +chronicled with such order and regularity, there is such a diary-like +air about the whole thing, that we accept it almost as if it were a +series of extracts from the ship's "log." Then again the execution--a +great thing to be said of so long a poem--is marvellously equal +throughout; the story never drags or flags for a moment, its felicities +of diction are perpetual, and it is scarcely marred by a single weak +line. What could have been better said of the instantaneous descent of +the tropical night than + + "The Sun's rim dips; the stars rush out: + At one stride comes the dark;" + +what more weirdly imagined of the "cracks and growls" of the rending +iceberg than that they sounded "like noises in a swound"? And how +beautifully steals in the passage that follows upon the cessation of +the spirit's song-- + + "It ceased; yet still the sails made on + A pleasant noise till noon, + A noise like to a hidden brook + In the leafy month of June, + That to the sleeping woods all night + Singeth a quiet tune." + +Then, as the ballad draws to its close, after the ship has drifted over +the harbour-bar-- + + "And I with sobs did pray-- + O let me be awake, my God; + Or let me sleep alway," + +with what consummate art are we left to imagine the physical traces +which the mariner's long agony had left behind it by a method far more +terrible than any direct description--the effect, namely, which the +sight of him produces upon others-- + + "I moved my lips--the Pilot shrieked + And fell down in a fit; + The holy Hermit raised his eyes, + And prayed where he did sit. + + "I took the oars: the Pilot's boy, + _Who now doth crazy go_, + Laughed loud and long, and all the while + His eyes went to and fro. + 'Ha! ha!' quoth he, 'full plain I see, + The Devil knows how to row.'" + +Perfect consistency of plan, in short, and complete equality of +execution, brevity, self-restraint, and an unerring sense of artistic +propriety--these are the chief notes of the _Ancient Mariner_, as they +are _not_, in my humble judgment, the chief notes of any poem of +Coleridge's before or since. And hence it is that this masterpiece of +ballad minstrelsy is, as has been said, so confounding to the +"pigeon-holing" mind. + +The next most famous poem of this or indeed of any period of +Coleridge's life is the fragment of _Christabel_, which, however, in +spite of the poet's own opinion on that point, it is difficult to +regard as "a more effective realisation" of the "natural-supernatural" +idea. Beautiful as it is, it possesses none of that human interest with +which, according to this idea, the narrator of the poetic story must +undertake to invest it. Nor can the unfinished condition in which it +was left be fairly held to account for this, for the characters +themselves--the lady Christabel, the witch Geraldine, and even the +baron Sir Leoline himself--are somewhat shadowy creations, with too +little hold upon life and reality, and too much resemblance to the +flitting figures of a dream. Powerful in their way as are the lines +descriptive of the spell thrown over Christabel by her uncanny +guest--lines at the recitation of which Shelley is said to have +fainted--we cannot say that they strike a reader with such a sense of +horror as should be excited by the contemplation of a real +flesh-and-blood maiden subdued by "the shrunken serpent eyes" of a +sorceress, and constrained "passively to imitate" their "look of dull +and treacherous hate." Judging it, however, by any other standard than +that of the poet's own erecting, one must certainly admit the claim of +_Christabel_ to rank very high as a work of pure creative art. It is so +thoroughly suffused and permeated with the glow of mystical romance, +the whole atmosphere of the poem is so exquisitely appropriate to the +subject, and so marvellously preserved throughout, that our lack of +belief in the reality of the scenes presented to us detracts but little +from the pleasure afforded by the artistic excellence of its +presentment. It abounds, too, in isolated pictures of surpassing +vividness and grace--word-pictures which live in the "memory of the +eye" with all the wholeness and tenacity of an actual painting. +Geraldine appearing to Christabel beneath the oak, and the two women +stepping lightly across the hall "that echoes still, pass as lightly as +you will," are pictures of this kind; and nowhere out of Keats's _Eve +of St. Agnes_ is there any "interior" to match that of Christabel's +chamber, done as it is in little more than half a dozen lines. These +beauties, it is true, are fragmentary, like the poem itself, but there +is no reason to believe that the poem itself would have gained anything +in its entirety--that is to say, as a poetic narrative--by completion. +Its main idea--that the purity of a pure maiden is a charm more +powerful for the protection of those dear to her than the spells of the +evil one for their destruction--had been already sufficiently +indicated, and the mode in which Coleridge, it seems, intended to have +worked would hardly have added anything to its effect. [4] And although +he clung till very late in life to the belief that he _could_ have +finished it in after days with no change of poetic manner--"If easy in +my mind," he says in a letter to be quoted hereafter, "I have no doubt +either of the reawakening power or of the kindling inclination"--there +are few students of his later poems who will share his confidence. +Charles Lamb strongly recommended him to leave it unfinished, and +Hartley Coleridge, in every respect as competent a judge on that point +as could well be found, always declared his conviction that his father +could not, at least _qualis ab incepto_, have finished the poem. + +The much-admired little piece first published in the _Lyrical Ballads_ +under the title of _Love_, and probably best known by its (original) +first and most pregnant stanza, [5] possesses a twofold interest for +the student of Coleridge's life and works, as illustrating at once one +of the most marked characteristics of his peculiar temperament, and one +of the most distinctive features of his poetic manner. The lines are +remarkable for a certain strange fascination of melody--a quality for +which Coleridge, who was not unreasonably proud of his musical gift, is +said to have especially prized them; and they are noteworthy also as +perhaps the fullest expression of the almost womanly softness of +Coleridge's nature. To describe their tone as effeminate would be +unfair and untrue, for effeminacy in the work of a male hand would +necessarily imply something of falsity of sentiment, and from this they +are entirely free. But it must certainly be admitted that for a man's +description of his wooing the warmth of feeling which pervades them is +as nearly sexless in character as it is possible to conceive; and, +beautiful as the verses are, one cannot but feel that they only escape +the "namby-pamby" by the breadth of a hair. + +As to the wild dream-poem _Kubla Khan_, it is hardly more than a +psychological curiosity, and only that perhaps in respect of the +completeness of its metrical form. For amid its picturesque but vague +imagery there is nothing which might not have presented itself, and the +like of which has not perhaps actually presented itself, to many a +half-awakened brain of far lower imaginative energy during its hours of +full daylight consciousness than that of Coleridge. Nor possibly is it +quite an unknown experience to many of us to have even a fully-written +record, so to speak, of such impressions imprinted instantaneously on +the mind, the conscious composition of whole pages of narrative, +descriptive, or cogitative matter being compressed as it were into a +moment of time. Unfortunately, however, the impression made upon the +ordinary brain is effaced as instantaneously as it is produced; the +abnormal exaltation of the creative and apprehensive power is quite +momentary, being probably indeed confined to the single moment between +sleep and waking; and the mental tablet which a second before was +covered so thickly with the transcripts of ideas and images, all far +more vivid, or imagined to be so, than those of waking life, and all +apprehended with a miraculous simultaneity by the mind, is converted +into a _tabula rasa_ in the twinkling of a half-opened eye. The wonder +in Coleridge's case was that his brain retained the word-impressions +sufficiently long to enable him to commit them, to the extent at least +of some fifty odd lines, to paper, and that, according to his own +belief, this is but a mere fraction of what but for an unlucky +interruption in the work of transcribing he would have been able to +preserve. His own account of this curious incident is as follows:-- + +"In the summer of 1797 the author, then in ill health, had retired to a +lonely farmhouse between Porlock and Linton, on the Exmoor confines of +Somerset and Devonshire. In consequence of a slight indisposition, an +anodyne had been prescribed, from the effects of which he fell asleep +in his chair at the moment that he was reading, the following sentence, +or words of the same substance, in Purchas's _Pilgrimage_:--'Here the +Khan Kubla commanded a palace to be built, and a stately garden +thereunto. And thus ten miles of fertile ground were enclosed by a +wall.' The Author continued for about three hours in a profound sleep, +at least of the external senses, during which time he has the most +vivid confidence that he could not have composed less than from two to +three hundred lines; if that indeed can be called composition in which +all the images rose up before him as things, with a parallel production +of the corresponding expressions, without any sensation or +consciousness of effect. On awaking he appeared to himself to have a +distinct recollection of the whole, and, taking his pen, ink, and +paper, instantly and eagerly wrote down the lines that are here +preserved. At this moment he was unfortunately called out by a person +on business from Porlock, and detained by him above an hour, and on his +return to his room found, to his no small surprise and mortification, +that though he still retained some vague and dim recollection of the +general purport of the vision, yet, with the exception of some eight or +ten scattered lines and images, all the rest had passed away like the +images on the surface of a stream into which a stone has been cast, +but, alas! without the after restoration of the latter." + +This poem, though written in 1797, remained, like _Christabel_, in MS. +till 1816. These were then published in a thin quarto volume, together +with another piece called the _Pains of Sleep_, a composition of many +years' later date than the other two, and of which there will be +occasion to say a word or two hereafter. + +At no time, however, not even in this the high-tide of its activity, +was the purely poetic impulse dominant for long together in Coleridge's +mind. He was born with the instincts of the orator, and still more with +those of the teacher, and I doubt whether he ever really regarded +himself as fulfilling the true mission of his life except at those +moments when he was seeking by spoken word to exercise direct influence +over his fellow-men. At the same time, however, such was the +restlessness of his intellect, and such his instability of purpose, +that he could no more remain constant to what he deemed his true +vocation than he could to any other. This was now to be signally +illustrated. Soon after the _Ancient Mariner_ was written, and some +time before the volume which was to contain it appeared, Coleridge +quitted Stowey for Shrewsbury to undertake the duties of a Unitarian +preacher in that town. This was in the month of January 1798, [6] and +it seems pretty certain, though exact dates are not to be ascertained, +that he was back again at Stowey early in the month of February. In the +pages of the _Liberal_ (1822) William Hazlitt has given a most graphic +and picturesque description of Coleridge's appearance and performance +in his Shrewsbury pulpit; and, judging from this, one can well believe, +what indeed was to have been antecedently expected, that had he chosen +to remain faithful to his new employment he might have rivalled the +reputation of the greatest preacher of the time. But his friends the +Wedgwoods, the two sons of the great potter, whose acquaintance he had +made a few years earlier, were apparently much dismayed at the prospect +of his deserting the library for the chapel, and they offered him an +annuity of L150 a year on condition of his retiring from the ministry +and devoting himself entirely to the study of poetry and philosophy. +Coleridge was staying at the house of Hazlitt's father when the letter +containing this liberal offer reached him, "and he seemed," says the +younger Hazlitt, "to make up his mind to close with the proposal in the +act of tying on one of his shoes." Another inducement to so speedy an +acceptance of it is no doubt to be found in the fact of its presenting +to Coleridge an opportunity for the fulfilment of a cherished +desire--that, namely, of "completing his education," as he regarded it, +by studying the German language, and acquiring an acquaintance with the +theology and philosophy of Germany in that country itself. This +prospect he was enabled, through the generosity of the Wedgwoods, to +put into execution towards the end of 1798. But before passing on from +this culminating and, to all intents and purposes, this closing year of +Coleridge's career as a poet it will be proper to attempt something +like a final review of his poetic work. Admirable as much of that work +is, and unique in quality as it is throughout, I must confess that it +leaves on my own mind a stronger impression of the unequal and +imperfect than does that of any poet at all approaching Coleridge in +imaginative vigour and intellectual grasp. It is not a mere inequality +and imperfection of style like that which so seriously detracts from +the pleasure of reading Byron. Nor is it that the thought is often +_impar sibi_--that, like Wordsworth's, it is too apt to descend from +the mountain-tops of poetry to the flats of commonplace, if not into +the bogs of bathos. In both these respects Coleridge may and does +occasionally offend, but his workmanship is, on the whole, as much more +artistic than Byron's as the material of his poetry is of more +uniformly equal value than Wordsworth's. Yet, with almost the sole +exception of the _Ancient Mariner_, his work is in a certain sense more +disappointing than that of either. In spite of his theory as to the +twofold function of poetry we must finally judge that of Coleridge, as +of any other poet, by its relation to the actual. Ancient Mariners and +Christabels--the people, the scenery, and the incidents of an imaginary +world--may be handled by poetry once and again to the wonder and +delight of man; but feats of this kind cannot--or cannot in the Western +world, at any rate--be repeated indefinitely, and the ultimate test of +poetry, at least for the modern European reader, is its treatment of +actualities--its relations to the world of human action, passion, +sensation, thought. And when we try Coleridge's poetry in any one of +these four regions of life, we seem forced to admit that, despite all +its power and beauty, it at no moment succeeds in convincing us, as at +their best moments Wordsworth's and even Byron's continually does, that +the poet has found his true poetic vocation--that he is interpreting +that aspect of life which he can interpret better than he can any +other, and which no other poet, save the one who has vanquished all +poets in their own special fields of achievement, can interpret as well +as he. In no poem of actuality does Coleridge so victoriously show +himself to be the right man at the right work as does Wordsworth in +certain moods of seership and Byron in certain moments of passion. Of +them at such moods and moments we feel assured that they have +discovered where their real strength lies, and have put it forth to the +utmost. But we never feel satisfied that Coleridge has discovered where +_his_ real strength lies, and he strikes us as feeling no more +certainty on the point himself. Strong as is his pinion, his flight +seems to resemble rather that of the eaglet than of the full-grown +eagle even to the last. He continues "mewing his mighty youth" a little +too long. There is a tentativeness of manner which seems to come from a +conscious aptitude for many poetic styles and an incapacity to +determine which should be definitively adopted and cultivated to +perfection. Hence one too often returns from any prolonged ramble +through Coleridge's poetry with an unsatisfied feeling which does not +trouble us on our return from the best literary country of Byron or +Wordsworth. Byron has taken us by rough roads, and Wordsworth led us +through some desperately flat and dreary lowlands to his favourite +"bits;" but we feel that we have seen mountain and valley, wood and +river, glen and waterfall at their best. But Coleridge's poetry leaves +too much of the feeling of a walk through a fine country on a misty +day. We may have had many a peep of beautiful scenery and occasional +glimpses of the sublime; but the medium of vision has been of variable +quality, and somehow we come home with an uneasy suspicion that we have +not seen as much as we might. It is obvious, however, even upon a +cursory consideration of the matter, that this disappointing element in +Coleridge's poetry is a necessary result of the circumstances of its +production; for the period of his productive activity (at least after +attaining manhood) was too short to enable a mind with so many +intellectual distractions to ascertain its true poetic bent, and to +concentrate its energies thereupon. If he seems always to be feeling +his way towards the work which he could do best, it is for the very +good reason that this is what, from 1796 to 1800, he was continually +doing as a matter of fact. The various styles which he attempted--and +for a season, in each case, with such brilliant results--are forms of +poetic expression corresponding, on the face of them, to poetic +impulses of an essentially fleeting nature. The political or +politico-religious odes were the offspring of youthful democratic +enthusiasm; the supernatural poems, so to call them for want of a +better name, had their origin in an almost equally youthful and more +than equally transitory passion for the wild and wondrous. Political +disillusion is fatal to the one impulse, and mere advance in years +extinguishes the other. Visions of Ancient Mariners and Christabels do +not revisit the mature man, and the Toryism of middle life will hardly +inspire odes to anything. + +With the extinction of these two forms of creative impulse Coleridge's +poetic activity, from causes to be considered hereafter, came almost +entirely to an end, and into what later forms it might subsequently +have developed remains therefore a matter more or less of conjecture. +Yet I think there is almost a sufficiency of _a priori_ evidence as to +what that form would have been. Had the poet in him survived until +years had "brought the philosophic mind," he would doubtless have done +for the human spirit, in its purely isolated self-communings, what +Wordsworth did for it in its communion with external nature. All that +the poetry of Wordsworth is for the mind which loves to hold converse +with the world of things; this, and more perhaps than this--if more be +possible--would the poetry of Coleridge have been for the mind which +abides by preference in the world of self-originating emotion and +introspective thought. Wordsworth's primary function is to interpret +nature to man: the interpretation of man to himself is with him a +secondary process only-the response, in almost every instance, to +impressions from without. This poet can nobly brace the human heart to +fortitude; but he must first have seen the leech-gatherer on the lonely +moor. The "presence and the spirit interfused" throughout creation is +revealed to us in moving and majestic words; yet the poet requires to +have felt it "in the light of setting suns and the round ocean and the +living air" before he feels it "in the mind of man." But what +Wordsworth grants only to the reader who wanders with him in +imagination by lake and mountain, the Muse of Coleridge, had she lived, +would have bestowed upon the man who has entered into his inner chamber +and shut to the door. This, it seems to me, is the work for which +genius, temperament, and intellectual habit would alike have fitted +him. For while his feeling for internal nature was undoubtedly less +profound, less mystically penetrating than Wordsworth's, his +sensibilities in general were incomparably quicker and more subtle than +those of the friend in whom he so generously recognised a master; and +the reach of his sympathies extends to forms of human emotion, to +subjects of human interest which lay altogether outside the somewhat +narrow range of Wordsworth's. + +And, with so magnificent a furniture of those mental and moral +qualities which should belong to "a singer of man to men," it must not +be forgotten that his technical equipment for the work was of the most +splendidly effective kind. If a critic like Mr. Swinburne seems to +speak in exaggerated praise of Coleridge's lyrics, we can well +understand their enchantment for a master of music like himself. +Probably it was the same feeling which made Shelley describe _France_ +as "the finest ode in the English language." With all, in fact, who +hold--as it is surely plausible to hold--that the first duty of a +singer is to sing, the poetry of Coleridge will always be more likely +to be classed above than below its merits, great as they are. For, if +we except some occasional lapses in his sonnets--a metrical form in +which, at his best, he is quite "out of the running" with +Wordsworth--his melody never fails him. He is a singer always, as +Wordsworth is not always, and Byron almost never. The _'olian Harp_ to +which he so loved to listen does not more surely respond in music to +the breeze of heaven than does Coleridge's poetic utterance to the wind +of his inspiration. Of the dreamy fascination which Love exercises over +a listening ear I have already spoken; and there is hardly less charm +in the measure and assonances of the _Circassian Love Chant. +Christabel_ again, considered solely from the metrical point of view, +is a veritable _tour de force_--the very model of a metre for romantic +legend: as which, indeed, it was imitated with sufficient grace and +spirit, but seldom with anything approaching to Coleridge's melody, by +Sir Walter Scott. + +Endowed therefore with so glorious a gift of song, and only not fully +master of his poetic means because of the very versatility of his +artistic power and the very variety and catholicity of his youthful +sympathies, it is unhappily but too certain that the world has lost +much by that perversity of conspiring accidents which so untimely +silenced Coleridge's muse. And the loss is the more trying to posterity +because he seems, to a not, I think, too curiously considering +criticism, to have once actually struck that very chord which would +have sounded the most movingly beneath his touch,--and to have struck +it at the very moment when the failing hand was about to quit the keys +for ever. + + "Ostendunt terris hunc tantum fata neque ultra + Esse sinunt." + +I cannot regard it as merely fantastic to believe that the _Dejection_, +that dirge of infinite pathos over the grave of creative imagination, +might, but for the fatal decree which had by that time gone forth +against Coleridge's health and happiness, have been but the cradle-cry +of a new-born poetic power, in which imagination, not annihilated but +transmigrant, would have splendidly proved its vitality through other +forms of song. + + +FOOTNOTES + +1. Perhaps the deepest impress of the Wordsworthian influence is to be +found in the little poem _Frost at Midnight_, with its affecting +apostrophe to the sleeping infant at his side--infant destined to +develop as wayward a genius and to lead as restless and irresolute a +life as his father. Its closing lines-- + + "Therefore all seasons shall be sweet to thee + Whether the summer clothe the general earth + With greenness... + ... whether the eave-drops fall, + Heard only in the trances of the blast, + Or if the secret ministry of frost + Shall hang them up in silent icicles + Quietly shining to the quiet moon"-- + +might have flowed straight from the pen of Wordsworth himself. + +2. "You had a great loss in not seeing Coleridge. He is a wonderful +man. His conversation teems with soul, mind, and spirit. Then he is so +benevolent, so good tempered and cheerful, and, like William, interests +himself so much about every little trifle. At first I thought him very +plain, that is, for about three minutes; he is pale, thin, has a wide +mouth, thick lips, and not very good teeth, longish loose-growing +half-curling rough black hair. But if you hear him speak for five +minutes you think no more of them. His eye is large and full, and not +very dark but gray, such an eye as would receive from a heavy soul the +dullest expression; but it speaks every emotion of his animated mind: +it has more of the poet's eye in a fine frenzy rolling than I ever +witnessed. He has fine dark eyebrows and an overhanging forehead." + +3. The lines-- + + "And it is long, and lank, and brown, + As is the ribbed sea-sand." + +4. Mr. Gillman (in his _Life_, p. 301) gives the following somewhat +bald outline of what were to form the two concluding cantos, no doubt +on the authority of Coleridge himself. The second canto ends, it may be +remembered, with the despatch of Bracy the bard to the castle of Sir +Roland:--"Over the mountains the Bard, as directed by Sir Leoline, +hastes with his disciple; but, in consequence of one of those +inundations supposed to be common to the country, the spot only where +the castle once stood is discovered, the edifice itself being washed +away. He determines to return. Geraldine, being acquainted with all +that is passing, like the weird sisters in _Macbeth_, vanishes. +Reappearing, however, she awaits the return of the Bard, exciting in +the meantime by her wily arts all the anger she could rouse in the +Baron's breast, as well as that jealousy of which he is described to +have been susceptible. The old bard and the youth at length arrive, and +therefore she can no longer personate the character of Geraldine, the +daughter of Lord Roland de Vaux, but changes her appearance to that of +the accepted though absent lover of Christabel. Next ensues a courtship +most distressing to Christabel, who feels--she knows not why--great +disgust for her once favoured knight. This coldness is very painful to +the Baron, who has no more conception than herself of the supernatural +transformation. She at last yields to her father's entreaties, and +consents to approach the altar with the hated suitor. The real lover +returning, enters at this moment, and produces the ring which she had +once given him in sign of her betrothment. Thus defeated, the +supernatural being Geraldine disappears. As predicted, the castle-bell +tolls, the mother's voice is heard, and, to the exceeding great joy of +the parties, the rightful marriage takes place, after which follows a +reconciliation and explanation between father and daughter." 5. + + "All thoughts, all passions, all delights, + Whatever stirs this mortal frame, + All are but ministers of Love, + And feed his sacred flame." + +6. It may be suggested that this sudden resolution was forced upon +Coleridge by the _res angusta domi_. But I do not think that was the +case. In the winter of 1797 he had obtained an introduction to and +entered into a literary engagement with Mr. Stuart of the _Morning +Post_, and could thus have met, as in fact he afterwards did meet, the +necessities of the hour. + + + + +CHAPTER IV. + +Visit to Germany--Life at Gottingen,--Return--Explores the Lake Country +--London--The _Morning Post_--Coleridge as a journalist--Retirement to +Keswick. + +[1799-1800.] + + +The departure of the two poets for the Continent was delayed only till +they had seen their joint volume through the press. The _Lyrical +Ballads_ appeared in the autumn of 1798, and on 16th September of that +year Coleridge left Yarmouth for Hamburg with Wordsworth and his +sister. [1] The purpose of his two companions' tour is not known to +have been other than the pleasure, or mixed pleasure and instruction, +usually derivable from foreign travel; that of Coleridge was strictly, +even sternly, educational. Immediately on his arrival in Germany he +parted from the Wordsworths, who went on to Gozlar, [2] and took up his +abode at the house of the pastor at Ratzeburg, with whom he spent five +months in assiduous study of the language. In January he removed to +Gottingen. Of his life here during the next few months we possess an +interesting record in the _Early Years and Late Reflections_ of Dr. +Carrlyon, a book published many years after the events which it +relates, but which is quite obviously a true reflection of impressions +yet fresh in the mind of its writer when its materials were first +collected. Its principal value, in fact, is that it gives us Coleridge +from the standpoint of the average young educated Englishman of the +day, sufficiently intelligent, indeed, to be sensible of his +fellow-student's transcendent abilities, but as little awed by them out +of youth's healthy irreverence of criticism as the ordinary English +undergraduate ever has been by the intellectual supremacy of any +"greatest man of his day" who might chance to have been his +contemporary at Oxford or Cambridge. In Dr. Carrlyon's reminiscences +and in the quoted letters of a certain young Parry, another of the +English student colony at Gottingen, we get a piquant picture of the +poet-philosopher of seven-and-twenty, with his yet buoyant belief in +his future, his still unquenched interest in the world of things, and +his never-to-be-quenched interest in the world of thought, his even +then inexhaustible flow of disquisition, his generous admiration for +the gifts of others, and his _naive_ complacency--including, it would +seem, a touch of the vanity of personal appearance--in his own. "He +frequently," writes Dr. Carrlyon, "recited his own poetry, and not +unfrequently led us further into the labyrinth of his metaphysical +elucidations, either of particular passages or of the original +conception of any of his productions, than we were able to follow him. +At the conclusion, for instance, of the first stanza of _Christabel_, +he would perhaps comment at full length upon such a line as +'Tu--whit!--Tu--whoo!' that we might not fall into the mistake of +supposing originality to be its sole merit." The example is not very +happily chosen, for Coleridge could hardly have claimed "originality" +for an onomatopoeia which occurs in one of Shakspeare's best known +lyrics; but it serves well enough to illustrate the fact that he "very +seldom went right to the end of any piece of poetry; to pause and +analyse was his delight." His disappointment with regard to his tragedy +of _Osorio_ was, we also learn, still fresh. He seldom, we are told, +"recited any of the beautiful passages with which it abounds without a +visible interruption of the perfect composure of his mind." He +mentioned with great emotion Sheridan's inexcusable treatment of him +with respect to it. At the same time, adds his friend, "he is a severe +critic of his own productions, and declares" (this no doubt with +reference to his then, and indeed his constant estimate of _Christabel_ +as his masterpiece) "that his best poems have perhaps not appeared in +print." + +Young Parry's account of his fellow-student is also fresh and pleasing. +"It is very delightful," he tells a correspondent, "to hear him +sometimes discourse on religious topics for an hour together. His +fervour is particularly agreeable when compared with the chilling +speculations of German philosophers," whom Coleridge, he adds, +"successively forced to abandon all their strongholds." He is "much +liked, notwithstanding many peculiarities. He is very liberal towards +all doctrines and opinions, and cannot be put out of temper. These +circumstances give him the advantage of his opponents, who are always +bigoted and often irascible. Coleridge is an enthusiast on many +subjects, and must therefore appear to many to possess faults, and no +doubt he has faults, but he has a good heart and a large mass of +information with," as his fellow-student condescendingly admits, +"superior talents. The great fault which his friends may lament is the +variety of subjects which he adopts, and the abstruse nature of his +ordinary speculations, _extra homines podtas_. They can easily," +concludes the writer, rising here to the full stateliness of youth's +epistolary style, "they can easily excuse his devoted attachment to his +country, and his reasoning as to the means of producing the greatest +human happiness, but they do not universally approve the mysticism of +his metaphysics and the remoteness of his topics from human +comprehension." + +In the month of May 1799 Coleridge set out with a party of his +fellow-students on a walking tour through the Harz Mountains, an +excursion productive of much oral philosophising on his part, and of +the composition of the _Lines on ascending the Brocken_, not one of the +happiest efforts of his muse. As to the philosophising, "he never," +says one of his companions on this trip, "appeared to tire of mental +exercise; talk seemed to him a perennial pastime, and his endeavours to +inform and amuse us ended only with the cravings of hunger or the +fatigue of a long march, from which neither his conversational powers +nor his stoicism could protect himself or us." It speaks highly for the +matter of Coleridge's allocutions that such incessant outpourings +during a mountaineering tramp appear to have left no lasting impression +of boredom behind them. The holiday seems to have been thoroughly +enjoyed by the whole party, and Coleridge, at any rate, had certainly +earned it. For once, and it is almost to be feared for the last time in +his life, he had resisted his besetting tendency to dispersiveness, and +constrained his intelligence to apply itself to one thing at a time. He +had come to Germany to acquire the language, and to learn what of +German theology and metaphysics he might find worth the study, and his +five months' steady pursuit of the former object had been followed by +another four months of resolute prosecution of the latter. He attended +the lectures of Professor Blumenbach, and obtained through a +fellow-student notes from those of Eichhorn. He suffered no +interruption in his studies, unless we are to except a short visit from +Wordsworth and his sister, who had spent most of their stay abroad in +residence at Gozlar; and he appears, in short, to have made in every +way the best use of his time. On 24th June 1799 he gave his +leave-taking supper at Gottingen, replying to the toast of his health +in fluent German but with an execrable accent; and the next day +presumably he started on his homeward journey. + +His movements for the next few months are incorrectly stated in most of +the brief memoirs prefixed to the various editions of the poet's works, +--their writers having, it is to be imagined, accepted without +examination a misplaced date of Mr. Gillman's. It is not the fact that +Coleridge "returned to England after an absence of fourteen months, and +arrived in London the 27th of November." His absence could not have +lasted longer than a year, for we know from the evidence of Miss +Wordsworth's diary that he was exploring the Lake country (very likely +for the first time) in company with her brother and herself in the +month of September 1799. The probability is that he arrived in England +early in July, and immediately thereupon did the most natural and +proper thing to be done under the circumstances--namely, returned to +his wife and children at Nether Stowey, and remained there for the next +two months, after which he set off with the Wordsworths, then still at +Alfoxden, to visit the district to which the latter had either already +resolved upon, or were then contemplating, the transfer of their abode. +The 27th of November is no doubt the correct date of his arrival in +London, though not "from abroad." And his first six weeks in the +metropolis were spent in a very characteristic fashion--in the +preparation, namely, of a work which he pronounced with perfect +accuracy to be destined to fall dead from the press. He shut himself up +in a lodging in Buckingham Street, Strand, and by the end of the +above-mentioned period he had completed his admirable translation of +_Wallenstein_, in itself a perfect, and indeed his most perfect +dramatic poem. The manuscript of this English version of Schiller's +drama was purchased by Messrs. Longman under the condition that the +translation and the original should appear at the same time. Very few +copies were sold, and the publishers, indifferent to Coleridge's advice +to retain the unsold copies until the book should become fashionable, +disposed of them as waste paper. Sixteen years afterwards, on the +publication of _Christabel_, they were eagerly sought for, and the few +remaining copies doubled their price. It was while engaged upon this +work that he formed that connection with political jouralism which +lasted, though with intermissions, throughout most of the remainder of +his life. His early poetical pieces had, as we have seen, made their +first appearance in the _Morning Post_, but hitherto that newspaper had +received no prose contribution from his pen. His engagement with its +proprietor, Mr. Daniel Stuart, to whom he had been introduced during a +visit to London in 1797, was to contribute an occasional copy of verses +for a stipulated annual sum; and some dozen or so of his poems (notably +among them the ode to _France_ and the two strange pieces _Fire Famine +and Slaughter_ and _The Devil's Thoughts_) had entered the world in +this way during the years 1798 and 1799. + +Misled by the error above corrected, the writers of some of the brief +memoirs of Coleridge's life represent him as having sent verse +contributions to the _Morning Post_ from Germany in 1799; but as the +earliest of these only appeared in August of that year there is no +reason to suppose that any of them were written before his return to +England. The longest of the serious pieces is the well-known _Ode to +Georgiana, Duchess of Devonshire_, which cannot be regarded as one of +the happiest of Coleridge's productions. Its motive is certainly a +little slight, and its sentiment more than a little overstrained. The +noble enthusiasm of the noble lady who, "though nursed in pomp and +pleasure," could yet condescend to "hail the platform wild where once +the Austrian fell beneath the shaft of Tell," hardly strikes a reader +of the present day as remarkable enough to be worth "gushing" over; and +when the poet goes on to suggest as the explanation of Georgiana's +having "learned that heroic measure" that the Whig great lady had +suckled her own children, we certainly seem to have taken the fatal +step beyond the sublime! It is to be presumed that Tory great ladies +invariably employed the services of a wet-nurse, and hence failed to +win the same tribute from the angel of the earth, who, usually, while +he guides + + "His chariot-planet round the goal of day, + All trembling gazes on the eye of God," + +but who on this occasion "a moment turned his awful face away" to gaze +approvingly on the high-born mother who had so conscientiously +performed her maternal duties. + +Very different is the tone of this poem from that of the two best known +of Coleridge's lighter contributions to the _Morning Post_. The most +successful of these, however, from the journalistic point of view, is +in a literary sense the less remarkable. One is indeed a little +astonished to find that a public, accustomed to such admirable +political satire as the _Anti-Jacobin_, should have been so much taken +as it seems to have been by the rough versification and somewhat clumsy +sarcasm of the _Devil's Thoughts_. The poem created something like a +_furore_, and sold a large reissue of the number of the _Morning Post_ +in which it appeared. Nevertheless it is from the metrical point of +view doggerel, as indeed the author admits, three of its most +smoothly-flowing stanzas being from the hand of Southey, while there is +nothing in its boisterous political drollery to put its composition +beyond the reach of any man of strong partisan feelings and a turn for +street-humour. _Fire Famine and Slaughter_, on the other hand, is +literary in every sense of the word, requiring indeed, and very +urgently, to insist on its character as literature, in order to justify +itself against the charge of inhuman malignity. Despite the fact that +"letters four do form his name," it is of course an idealised +statesman, and not the real flesh and blood Mr. Pitt, whom the sister +furies, Fire, Famine, and Slaughter, extol as their patron in these +terrible lines. The poem must be treated as what lawyers call an "A. B. +case." Coleridge must be supposed to be lashing certain alphabetical +symbols arranged in a certain order. This idealising process is +perfectly easy and familiar to everybody with the literary sense. The +deduction for "poetic license" is just as readily, though it does not, +of course, require to be as frequently, made with respect to the +hyperbole of denunciation as with respect to that of praise. Nor need +we doubt that this deduction had in fact been made by all intelligent +readers long before that agitating dinner at Mr. Sotheby's, which +Coleridge describes with such anxious gravity in his apologetic preface +to the republication of the lines. On the whole one may pretty safely +accept De Quincey's view of the true character of this incident as +related by him in his own inimitable fashion, namely, that it was in +the nature of an elaborate hoax, played off at the poet's expense. [3] +The malice of the piece is, as De Quincey puts it, quite obviously a +"malice of the understanding and fancy," and not of the heart. There is +significance in the mere fact that the poem was deliberately published +by Coleridge two years after its composition, when the vehemence of his +political animosities had much abated. Written in 1796, it did not +appear in the _Morning Post_ till January 1798. + +He was now, however, about to draw closer his connection with the +newspaper press. Soon after his return from Germany he was solicited to +"undertake the literary and political department in the _Morning +Post_," and acceded to the proposal "on condition that the paper should +thenceforward be conducted on certain fixed and announced principles, +and that he should be neither obliged nor requested to deviate from +them in favour of any party or any event." Accordingly, from December +1799 until about midsummer of 1800, Coleridge became a regular +contributor of political articles to this journal, sometimes to the +number of two or three in one week. At the end of the period of six +months he quitted London, and his contributions became necessarily less +frequent, but they were continued (though with two apparent breaks of +many months in duration) [4] until the close of the year 1802. It would +seem, however, that nothing but Coleridge's own disinclination +prevented this connection from taking a form in which it would have +profoundly modified his whole future career. In a letter to Mr. Poole, +dated March 1800, he informs his friend that if he "had the least love +of money" he could "make sure of L2000 a year, for that Stuart had +offered him half shares in his two papers, the _Morning Post_ and the +_Courier_, if he would devote himself to them in conjunction with their +proprietor. But I told him," he continues, "that I would not give up +the country and the lazy reading of old folios for two thousand times +two thousand pounds,--in short, that beyond L350 a year I considered +money as a real evil." Startlingly liberal as this offer will appear to +the journalist, it seems really to have been made. For, writing long +afterwards to Mr. Nelson Coleridge, Mr. Stuart says: "Could Coleridge +and I place ourselves thirty years back, and he be so far a man of +business as to write three or four hours a day, there is nothing I +would not pay for his assistance. I would take him into partnership, +and I would enable him to make a large fortune." Nor is there any +reason to think that the bargain would have been a bad one for the +proprietor from the strictly commercial point of view. Coleridge in +later years may no doubt have overrated the effect of his own +contributions on the circulation of the _Morning Post_, but it must +have been beyond question considerable, and would in all likelihood +have become far greater if he could have been induced to devote himself +more closely to the work of journalism. For the fact is--and it is a +fact for which the current conception of Coleridge's intellectual +character does not altogether prepare one--that he was a workman of the +very first order of excellence in this curious craft. The faculties +which go to the attainment of such excellence are not perhaps among the +highest distinctions of the human mind, but, such as they are, they are +specific and well marked; they are by no means the necessary +accompaniments even of the most conspicuous literary power, and they +are likely rather to suffer than to profit by association with great +subtlety of intellect or wide philosophic grasp. It is not to the +advantage of the journalist, as such, that he should see too many +things at a time, or too far into any one thing, and even the gifts of +an active imagination and an abundant vocabulary are each of them +likely to prove a snare. To be wholly successful, the journalist--at +least the English journalist--must not be too eloquent, or too witty, +or too humorous, or too ingenious, or too profound. Yet the English +reader likes, or thinks he likes, eloquence; he has a keen sense of +humour, and a fair appreciation of wit; and he would be much hurt if he +were told that ingenuity and profundity were in themselves distasteful +to him. How, then, to give him enough of these qualities to please and +not enough to offend him--as much eloquence as will stir his emotions, +but not enough to arouse his distrust; as much wit as will carry home +the argument, but not enough to make him doubt its sincerity; as much +humour as will escape the charge of levity, as much ingenuity as can be +displayed without incurring suspicion, and as much profundity as may +impress without bewildering? This is a problem which is fortunately +simplified for most journalists by the fact of their possessing these +qualities in no more than, if in so much as, the minimum required. But +Coleridge, it must be remembered, possessed most of them in +embarrassing superfluity. Not all of them indeed, for, though he could +be witty and at times humorous, his temptations to excess in these +respects were doubtless not considerable. But as for his eloquence, he +was from his youth upwards _Isoo torrentior_, his dialectical ingenuity +was unequalled, and in disquisition of the speculative order no man was +so apt as he to penetrate more deeply into his subject than most of his +readers would care to follow him. _A priori_, therefore, one would have +expected that Coleridge's instincts would have led him to rhetorise too +much in his diction, to refine too much in his arguments, and to +philosophise too much in his reflections, to have hit the popular taste +as a journalist, and that at the age of eight-and-twenty he would have +been unable to subject these tendencies either to the artistic +repression of the maturer writer or to the tactical restraints of the +trained advocate. This eminently natural assumption, however, is +entirely rebutted by the facts. Nothing is more remarkable in +Coleridge's contributions to the _Morning Post_ than their thoroughly +workmanlike character from the journalistic point of view, their +avoidance of "viewiness," their strict adherence to the one or two +simple points which he is endeavouring at any particular juncture in +politics to enforce upon his readers, and the steadiness with which he +keeps his own and his readers' attention fixed on the special political +necessities of the hour. His articles, in short, belong to that +valuable class to which, while it gives pleasure to the cultivated +reader, the most commonplace and Philistine man of business cannot +refuse the to him supreme praise of being eminently "practical." They +hit the nail on the head in nearly every case, and they take the +plainest and most direct route to their point, dealing in rhetoric and +metaphor only so far as the strictly "business" ends of the argument +appear to require. Nothing, for instance, could have been better done, +better reasoned and written, more skilfully adapted throughout to the +English taste, than Coleridge's criticism (3lst Dec. 1799) on the new +constitution established by Bonaparte and Sieyes on the foundation of +the Consulate, with its eighty senators, the "creatures of a renegade +priest, himself the creature of a foreign mercenary, its hundred +tribunes who are to talk and do nothing, and its three hundred +legislators whom the constitution orders to be silent." What a +ludicrous Purgatory, adds he, "for three hundred Frenchmen!" Very +vigorous, moreover, is he on the ministerial rejection of the French +proposals of peace in 1800, arguing against the continuance of the war +on the very sound anti-Jacobin ground that if it were unsuccessful it +would inflame French ambition anew, and, if successful, repeat the +experience of the results of rendering France desperate, and simply +reanimate Jacobinism. + +Effective enough too, for the controversial needs of the moment, was +the argument that if France were known, as Ministers pretended, to be +insincere in soliciting peace, "Ministers would certainly treat with +her, since they would again secure the support of the British people in +the war, and expose the ambition of the enemy;" and that, therefore, +the probability was that the British Government knew France to be +sincere, and shrank from negotiation lest it should expose their own +desire to prosecute the war. [5] Most happy, again, is his criticism of +Lord Grenville's note, with its references to the unprovoked aggression +of France (in the matter of the opening of the Scheldt, etc.) as the +sole cause and origin of the war. "If this were indeed true, in what +ignorance must not Mr. Pitt and Mr. Windham have kept the poor Duke of +Portland, who declared in the House of Lords that the cause of the war +was the maintenance of the Christian religion?" + +To add literary excellence of the higher order to the peculiar +qualities which give force to the newspaper article is for a +journalist, of course, a "counsel of perfection;" but it remains to be +remarked that Coleridge did make this addition in a most conspicuous +manner. Mrs. H. N. Coleridge's three volumes of her father's _Essays on +his own Times_ deserve to live as literature apart altogether from +their merits as journalism. Indeed among the articles in the _Morning +Post_ between 1799 and 1802 may be found some of the finest specimens +of Coleridge's maturer prose style. The character of Pitt, which +appeared on 19th March 1800, is as remarkable for its literary merits +as it is for the almost humorous political perversity which would not +allow the Minister any single merit except that which he owed to the +sedulous rhetorical training received by him from his father, viz. "a +premature and unnatural dexterity in the combination of words." [6] The +letters to Fox, again, though a little artificialised perhaps by +reminiscences of Junius, are full of weight and dignity. But by far the +most piquant illustration of Coleridge's peculiar power is to be found +in the comparison between his own version of Pitt's speech of 17th +February 1800, on the continuance of the war, with the report of it +which appeared in the _Times_ of that date. With the exception of a few +unwarranted elaborations of the arguments here and there, the two +speeches are in substance identical; but the effect of the contrast +between the minister's cold state-paper periods and the life and glow +of the poet-journalist's style is almost comic. Mr. Gillman records +that Canning, calling on business at the editor's, inquired, as others +had done, who was the reporter of the speech for the _Morning Post_, +and, on being told, remarked drily that the report "did more credit to +his head than to his memory." + +On the whole one can well understand Mr. Stuart's anxiety to secure +Coleridge's permanent collaboration with him in the business of +journalism; and it would be possible to maintain, with less of paradox +than may at first sight appear, that it would have been better not only +for Coleridge himself but for the world at large if the editor's +efforts had been successful. It would indeed have been bowing the neck +to the yoke; but there are some natures upon which constraint of that +sort exercises not a depressing but a steadying influence. What, after +all, would the loss in hours devoted to a comparatively inferior class +of literary labour have amounted to when compared with the gain in +much-needed habits of method and regularity, and--more valuable than +all to an intellect like Coleridge's,--in the constant reminder that +human life is finite and the materials of human speculation infinite, +and that even a world-embracing mind must apportion its labour to its +day? There is, however, the great question of health to be +considered--_the_ question, as every one knows, of Coleridge's whole +career and life. If health was destined to give way, in any event--if +its collapse, in fact, was simply the cause of all the lamentable +external results which followed it, while itself due only to +predetermined internal conditions over which the sufferer had no +control--then to be sure _cadit qu'stio_. At London or at the Lakes, +among newspaper files or old folios, Coleridge's life would in that +case have run the same sad course; and his rejection of Mr. Stuart's +offer becomes a matter of no particular interest to disappointed +posterity. But be that as it may, the "old folios" won the day. In the +summer of 1800 Coleridge quitted London, and having wound up his +affairs at his then place of residence, removed with his wife and +children to a new and beautiful home in that English Lake country with +which his name was destined, like those of Southey and Wordsworth, to +be enduringly associated. + + +FOOTNOTES + +1. De Quincey's error, in supposing that Coleridge's visit to Germany +to "complete his education" was made at an earlier date than this +journey with the Wordsworths, is a somewhat singular mistake for one so +well acquainted with the facts of Coleridge's life. Had we not his own +statement that this of 1798 was the first occasion of his quitting his +native country, it so happens that we can account in England for nearly +every month of his time from his leaving Cambridge until this date. + + +2. It has only within a comparatively recent period been ascertained +that the visit of the Wordsworths to Germany was itself another result +of Thomas Wedgwood's generous appreciation of literary merit. It +appears, on the incontrovertible testimony of the Wedgwoods' accounts +with their agents at Hamburg, that the expenses of all three travellers +were defrayed by their friend at home. The credits opened for them +amounted, during the course of their stay abroad, to some L260.--Miss +Meteyard's _A Group of Englishmen_, p. 99. + +3. After quoting the two concluding lines of the poem, "Fire's" rebuke +of her inconstant sisters, in the words + + "I alone am faithful, I + Cling to him everlastingly," + +De Quincey proceeds: "The sentiment is diabolical; and the question +argued at the London dinner-table (Mr. Sotheby's) was 'Could the writer +have been other than a devil?'... Several of the great guns among the +literary body were present--in particular Sir Walter Scott, and he, we +believe, with his usual good nature, took the apologetic side of the +dispute; in fact, he was in the secret. Nobody else, barring the +author, knew at first whose good name was at stake. The scene must have +been high. The company kicked about the poor diabolic writer's head as +though it had been a tennis-ball. Coleridge, the yet unknown criminal, +absolutely perspired and fumed in pleading for the defendant; the +company demurred; the orator grew urgent; wits began to smoke the case +as an active verb, the advocate to smoke as a neuter verb; the 'fun +grew fast and furious,' until at length the delinquent arose, burning +tears in his eyes, and confessed to an audience now bursting with +stifled laughter (but whom he supposed to be bursting with fiery +indignation), 'Lo, I am he that wrote it.'" + +4. _Sic_ in _Essays on his own Times_ by S. T. C., the collection of +her father's articles made by Mrs. Nelson (Sara) Coleridge; but without +attributing strange error to Coleridge's own estimate (in the +_Biographia Literaria_) of the amount of his journalistic work, it is +impossible to believe that this collection, forming as it does but two +small volumes, and a portion of a third, is anything like complete. + +5. Alas, that the facts should be so merciless to the most excellent +arguments! Coleridge could not foresee that Napoleon would, years +afterwards, admit in his own Memoirs the insincerity of his overtures. +"I had need of war; a treaty of peace...would have withered every +imagination." And when Mr. Pitt's answer arrived, "it filled me with a +secret satisfaction." + +6. The following passage, too, is curious as showing how polemics, like +history, repeat themselves. "As his reasonings were, so is his +eloquence. One character pervades his whole being. Words on words, +finely arranged, and so dexterously consequent that the whole bears the +semblance of argument and still keeps awake a sense of surprise; but, +when all is done, nothing rememberable has been said; no one +philosophical remark, no one image, not even a pointed aphorism. Not a +sentence of Mr. Pitt's has ever been quoted, or formed the favourite +phrase of the day--a thing unexampled in any man of equal reputation." +With the alteration of one word--the proper name--this passage might +have been taken straight from some political diatribe of to-day. + + + + +CHAPTER V. + +Life at Keswick--Second part of _Christabel_--Failing health--Resort to +opium--The _Ode to Dejection_--Increasing restlessness--Visit to Malta. + +[1800-1804.] + + +We are now approaching the turning-point, moral and physical, of +Coleridge's career. The next few years determined not only his destiny +as a writer but his life as a man. Between his arrival at Keswick in +the summer of 1800 and his departure for Malta in the spring of 1804 +that fatal change of constitution, temperament, and habits which +governed the whole of his subsequent history had fully established +itself. Between these two dates he was transformed from the Coleridge +of whom his young fellow-students in Germany have left us so pleasing a +picture into the Coleridge whom distressed kinsmen, alienated friends, +and a disappointed public were to have before them for the remainder of +his days. Here, then, at Keswick, and in these first two or three years +of the century--here or nowhere is the key to the melancholy mystery to +be found. + +It is probable that only those who have gone with some minuteness into +the facts of this singular life are aware how great was the change +effected during this very short period of time. When Coleridge left +London for the Lake country he had not completed his +eight-and-twentieth year. Before he was thirty he wrote that _Ode to +Dejection_ in which his spiritual and moral losses are so pathetically +bewailed. His health and spirits, his will and habits, may not have +taken any unalterable bent for the worse until 1804, the year of his +departure for Malta--the date which I have thought it safest to assign +as the definitive close of the earlier and happier period of his life; +but undoubtedly the change had fully manifested itself more than two +years before. And a very great and painful one it assuredly was. We +know from the recorded evidence of Dr. Carrlyon and others that +Coleridge was full of hope and gaiety, full of confidence in himself +and of interest in life during his few months' residence in Germany. +The _annus mirabilis_ of his poetic life was but two years behind him, +and his achievements of 1797-98 seemed to him but a mere earnest of +what he was destined to accomplish. His powers of mental concentration +were undiminished, as his student days at Gottingen sufficiently +proved; his conjugal and family affections, as Dr. Carrlyon notes for +us, were still unimpaired; his own verse gives signs of a home-sickness +and a yearning for his own fireside which were in melancholy contrast +with the restlessness of his later years. Nay, even after his return to +England, and during the six months of his regular work on the _Morning +Post_, the vigour of his political articles entirely negatives the idea +that any relaxation of intellectual energy had as yet set in. Yet +within six months of his leaving London for Keswick there begins a +progressive decline in Coleridge's literary activity in every form. The +second part of _Christabel_, beautiful but inferior to the first, was +composed in the autumn of 1800, and for the next two years, so far as +the higher forms of literature are concerned, "the rest is silence." +The author of the prefatory memoir in the edition of Coleridge's +_Poetical and Dramatic Works_ (1880), enumerates some half-dozen slight +pieces contributed to the _Morning Post_ in 1801, but declares that +Coleridge's poetical contributions to this paper during 1802 were "very +rich and varied, and included the magnificent ode entitled +_Dejection_." Only the latter clause of this statement is entitled, I +think, to command our assent. Varied though the list may be, it is +hardly to be described as "rich." It covers only about seven weeks in +the autumn of 1802, and, with the exception of the _Lovers' Resolution_ +and the "magnificent ode" referred to, the pieces are of the shortest +and slightest kind. Nor is it accurate to say that the "political +articles of the same period were also numerous and important." On the +contrary, it would appear from an examination of Mrs. H. N. Coleridge's +collection that her father's contributions to the _Post_ between his +departure from London and the autumn of 1802 were few and intermittent, +and in August 1803 the proprietorship of that journal passed out of Mr. +Stuart's hands. It is, in short, I think, impossible to doubt that very +shortly after his migration to the Lake country he practically ceased +not only to write poetry but to produce any mentionable quantity of +_complete_ work in the prose form. His mind, no doubt, was incessantly +active throughout the whole of the deplorable period upon which we are +now entering; but it seems pretty certain that its activity was not +poetic nor even critical, but purely philosophical, and that the +products of that activity went exclusively to _marginalia_ and the +pages of note-books. + +Yet unfortunately we have almost no evidence, personal or other, from +which we can with any certainty construct the psychological--if one +should not rather say the physiological, or better still, perhaps, the +pathological--history of this cardinal epoch in Coleridge's life. Miss +Wordsworth's diary is nearly silent about him for the next few years; +he was living indeed some dozen miles from her brother at Grasmere, and +they could not therefore have been in daily intercourse. Southey did +not come to the Lakes till 1803, and the records of his correspondence +only begin therefore from that date. Mr. Cottle's _Reminiscences_ are +here a blank; Charles Lamb's correspondence yields little; and though +De Quincey has plenty to say about this period in his characteristic +fashion, it must have been based upon pure gossip, as he cites no +authorities, and did not himself make Coleridge's acquaintance till six +years afterwards. This, however, is at least certain, that his gloomy +accounts of his own health begin from a period at which his +satisfaction with his new abode was still as fresh as ever. The house +which he had taken, now historic as the residence of two famous +Englishmen, enjoyed a truly beautiful situation and the command of a +most noble view. It stood in the vale of Derwentwater, on the bank of +the river Greta, and about a mile from the lake. When Coleridge first +entered it, it was uncompleted, and an arrangement was made by which, +after completion, it was to be divided between the tenant and the +landlord, a Mr. Jackson. As it turned out, however, the then completed +portion was shared by them in common, the other portion, and eventually +the whole, being afterwards occupied by Southey. In April 1801, some +eight or nine months after his taking possession of Greta Hall, +Coleridge thus describes it to its future occupant:-- + +"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 is the river Greta, which winds round and catches the +evening's light in the front of the house. In front we have a giant +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 Borrowdale. +Behind is the massy Skiddaw, smooth, green, high, with two chasms and a +tent-like ridge in the larger. A fairer scene you have not seen in all +your wanderings." + +There is here no note of discontent with the writer's surroundings; and +yet, adds Mr. Cuthbert Southey in his _Life and Correspondence_ of his +father, the remainder of this letter was filled by Coleridge with "a +most gloomy account of his health." Southey writes him in reply that he +is convinced that his friend's "complaint is gouty, that good living is +necessary and a good climate." In July of the same year he received a +visit from Southey at Greta Hall, and one from Charles and Mary Lamb in +the following summer, and it is probable that during such intervals of +pleasurable excitement his health and spirits might temporarily rally. +But henceforward and until his departure for Malta we gather nothing +from any source as to Coleridge's _normal_ condition of body and mind +which is not unfavourable, and it is quite certain that he had long +before 1804 enslaved himself to that fatal drug which was to remain his +tyrant for the rest of his days. + +When, then, and how did this slavery begin? What was the precise date +of Coleridge's first experiences of opium, and what the original cause +of his taking it? Within what time did its use become habitual? To what +extent was the decline of his health the effect of the evil habit, and +to what, if any, extent its cause? And how far, if at all, can the +deterioration of his character and powers be attributed to a decay of +physical constitution, brought about by influences beyond the +sufferer's own control? + +Could every one of these questions be completely answered, we should be +in a position to solve the very obscure and painful problem before us; +but though some of them can be answered with more or less approach to +completeness, there is only one of them which can be finally disposed +of. It is certain, and it is no doubt matter for melancholy +satisfaction to have ascertained it, that Coleridge first had recourse +to opium as an anodyne. It was Nature's revolt from pain, and not her +appetite for pleasure, which drove him to the drug; and though De +Quincey, with his almost comical malice, remarks that, though Coleridge +began in the desire to obtain relief "there is no proof that he did not +end in voluptuousness," there is on the other hand no proof whatever +that he did so end--_until the habit was formed_. It is quite +consistent with probability, and only accords with Coleridge's own +express affirmations, to believe that it was the medicinal efficacy of +opium, and this quality of it alone, which induced him to resort to it +again and again until his senses contracted that well-known and +insatiable craving for the peculiar excitement, "voluptuous" only to +the initiated, which opium-intoxication creates. But let Coleridge +speak on this point for himself. Writing in April 1826 he says:-- + +"I wrote a few stanzas three-and-twenty years ago, soon after my eyes +had been opened to the true nature of the habit into which I had been +ignorantly deluded by the seeming magic effects of opium, in the sudden +removal of a supposed rheumatic affection, attended with swellings in +my knees and palpitation of the heart and pains all over me, by which I +had been bed-ridden for nearly six months. Unhappily among my +neighbours' and landlord's books were a large number of medical reviews +and magazines. I had always a fondness (a common case, but most +mischievous turn with reading men who are at all dyspeptic) for +dabbling in medical writings; and in one of these reviews I met a case +which I fancied very like my own, in which a cure had been effected by +the Kendal Black Drop. In an evil hour I procured it: it worked +miracles--the swellings disappeared, the pains vanished. I was all +alive, and all around me being as ignorant as myself, nothing could +exceed my triumph. I talked of nothing else, prescribed the +newly-discovered panacea for all complaints, and carried a little about +with me not to lose any opportunity of administering 'instant relief +and speedy cure' to all complainers, stranger or friend, gentle or +simple. Alas! it is with a bitter smile, a laugh of gall and +bitterness, that I recall this period of unsuspecting delusion, and how +I first became aware of the Maelstrom, the fatal whirlpool to which I +was drawing, just when the current was beyond my strength to stem. The +state of my mind is truly portrayed in the following effusion, for God +knows! that from that time I was the victim of pain and terror, nor had +I at any time taken the flattering poison as a stimulus or for any +craving after pleasurable sensation." + +The "effusion" in question has parted company with the autobiographical +note, and the author of the prefatory memoir above quoted conjectures +it to have been a little poem entitled the _Visionary Hope_; but I am +myself of opinion, after a careful study of both pieces, that it is +more probably the _Pains of Sleep_, which moreover is known to have +been written in 1803. But whichever it be, its date is fixed in that +year by the statement in the autobiographical note of 1826 that the +stanzas referred to in it were written "twenty-three years ago." Thus, +then, we have the two facts established, that the opium-taking habit +had its origin in a bodily ailment, and that at some time in 1803 that +habit had become confirmed. The disastrous experiment in amateur +therapeutics, which was the means of implanting it, could not have +taken place, according to the autobiographical note, until at least six +months after Coleridge's arrival at Keswick, and perhaps not for some +months later yet. At any rate, it seems tolerably certain that it was +not till the spring of 1801, when the climate of the Lake country first +began to tell unfavourably on his health, that the "Kendal Black Drop" +was taken. Possibly it may have been about the time (April 1801) when +he wrote the letter to Southey which has been quoted above, and which, +it will be remembered, contained "so gloomy an account of his health." +How painfully ailing he was at this time we know from a variety of +sources, from some of which we also gather that he must have been a +sufferer in more or less serious forms from his boyhood upwards. Mr. +Gillman, for instance, who speaks on this point with the twofold +authority of confidant and medical expert, records a statement of +Coleridge's to the effect that, as a result of such schoolboy +imprudences as "swimming over the New River in my clothes and remaining +in them, full half the time from seventeen to eighteen was passed by me +in the sick ward of Christ's Hospital, afflicted with jaundice and +rheumatic fever." From these indiscretions and their consequences "may +be dated," Mr. Gillman thinks, "all his bodily sufferings in future +life." That he was a martyr to periodical attacks of rheumatism for +some years before his migration to Keswick is a conclusion resting upon +something more than conjecture. The _Ode to the Departing Year_ (1796) +was written, as he has himself told us, under a severe attack of +rheumatism in the head. In 1797 he describes himself in ill health, and +as forced to retire on that account to the "lonely farmhouse between +Porlock and London on the Exmoor confines of Somerset and Devonshire," +where _Kubla Khan_ was written. [1] + +Thus much is, moreover, certain, that whatever were Coleridge's health +and habits during the first two years of his residence at Keswick, his +career as a poet--that is to say, as a poet of the first order--was +closed some months before that period had expired. The ode entitled +_Dejection_, to which reference has so often been made, was written on +the 4th of April 1802, and the evidential importance which attaches, in +connection with the point under inquiry, to this singularly pathetic +utterance has been almost universally recognised. Coleridge has himself +cited its most significant passage in the _Biographia Literaria_ as +supplying the best description of his mental state at the time when it +was written. De Quincey quotes it with appropriate comments in his +_Coleridge and Opium-Eating_. Its testimony is reverently invoked by +the poet's son in the introductory essay prefixed by him to his edition +of his father's works. The earlier stanzas are, however, so necessary +to the comprehension of Coleridge's mood at this time that a somewhat +long extract must be made. In the opening stanza he expresses a longing +that the storm which certain atmospheric signs of a delusively calm +evening appear to promise might break forth, so that + + "Those sounds which oft have raised me, whilst they awed, + And sent my soul abroad, + Might now perhaps their wonted impulse give, + Might startle this dull pain, and make it move and live." + +And thus, with ever-deepening sadness, the poem proceeds: + + "A grief without a pang, void, dark, and drear, + A stifled, drowsy, unimpassioned grief, + Which finds no natural outlet, no relief, + In word, or sigh, or tear-- + O Lady! in this wan and heartless mood, + To other thoughts by yonder throstle woo'd, + All this long eve, so balmy and serene, + Have I been gazing on the western sky, + And its peculiar tint of yellow green: + And still I gaze--and with how blank an eye! + And those thin clouds above, in flakes and bars, + That give away their motion to the stars; + Those stars, that glide behind them or between, + Now sparkling, now bedimmed, but always seen: + Yon crescent Moon as fixed as if it grew + In its own cloudless, starless lake of blue; + I see them all so excellently fair, + I see, not feel how beautiful they are! + + "My genial spirits fail, + And what can these avail + To lift the smothering weight from off my breast? + It were a vain endeavour, + Though I should gaze for ever + On that green light that lingers in the west: + I may not hope from outward forms to win + The passion and the life, whose fountains are within. + + "O Lady! we receive but what we give, + And in our life alone does nature live: + Ours is her wedding garment, ours her shroud! + And would we aught behold, of higher worth, + Than that inanimate cold world allowed + To the poor loveless ever-anxious crowd, + Ah! from the soul itself must issue forth, + A light, a glory, a fair luminous cloud + Enveloping the earth-- + And from the soul itself must there be sent + A sweet and potent voice, of its own birth, + Of all sweet sounds the life and element! + + "O pure of heart! thou need'st not ask of me + What this strong music in the soul may be! + What, and wherein it doth exist, + This light, this glory, this fair luminous mist, + This beautiful and beauty-making power. + Joy, virtuous Lady! Joy that ne'er was given, + Save to the pure, and in their purest hour, + Life, and Life's effluence, cloud at once and shower, + Joy, Lady! is the spirit and the power, + Which, wedding Nature to us, gives in dower + A new Earth and new Heaven, + Undreamt of by the sensual and the proud-- + Joy is the sweet voice, Joy the luminous cloud-- + We in ourselves rejoice! + And thence flows all that charms or ear or sight, + All melodies the echoes of that voice, + All colours a suffusion from that light." + +And then follows the much quoted, profoundly touching, deeply +significant stanza to which we have referred:-- + + "There was a time when, though my path was rough, + This joy within me dallied with distress, + And all misfortunes were but as the stuff + Whence Fancy made me dreams of happiness: + For hope grew round me, like the twining vine, + And fruits, and foliage, not my own, seemed mine. + But now afflictions how me down to earth: + Nor care I that they rob me of my mirth, + But O! each visitation + Suspends what nature gave me at my birth, + My shaping spirit of Imagination. + For not to think of what I needs must feel, + But to be still and patient, all I can; + And haply by abstruse research to steal + From my own nature all the natural Man-- + This was my sole resource, my only plan: + Till that which suits a part infects the whole, + And now is almost grown the habit of my Soul." + +Sadder lines than these were never perhaps written by any poet in +description of his own feelings. And what gives them their peculiar +sadness--as also, of course, their special biographical value--is that +they are not, like Shelley's similarly entitled stanzas, the mere +expression of a passing mood. They are the record of a life change, a +veritable threnody over a spiritual death. For there can be no +doubt--his whole subsequent history goes to show it--that Coleridge's +"shaping spirit of Imagination" was in fact dead when these lines were +written. To a man of stronger moral fibre a renascence of the poetical +instinct in other forms might, as I have suggested above, been +possible; but the poet of _Christabel_ and the _Ancient Mariner_ was +dead. The metaphysician had taken his place, and was striving, in +abstruse research, to live in forgetfulness of the loss. Little more, +that is to say, than a twelvemonth after the composition of the second +part of _Christabel_ the impulse which gave birth to it had passed away +for ever. Opium-taking had doubtless begun by this time--may +conceivably indeed have begun nearly a year before--and the mere _mood_ +of the poem, the temporary phase of feeling which directed his mind +inwards into deeper reflections on its permanent state, is no doubt +strongly suggestive, in its excessive depression, of the terrible +reaction which is known to follow upon opium-excitement. But, I +confess, it seems to me improbable that even the habitual use of the +stimulant for so comparatively short a time as twelve months could have +produced so profound a change in Coleridge's intellectual nature. I +cannot but think that De Quincey overstates the case in declaring that +"opium killed Coleridge as a poet," though it may well be that, after +the collapse of health, which appears to me to have been the real +_causa causans_ in the matter, had killed the poet as we know him, +opium prevented his resurrection in another and it may be but little +inferior form. On the whole, in fact, the most probable account of this +all-important era in Coleridge's life appears to me to be this: that in +the course of 1801, as he was approaching his thirtieth year, a +distinct change for the worse--precipitated possibly, as Mr. Gillman +thinks, by the climate of his new place of abode--took place in his +constitution; that his rheumatic habit of body, and the dyspeptic +trouble by which it was accompanied became confirmed; and that the +severe attacks of the acute form of the malady which he underwent +produced such a permanent lowering of his vitality and animal spirits +as, _first_, to extinguish the creative impulse, and _then_ to drive +him to the physical anodyne of opium and to the mental stimulant of +metaphysics. + +From the summer of 1801, at any rate, his _malaise_, both of mind and +body, appears to have grown apace. Repeated letters from Southey allow +us to see how deeply concerned he was at this time about his friend's +condition. Plans of foreign travel are discussed between them, and +Southey endeavours in vain to spur his suffering and depressed +correspondent to "the assertion of his supremacy" in some new literary +work. But, with the exception of his occasional contributions to the +press, whatever he committed to paper during these years exists only, +if at all, in a fragmentary form. And his restlessness, continually on +the increase, appears by the end of 1802 to have become ungovernable. +In November of that year he eagerly accepted an offer from Thomas +Wedgwood to become his companion on a tour, and he spent this and the +greater part of the following month in South Wales with some temporary +advantage, it would seem, to his health and spirits. "Coleridge," +writes Mr. Wedgwood to a friend, "is all kindness to me, and in +prodigious favour here. He is quite easy, cheerful, and takes great +pains to make himself pleasant. He is willing, indeed desirous, to +accompany me to any part of the globe." "Coll and I," he writes on +another occasion, the abbreviation of name having been suggested to him +by Coleridge himself, "harmonise amazingly," and adds that his +companion "takes long rambles, and writes a great deal." But the fact +that such changes of air and scene produced no permanent effect upon +the invalid after his return to his own home appears to show that now, +at any rate, his fatal habit had obtained a firm hold upon him. And his +"writing a great deal resulted" only in the filling of many note-books, +and perhaps the sketching out of many of those vast schemes of literary +labour of which he was destined to leave so remarkable a collection at +his death. One such we find him forwarding to Southey in the August of +1803--the plan of a Bibliotheca Britannica, or "History of British +Literature, bibliographical, biographical, and critical," in eight +volumes. The first volume was to contain a "complete history of all +Welsh, Saxon, and Erse books that are not translations, but the native +growth of Britain;" to accomplish which, writes Coleridge, "I will with +great pleasure join you in learning Welsh and Erse." The second volume +was to contain the history of English poetry and poets, including "all +prose truly poetical." The third volume "English prose, considered as +to style, as to eloquence, as to general impressiveness; a history of +styles and manners, their causes, their birthplace and parentage, their +analysis." The fourth volume would take up "the history of metaphysics, +theology, medicine, alchemy; common, canon, and Roman law from Alfred +to Henry VII." The fifth would "carry on metaphysics and ethics to the +present day in the first half, and comprise in the second half the +theology of all the reformers." In the sixth and seventh volumes were +to be included "all the articles you (Southey) can get on all the +separate arts and sciences that have been treated of in books since the +Reformation; and by this time," concludes the enthusiastic projector, +"the book, if it answered at all, would have gained so high a +reputation that you need not fear having whom you liked to write the +different articles--medicine, surgery, chemistry, etc.; navigation, +travellers' voyages, etc., etc." There is certainly a melancholy humour +in the formulation of so portentous a scheme by a man who was at this +moment wandering aimlessly among the lakes and mountains, unable to +settle down to any definite piece of literary work, or even to throw +off a fatal habit, which could not fail, if persevered in, to destroy +all power of steady application in the future. That neither the comic +nor the pathetic element in the situation was lost upon Southey is +evident from his half-sad, half-satirical, wholly winning reply. "Your +plan," he writes, "is too good, too gigantic, quite beyond my powers. +If you had my tolerable state of health and that love of steady and +productive employment which is now grown into a necessary habit with +me, if you were to execute and would execute it, it would be beyond all +doubt the most valuable work of any age or any country; but I cannot +fill up such an outline. No man can better feel where he fails than I +do, and to rely upon you for whole quartos! Dear Coleridge, the smile +that comes with that thought is a very melancholy one; and if Edith saw +me now she would think my eyes were weak again, when in truth the +humour that covers them springs from another cause." A few weeks after +this interchange of correspondence Coleridge was once again to prove +how far he was from possessing Southey's "tolerable state of health." +Throughout the whole of this year he had been more restless than ever. +In January 1803 we find him staying with Southey at Bristol, "suffering +terribly from the climate, and talking of going abroad." A week later +he is at Stowey, planning schemes, not destined to be realised, of +foreign travel with Wedgwood. Returning again to Keswick, he started, +after a few months' quiescence, on 15th August, in company with +Wordsworth and his sister, for a tour in Scotland, but after a +fortnight he found himself too ill to proceed. The autumn rains set in, +and "poor Coleridge," writes Miss Wordsworth, "being very unwell, +determined to send his clothes to Edinburgh, and make the best of his +way thither, being afraid to face much wet weather in an open +carriage." It is possible, however, that his return to Keswick may have +been hastened by the circumstance that Southey, who had paid a brief +visit to the Lake country two years before, was expected in a few days +at the house which was destined to be his abode for the longest portion +of his life. He arrived at Greta Hall on 7th September 1803, and from +time to time during the next six months his correspondence gives us +occasional glimpses of Coleridge's melancholy state. At the end of +December, his health growing steadily worse, he conceived the project +of a voyage to Madeira, and quitted Keswick with the intention, after +paying a short visit to the Wordsworths, of betaking himself to London +to make preparations. His stay at Grasmere, however, was longer than he +had counted on. "He was detained for a month by a severe attack of +illness, induced, if his description is to be relied on, by the use of +narcotics. [2] Unsuspicious of the cause, Mrs. and Miss Wordsworth +nursed him with the tenderest affection, while the poet himself, +usually a parsimonious man, forced upon him, to use Coleridge's own +words, a hundred pounds in the event of his going to Madeira, and his +friend Stuart offered to befriend him." From Grasmere he went to +Liverpool, where he spent a pleasant week with his old Unitarian +friend, Dr. Crompton, and arrived in London at the close of 1803. Here, +however, his plans were changed. Malta was substituted for Madeira, in +response to an invitation from his friend Mr., afterwards Sir John, +Stoddart, then resident as judge in the Mediterranean island. By 12th +March, as we gather from the Southey correspondence, the change of +arrangements had been made. Two days afterwards he receives a letter of +valediction from his "old friend and brother" at Greta Hall, and on 2d +April 1804, he sailed from England in the _Speedwell_, dropping anchor +sixteen days later in Valetta harbour. + + +FOOTNOTES + +1. Were it not for Coleridge's express statement that he first took +opium at Keswick, one would be inclined to attribute the gorgeous but +formless imagery of that poem to the effects of the stimulant. It is +certainly very like a metrical version of one of the pleasant variety +of opium-dreams described in De Quincey's poetic prose. + +2. See Miss Meteyard (_A Group of Englishmen_, p. 223). Her evidence, +however, on any point otherwise doubtful in Coleridge's history should +be received with caution, as her estimate of the poet certainly errs +somewhat on the side of excessive harshness. + + + + +CHAPTER VI + +Stay at Malta--Its injurious effects--Return to England--Meeting with +De Quincey--Residence in London--First series of lectures. + +[1806-1809.] + + +Never was human being destined so sadly and signally to illustrate the +_coelum non animum_ aphorism as the unhappy passenger on the +_Speedwell_. Southey shall describe his condition when he left England; +and his own pathetic lines to William Wordsworth will picture him to us +on his return. "You are in great measure right about Coleridge," writes +the former to his friend Rickman, "he is worse in body than you seem to +believe; but the main cause lies in his own management of himself, or +rather want of management. His mind is in a perpetual St. Vitus's +dance--eternal activity without action. At times he feels mortified +that he should have done so little, but this feeling never produces any +exertion. 'I will begin to-morrow,' he says, and thus he has been all +his lifelong letting to-day slip. He has had no heavy calamities in +life, and so contrives to be miserable about trifles. Poor fellow, +there is no one thing which gives me so much pain as the witnessing +such a waste of unequalled powers." Then, after recalling the case of a +highly promising schoolfellow, who had made shipwreck of his life, and +whom "a few individuals only remember with a sort of horror and +affection, which just serves to make them melancholy whenever they +think of him or mention his name," he adds: "This will not be the case +with Coleridge; the _disjecta membra_ will be found if he does not die +early: but having so much to do, so many errors to weed out of the +world which he is capable of eradicating, if he does die without doing +his work, it would half break my heart, for no human being has had more +talents allotted." Such being his closest friend's account of him, and +knowing, as we now do (what Southey perhaps had no suspicion of at the +time), the chief if not the sole or original cause of his morally +nerveless condition, it is impossible not to feel that he did the worst +possible thing for himself in taking this journey to Malta. In quitting +England he cut himself off from those last possibilities of +self-conquest which the society and counsels of his friends might +otherwise have afforded him, and the consequences were, it is to be +feared, disastrous. After De Quincey's incredibly cool assertion that +it was "notorious that Coleridge began the use of opium, not as a +relief from any bodily pain or nervous irritations, since his +constitution was strong and excellent(!), but as a source of luxurious +sensations," we must receive anything which he has to say on this +particular point with the utmost caution; but there is only too much +plausibility in his statement that, Coleridge being necessarily thrown, +while at Malta, "a good deal upon his own resources in the narrow +society of a garrison, he there confirmed and cherished ... his habit +of taking opium in large quantities." Contrary to his expectations, +moreover, the Maltese climate failed to benefit him. At first, indeed, +he did experience some feeling of relief, but afterwards, according to +Mr. Gillman, he spoke of his rheumatic limbs as "lifeless tools," and +of the "violent pains in his bowels, which neither opium, ether, nor +peppermint combined could relieve." + +Occupation, however, was not wanting to him, if occupation could have +availed in the then advanced stage of his case. He early made the +acquaintance of the governor of the island, Sir Alexander Ball, who, +having just lost his secretary by death, requested Coleridge to +undertake that official's duties until his successor should be +appointed. By this arrangement the governor and the public service in +all likelihood profited more than the provisional secretary; for +Coleridge's literary abilities proved very serviceable in the +department of diplomatic correspondence. The dignities of the office, +Mr. Gillman tells us, no doubt on Coleridge's own authority, "he never +attempted to support; he was greatly annoyed at what he thought its +unnecessary parade, and he petitioned Sir Alexander Ball to be relieved +from it." The purely mechanical duties of the post, too, appear to have +troubled him. He complains, in one of the journals which he kept during +this period, of having been "for months past incessantly employed in +official tasks, subscribing, examining, administering oaths, auditing, +etc." On the whole it would seem that the burden of his secretarial +employment, though doubtless it would have been found light enough by +any one accustomed to public business, was rather a weariness to the +flesh than a distraction to the mind; while in the meantime a new +symptom of disorder--a difficulty of breathing, to which he was always +afterwards subject--began to manifest itself in his case. Probably he +was glad enough--relieved, in more than one sense of the word--when, in +the autumn of 1805, the new secretary arrived at Malta to take his +place. + +On 27th September Coleridge quitted the island on his homeward journey +_via_ Italy, stopping for a short time at Syracuse on his way. At +Naples, which he reached on the 15th of December, he made a longer +stay, and in Rome his sojourn lasted some months. Unfortunately, for a +reason which will presently appear, there remains no written record of +his impressions of the Eternal City; and though Mr. Gillman assures us +that the gap is "partly filled by his own verbal account, repeated at +various times to the writer of this memoir," the public of to-day is +only indebted to "the writer of this memoir" for the not very startling +information that Coleridge, "while in Rome, was actively employed in +visiting the great works of art, statues, pictures, buildings, palaces, +etc. etc., observations on which he minuted down for publication." It +is somewhat more interesting to learn that he made the acquaintance of +many literary and artistic notabilities at that time congregated there, +including Tieck, the German poet and novelist, and the American painter +Alston, to whose skill we owe what is reputed to be the best of his +many not easily reconcilable portraits. The loss of his Roman memoranda +was indirectly brought about by a singular incident, his account of +which has met with some undeserved ridicule at the hands of Tory +criticism. When about to quit Rome for England _via_ Switzerland and +Germany he took the precaution of inquiring of Baron von Humboldt, +brother of the traveller, and then Prussian Minister at the Court of +Rome, whether the proposed route was safe, and was by him informed that +he would do well to keep out of the reach of Bonaparte, who was +meditating the seizure of his person. According to Coleridge, indeed, +an order for his arrest had actually been transmitted to Rome, and he +was only saved from its execution by the connivance of the "good old +Pope," Pius VII., who sent him a passport and counselled his immediate +flight. Hastening to Leghorn, he discovered an American vessel ready to +sail for England, on board of which he embarked. On the voyage she was +chased by a French vessel, which so alarmed the captain that he +compelled Coleridge to throw his papers, including these precious MSS., +overboard. The wrath of the First Consul against him was supposed to +have been excited by his contributions to the _Morning Post_, an +hypothesis which De Quincey reasonably finds by no means so ridiculous +as it appeared to a certain writer in _Blackwood_, who treated it as +the "very consummation of moonstruck vanity," and compared it to "John +Dennis's frenzy in retreating from the sea-coast under the belief that +Louis XIV. had commissioned commissaries to land on the English shore +and make a dash at his person." It must be remembered, however, that +Mr. Fox, to whose statement on such a point Napoleon would be likely to +attach especial weight, had declared in the House of Commons that the +rupture of the Peace of Amiens had been brought about by certain essays +in the _Morning Post_, and there is certainly no reason to believe that +a tyrant whose animosity against literary or quasi-literary assailants +ranged from Madame de Stael down to the bookseller Palm would have +regarded a man of Coleridge's reputation in letters as beneath the +stoop of his vengeance. + +After an absence of two years and a half Coleridge arrived in England +in August 1806. That his then condition of mind and body was a +profoundly miserable one, and that he himself was acutely conscious of +it, will be seen later on in certain extracts from his correspondence; +but his own _Lines to William Wordsworth_--lines "composed on the night +after his recitation of a poem on the growth of an individual +mind"--contain an even more tragic expression of his state. It was +Wordsworth's pensive retrospect of their earlier years together which +awoke the bitterest pangs of self-reproach in his soul, and wrung from +it the cry which follows:-- + + "Ah! as I listened with a heart forlorn + The pulses of my being beat anew: + And even as life returns upon the drowned, + Life's joy rekindling roused a throng of pains-- + Keen pangs of Love, awakening as a babe + Turbulent, with an outcry in the heart; + And fears self-willed, that shunned the eye of hope; + And hope that scarce would know itself from fear; + Sense of past youth, and manhood come in vain, + And genius given, and knowledge won in vain; + And all which I had culled in wood-walks wild, + And all which patient toil had reared, and all, + Commune with thee had opened out--but flowers + Strewn on my corse, and borne upon my bier, + In the same coffin, for the self-same grave!" + +A dismal and despairing strain indeed, but the situation unhappily was +not less desperate. We are, in fact, entering upon that period of +Coleridge's life--a period, roughly speaking, of about ten years--which +no admirer of his genius, no lover of English letters, no one, it might +even be said, who wishes to think well of human nature, can ever +contemplate without pain. His history from the day of his landing in +England in August 1806 till the day when he entered Mr. Gillman's house +in 1816 is one long and miserable story of self-indulgence and +self-reproach, of lost opportunities, of neglected duties, of +unfinished undertakings. His movements and his occupation for the first +year after his return are not now traceable with exactitude, but his +time was apparently spent partly in London and partly at Grasmere and +Keswick. When in London, Mr. Stuart, who had now become proprietor of +the _Courier_, allowed him to occupy rooms at the office of that +newspaper to save him expense; and Coleridge, though his regular +connection with the _Courier_ did not begin till some years afterwards, +may possibly have repaid the accommodation by occasional contributions +or by assistance to its editor in some other form. It seems certain, at +any rate, that if he was earning no income in this way he was earning +none at all. His friend and patron, Mr. Thomas Wedgwood, had died while +he was in Malta; but the full pension of L150 per annum bestowed upon +him by the two brothers jointly continued to be paid to him by Josiah, +the senior. Coleridge, however, had landed in England in ignorance of +his patron's death. He had wholly neglected to keep up any +correspondence with the Wedgwoods during his stay in Malta, and though +"dreadfully affected" by it, as Mr. Poole records, he seems to have +allowed nearly a year to elapse before communicating with the surviving +brother. The letter which he then wrote deserves quotation, not only as +testimony to his physical and pecuniary condition on his arrival in +England, but as affording a distressing picture of the morbid state of +his emotions and the enfeebled condition of his will. "As to the +reasons for my silence, they are," he incoherently begins, "impossible, +and the numbers of the _causes_ of it, with the almost weekly +expectation for the last eight months of receiving my books, +manuscripts, etc. from Malta, has been itself a cause of increasing the +procrastination which constant ill health, despondency, domestic +distractions, and embarrassment from accidents, equally unconnected +with my will or conduct" [every cause mentioned, it will be seen, but +the true one], "had already seated deep in my very muscles, as it were. +I do not mean to accuse myself of idleness--I have enough of +self-crimination without adding imaginary articles--but in all things +that affect my moral feelings I have sunk under such a strange +cowardice of pain that I have not unfrequently kept letters from +persons dear to me for weeks together unopened. After a most miserable +passage from Leghorn of fifty-five days, during which my life was twice +given over, I found myself again in my native country, ill, penniless, +and worse than homeless. I had been near a month in the country before +I ventured or could summon courage enough to ask a question concerning +you and yours, and yet God Almighty knows that every hour the thought +had been gnawing at my heart. I then for the first time heard of that +event which sounded like my own knell, without its natural hope or +sense of rest. Such shall I be (is the thought that haunts me), but O! +not such; O! with what a different retrospect! But I owe it to justice +to say, Such good I truly can do myself, etc., etc." The rest of this +painfully inarticulate letter is filled with further complaints of ill +health, with further protestations of irresponsibility for the neglect +of duties, and with promises, never to be fulfilled, of composing or +assisting others to compose a memoir of Thomas Wedgwood, who, in +addition to his general repute as a man of culture, had made a special +mark by his speculations in psychology. + +The singular expression, "worse than homeless," and the reference to +domestic distractions, appear to indicate that some estrangement had +already set in between Coleridge and his wife. De Quincey's testimony +to its existence at the time (a month or so later) when he made +Coleridge's acquaintance may, subject to the usual deductions, be +accepted as trustworthy; and, of course, for aught we know, it may then +have been already of some years' standing. That the provocation to it +on the husband's part may be so far antedated is at least a reasonable +conjecture. There may be nothing--in all likelihood there is +nothing--worth attention in De Quincey's gossip about the young lady, +"intellectually very much superior to Mrs. Coleridge, who became a +neighbour and daily companion of Coleridge's walks" at Keswick. But if +there be no foundation for his remarks on "the mischiefs of a situation +which exposed Mrs. Coleridge to an invidious comparison with a more +intellectual person," there is undoubtedly plenty of point in the +immediately following observation that "it was most unfortunate for +Coleridge himself to be continually compared with one so ideally +correct and regular in his habits as Mr. Southey." The passion of +female jealousy assuredly did not need to be called into play to +account for the alienation of Mrs. Coleridge from her husband. Mrs. +Carlyle has left on record her pathetic lament over the fate of a woman +who marries a man of genius; but a man of genius of the coldly selfish +and exacting type of the Chelsea philosopher would probably be a less +severe burden to a woman of housewifely instincts than the weak, +unmethodical, irresolute, shiftless being that Coleridge had by this +time become. After the arrival of the Southeys, Mrs. Coleridge would +indeed have been more than human if she had not looked with an envious +eye upon the contrast between her sister Edith's lot and her own. For +this would give her the added pang of perceiving that she was specially +unlucky in the matter, and that men of genius could ("if they chose," +as she would probably, though not perhaps quite justly have put it) +make very good husbands indeed. If one poet could finish his poems, and +pay his tradesmen's bills, and work steadily for the publishers in his +own house without the necessity of periodical flittings to various +parts of the United Kingdom or the Continent, why, so could another. +With such reflections as these Mrs. Coleridge's mind was no doubt sadly +busy during the early years of her residence at the Lakes, and, since +their causes did not diminish but rather increased in intensity as time +went on, the estrangement between them--or rather, to do Coleridge +justice, her estrangement from her husband--had, by 1806, no doubt +become complete. The fatal habit which even up to this time seems to +have been unknown to most of his friends could hardly have been a +secret to his wife, and his four or five years of slavery to it may +well have worn out her patience. + +This single cause indeed, namely, Coleridge's addiction to opium, is +quite sufficient, through the humiliations, discomfort, and privations, +pecuniary and otherwise, for which the vice was no doubt mediately or +immediately responsible, to account for the unhappy issue of a union +which undoubtedly was one of love to begin with, and which seems to +have retained that character for at least six years of its course. We +have noted the language of warm affection in which the "beloved Sara" +is spoken of in the early poems, and up to the time of Coleridge's stay +in Germany his feelings towards his wife remained evidently unchanged. +To his children, of whom three out of the four born to him had +survived, he was deeply attached; and the remarkable promise displayed +by the eldest son, Hartley, and his youngest child and only daughter, +Sara, made them objects of no less interest to his intellect than to +his heart. "Hartley," he writes to Mr. Poole in 1803, "is a strange, +strange boy, exquisitely wild, an utter visionary; like the moon among +thin clouds, he moves in a circle of light of his own making. He alone +is a light of his own." And of his daughter in the same poetic strain: +"My meek little Sara is a remarkably interesting baby, with the finest +possible skin, and large blue eyes, and she smiles as if she were +basking in a sunshine as mild as moonlight of her own quiet happiness." +Derwent, a less remarkable but no less attractive child than his +brother and sister (whom he was destined long to survive), held an +equal place in his father's affections. Yet all these interwoven +influences--a deep love of his children and a sincere attachment to his +wife, of whom, indeed, he never ceased to speak with respect and +regard--were as powerless as in so many thousands of other cases they +have been, to brace an enfeebled will to the task of self-reform. In +1807 "respect and regard" had manifestly taken the place of any warmer +feeling in his mind. Later on in the letter above quoted he says, "In +less than a week I go down to Ottery, with my children and their +mother, from a sense of duty" (_i.e._ to his brother, the Rev. George +Coleridge, who had succeeded his father as head master of the Ottery +St. Mary Grammar School) "as far as it affects myself, and from a +promise made to Mrs. Coleridge, as far as it affects her, and indeed of +a debt of respect to her for her many praiseworthy qualities." When +husbands and wives take to liquidating debts of this kind, and in this +spirit, it is pretty conclusive evidence that all other accounts +between them are closed. + +The letter from which these extracts have been taken was written from +Aisholt near Bridgewater, where Coleridge was then staying, with his +wife and children, as the guest of a Mr. Price; and his friend Poole's +description to Josiah Wedgwood of his state at that time is significant +as showing that some at least of his intimate acquaintances had no +suspicion of the real cause of his bodily and mental disorders. "I +admire him," Poole writes, "and pity him more than ever. His +information is much extended, the _great_ qualities of his mind +heightened and better disciplined, but alas! his health is much weaker, +and his great failing, procrastination, or the incapability of acting +agreeably to his wish and will, much increased." + +Whether the promised visit to Ottery St. Mary was ever paid there is no +record to show, but at the end of July 1807 we again hear of the +Coleridges at the house of a Mr. Chubb, a descendant of the Deist, at +Bridgewater; and here it was that De Quincey, after having endeavoured +in vain to run the poet to earth at Stowey, where he had been staying +with Mr. Poole, and whence he had gone to pay a short visit to Lord +Egmont, succeeded in obtaining an introduction to him. The +characteristic passage in which the younger man describes their first +meeting is too long for quotation, and it is to be hoped too well known +to need it: his vivid and acute criticism of Coleridge's conversation +may be more appropriately cited hereafter. His evidence as to the +conjugal relations of Coleridge and his wife has been already +discussed; and the last remaining point of interest about this +memorable introduction is the testimony which it incidentally affords +to De Quincey's genuine and generous instinct of hero-worship, and to +the depth of Coleridge's pecuniary embarrassments. The loan of L300, +which the poet's enthusiastic admirer insisted on Cottle's conveying to +him as from an unknown "young man of fortune who admired his talents," +should cover a multitude of De Quincey's subsequent sins. It was indeed +only upon Cottle's urgent representation that he had consented to +reduce the sum from L500 to L300. Nor does there seem any doubt of his +having honestly attempted to conceal his own identity with the nameless +benefactor, though, according to his own later account, he failed. [1] + +This occurred in November 1807, and in the previous month De Quincey +had been able to render Coleridge a minor service, while at the same +moment gratifying a long cherished wish of his own. Mrs. Coleridge was +about to return with her children to Keswick, but her husband, not yet +master of this L300 windfall, and undoubtedly at his wits' end for +money, was arranging for a course of lectures to be delivered at the +Royal Institution early in the ensuing year, and could not accompany +them. De Quincey offered accordingly to be their escort, and duly +conducted them to Wordsworth's house, thus making the acquaintance of +the second of his two great poetical idols within a few months of +paying his first homage to the other. In February 1808 Coleridge again +took up his abode in London at his old free quarters in the _Courier_ +office, and began the delivery of a promised series of sixteen lectures +on Poetry and the Fine Arts. "I wish you could see him," again writes +Poole to Wedgwood, "you would pity and admire. He is much improved, but +has still less voluntary power than ever. Yet he is so committed that I +think he must deliver these lectures." Considering that the authorities +of the Royal Institution had agreed to pay him one hundred guineas for +delivering the lectures, he undoubtedly was more or less "committed;" +and his voluntary power, however small, might be safely supposed to be +equal to the task of fulfilling a contract. But to get the lecturer +into the lecture-room does not amount to much more than bringing the +horse to the water. You can no more make the one drink than you can +prevent the other from sending his audience away thirsty. Coleridge's +lectures on Poetry and the Fine Arts were confused, ill arranged, and +generally disappointing to the last degree. Sometimes it was not even +possible to bring the horse to the water. Charles Lamb writes to +Manning on the 20th of February 1808 (early days indeed) that Coleridge +had only delivered two lectures, and that though "two more were +intended, he did not come." De Quincey writes of "dismissals of +audience after audience, with pleas of illness; and on many of his +lecture-days I have seen all Albemarle Street closed by a lock of +carriages filled with women of distinction, until the servants of the +Institution or their own footmen advanced to the carriage-doors with +the intelligence that Mr. Coleridge had been suddenly taken ill." +Naturally there came a time when the "women of distinction" began to +tire of this treatment. "The plea, which at first had been received +with expressions of concern, repeated too often began to rouse disgust. +Many in anger, and some in real uncertainty whether it would not be +trouble thrown away, ceased to attend." And what De Quincey has to say +of the lectures themselves when they did by chance get delivered is no +less melancholy. "The lecturer's appearance," he says, "was generally +that of a man struggling with pain and over-mastering illness." + +"His lips were baked with feverish heat, and often black in colour; and +in spite of the water which he continued drinking through the whole +course of the lecture, he often seemed to labour under an almost +paralytic inability to raise the upper jaw from the lower" [_i.e._ I +suppose to move the lower jaw]. "In such a state it is clear that +nothing could save the lecture itself from reflecting his own +feebleness and exhaustion except the advantage of having been +precomposed in some happier mood. But that never happened: most +unfortunately, he relied on his extempore ability to carry him through. +Now, had he been in spirits, or had he gathered animation and kindled +by his own emotion, no written lecture could have been more effectual +than one of his unpremeditated colloquial harangues. But either he was +depressed originally below the point from which reascent was possible, +or else this reaction was intercepted by continual disgust from looking +back upon his own ill success; for assuredly he never once recovered +that free and eloquent movement of thought which he could command at +any time in a private company. The passages he read, moreover, in +illustrating his doctrines, were generally unhappily chosen, because +chosen at haphazard, from the difficulty of finding at a moment's +summons these passages which his purpose required. Nor do I remember +any that produced much effect except two or three which I myself put +ready marked into his hands among the _Metrical Romances_, edited by +Ritson. Generally speaking, the selections were as injudicious and as +inappropriate as they were ill delivered, for among Coleridge's +accomplishments good reading was not one. He had neither voice (so at +least I thought) nor management of voice. This defect is unfortunate in +a public lecturer, for it is inconceivable how much weight and +effectual pathos can be communicated by sonorous depth and melodious +cadence of the human voice to sentiments the most trivial; [2] nor, on +the other hand, how the grandest are emasculated by a style of reading +which fails in distributing the lights and shadows of a musical +intonation. However, this defect chiefly concerned the immediate +impression; the most afflicting to a friend of Coleridge's was the +entire absence of his own peculiar and majestic intellect; no heart, no +soul, was in anything he said; no strength of feeling in recalling +universal truths, no power of originality or compass of moral relations +in his novelties,--all was a poor, faint reflection from pearls once +scattered on the highway by himself in the prodigality of his early +opulence--a mendicant dependence on the alms dropped from his own +overflowing treasury of happier times." + +Severe as is this censure of the lectures, there is unhappily no good +ground for disputing its substantial justice. And the inferences which +it suggests are only too painfully plain. One can well understand +Coleridge's being an ineffective lecturer, and no failure in this +respect, however conspicuous, would necessarily force us to the +hypothesis of physical disability. But a Coleridge who could no more +compose a lecture than he could deliver one-a Coleridge who could +neither write nor extemporise anything specially remarkable on a +subject so congenial to him as that of English poetry--must assuredly +have spent most of his time, whether in the lecture-room or out of it, +in a state of incapacity for sustained intellectual effort. De +Quincey's humorous account of the lecturer's shiftless untidy life at +the Courier office, and even the Rabelaisian quip which Charles Lamb +throws at it in the above-quoted letter to Manning, are sufficient +indications of his state at this time. "Oh, Charles," he writes to +Lamb, early in February, just before the course of lectures was to +begin, "I am very, very ill. _Vixi._" The sad truth is that, as seems +to have been always the case with him when living alone, he was during +these months of his residence in London more constantly and hopelessly +under the dominion of opium than ever. + + +FOOTNOTES + +1. "In a letter written by him (Coleridge) about fifteen years after +that time, I found that he had become aware of all the circumstances, +perhaps through some indiscretion of Mr. Cottle's." Perhaps, however, +no very great indiscretion on Mr. Cottle's part was needed to enable +Coleridge to trace the loan to so ardent a young admirer and disciple. + +2. The justice of this criticism will be acknowledged by those many +persons whom Mr. Bright's great elocutionary skill has occasionally +deluded into imagining that the very commonplace verse which the famous +orator has been often known to quote with admiration is poetry of a +high order. + + + + +CHAPTER VII. + +Return to the Lakes--From Keswick to Grasmere--With Wordsworth at Allan +Bank--The _Friend_--Quits the Lake country for ever. + +[1809-1810.] + + +From the close of this series of lectures in the month of May 1808 +until the end of the year it is impossible to trace Coleridge's +movements or even to determine the nature of his occupation with any +approach to exactitude. The probability is, however, that he remained +in London at his lodgings in the _Courier_ office, and that he +supported himself by rendering assistance in various ways to Mr. Daniel +Stuart. We know nothing of him, however, with certainty until we find +him once more at the Lakes in the early part of the year 1809, but not +in his own home. Wordsworth had removed from his former abode at +Grasmere to Allan Bank, a larger house some three-quarters of a mile +distant, and there Coleridge took up his residence, more, it would +seem, as a permanent inmate of his friend's house than as a guest. The +specific cause of this migration from Greta Hall to Allan Bank does not +appear, but all the accessible evidence, contemporary and subsequent, +seems to point to the probability that it was the result of a definite +break-up of Coleridge's own home. He continued, at any rate, to reside +in Wordsworth's house during the whole seven months of his editorship +of the _Friend_, a new venture in periodical literature which he +undertook at this period; and we shall see that upon its failure he did +not resume his residence at Greta Hall, but quitted the Lake country at +once and for ever. + +We need not take too literally Coleridge's declaration in the +_Biographia Literaria_ that one "main object of his in starting the +_Friend_ was to establish the philosophical distinction between the +Reason and the Understanding." Had this been so, or at least had the +periodical been actually conducted in conformity with any such purpose, +even the chagrined projector himself could scarcely have had the face +to complain, as Coleridge did very bitterly, of the reception accorded +to it by the public. The most unpractical of thinkers can hardly have +imagined that the "general reader" would "take in" a weekly +metaphysical journal published at a town in Cumberland. The _Friend_ +was not quite so essentially hopeless an enterprise as that would have +been; but the accidents of mismanagement and imprudence soon made it, +for all practical purposes, sufficiently desperate. Even the forlorn +_Watchman_, which had been set on foot when Coleridge had fourteen +years' less experience of the world, was hardly more certainly +foredoomed. The first care of the founder of the _Friend_ was to +select, as the place of publication, a town exactly twenty-eight miles +from his own abode--a distance virtually trebled, as De Quincey +observes, "by the interposition of Kirkstone, a mountain only to be +scaled by a carriage ascent of three miles, and so steep in parts that +without four horses no solitary traveller can persuade the neighbouring +innkeepers to convey him." Here, however, at Penrith, "by way of +purchasing intolerable difficulties at the highest price," Coleridge +was advised and actually persuaded to set up a printer, to buy and lay +in a stock of paper, types, etc., instead of resorting to some printer +already established at a nearer place--as, for instance, Kendal, which +was ten miles nearer, and connected with Coleridge's then place of +residence by a daily post, whereas at Penrith there was no post at all. +Having thus studiously and severely handicapped himself, the projector +of the new periodical set to work, upon the strength of what seems to +have been in great measure a fancy list of subscribers, to print and, +so far as his extraordinary arrangements permitted, to circulate his +journal. With _naive_ sententiousness he warns the readers of the +_Biographia Literaria_ against trusting, in their own case, to such a +guarantee as he supposed himself to possess. "You cannot," he observes, +"be certain that the names on a subscription list have been put down by +sufficient authority; or, should that be ascertained, it still remains +to be known whether they were not extorted by some over-zealous +friend's importunity; whether the subscriber had not yielded his name +merely from want of courage to say no! and with the intention of +dropping the work as soon as possible." Thus out of a hundred patrons +who had been obtained for the _Friend_ by an energetic canvasser, +"ninety threw up the publication before the fourth number without any +notice, though it was well known to them that in consequence of the +distance and the slowness and irregularity of the conveyance" [it is +amusing to observe the way in which Coleridge notes these drawbacks of +his own creation as though they were "the act of God"] "I was compelled +to lay in a stock of stamped paper for at least eight weeks beforehand, +each sheet of which stood me in fivepence previous to its arrival at my +printer's; though the subscription money was not to be received till +the twenty-first week after the commencement of the work; and, lastly, +though it was in nine cases out of ten impracticable for me to receive +the money for two or three numbers without paying an equal sum for the +postage." + +Enough appears in this undesignedly droll account of the venture to +show pretty clearly that, even had the _Friend_ obtained a reasonable +measure of popularity at starting, the flagrant defects in the methods +of distributing and financing it must have insured its early decease. +But, as a matter of fact, it had no chance of popularity from the +outset. Its first number appeared on 1st August 1809, and Coleridge, +writing to Southey on 20th October of the same year, speaks of his +"original apprehension" that the plan and execution of the _Friend_ is +so utterly unsuitable to the public taste as to preclude all rational +hopes of its success. "Much," he continues, "might have been done to +have made the former numbers less so, by the interposition of others +written more expressly for general interest;" and he promises to do his +best in future to "interpose tales and whole numbers of amusement, +which will make the periods lighter and shorter." Meanwhile he begs +Southey to write a letter to the _Friend_ in a lively style, rallying +its editor on "his Quixotism in expecting that the public will ever +pretend to understand his lucubrations or feel any interest in subjects +of such sad and unkempt antiquity." Southey, ever good-natured, +complied, even amid the unceasing press of his work, with the request; +and to the letter of lightly-touched satire which he contributed to the +journal he added a few private lines of friendly counsel, strongly +urging Coleridge to give two or three amusing numbers, and he would +hear of admiration on every side. "Insert too," he suggested, "a few +more poems--any that you have, except _Christabel_, for that is of too +much value. And write _now_ that character of Bonaparte, announced in +former times for 'to-morrow, and to-morrow, and to-morrow.'" It was too +late, however, for good advice to be of any avail: the _Friend_ was +past praying for. It lingered on till its twenty-eighth number, and +expired, unlike the Watchman, without any farewell to its friends, in +the third week of March 1810. + +The republication of this periodical, or rather selections from it, +which appeared in 1818, is hardly perhaps described with justice in De +Quincey's words as "altogether and absolutely a new work." A reader +can, at any rate, form a pretty fair estimate from it of the style and +probable public attractions of the original issue; and a perusal of it, +considered in its character as a bid for the patronage of the general +reader, is certainly calculated to excite an astonishment too deep for +words. We have, of course, to bear in mind that the standard of the +readable in our grandfathers' days was a more liberal and tolerant one +than it is in our own. In those days of leisurely communications and +slowly moving events there was relatively at least a far larger public +for a weekly issue of moral and philosophical essays, under the name of +a periodical, than it would be found easy to secure at present, when +even a monthly discourse upon things in general requires Mr. Euskin's +brilliancy of eloquence, vivacity of humour, and perpetual charm of +unexpectedness to carry it off. Still the _Spectator_ continued to be +read in Coleridge's day, and people therefore must have had before them +a perpetual example of what it was possible to do in the way of +combining entertainment with instruction. How, then, it could have +entered into the mind of the most sanguine projector to suppose that +the _longueurs_ and the difficulty of the _Friend_ would be patiently +borne with for the sake of the solid nutriment which it contained it is +quite impossible to understand. Even supposing that a weekly, whose +avowed object was "to aid in the formation of fixed principles in +politics, morals, and religion," could possibly be floated, even "with +literary amusements interspersed," it is evident that very much would +depend upon the character of these "amusements" themselves. In the +republication of 1817 they appear under the heading of +"landing-places." One of them consists of a parallel between Voltaire +and Erasmus, and between Rousseau and Luther, founded, of course, on +the respective attitudes of the two pairs of personages to the +Revolution and the Reformation. Another at the end of the series +consists of a criticism of, and panegyric on, Sir Alexander Ball, the +governor of Malta. Such are the landing-places. But how should any +reader, wearied with "for ever climbing up the climbing wave" of +Coleridge's eloquence, have found rest or refreshment on one of these +uncomfortable little sandbanks? It was true that the original issue of +the _Friend_ contained poetical contributions which do not appear in +the republication; but poetry in itself, or, at any rate, good poetry, +is not a relief to the overstrained faculties, and, even if it were, +the relief would have been provided at too infrequent intervals to +affect the general result. The fact is, however, that Coleridge's own +theory of his duty as a public instructor was in itself fatal to any +hope of his venture proving a commercial success. Even when entreated +by Southey to lighten the character of the periodical, he accompanies +his admission of the worldly wisdom of the advice with something like a +protest against such a departure from the severity of his original +plan. His object, as he puts it with much cogency from his own +unpractical point of view--his object being to teach men how to think +on politics, religion, and morals, and thinking being a very arduous +and distasteful business to the mass of mankind, it followed that the +essays of the _Friend_ (and particularly the earlier essays, in which +the reader required to be "grounded" in his subject) could hardly be +agreeable reading. With perfect frankness indeed does he admit in his +prospectus that he must "submit to be thought dull by those who seek +amusement only." He hoped, however, as he says in one of his earlier +essays, to become livelier as he went on. "The proper merit of a +foundation is its massiveness and solidity. The conveniences and +ornaments, the gilding and stucco-work, the sunshine and sunny +prospects, will come with the superstructure." But the building, alas! +was never destined to be completed, and the architect had his own +misgivings about the attractions even of the completed edifice. "I dare +not flatter myself that any endeavours of mine, compatible with the +duty I owe to the truth and the hope of permanent utility, will render +the _Friend_ agreeable to the majority of what is called the reading +public. I never expected it. How indeed could I when, etc." Yet, in +spite of these professions, it is clear from the prospectus that +Coleridge believed in the possibility of obtaining a public for the +_Friend_. He says that "a motive for honourable ambition was supplied +by the fact that every periodical paper of the kind now attempted, +which had been conducted with zeal and ability, was not only well +received at the time, but has become popular;" and he seems to regard +it as a comparatively unimportant circumstance that the _Friend_ would +be distinguished from "its celebrated predecessors, the _Spectator_ and +the like," by the "greater length of the separate essays, by their +closer connection with each other, and by the predominance of one +object, and the common bearing of all to one end." It was, of course, +exactly this _plus_ of prolixity and _minus_ of variety which lowered +the sum of the _Friend's_ attractions so far below that of the +_Spectator_ as to deprive the success of Addison of all its value as a +precedent. + +Nor is it easy to agree with the editor of the reprint of 1837 that the +work, "with all its imperfections, is perhaps the most vigorous" of its +author's compositions. That there are passages in it which impress us +by their force of expression, as well as by subtlety or beauty of +thought, must of course be admitted. It was impossible to a man of +Coleridge's literary power that it should be otherwise. But "vigorous" +is certainly not the adjective which seems to me to suggest itself to +an impartial critic of these too copious disquisitions. Making every +allowance for their necessary elasticity of scope as being designed to +"prepare and discipline the student's moral and intellectual being, not +to propound dogmas and theories for his adoption," it must, I think, be +allowed that they are wanting in that continuity of movement and +co-ordination of parts which, as it seems to me, enters into any +intelligible definition of "vigour," as attributed to a work of moral +and political exposition considered as a whole. The writer's +discursiveness is too often and too vexatiously felt by the reader to +permit of the survival of any sense of theorematic unity in his mind; +he soon gives up all attempts at periodical measurement of his own and +his author's progress towards the prescribed goal of their journey; and +he resigns himself in this, as in so many other of Coleridge's prose +works, to a study of isolated and detached passages. So treated, +however, one may freely admit that the _Friend_ is fully worthy of the +admiration with which Mr. H. N. Coleridge regarded it. If not the most +vigorous, it is beyond all comparison the most characteristic of all +his uncle's performances in this field of his multiform activity. In no +way could the peculiar pregnancy of Coleridge's thoughts, the more than +scholastic subtlety of his dialectic, and the passionate fervour of his +spirituality be more impressively exhibited than by a well-made +selection of _loci_ from the pages of the _Friend_. + + + + +CHAPTER VIII. + +London again--Second recourse to journalism--The _Courier_ +articles--The Shakespeare lectures--Production of _Remorse_--At Bristol +again as lecturer--Residence at Calne--Increasing ill health and +embarrassment--Retirement to Mr. Gillman's. + +[1810-1816.] + + +The life led by Coleridge during the six years next ensuing is +difficult to trace, even in the barest outline; to give a detailed and +circumstantial account of it from any ordinarily accessible source of +information is impossible. Nor is it, I imagine, very probable that +even the most exhaustive search among whatever imprinted records may +exist in the possession of his friends would at all completely supply +the present lack of biographical material. For not only had it become +Coleridge's habit to disappear from the sight of his kinsmen and +acquaintances for long periods together; he had fallen almost wholly +silent also. They not only ceased to see him, but they ceased to hear +of him. Letters addressed to him, even on subjects of the greatest +importance, would remain for months unnoticed, and in many instances +would receive no answer at all. His correspondence during the next +half-dozen years must have been of the scantiest amount and the most +intermittent character, and a biographer could hope, therefore, for but +little aid in bridging over the large gaps in his knowledge of this +period, even if every extant letter written by Coleridge during its +continuance were to be given to the world. + +Such light, too, as is retrospectively thrown upon it by Coleridge's +correspondence of a later date is of the most fitful +description,--scarcely more than serves, in fact, for the rendering of +darkness visible. Even the sudden and final departure from the Lakes it +leaves involved in as much obscurity as ever. Writing to Mr. Thomas +Allsop [1] from Ramsgate twelve years afterwards (8th October 1822) he +says that he "counts four grasping and griping sorrows in his past +life." The first of these "was when" [no date given] "the vision of a +happy home sank for ever, and it became impossible for me longer even +to hope for domestic happiness under the name of husband." That is +plain enough on the whole, though it still leaves us in some +uncertainty as to whether the "sinking of the vision" was as gradual as +the estrangement between husband and wife, or whether he refers to some +violent rupture of relations with Mrs. Coleridge, possibly +precipitating his departure from the Lakes. If soothe second "griping +and grasping sorrow" followed very quickly on the first, for he says +that it overtook him "on the night of his arrival from Grasmere with +Mr. and Mrs. Montagu;" while in the same breath and paragraph, and as +though undoubtedly referring to the same thing, he speaks of the +"destruction of a friendship of fifteen years when, just at the moment +of Tenner and Curtis's (the publishers) bankruptcy" (by which Coleridge +was a heavy loser, but which did not occur till seven years +afterwards), somebody indicated by seven asterisks and possessing an +income of L1200 a-year, was "totally transformed into baseness." There +is certainly not much light here, any more than in the equally +enigmatical description of the third sorrow as being "in some sort +included in the second," so that "what the former was to friendship the +latter was to a still more inward bond." The truth is, that all +Coleridge's references to himself in his later years are shrouded in a +double obscurity. One veil is thrown over them by his deliberate +preference for abstract and mystical forms of expression, and another +perhaps by that kind of shameful secretiveness which grows upon all men +who become the slaves of concealed indulgences, and which often +displays itself on occasions when it has no real object to gain of any +kind whatever. + +Thus much only we know, that on reaching London in the summer of 1810 +Coleridge became the guest of the Montagus, and that, after some +months' residence with them, he left as the immediate result of some +difference with his host which was never afterwards composed. Whether +it arose from the somewhat trivial cause to which De Quincey has, +admittedly upon the evidence of "the learned in literary scandal," +referred it, it is now impossible to say. But at some time or other, +towards the close probably of 1810, or in the early months of 1811, +Coleridge quitted Mr. Montagu's house for that of Mr. John Morgan, a +companion of his early Bristol days, and a common friend of his and +Southey's; and here, at No. 7 Portland Place, Hammersmith, he was +residing when, for the second time, he resolved to present himself to +the London public in the capacity of lecturer. His services were on +this occasion engaged by the London Philosophical Society, at Crane +Court, Fleet Street, and their prospectus announced that on Monday, +18th November, Mr. Coleridge would commence "a course of lectures on +Shakspeare and Milton, in illustration of the principles of poetry and +their application, on grounds of criticism, to the most popular works +of later English poets, those of the living included. After an +introductory lecture on false criticism (especially in poetry) and on +its causes, two-thirds of the remaining course," continues the +prospectus, "will be assigned, 1st, to a philosophical analysis and +explanation of all the principal characters of our great dramatists, as +Othello, Falstaff, Richard the Third, Lago, Hamlet, etc., and to a +critical comparison of Shakspeare in respect of diction, imagery, +management of the passions, judgment in the construction of his +dramas--in short, of all that belongs to him as a poet, and as a +dramatic poet, with his contemporaries or immediate successors, Jonson, +Beaumont and Fletcher, Ford, Massinger, and in the endeavour to +determine which of Shakespeare's merits and defects are common to him, +with other writers of the same age, and what remain peculiar to his +genius." + +A couple of months before the commencement of this course, viz. in +September 1811, Coleridge seems to have entered into a definite +journalistic engagement with his old editor, Mr. Daniel Stuart, then +the proprietor of the _Courier_. It was not, however, his first +connection with that journal. He had already published at least one +piece of verse in its columns, and two years before, while the _Friend_ +was still in existence, he had contributed to it a series of letters on +the struggle of the Spaniards against their French invaders. In these, +as though to show that under the ashes of his old democratic enthusiasm +still lived its wonted fires, and that the inspiration of a popular +cause was only needed to reanimate them, we find, with less of the +youthful lightness of touch and agility of movement, a very near +approach to the vigour of his early journalistic days. Whatever may be +thought of the historic value of the parallel which he institutes +between the struggle of the Low Countries against their tyrant, and +that of the Peninsula against its usurping conqueror, it is worked out +with remarkable ingenuity of completeness. Whole pages of the letters +are radiant with that steady flame of hatred which, ever since the hour +of his disillusionment, had glowed in his breast at the name and +thought of Bonaparte; and whenever he speaks of the Spaniards, of +Spanish patriotism, of the Spanish Cortes, we see that the names of +"the people," of "freedom," of "popular assembly," have some of their +old magic for him still. The following passage is almost pathetic in +its reminder of the days of 1792, before that modern Leonidas, the +young French Republic, had degenerated into the Xerxes of the Empire. + +"The power which raised up, established, and enriched the Dutch +republic,--the same mighty power is no less at work in the present +struggle of the Spanish nation, a power which mocks the calculations of +ordinary statecraft too subtle to be weighed against it, and mere +outward brute force too different from it to admit of comparison. A +power as mighty in the rational creation as the element of electricity +in the material world; and, like that element, infinite in its +affinities, infinite in its mode of action, combining the most +discordant natures, fixing the most volatile, and arming the sluggish +vapour of the marsh with arrows of fire; working alike in silence and +in tempest, in growth and in destruction; now contracted to an +individual soul, and now, as in a moment, dilating itself over a whole +nation! Am I asked what this mighty power may be, and wherein it +exists? If we are worthy of the fame which we possess as the countrymen +of Hampden, Russell, and Algernon Sidney, we shall find the answer in +our own hearts. It is the power of the insulted free-will, steadied by +the approving conscience and struggling against brute force and +iniquitous compulsion for the common rights of human nature, brought +home to our inmost souls by being, at the same time, the rights of our +betrayed, insulted, and bleeding country." + +And as this passage recalls the most striking characteristics of his +earlier style, so may its conclusion serve as a fair specimen of the +calmer eloquence of his later manner:-- + +"It is a painful truth, sir, that these men who appeal most to facts, +and pretend to take them for their exclusive guide, are the very +persons who most disregard the light of experience when it refers them +to the mightiness of their own inner nature, in opposition to those +forces which they can see with their eyes, and reduce to figures upon a +slate. And yet, sir, what is history for the greater and more useful +part but a voice from the sepulchres of our forefathers, assuring us, +from their united experience, that our spirits are as much stronger +than our bodies as they are nobler and more permanent? The historic +muse appears in her loftiest character as the nurse of Hope. It is her +appropriate praise that her records enable the magnanimous to silence +the selfish and cowardly by appealing to actual events for the +information of these truths which they themselves first learned from +the surer oracle of their own reason." + +But this reanimation of energy was but a transient phenomenoa It did +not survive the first freshness of its exciting cause. The Spanish +insurrection grew into the Peninsular war, and though the glorious +series of Wellington's victories might well, one would think, have +sustained the rhetorical temperature at its proper pitch, it failed to +do so. Or was it, as the facts appear now and then to suggest, that +Coleridge at Grasmere or Keswick-Coleridge in the inspiring (and +restraining) companionship of close friends and literary compeers--was +an altogether different man from Coleridge in London, alone with his +thoughts and his opium? The question cannot be answered with +confidence, and the fine quality of the lectures on Shakespeare is +sufficient to show that, for some time, at any rate, after his final +migration to London, his critical faculty retained its full vigour. But +it is beyond dispute that his regular contributions to the _Courier_ in +1811-12 are not only vastly inferior to his articles of a dozen years +before in the _Morning Post_ but fall sensibly short of the level of +the letters of 1809, from which extract has just been made. Their tone +is spiritless, and they even lack distinction of style. Their very +subjects, and the mode of treating them, appear to show a change in +Coleridge's attitude towards public affairs if not in the very +conditions of his journalistic employment. They have much more of the +character of newspaper hack-work than his earlier contributions. He +seems to have been, in many instances, set to write a mere report, and +often a rather dry and mechanical report of this or the other +Peninsular victory. He seldom or never discusses the political +situation, as his wont had been, _au large_; and in place of broad +statesmanlike reflection on the scenes and actors in the great +world-drama then in progress, we meet with too much of that sort of +criticism on the consistency and capacity of "our contemporary, the +_Morning Chronicle_," which had less attraction, it may be suspected, +even for the public of its own day than for the journalistic +profession, while for posterity, of course, it possesses no interest at +all. The series of contributions extends from September of 1811 until +April of the following year, and appears to have nearly come to a +premature and abrupt close in the intermediate July, when an article +written by Coleridge in strong opposition to the proposed reinstatement +of the Duke of York in the command-in-chief was, by ministerial +influence, suppressed before publication. This made Coleridge, as his +daughter informs us on the authority of Mr. Crabb Kobinson, "very +uncomfortable," and he was desirous of being engaged on another paper. +He wished to be connected with the _Times_, and "I spoke," says Mr. +Eobinson, "with Walter on the subject, but the negotiation failed." + +With the conclusion of the lectures on Shakespeare, and the loss of the +stimulus, slight as it then was to him, of regular duties and recurring +engagements, Coleridge seems to have relapsed once more into thoroughly +desultory habits of work. The series of aphorisms and reflections which +he contributed in 1812 to Southey's _Omniana_, witty, suggestive, +profound as many of them are, must not of course be referred to the +years in which they were given to the world. They belong unquestionably +to the order of _marginalia_, the scattered notes of which De Quincey +speaks with not extravagant admiration, and which, under the busy +pencil of a commentator always indefatigable in the _strenua inertia_ +of reading, had no doubt accumulated in considerable quantities over a +long course of years. + +The disposal, however, of this species of literary material could +scarcely have been a source of much profit to him, and Coleridge's +difficulties of living must by this time have been growing acute. His +pension from the Wedgwoods had been assigned, his surviving son has +stated, to the use of his family, and even this had been in the +previous year reduced by half. "In Coleridge's neglect," observes Miss +Meteyard, "of his duties to his wife, his children, and his friends, +must be sought the motives which led Mr. Wedgwood in 1811 to withdraw +his share of the annuity. An excellent, even over-anxious father, he +was likely to be shocked at a neglect which imposed on the generosity +of Southey, himself heavily burdened, those duties which every man of +feeling and honour proudly and even jealously guards as his own.... The +pension of L150 per annum had been originally granted with the view to +secure Coleridge independence and leisure while he effected some few of +his manifold projects of literary work. But ten years had passed, and +these projects were still _in nubibus_--even the life of Leasing, even +the briefer memoir of Thomas Wedgwood; and gifts so well intentioned, +had as it were, ministered to evil rather than to good." We can hardly +wonder at the step, however we may regret it; and if one of the reasons +adduced in defence of it savours somewhat of the fallacy known as _... +non cause, pro cause_, we may perhaps attribute that rather to the +maladroitness of Miss Meteyard's advocacy than to the weakness of Mr. +Wedgwood's logic. The fact, however, that this "excellent, even +over-anxious father" was shocked at a neglect which imposed a burden on +the generosity of Southey, is hardly a just ground for cutting off one +of the supplies by which that burden was partially relieved. As to the +assignment of the pension to the family, it is impossible to question +what has been positively affirmed by an actual member of that family, +the Rev. Derwent Coleridge himself; though, when he adds that not only +was the school education of both the sons provided from this source, +but that through his (Coleridge's) influence they were both sent to +college, his statement is at variance, as will be presently seen, with +an authority equal to his own. + +In 1812, at any rate, we may well believe that Coleridge's necessities +had become pressing, and the timely service then rendered to him by +Lord Byron may have been suggested almost as much by a knowledge of his +needs as by admiration for the dramatic merits of his long-since +rejected tragedy. _Osorio's_ time had at any rate come. The would-be +fratricide changed his name to Ordonio, and ceased to stand sponsor to +the play, which was rechristened _Remorse_, and accepted at last, upon +Byron's recommendation, by the committee of Drury Lane Theatre, the +playhouse at whose doors it had knocked vainly fifteen years before it +was performed there for the first time on the 23d of January 1813. The +prologue and epilogue, without which in those times no gentleman's +drama was accounted complete, was written, the former by Charles Lamb, +the latter by the author himself. It obtained a brilliant success on +its first representation, and was honoured with what was in those days +regarded as the very respectable run of twenty nights. + +The success, however, which came so opportunely for his material +necessities was too late to produce any good effect upon Coleridge's +mental state. But a month after the production of his tragedy we find +him writing in the most dismal strain of hypochondria to Thomas Poole. +The only pleasurable sensation which the success of _Remorse_ had given +him was, he declares, the receipt of his friend's "heart-engendered +lines" of congratulation. "No grocer's apprentice, after his first +month's permitted riot, was ever sicker of figs and raisins than I of +hearing about the _Remorse_. The endless rat-a-tat-tat at our +black-and-blue bruised doors, and my three master-fiends, proof-sheets, +letters, and--worse than these--invitations to large dinners, which I +cannot refuse without offence and imputation of pride, etc., oppress me +so much that my spirits quite sink under it. I have never seen the play +since the first night. It has been a good thing for the theatre. They +will get eight or ten thousand pounds by it, and I shall get more than +by all my literary labours put together--nay, thrice as much." So +large a sum of money as this must have amounted to should surely have +lasted him for years; but the particular species of intemperance to +which he was now hopelessly enslaved is probably the most costly of all +forms of such indulgence, and it seems pretty evident that the proceeds +of his theatrical _coup_ were consumed in little more than a year. + +Early in 1814, at any rate, Coleridge once more returned to his old +occupation of lecturer, and this time not in London, but in the scene +of his first appearance in that capacity. The lectures which he +proposed to deliver at Bristol were, in fact, a repetition of the +course of 1811-12; but the ways of the lecturer, to judge from an +amusing story recorded by Cottle, more nearly resembled his proceedings +in 1808. A "brother of Mr. George Cumberland," who happened to be his +fellow-traveller to Bristol on this occasion, relates that before the +coach started Coleridge's attention was attracted by a little Jew boy +selling pencils, with whom he entered into conversation, and with whose +superior qualities he was so impressed as to declare that "if he had +not an important engagement at Bristol he would stay behind to provide +some better condition for the lad." The coach having started, "the +gentleman" (for his name was unknown to the narrator of the incident) +"talked incessantly and in a most entertaining way for thirty miles out +of London, and, afterwards, with little intermission till they reached +Marlborough," when he discovered that a lady in the coach with him was +a particular friend of his; and on arriving at Bath he quitted the +coach declaring that he was determined not to leave her till he had +seen her safe to her brother's door in North Wales. This was the day +fixed for the delivery of Coleridge's first lecture. Two or three days +afterwards, having completed his _detour_ by North Wales, he arrived at +Bristol: another day was fixed for the commencement of the course, and +Coleridge then presented himself an hour after the audience had taken +their seats. The "important engagement" might be broken, it seems, for +a mere whim, though not for a charitable impulse--a distinction +testifying to a mixture of insincerity and unpunctuality not pleasant +to note as an evidence of the then state of Coleridge's emotions and +will. + +Thus inauspiciously commenced, there was no reason why the Bristol +lectures of 1814 should be more successful than the London Institution +lectures of 1808; nor were they, it appears, in fact. They are said to +have been "sparsely attended,"--no doubt owing to the natural +unwillingness of people to pay for an hour's contemplation of an empty +platform; and their pecuniary returns in consequence were probably +insignificant. Coleridge remained in Bristol till the month of August, +when he returned to London. + +The painful task of tracing his downward course is now almost +completed. In the middle of this year he touched the lowest point of +his descent. Cottle, who had a good deal of intercourse with him by +speech and letter in 1814, and who had not seen him since 1807, was +shocked by his extreme prostration, and then for the first time +ascertained the cause. "In 1814," he says in his _Recollections_, "S. +T. C. had been long, very long, in the habit of taking from two quarts +of laudanum a week to a pint a day, and on one occasion he had been +known to take in the twenty-four hours a whole quart of laudanum. The +serious expenditure of money resulting from this habit was the least +evil, though very great, and must have absorbed all the produce of his +writings and lectures and the liberalities of his friends." Cottle +addressed to him a letter of not very delicate remonstrance on the +subject, to which Coleridge replied in his wontedly humble strain. + +There is a certain Pharisaism about the Bristol poet-publisher which +renders it necessary to exercise some little caution in the acceptance +of his account of Coleridge's condition; but the facts, from whatever +source one seeks them, appear to acquit him of any exaggeration in his +summing up of the melancholy matter. "A general impression," he says, +"prevailed on the minds of Coleridge's friends that it was a desperate +case, that paralysed all their efforts; that to assist Coleridge with +money which, under favourable circumstances would have been most +promptly advanced, would now only enlarge his capacity to obtain the +opium which was consuming him. We merely knew that Coleridge had +retired with his friend, Mr. John Morgan, to a small house at Calne in +Wiltshire." + +It must have been at Calne, then, that Coleridge composed the series of +"Letters to Mr. Justice Fletcher concerning his charge to the Grand +Jury of the county of Wexford, at the summer Assizes in 1814," which +appeared at intervals in the _Courier_ between 20th September and 10th +December of this year. Their subject, a somewhat injudiciously animated +address to the aforesaid Grand Jury on the subject of the relations +between Catholicism and Protestantism in Ireland, was well calculated +to stimulate the literary activity of a man who always took something +of the keen interest of the modern Radical in the eternal Irish +question; and the letters are not wanting either in argumentative force +or in grave impressiveness of style. But their lack of spring and +energy as compared with Coleridge's earlier work in journalism is +painfully visible throughout. + +Calne, it is to be supposed, was still Coleridge's place of abode when +Southey (17th October) wrote Cottle that letter which appears in his +_Correspondence_, and which illustrates with such sad completeness the +contrast between the careers of the two generous, romantic, brilliant +youths who had wooed their wives together--and between the fates, one +must add, of the two sisters who had listened to their wooing--eighteen +years before: a letter as honourable to the writer as it is the reverse +to its subject. "Can you," asks Southey, "tell me anything of +Coleridge? A few lines of introduction for a son of Mr. ---- of St. +James's, in your city, are all that we have received from him since I +saw him last September twelvemonth (1813) in town. The children being +thus left entirely to chance, I have applied to his brothers at Ottey +(Ottery?) concerning them, and am in hopes through their means and the +assistance of other friends of sending Hartley to college. Lady +Beaumont has promised L30 a year for the purpose, and Poole L10. I +wrote to Coleridge three or four months ago, telling him that unless he +took some steps in providing for this object I must make the +application, and required his answer within a given term of three +weeks. He received the letter, and in his note by Mr. ---- promised to +answer it, but he has never taken any further notice of it. I have +acted with the advice of Wordsworth. The brothers, as I expected, +promise their concurrence, and I daily expect a letter stating to what +extent they will contribute." With this letter before him an impartial +biographer can hardly be expected to adopt the theory which has +commended itself to the filial piety of the Rev. Derwent +Coleridge--namely, that it was through the father's "influence" that +the sons were sent to college. On a plain matter of fact such as this, +one may be permitted, without indelicacy, to uphold the conclusions +compelled by the evidence. Such expressions of opinion, on the other +hand, as that Coleridge's "separation from his family, brought about +and continued through the force of circumstances over which he had far +less control than has been commonly supposed, was in fact nothing else +but an ever-prolonged absence;" and that "from first to last he took an +affectionate, it may be said a passionate, interest in the welfare of +his children"--such expressions of mere opinion as these it may be +proper enough to pass by in respectful silence. + +The following year brought with it no improvement in the embarrassed +circumstances, no reform of the disordered life. Still domiciled with +Mr. Morgan at Calne, the self-made sufferer writes to Cottle: "You will +wish to know something of myself. In health I am not worse than when at +Bristol I was best; yet fluctuating, yet unhappy, in circumstances poor +indeed! I have collected my scattered and my manuscript poems +sufficient to make one volume. Enough I have to make another. But, till +the latter is finished, I cannot, without great loss of character, +publish the former, on account of the arrangement, besides the +necessity of correction. For instance, I earnestly wish to begin the +volumes with what has never been seen by any, however few, such as a +series of odes on the different sentences of the Lord's Prayer, and, +more than all this, to finish my greater work on 'Christianity +considered as philosophy, and as the only philosophy.'" Then follows a +request for a loan of forty pounds on the security of the MSS., an +advance which Cottle declined to make, though he sent Coleridge "some +smaller temporary relief." The letter concludes with a reference to a +project for taking a house and receiving pupils to hoard and instruct, +which Cottle appeared to consider the crowning "degradation and +ignominy of all." + +A few days later we find Lord Byron again coming to Coleridge's +assistance with a loan of a hundred pounds and words of counsel and +encouragement. Why should not the author of Remorse repeat his success +I "In Kean," writes Byron, "there is an actor worthy of expressing the +thoughts of the character which you have every power of embodying, and +I cannot but regret that the part of Ordonio was disposed of before his +appearance at Drury Lane. We have had nothing to be mentioned in the +same breath with Remorse for very many years, and I should think that +the reception of that play was sufficient to encourage the highest +hopes of author and audience." The advice was followed, and the drama +of Zapolya was the result. It is a work of even less dramatic strength +than its predecessor, and could scarcely, one thinks, have been as +successful with an audience. It was not, however, destined to see the +footlights. Before it had passed the tribunal of the Drury Lane +Committee it had lost the benefit of Byron's patronage through the +poet's departure from England, and the play was rejected by Mr. Douglas +Kinnaird, the then reader for the theatre, who assigned, according to +Mr. Gillman, "some ludicrous objections to the metaphysics." Before +leaving England, however, Byron rendered a last, and, as the result +proved, a not unimportant service to his brother-poet. He introduced +him to Mr. Murray, who, in the following year, undertook the +publication of _Christabel_--the most successful, in the sense of the +most popular, of all its author's productions in verse. + +With the coming of spring in the following year that dreary story of +slow self-destruction, into which the narrative of Coleridge's life +from the age of thirty to that of forty-five resolves itself, was +brought to a close. Coleridge had at last perceived that his only hope +of redemption lay in a voluntary submission of his enfeebled will to +the control of others, and he had apparently just enough strength of +volition to form and execute the necessary resolve. He appears, in the +first instance, to have consulted a physician of the name of Adams, +who, on the 9th of April 1816, put himself in communication with Mr. +Gillman of Highgate. "A very learned, but in one respect an unfortunate +gentleman, has," he wrote, "applied to me on a singular occasion. He +has for several years been in the habit of taking large quantities of +opium. For some time past he has been in vain endeavouring to break +himself of it. It is apprehended his friends are not firm enough, from +a dread lest he should suffer by suddenly leaving it off, though he is +conscious of the contrary, and has proposed to me to submit himself to +any regimen, however severe. With this view he wishes to fix himself in +the house of some medical gentleman who will have the courage to refuse +him any laudanum, and under whose assistance, should he be the worse +for it, he may be relieved." Would such a proposal, inquires the +writer, be absolutely inconsistent with Mr. Gillman's family +arrangements? He would not, he adds, have proposed it "but on account +of the great importance of the character as a literary man. His +communicative temper will make his society very interesting as well as +useful." Mr. Gillman's acquaintance with Dr. Adams was but slight, and +he had had no previous intention of receiving an inmate into his house. +But the case very naturally interested him; he sought an interview with +Dr. Adams, and it was agreed that the latter should drive Coleridge to +Highgate the following evening. At the appointed hour, however, +Coleridge presented himself alone, and, after spending the evening at +Mr. Gillman's, left him, as even in his then condition he left most +people who met him for the first time, completely captivated by the +amiability of his manners and the charm of his conversation. The next +day Mr. Gillman received from him a letter, finally settling the +arrangement to place himself under the doctor's care, and concluding +with the following pathetic passage: + +"And now of myself. My ever wakeful reason and the keenness of my moral +feelings will secure you from all unpleasant circumstances connected +with me save only one, viz. the evasion of a specific madness. You will +never hear anything but truth from me; prior habits render it out of my +power to tell an untruth, but, unless carefully observed, I dare not +promise that I should not, with regard to this detested poison, be +capable of acting one. Not sixty hours have yet passed without my +having taken laudanum, though, for the last week, comparatively +trifling doses. I have full belief that your anxiety need not be +extended beyond the first week, and for the first week, I shall not, +must not, be permitted to leave your house, unless with you; delicately +or indelicately, this must be done, and both the servants, and the +assistant, must receive absolute commands from you. The stimulus of +conversation suspends the terror that haunts my mind; but, when I am +alone, the horrors I have suffered from laudanum, the degradation, the +blighted utility, almost overwhelm me. If (as I feel for the _first +time_ a soothing confidence that it will prove) I should leave you +restored to my moral and bodily health, it is not myself only that will +love and honour you; every friend I have (and, thank God! in spite of +this wretched vice I have many and warm ones, who were friends of my +youth, and have never deserted me) will thank you with reverence. I +have taken no notice of your kind apologies. If I could not be +comfortable in your house and with your family, I should deserve to be +miserable." + +This letter was written on a Saturday, and on the following Monday +Coleridge presented himself at Mr. Gillman's, bringing in his hand the +proof--sheets of _Christabel_, now printed for the first time. He had +looked, as the letter just quoted shows, with a "soothing confidence" +to leaving his retreat at some future period in a restored condition of +moral and bodily health; and as regards the restoration, his confidence +was in a great measure justified. But the friendly doors which opened +to receive him on this 15th of April 1816, were destined to close only +upon his departing bier. Under the watchful and almost reverential care +of this well-chosen guardian, sixteen years of comparatively quiet and +well-ordered life, of moderate but effective literary activity, and of +gradual though never complete emancipation from his fatal habit, were +reserved to him. He had still, as we shall see, to undergo certain +recurrences of restlessness and renewals of pecuniary difficulty; his +shattered health was but imperfectly and temporarily repaired; his +"shaping spirit of imagination" could not and did not return; his +transcendental broodings became more and more the "habit of his soul." +But henceforth he recovers for us a certain measure of his long-lost +dignity, and a figure which should always have been "meet for the +reverence of the hearth" in the great household of English literature, +but which had far too long and too deeply sunk below it, becomes once +more a worthy and even a venerable presence. At evening-time it was +light. + + +FOOTNOTES + +1. Coleridge made the acquaintance of this gentleman, who became his +enthusiastic disciple, in 1818. His chief interest for us is the fact +that for the next seven years he was Coleridge's correspondent. +Personally, he was a man of little judgment or critical discrimination, +and his sense of the ridiculous may be measured by the following +passage. Speaking of the sweetness of Charles Lamb's smile, he says +that "there is still one man living, a stockbroker, who has that +smile," and adds: "To those who wish to see the only thing left on +earth, _if it is still left_, of Lamb, his best and most beautiful +remain--his smile, I will indicate its possessor, Mr. ---- of +Throgmorton Street." How the original "possessor" of this apparently +assignable security would have longed to "feel Mr. Allsop's head"! + + + + +CHAPTER IX + +Life at Highgate-Renewed activity-Publications and re-publications--The +_Biographia Literaria_--The lectures of 1818-Coleridge as a +Shakespearian critic. + +[1816-1818.] + + +The results of the step which Coleridge had just taken became speedily +visible in more ways than one, and the public were among the first to +derive benefit from it. For not only was he stimulated to greater +activity of production, but his now more methodical way of life gave +him time and inclination for that work of arrangement and preparation +for the press which, distasteful to most writers, was no doubt +especially irksome to him, and thus insured the publication of many +pieces which otherwise might never have seen the light. The appearance +of _Christabel_ was, as we have said, received with signal marks of +popular favour, three editions being called for and exhausted in the +same year. In 1816 there appeared also The Statesman's Manual; or the +Bible the best guide to Political Skill and Foresight: a Lay Sermon +addressed to the higher classes of Society, with an Appendix containing +Comments and Essays connected with the Study of the Inspired Writings; +in 1817, another _Lay Sermon addressed to the higher and middle classes +on the existing distresses and discontents;_ and in the same year +followed the most important publication of this period, the _Biographia +Literaria_. + +In 1817, too, it was that Coleridge at last made his long-meditated +collection and classification of his already published poems, and that +for the first time something approaching to a complete edition of the +poet's works was given to the world. The _Sibylline Leaves_, as this +reissue was called, had been intended to be preceded by another volume +of verse, and "accordingly on the printer's signatures of every sheet +we find Vol. II, appearing." Too characteristically, however, the +scheme was abandoned, and Volume II. emerged from the press without any +Volume I. to accompany it. The drama of _Zapolya_ followed in the same +year, and proved more successful with the public than with the critic +of Drury Lane. The "general reader" assigned no "ludicrous objections +to its metaphysics;" on the contrary, he took them on trust, as his +generous manner is, and _Zapolya_, published thus as a Christmas tale, +became so immediately popular that two thousand copies were sold in six +weeks. In the year 1818 followed the three-volume selection of essays +from the _Friend_, a reissue to which reference has already been made. +With the exception of _Christabel_, however, all the publications of +these three years unfortunately proceeded from the house of Gale and +Fenner, a firm which shortly afterwards became bankrupt; and Coleridge +thus lost all or nearly all of the profits of their sale. + +The most important of the new works of this period was, as has been +said, the _Biographia Literaria_, or, to give it its other title, +_Biographical Sketches of my Literary Life and Opinions_. Its interest, +however, is wholly critical and illustrative; as a narrative it would +be found extremely disappointing and probably irritating by the average +reader. With the exception of one or two incidental disclosures, but +little biographical information is to be derived from it which is not +equally accessible from sources independent of the author; and the +almost complete want of sequence and arrangement renders it a very +inconvenient work of reference even for these few biographical details. +Its main value is to be found in the contents of seven chapters, from +the fourteenth to the twentieth; but it is not going too far to say +that, in respect of these, it is literally priceless. No such analysis +of the principles of poetry--no such exact discrimination of what was +sound in the modern "return-to-nature" movement from what was +false--has ever been accomplished by any other critic, or with such +admirable completeness by this consummate critic at any other time. +Undoubtedly it is not of the light order of reading; none, or very +little, of Coleridge's prose is. The whole of chapter xv., for +instance, in which the specific elements of "poetic power" are +"distinguished from general talent determined to poetic composition by +accidental motives," requires a close and sustained effort of the +attention, but those who bestow it will find it amply re-paid. I know +of no dissertation conceived and carried out in terms of the abstract +which in the result so triumphantly justifies itself upon application +to concrete cases, As regards the question of poetic expression, and +the laws by which its true form is determined, Coleridge's analysis is, +it seems to me, final. I cannot, at least, after the most careful +reflection upon it, conceive it as being other than the absolutely last +word on the subject. Reasoning and illustration are alike so convincing +that the reader, like the contentious student who listened unwillingly +to his professor's demonstration of the first proposition of Euclid, is +compelled to confess that "he has nothing to reply." To the judicious +admirer of Wordsworth, to every one who, while recognising Wordsworth's +inestimable services to English literature as the leader of the +naturalist reaction in poetry, has yet been vaguely conscious of the +defect in his poetic theory, and very keenly conscious of the vices of +his poetic practice,--to all such persons it must be a profound relief +and satisfaction to be guided as unerringly as Coleridge guides them to +the "parting of the ways" of truth and falsity in Wordsworth's +doctrines, and to be enabled to perceive that nothing which has +offended him in that poet's thought and diction has any real connection +with whatever in the poet's principles has commanded his assent. There +is no one who has ever felt uneasy under the blasphemies of the enemy +but must entertain deep gratitude for so complete a discharge as +Coleridge has procured him from the task of defending such lines as + + "And I have travelled far as Hull to see + What clothes he might have left or other property." + +Defend them indeed the ordinary reader probably would not, preferring +even the abandonment of his theory to a task so humiliating. But the +theory has so much of truth and value in it that the critic who has +redeemed it from the discredit of Wordsworth's misapplications of it is +entitled to the thanks of every friend of simplicity, who is at the +same time an enemy of bathos. There is no longer any reason to treat +the deadly commonplaces, amid which we toil through so many pages of +the _Excursion_, as having any true theoretic affinity with its but too +occasional majestic interludes. The smooth square-cut blocks of prose +which insult the natural beauty of poetic rock and boulder even in such +a scene of naked moorland grandeur as that of _Resolution and +Independence_ are seen and shown to be the mere intruders which we have +all felt them to be. To the Wordsworthian, anxious for a full +justification of the faith that is in him, the whole body of +Coleridge's criticism on his friend's poetry in the _Biographia +Literaria_ may be confidently recommended. The refutation of what is +untenable in Wordsworth's theory, the censure pronounced upon certain +characteristics of his practice, are made all the more impressive by +the tone of cordial admiration which distinguishes every personal +reference to the poet himself, and by the unfailing discrimination with +which the critic singles out the peculiar beauties of his poetry. No +finer selection of finely characteristic Wordsworthian passages could +perhaps have been made than those which Coleridge has quoted in +illustration of his criticisms in the eighteenth and two following +chapters of the _Biographia Literaria_. For the rest, however, unless +indeed one excepts the four chapters on the Hartleian system and its +relation to the German school of philosophy, the book is rather one to +be dipped into for the peculiar pleasure which an hour in Coleridge's +company must always give to any active intelligence, than to be +systematically studied with a view to perfecting one's conception of +Coleridge's philosophical and critical genius considered in its +totality. + +As to the two lay sermons, the less ambitious of them is decidedly the +more successful. The advice to "the higher and middle classes" on the +existing distresses and discontents contains at least an ingredient of +the practical; its distinctively religious appeals are varied by sound +political and economical arguments; and the enumeration and exposure of +the various artifices by which most orators are accustomed to delude +their hearers is as masterly as only Coleridge could have made it. Who +but he, for instance, could have thrown a piece of subtle observation +into a form in which reason and fancy unite so happily to impress it on +the mind as in the following passage: "The mere appeal to the auditors, +whether the arguments are not such that none but an idiot or an +hireling could resist, is an effective substitute for any argument at +all. For mobs have no memories. They are in nearly the same state as +that of an individual when he makes what is termed a bull. _The +passions, like a fused metal, fill up the wide interstices of thought +and supply the defective links; and thus incompatible assertions are +harmonised by the sensation, without the sense of connection_." The +other lay sermon, however, the _Statesman's Manual_, is less +appropriately conceived. Its originating proposition, that the Bible is +"the best guide to political skill and foresight," is undoubtedly open +to dispute, but might nevertheless be capable of plausible defence upon +_a priori_ grounds. Coleridge, however, is not content with this method +of procedure; as, indeed, with so avowedly practical an object in view +he scarcely could be, for a "manual" is essentially a work intended for +the constant consultation of the artificer in the actual performance of +his work, and ought at least to contain illustrations of the +application of its general principles to particular cases. It is in +undertaking to supply these that the essential mysticism of Coleridge's +counsels comes to light. For instance: "I am deceived if you will not +be compelled to admit that the prophet Isaiah revealed the true +philosophy of the French Revolution more than two thousand years before +it became a sad irrevocable truth of history. 'And thou saidst, I shall +be a lady for ever, so that thou didst not lay these things to thy +heart neither didst remember the latter end of it.... Therefore shall +evil come upon thee; thou shalt not know from whence it riseth, etc.'" +And to this ast-quoted sentence Coleridge actually appends the +following note: "The reader will scarcely fail to find in this verse a +remembrancer of the sudden setting in of the frost before the usual +time (in a country, too, where the commencement of its two seasons is +in general scarcely less regular than that of the wet and dry seasons +between the tropics) which caused, and the desolation which +accompanied, the flight from Moscow." One can make no other comment +upon this than that if it really + be wisdom which statesmen would do well to lay to heart, the late Dr. +Cumming must have been the most profound instructor in statesmanship +that the world has ever seen. A prime minister of real life, however, +could scarcely be seriously recommended to shape his policy upon a due +consideration of the possible allegoric meaning of a passage in Isaiah, +to say nothing of the obvious objection that this kind of appeal to +_Sortes Biblicae_ is dangerously liable to be turned against those who +recommend it. On the whole, one must say of this lay sermon that it +justifies the apprehension expressed by the author in its concluding +pages. It does rather "resemble the overflow of an earnest mind than an +orderly and premeditated," in the sense, at any rate, of a +well-considered "composition." + +In the month of January 1818 Coleridge once more commenced the delivery +of a course of lectures in London. The scope of this series-fourteen in +number was, as will be seen from the subjoined syllabus, an immensely +comprehensive one. The subject of the first was "the manners, morals, +literature, philosophy, religion, and state of society in general in +European Christendom, from the eighth to the fifteenth century;" and of +the second "the tales and metrical romances common for the most part to +England, Germany, and the north of France; and English songs and +ballads continued to the reign of Charles I." In the third the lecturer +proposed to deal with the poetry of Chaucer and Spenser, of Petrarch, +and of Ariosto, Pulci, and Boiardo. The fourth, fifth, and sixth were +to be devoted to the dramatic works of Shakespeare, and to comprise the +substance of Coleridge's former courses on the same subject, "enlarged +and varied by subsequent study and reflection." In the seventh he was +to treat of the other principal dramatists of the Elizabethan period, +Ben Jonson, Massinger, and Beaumont and Fletcher; in the eighth of the +life and all the works of Cervantes; in the ninth of Rabelais, Swift, +and Sterne, with a dissertation "on the nature and constituents of +genuine humour, and on the distinctions of humorous from the witty, the +fanciful, the droll, the odd, etc." Donne, Dante, and Milton formed the +subject of the tenth; the _Arabian Nights Entertainment_, and the +_romantic_ use of the supernatural in poetry, that of the eleventh. The +twelfth was to be on "tales of witches and apparitions, etc.," as +distinguished from magic and magicians of Asiatic origin; and the +thirteenth,--"on colour, sound, and form in nature, as connected with +Poesy--the word 'Poesy' being used as the generic or class term +including poetry, music, painting, statuary, and ideal architecture as +its species, the reciprocal relations of poetry and philosophy to each +other, and of both to religion and the moral sense.'" In the fourteenth +and final lecture Coleridge proposed to discuss "the corruptions of the +English language since the reign of Queen Anne, in our style of writing +prose," and to formulate "a few easy rules for the attainment of a +manly, unaffected, and pure language in our genuine mother tongue, +whether for the purposes of writing, oratory, or conversation." + +These lectures, says Mr. Gillman, were from Coleridge's own account +more profitable than any he had before given, though delivered in an +unfavourable situation; a lecture-room in Flower de Luce Court, which, +however, being near the Temple, secured to him the benefit--if benefit +it were--of a considerable number of law students among his auditors. +It was the first time that his devoted guardian had ever heard him in +public, and he reports the significant fact that though Coleridge +lectured from notes, which he had carefully made, "it was obvious that +his audience were more delighted when, putting his notes aside, he +spoke extempore...." He was brilliant, fluent, and rapid; his words +seemed to flow as from a person repeating with grace and energy some +delightful poem. If he sometimes paused, it was not for the want of +words, but that he was seeking their most appropriate or most logical +arrangement. + +An incident related with extreme, though in a great measure +unconscious, drollery by Mr. Gillman in connection with a lecture +delivered at this period is to my mind of more assistance than many of +the accounts of his "lay sermons" in private circles, in enabling us to +comprehend one element of Coleridge's marvellous powers of discourse. +Early one morning at Mr. Gillman's he received two letters-one to +inform him that he was expected that same evening to deliver a lecture, +at the rooms of the London Philosophical Society, to an audience of +some four or five hundred persons; the other containing a list of the +previous lecturers and the lectures delivered by them during the course +of the season. At seven o'clock in the evening Coleridge and Mr. +Gillman went up to town to make some inquiries respecting this +unexpected application; but, on arriving at the house of the gentleman +who had written the letter, they were informed that he was not at home, +but would return at eight o'clock--the hour fixed for the commencement +of the lecture. They then proceeded to the Society's rooms, where in +due time the audience assembled; and the committee having at last +entered and taken their places on the seats reserved for them, "Mr. +President arose from the centre of the group, and, putting on a +'president's hat,' which so disfigured him that we could scarcely +refrain from laughter, addressed the company in these words: This +evening Mr. Coleridge will deliver a lecture on 'the Growth of the +Individual Mind.'" Coleridge at first "seemed startled," as well he +might, and turning round to Mr. Gillman whispered: "A pretty stiff +subject they have chosen for me." However, he instantly mounted his +standing-place and began without hesitation, previously requesting his +friend to observe the effect of his lecture on the audience. It was +agreed that, should he appear to fail, Gillman was to "clasp his ancle; +but that he was to continue for an hour if the countenances of his +auditors indicated satisfaction." Coleridge then began his address in +these words: "The lecture I am about to give this evening is purely +extempore. Should you find a nominative case looking out for a verb, or +a fatherless verb for a nominative case, you must excuse it. It is +purely extempore, though I have read and thought much on the subject." +At this the company smiled, which seemed to inspire the lecturer with +confidence. He plunged at once into his lecture--and most brilliant, +eloquent, and logically consecutive it was. The time moved on so +swiftly that Mr. Gillman found, on looking at his watch, that an hour +and a half had passed away, and, therefore, he continues "waiting only +a desirable moment--to use his own playful words--I prepared myself to +punctuate his oration. As previously agreed, I pressed his ancle, and +thus gave him the hint he had requested; when, bowing graciously, and +with a benevolent and smiling countenance, he presently descended. The +lecture was quite new to me, and I believe quite new to himself so far +as the arrangement of his words was concerned. The floating thoughts +were beautifully arranged, and delivered on the spur of the moment. +What accident gave rise to the singular request, that he should deliver +this lecture impromptu, I never learnt; nor did it signify, as it +afforded a happy opportunity to many of witnessing in part the extent +of his reading and the extraordinary strength of his powers." + +It is tantalising to think that no record of this remarkable +performance remains; but, indeed, the same may to some extent be said, +and in various degrees, of nearly all the lectures which Coleridge ever +delivered. With the exception of seven out of the fifteen of 1811, +which were published in 1856 by Mr. Payne Collier from shorthand notes +taken at the time, Coleridge's lectures scarcely exist for us otherwise +than in the form of rough preparatory notes. A few longer pieces, such +as the admirable observations in the second volume of the _Literary +Remains_, on poetry, on the Greek drama, and on the progress of the +dramatic art in England, are, with the exception above noticed, almost +the only general disquisitions on these subjects which appear to have +reached us in a complete state. Of the remaining contents of the +volume, including the detailed criticisms now textual, now analytic--of +the various plays of Shakespeare, a considerable portion is frankly +fragmentary, pretending, indeed, to no other character than that of +mere marginalia. This, however, does not destroy--I had almost said it +does not even impair--their value. It does but render them all the more +typical productions of a writer, whose greatest services to mankind in +almost every department of human thought and knowledge with which he +concerned himself were much the most often performed in the least +methodical way. In reading through these incomparable notes on +Shakespeare we soon cease to lament, or even to remember, their +unconnected form and often somewhat desultory appearance; if, indeed, +we do not see reason to congratulate ourselves that the annotator, +unfettered by the restraints which the composition of a systematic +treatise would have imposed upon him, is free to range with us at will +over many a flower-strewn field, for which otherwise he could not +perhaps have afforded to quit the main road of his subject. And this +liberty is the more welcome, because Coleridge, _primus inter pares_ as +a critic of any order of literature, is in the domain of Shakespearian +commentary absolute king. The principles of analysis which he was +charged with having borrowed without acknowledgment from Schlegel, with +whose Shakespearian theories he was at the time entirely unacquainted, +were in fact of his own excogitation. He owed nothing in this matter to +any individual German, nor had he anything in common with German +Shakespearianism except its profoundly philosophising spirit, which, +moreover, was in his case directed and restrained by other qualities, +too often wanting in critics of that industrious race; for he possessed +a sense of the ridiculous, a feeling for the poetic, a tact, a taste, +and a judgment, which would have saved many a worthy but heavy-handed +Teutonic professor, who should have been lucky enough to own these +gifts, from exposing himself and his science to the satire of the +light-minded. Very rarely, indeed, do we find Coleridge indulging _plus +'quo_ his passion for psychological analysis. Deeply as his criticism +penetrates, it is yet loyally recognitive of the opacity of milestones. +Far as he sees into his subject, we never find him fancying that he +sees beyond the point at which the faculty of human vision is +exhausted. His conception of the more complex of Shakespeare's +personages, his theory of their characters, his reading of their +motives, is often subtle, but always sane; his interpretation of the +master's own dealings with them, and of the language which he puts into +their mouths, is often highly imaginative, but it is rarely fanciful. +Take, as an illustration of the first-mentioned merit, the following +acute but eminently sensible estimate of the character of Polonius:-- + + +"He is the personified memory of wisdom no longer actually possessed. +This admirable character is always misrepresented on the stage. +Shakspeare never intended to exhibit him as a buffoon; for although it +was natural for Hamlet--a young man of fire and genius, detesting +formality and disliking Polonius on political grounds, as imagining +that he had assisted his uncle in his usurpation--should express +himself satirically, yet this must not be taken exactly as the poet's +conception of him. In Polonius a certain induration of character had +arisen from long habits of business; but take his advice to Laertes, +and Ophelia's reverence for his memory, and we shall see that he was +meant to be represented as a statesman somewhat past his faculties--his +recollections of life all full of wisdom, and showing a knowledge of +human nature, while what immediately takes place before him and escapes +from him is indicative of weakness." + +Or this comment on the somewhat faint individualisation of the figure +of Lear: + +"In Lear old age is itself a character-natural imperfections being +increased by life-long habits of receiving a prompt obedience. Any +addition of individualisation would have been unnecessary and painful; +for the relation of others to him, of wondrous fidelity and of +frightful ingratitude, alone sufficiently distinguish him. Thus Lear +becomes the open and ample playroom of nature's passions." + +Or lastly, in illustration of my second point, let us take this note on +the remark of the knight that "since my young lady's going into France +the fool hath much pined away ":-- + +"The fool is no comic buffoon--to make the groundlings laugh--no forced +condescension of Shakspeare's genius to the taste of his audience. +Accordingly the poet prepares us for the introduction, which he never +does with any of his common clowns and fools, by bringing him into +living connection with the pathos of the play. He is as wonderful a +creation as Caliban,--his wild babblings and inspired idiocy articulate +and gauge the horrors of the scene." + +The subject is a tempting one to linger over, did not imperative +Exigencies of space compel me to pass on from it. There is much--very +much--more critical matter in the Literary Remains of which it is hard +to forbear quotation; and I may mention in particular the profoundly +suggestive remarks on the nature of the humorous, with their +accompanying analysis of the genius and artistic method of Sterne. But +it is, as has been said, in Shakespearian criticism that Coleridge's +unique mastery of all the tools of the critic is most conspicuous, and +it is in the brilliant, if unmethodised, pages which I have been +discussing that we may most readily find consolation for the too early +silencing of his muse. For these consummate criticisms are essentially +and above all the criticisms of a poet They are such as could not have +been achieved by any man not originally endowed with that divine gift +which was fated in this instance to expend itself within so few years. +Nothing, indeed, could more strikingly illustrate the commanding +advantage possessed by a poet interpreting a poet than is to be found +in Coleridge's occasional sarcastic comments on the _banalites_ of our +national poet's most prosaic commentator, Warburton--the +"thought-swarming, but idealess Warburton," as he once felicitously +styles him. The one man seems to read his author's text under the +clear, diffused, unwavering radiance emitted from his own poetic +imagination; while the criticism of the other resembles a perpetual +scratching of damp matches, which ash a momentary light into one corner +of the dark assage, and then go out. + + + + +CHAPTER X + +Closing years--Temporary renewal of money troubles--The Aids to +Reflection--Growing weakness-Visit to Germany with the +Wordsworths--Last illness and death. + +[1818-1834.] + + +For the years which now remained to Coleridge, some sixteen in number, +dating from his last appearance as a public lecturer, his life would +seem to have been attended with something, at least, of that sort of +happiness which is enjoyed by the nation of uneventful annals. There is +little to be told of him in the way of literary performance; little +record remains, unfortunately, of the discursively didactic talk in +which, during these years, his intellectual activity found its busiest +exercise; of incident in the ordinary sense of the word there is almost +none. An account of these closing days of his life must resolve itself +almost wholly into a "history of opinion,"--an attempt to reanimate for +ourselves that life of perpetual meditation which Coleridge lived, and +to trace, so far as the scanty evidence of his utterances enables us to +do so, the general tenor of his daily thoughts. From one point of view, +of course, this task would be extremely difficult, if not impossible; +from another comparatively easy. It is easy, that is to say, to +investigate Coleridge's speculations, so far as their subject is +concerned, whatever difficulties their obscurity and subtlety may +present to the inquirer; for, as a matter of fact, their subject is +remarkably uniform. Attempts to divide the literary life of a writer +into eras are more often arbitrary and fanciful than not; but the +peculiar circumstances of Coleridge's career did in fact effect the +division for themselves. His life until the age of twenty-six may +fairly be described as in its "poetic period." It was during these +years, and indeed during the last two or three of them, that he +produced all the poetry by which he will be remembered, while he +produced little else of mark or memorability. The twenty years which +follow from 1798 to 1818 may with equal accuracy be styled the +"critical period." It was during these years that he did his best work +as a journalist, and all his work as a public lecturer on aesthetics. +It was during them that he said his say, and even his final say, so far +as any public modes of expression were concerned, on politics and on +art. From 1818 to his death his life was devoted entirely to +metaphysics and theology, and with such close and constant reference to +the latter subject, to which indeed his metaphysics had throughout his +life been ancillary, that it deserves to give the name of the +"theological period" to these closing years. + +Their lack of incident, however, is not entirely as favourable a +circumstance as that uneventfulness of national annals to which I have +compared it; for, though "no news may be good news" in the case of a +nation's history, it is by no means as certainly so in the case of a +man's biography, and, least of all, when the subject is a man whose +inward life of thought and feeling so completely overshadowed his +outward life of action throughout his whole career. There is indeed +evidence, slight in amount, but conclusive in character-plain and +painful evidence enough to show that at least the first four or five +years of the period we have mentioned were not altogether years of +resignation and calm; that they were embittered by recurring agonies of +self-reproach, by + + "Sense of past youth, and manhood come in vain, + And genius given, and knowledge won in vain;" + +and by the desolating thought that all which had been "culled in +wood-walks wild," and "all which patient toil had reared," were to be + + --"but flowers + Strewn on the corse, and borne upon the bier, + In the same coffin, for the self-same grave!" + +Here and there in the correspondence with Thomas Allsop we obtain a +glimpse into that vast half-darkened arena in which this captive spirit +self-condemned to the lions was struggling its last. To one strange and +hitherto unexplained letter I have already referred. It was written +from Ramsgate in the autumn of 1822, evidently under circumstances of +deep depression. But there is a letter nearly two years earlier in date +addressed to the same correspondent which contains by far the fullest +account of Coleridge's then condition of mind, the state of his +literary engagements and his literary projects, his completed and +uncompleted work. As usual with him it is stress of money matters that +prompts him to write, and he prefaces his request for assistance with +the following portentous catalogue of realised or contemplated schemes. +"Contemplated," indeed, is too modest a word, according to his own +account, to be applied to any one item in the formidable list. Of all +of them, he has, he tells Allsop, "already the written materials and +contents, requiring only to be put together from the loose papers and +commonplace in memorandum books, and needing no other change, whether +of omission, addition, or correction, than the mere act of arranging, +and the opportunity of seeing the whole collectively, bring with them +of course." Heads I. and II. of the list comprise those criticisms on +Shakespeare and the other principal Elizabethan dramatists; on Dante, +Spenser, Milton, Cervantes, Calderon; on Chaucer, Ariosto, Donne, +Rabelais, etc., which formed the staple of the course of lectures +delivered in 1818, and which were published after his death in the +first two of the four volumes of _Literary Remains_ brought out under +the editorship of Mr. H. N. Coleridge. Reserving No. III. for a moment +we find No. IV. to consist of "Letters on the Old and New Testament, +and on the Doctrines and Principles held in common by the Fathers and +Founders of the Reformation, addressed to a Candidate for Holy Orders, +including advice on the plan and subjects of preaching proper to a +minister of the Established Church." The letters never apparently saw +the light of publicity, at any rate, in the epistolary form, either +during the author's lifetime or after his death; and with regard to II. +and III., which did obtain posthumous publication, the following +caution should be borne in mind by the reader. "To the completion," +says Coleridge, "of these four works I have literally nothing more to +do than to transcribe; but, as I before hinted, from so many scraps and +Sibylline leaves, including margins of blank pages that unfortunately I +must be my own scribe, and, not done by myself, they will be all but +lost." As matters turned out he was not his own scribe, and the +difficulty which Mr. Nelson Coleridge experienced in piecing together +the fragmentary materials at his disposal is feelingly described by him +in his preface to the first edition. He added that the contents of +these volumes were drawn from a portion only of the MSS. entrusted to +him, and that the remainder of the collection, which, under favourable +circumstances, he hoped might hereafter see the light, "was at least of +equal value" with what he was then presenting to the reader. This hope +was never realised; and it must be remembered, therefore, that the +published record of Coleridge's achievements as a critic is, as has +already been pointed out, extremely imperfect. [1] That it is not even +more disappointingly so than it is, may well entitle his nephew and +editor to the gratitude of posterity; but where much has been done, +there yet remains much to do ere Coleridge's consummate analyses of +poetic and dramatic works can be presented to the reader in other than +their present shape of a series of detached brilliancies. The pearls +are there, but the string is wanting. Whether it will be ever supplied, +or whether it is possible now to supply it, one cannot say. + +The third of Coleridge's virtually completed works there is much virtue +in a "virtually"-was a "History of Philosophy considered as a Tendency +of the Human Mind to exhibit the Powers of the Human Reason, to +discover by its own strength the Origin and Laws of Man and the World, +from Pythagoras to Locke and Condillac." This production, however, +considerable as it is, was probably merely ancillary to what he calls +"My GREAT WORK, to the preparation of which more than twenty years of +my life have been devoted, and on which my hopes of extensive and +permanent utility, of fame in the noblest sense of the word, mainly +rest." To this work he goes on to say: + +"All my other writings, unless I except my Poems (and these I can +exclude in part only), are introductory and preparative, while its +result, if the premises be as I with the most tranquil assurance am +convinced they are-incontrovertible, the deductions legitimate, and the +conclusions commensurate, and only commensurate with both [must be], to +effect a revolution in all that has been called Philosophy and +Metaphysics in England and France since the era of commencing +predominance of the mechanical system at the Restoration of our Second +Charles, and with [in] the present fashionable views not only of +religion, morals, and politics, but even of the modern physics and +physiology." + +This, it must be allowed, is a sufficiently "large order," being +Apparently indeed nothing less than an undertaking to demolish the +system of Locke and his successors, and to erect German +Transcendentalism on the ruins. With anything less than this, however +with any less noble object or less faith in their +attainments--Coleridge could not, he declares, have stood acquitted of +folly and abuse of time, talent, and learning, on a labour of +three--fourths of his intellectual life. Somewhat more than a volume of +this _magnum opus_ had been dictated by him to his "friend and +enlightened pupil, Mr. Green, so as to exist fit for the press;" and +more than as much again had been done, but he had been compelled to +break off the weekly meetings with his pupil from the necessity of +writing on subjects of the passing day. Then comes a reference, the +last we meet with, to the real "great work," as the unphilosophic world +has always considered and will always consider it. On this subject he +says: + +"Of my poetic works I would fain finish the _Christabel_, Alas! for the +proud time when I planned, when I had present to my mind the materials +as well as the scheme of the Hymns entitled Spirit, Sun, Earth, Air, +Water, Fire, and Man; and the Epic Poem on what appears to me the only +fit subject remaining for an Epic Poem--Jerusalem besieged and +destroyed by Titus." + +And then there follows this most pathetic passage, necessary, in spite +of its length, to be transcribed entire, both on account of the value +of its biographic details--its information on the subject of the +useless worldly affairs, etc.--and because of the singularly +penetrating light which it throws upon the mental and moral nature of +the man:-- + +"I have only by fits and starts ever prayed--I have not prevailed upon +myself to pray to God in sincerity and entireness for the fortitude +that might enable me to resign myself to the abandonment of all my +life's best hopes, to say boldly to myself, 'Gifted with powers +confessedly above mediocrity, aided by an education of which no less +from almost unexampled hardships and sufferings than from manifold and +peculiar advantages I have never yet found a parallel, I have devoted +myself to a life of unintermitted reading, thinking, meditating, and +observing, I have not only sacrificed all worldly prospects of wealth +and advancement, but have in my inmost soul stood aloof from temporary +reputation. In consequence of these toils and this self-dedication I +possess a calm and clear consciousness that in many and most important +departments of truth and beauty I have outstrode my contemporaries, +those at least of highest name, that the number of my. printed works +bear witness that I have not been idle, and the seldom acknowledged but +strictly _proveable_ effects of my labours appropriated to the welfare +of my age in the _Morning Post_ before the peace of Amiens, in the +_Courier_ afterwards, and in the serious and various subjects of my +lectures... (add to which the unlimited freedom of my communications to +colloquial life) may surely be allowed as evidence that I have not been +useless to my generation. But, from circumstances, the main portion of +my harvest is still on the ground, ripe indeed and only waiting, a few +for the sickle, but a large part only for the _sheaving_ and carting +and housing-but from all this I must turn away and let them rot as they +lie, and be as though they never had been; for I must go and gather +black berries and earth-nuts, or pick mushrooms and gild oak-apples for +the palate and fancies of chance customers. I must abrogate the name of +philosopher and poet, and scribble as fast as I can and with as little +thought as I can for _Blackwood's Magazine_, or as I have been employed +for the last days in writing MS. sermons for lazy clergymen who +stipulate that the composition must be more than respectable.'... This" +[_i.e._ to say this to myself] "I have not yet had courage to do. My +soul sickens and my heart sinks, and thus oscillating between both" +[forms of activity--the production of permanent and of ephemeral work] +"I do neither--neither as it ought to be done to any profitable end." + +And his proposal for extricating himself from this distressing position +is that "those who think respectfully and hope highly of my power and +attainments should guarantee me a yearly sum for three or four years, +adequate to my actual support, with such comforts and decencies of +appearance as my health and habit have made necessaries, so that my +mind may be unanxious as far as the present time is concerned." Thus +provided for he would undertake to devote two-thirds of his time to +some one work of those above mentioned that is to say, of the first +four--and confine it exclusively to it till finished, while the +remaining third of his time he would go on maturing and completing his +"great work," and "(for, if but easy in my mind, I have no doubt either +of the reawakening power or of the kindling inclination) my +_Christabel_ and what else the happier hour may inspire." Mr. Green, he +goes on to say, had promised to contribute L30 to L40 yearly, another +pupil, "the son of one of my dearest old friends, L50," and L10 or L20 +could, he thought, be relied on from another. The whole amount of the +required annuity would be about L200, to be repaid of course should +disposal or sale of his works produce, or as far as they should +produce, the means. But "am I entitled," he asks uneasily, "have I a +_right_ to do this I Can I do it without moral degradation? And lastly, +can it be done without loss of character in the eyes of my +acquaintances and of my friends' acquaintances?" + +I cannot take upon myself to answer these painful questions. The reply +to be given to them must depend upon the judgment which each individual +student of this remarkable but unhappy career may pass upon it as a +whole; and, while it would be too much to expect that that judgment +should be entirely favourable, one may at least believe that a fair +allowance for those inveterate weaknesses of physical constitution +which so largely aggravated, if they did not wholly generate, the fatal +infirmities of Coleridge's moral nature, must materially mitigate the +harshness of its terms. + +The story of Coleridge's closing years is soon told. It is mainly a +record of days spent in meditation and discourse, in which character it +will be treated of more fully in a subsequent chapter. His literary +productions during the last fourteen years of his life were few in +number, and but one of them of any great importance. In 1821 he had +offered himself as an occasional contributor to _Blackwood's Magazine_, +but a series of papers promised by him to that periodical were +uncompleted, and his only two contributions (in October 1821 and +January 1822) are of no particular note. In May 1825 he read a paper on +the _Prometheus_ of 'schylus before the Royal Society of Literature; +but "the series of disquisitions respecting the Egyptian in connection +with the sacerdotal theology and in contrast with the mysteries of +ancient Greece," to which this essay had been announced as preparatory, +never made their appearance. In the same year, however, he published +one of the best known of his prose works, his _Aids to Reflection_. + +Of the success of this latest of Coleridge's more important +contributions to literature there can be no doubt. New editions of it +seem to have been demanded at regular intervals for some twenty years +after its first production, and it appears to have had during the same +period a relatively equal reissue in the United States. The Rev. Dr. +James Marsh, an American divine of some ability and reputation, +composed a preliminary essay (now prefixed to the fifth English +edition), in which he elaborately set forth the peculiar merits of the +work, and undertook to initiate the reader in the fittest and most +profitable method of making use of it. In these remarks the reverend +essayist insists more strongly on the spiritually edifying quality of +the _Aids_ than on their literary merits, and, for my own part, I must +certainly consider him right in doing so. As a religious manual it is +easy to understand how this volume of Coleridge's should have obtained +many and earnest readers. What religious manual, which shows traces of +spiritual insight, or even merely of pious yearnings after higher and +holier than earthly things, has ever failed to win such readers among +the weary and heavy-laden of the world? And that Coleridge, a writer of +the most penetrating glance into divine mysteries, and writing always +from a soul all tremulous, as it were, with religious sensibility, +should have obtained such readers in abundance is not surprising. But +to a critic and literary biographer I cannot think that his success in +this respect has much to say. For my own part, at any rate, I find +considerable difficulty in tracing it to any distinctively literary +origin. There seems to me to be less charm of thought, less beauty of +style, less even of Coleridge's seldom-failing force of effective +statement, in the _Aids to Reflection_ than in almost any of his +writings. Even the volume of some dozen short chapters on the +Constitution of the Church and State, published in 1830, as an "aid +towards a right judgment in the late Catholic Kelief Bill," appears to +me to yield a more characteristic flavour of the author's style, and to +exhibit far more of his distinction of literary workmanship than the +earlier and more celebrated work. + +Among the acquaintances made by Coleridge after his retirement to Mr. +Gillman's was one destined to be of some importance to the history of +his philosophical work. It was that of a gentleman whose name has +already been mentioned in this chapter, Mr. Joseph Henry Green, +afterwards a distinguished surgeon and Fellow of the Royal Society, who +in his early years had developed a strong taste for metaphysical +speculation, going even so far as to devote one of his hard-earned +periods of professional holiday to a visit to Germany for the sake of +studying philosophy in that home of abstract thought. To him Coleridge +was introduced by his old Roman acquaintance, Ludwig Tieck, on one of +the latter's visits to England, and he became, as the extract above +quoted from Coleridge's correspondence shows, his enthusiastic disciple +and indefatigable fellow-worker. In the pursuit of their common studies +and in those weekly reunions of admiring friends which Coleridge, while +his health permitted it, was in the habit of holding, we may believe +that a considerable portion of these closing years of his life was +passed under happier conditions than he had been long accustomed to. It +is pleasant to read of him among his birds and flowers, and surrounded +by the ever-watchful tendance of the affectionate Gillmans, tranquil in +mind at any rate, if not at ease from his bodily ailments, and +enjoying, as far as enjoyment was possible to him, the peaceful close +of a stormy and unsettled day. For the years 1825-30, moreover, his +pecuniary circumstances were improved to the extent of L105 per annum, +obtained for him at the instance of the Royal Society of Literature, +and held by him till the death of George IV. + +Two incidents of his later years are, however, worthy of more special +mention--a tour up the Rhine, which he took in 1828, in company with +Wordsworth and his daughter; and, some years earlier, a meeting with +John Keats. "A loose, slack, not well dressed youth," it is recorded in +the _Table Talk,_ published after his death by his nephew, "met Mr. +----" (it was Mr. Green, of whom more hereafter) "and myself in a lane +near Highgate. Green knew him and spoke. It was Keats. He was +introduced to me, and stayed a minute or so. After he had left us a +little way, he came back and said, 'Let me carry away the memory, +Coleridge, of having pressed your hand.' 'There is death in that hand,' +I said to Green when Keats was gone; yet this was, I believe, before +the consumption showed itself distinctly." + +His own health, however, had been steadily declining in these latter +years, and the German tour with the Wordsworths must, I should imagine, +have been the last expedition involving any considerable exercise of +the physical powers which he was able to take. Within a year or so +afterwards his condition seems to have grown sensibly worse. In +November 1831 he writes that for eighteen months past his life had been +"one chain of severe sicknesses, brief and imperfect convalescences, +and capricious relapses." Henceforth he was almost entirely confined to +the sick-room. His faculties, however, still remained clear and +unclouded. The entries in the _Table Talk_ do not materially dimmish in +frequency. Their tone of colloquy undergoes no perceptible variation; +they continue to be as stimulating and delightful reading as ever. Not +till 11th July 1834 do we find any change; but here at last we meet the +shadow, deemed longer than it was in reality, of the approaching end. +"I am dying," said Coleridge, "but without expectation of a speedy +release. Is it not strange that, very recently, bygone images and +scenes of early life have stolen into my mind like breezes blown from +the spice-islands of Youth and Hope--those twin realities of the +phantom world! I do not add Love, for what is Love but Youth and Hope +embracing, and, so seen, as _one_.... Hooker wished to live to finish +his _Ecclesiastical Polity_--so I own I wish life and strength had been +spared to me to complete my _Philosophy._ For, as God hears me, the +originating, continuing, and sustaining wish and design in my heart +were to exalt the glory of His name; and, which is the same thing in +other words, to promote the improvement of mankind. But _visum aliter +Deo,_ and His will be done." + +The end was nearer than he thought. It was on the 11th of July, as has +been said, that he uttered these last words of gentle and pious +resignation. On that day fortnight he died. Midway, however, in this +intervening period, he knew that the "speedy release" which he had not +ventured to expect was close at hand. The death, when it came, was in +some sort emblematic of the life. Sufferings severe and constant, till +within thirty-six hours of the end: at the last peace. On the 25th of +July 1834 this sorely-tried, long-labouring, fate-marred and +self-marred life passed tranquilly away. The pitiful words of Kent over +his dead master rise irrepressibly to the lips-- + + "O let him pass: he hates him + Who would upon the rack of this tough world + Stretch him out longer." + +There might have been something to be said, though not by Kent, of the +weaknesses of Lear himself; but at such a moment compassion both for +the king and for the poet may well impose silence upon censure. + + +FOOTNOTES + +1. How imperfect, a comparison between estimated and actual bulk will +show. No. I. was, according to Coleridge's reckoning, to form three +volumes of 500 pages each. In the Literary Remains it fills less than +half of four volumes of little more than 400 pages each. + + + + +CHAPTER XI + +Coleridge's metaphysics and theology--The _Spiritual Philosophy_ of Mr. +Green. + + +In spite of all the struggles, the resolutions, and the entreaties +which displayed themselves so distressingly in the letter to Mr. +Allsop, quoted in the last chapter, it is doubtful whether Coleridge's +"great work" made much additional progress during the last dozen years +of his life. The weekly meeting with Mr. Green seems, according to the +latter's biographer, to have been resumed. Mr. Simon tells us that he +continued year after year to sit at the feet of his Gamaliel, getting +more and more insight into his opinions, until, in 1834, two events +occurred which determined the remaining course of Mr. Green's life. One +of these events, it is needless to say, was Coleridge's death; the +other was the death of his disciple's father, with the result of +leaving Mr. Green possessed of such ample means as to render him +independent of his profession. The language of Coleridge's will, +together, no doubt, with verbal communications which had passed, +imposed on Mr. Green what he accepted as an obligation to devote so far +as necessary the whole remaining strength and earnestness of his life +to the one task of systematising, developing, and establishing the +doctrines of the Coleridgian philosophy. Accordingly, in 1836, two +years after his master's death, he retired from medical practice, and +thenceforward, until his own death nearly thirty years afterwards, he +applied himself unceasingly to what was in a twofold sense a labour of +love. + +We are not, it seems from his biographer's account, to suppose that Mr. +Green's task was in any material degree lightened for him by his +previous collaboration with Coleridge. The latter had, as we have seen, +declared in his letter to Allsop that "more than a volume" of the great +work had been dictated by him to Mr. Green, so as to exist in a +condition fit for the press: but this, according to Mr. Simon, was not +the case; and the probability is therefore that "more than a volume" +meant written material equal in amount to more than a volume--of +course, an entirely different thing. Mr. Simon, at any rate, assures us +that no available written material existed for setting comprehensively +before the public, in Coleridge's own language, and in an argued form, +the philosophical system with which he wished his name to be +identified. Instead of it there were fragments--for the most part +mutually inadaptable fragments, and beginnings, and studies of special +subjects, and numberless notes on the margins and fly-leaves of books. + +With this equipment, such as it was, Mr. Green set to work to methodise +the Coleridgian doctrines, and to construct from them nothing less than +such a system of philosophy as should "virtually include the law and +explanation of all being, conscious and unconscious, and of all +correlativity and duty, and be applicable directly or by deduction to +whatsoever the human mind can contemplate--sensuous or +supersensuous--of experience, purpose, or imagination." Born under +post-diluvian conditions, Mr. Green was of course unable to accomplish +his self-proposed enterprise, but he must be allowed to have attacked +his task with remarkable energy. "Theology, ethics, politics and +political history, ethnology, language, aesthetics, psychology, +physics, and the allied sciences, biology, logic, mathematics, +pathology, all these subjects," declares his biographer, "were +thoughtfully studied by him, in at least their basial principles and +metaphysics, and most were elaborately written of, as though for the +divisions of some vast cyclop'dic work." At an early period of his +labours he thought it convenient to increase his knowledge of Greek; he +began to study Hebrew when more than sixty years old, and still later +in life he took up Sanscrit. It was not until he was approaching his +seventieth year and found his health beginning to fail him that Mr. +Green seems to have felt that his design, in its more ambitious scope, +must be abandoned, and that, in the impossibility of applying the +Coleridgian system of philosophy to all human knowledge, it was his +imperative duty under his literary trust to work out that particular +application of it which its author had most at heart. Already, in an +unpublished work which he had made it the first care of his trusteeship +to compose, he had, though but roughly and imperfectly, as he +considered, exhibited the relation of his master's doctrines to +revealed religion, and it had now become time to supersede this +unpublished compendium, the _Religio Laici_, as he had styled it, by a +fuller elaboration of the great Coleridgian position, that +"Christianity, rightly understood, is identical with the highest +philosophy, and that, apart from all question of historical evidence, +the essential doctrines of Christianity are necessary and eternal +truths of reason--truths which man, by the vouchsafed light of Nature +and without aid from documents or tradition, may always and anywhere +discover for himself." To this work accordingly Mr. Green devoted the +few remaining years of his life, and, dying in 1863 at the age of +seventy-two, left behind him in MS. the work entitled _Spiritual +Philosophy: founded on the teaching of the late Samuel Taylor +Coleridge,_ which was published two years later, together with the +memoir of the author, from which I have quoted, by Mr. John Simon. It +consists of two volumes, the first of which is devoted to the +exposition of the general principles of Coleridge's philosophy, while +the second is entirely theological, and aims at indicating on +principles for which the first volume has contended, the essential +doctrines of Christianity. + +The earlier chapters of this volume Mr. Green devotes to an exposition +(if indeed the word can be applied to what is really a catalogue of the +results of a transcendental intuition) of the essential difference +between the reason and the understanding--a distinction which Coleridge +has himself elsewhere described as preeminently the _gradus ad +philosophiam,_ and might well have called its _pons asinorum._ In the +second part of his first volume Mr. Green applies himself to the +establishment of a position which, fundamental as it must be accounted +in all philosophical speculations of this school, is absolutely vital +to the theology which Coleridge sought to erect upon a metaphysical +basis. This position is that the human will is to be regarded as the +one ultimate fact of self-consciousness. So long as man confines +himself to the contemplation of his percipient and reflective self +alone--so long as he attends only to those modes of consciousness which +are produced in him by the impressions of the senses and the operations +of thought, he can never hope to escape from the famous _reductio ad +inscibile_ of Hume. He can never affirm anything more than the +existence of those modes of consciousness, or assert, at least as a +direct deliverance of intuition, that his conscious self _is_ anything +apart from the perceptions and concepts to which he is attending. But +when he turns from his perceiving and thinking to his willing self he +becomes for the first time aware of something deeper than the mere +objective presentations of consciousness; he obtains a direct intuition +of an originant, causative, and independent self-existence. He will +have attained in short to the knowledge of a noumenon, and of the only +knowable noumenon. The barrier, elsewhere insuperable between the +subject and object, is broken down; that which _knows_ becomes +identified with that which _is;_ and in the consciousness of will the +consciousness also of a self, as something independent of and superior +to its own modifications, is not so much affirmed as acquired. The +essence, in short, of the Coleridgian ontology consists in the +alteration of a single though a very important word in the well-known +Cartesian formula. _Cogito ergo sum_ had been shown by Hume to involve +an illicit process of reasoning. Descartes, according to the Scottish +sceptic, had no right to have said more than _Cogito ergo cogitationes +sunt._ But substitute willing for thinking, convert the formula into +_Volo ergo sum_, and it becomes irrefragable. + +So far as I can perceive, it would have been sufficient for Mr. Green's +subsequent argument to have thus established the position of the will +as the ultimate fact of consciousness, but he goes on to assert that he +has thus secured the immovable ground of a philosophy of Realism. For +since man, "in affirming his Personality by the verb substantive I am, +asserts, nay, acquires, the knowledge of his own Substance as a +Spiritual being, and thereby knows what substance truly and properly +is--so he contemplates the outward, persons or things, as subjects +partaking of reality by virtue of the same substance of which he is +conscious in his own person." So far, however, from this being a +philosophy of Realism, it is in effect, if not indeed in actual terms, +a philosophy of Idealism. I, at least, am unable to see how any +Idealist, from Berkeley downwards, could ask for a better definition of +his theory of the external world than that it "partakes of reality by +virtue of the same substance of which he is conscious in his own +person." + +But it is, of course, with the second volume of Mr. Green's work that +one is chiefly concerned. Had Coleridge been a mere Transcendentalist +for Transcendentalism's sake, had there been no connection between his +philosophy of Being and his religious creed, it might be a question +whether even the highly condensed and necessarily imperfect sketch +which has here been given of it would not have been superfluous and out +of place. But Coleridge was a Theosophist first, and a philosopher +afterwards; it was mainly as an organon of religion that he valued his +philosophy, and it was to the development and perfection of it, _as +such organon,_ that he may be said to have devoted, so far as it could +be redeemed from its enthralment to lower necessities, the whole of the +latter half of his career. No account of his life, therefore, could be +complete without at least some brief glance at the details of this +notable attempt to lead the world to true religion by the road of the +Transcendental philosophy. It is difficult, of course, for those who +have been trained in a wholly differet school of thought to do justice +to processes of reasoning carried on, as they cannot but hold, in terms +of the inconceivable; it is still more difficult to be sure that you +have done justice to it after all has been said; and I think that no +candid student of the Coleridgian philosophico-theology (not being a +professed disciple of it, and therefore bound, at any rate, to feign +familiarity with incomprehensibilities) will deny that he is often +compelled, to formulate its positions and recite its processes in +somewhat of the same modest and confiding spirit as animates those +youthful geometricians who leacn their Euclid by heart. With this +proviso I will, as briefly as may be, trace the course of the dialectic +by which Mr. Green seeks to make the Coleridgian metaphysics +demonstrative of the truth of Christianity. + +Having shown that the Will is the true and the only tenable base of +Philosophic Realism, the writer next proceeds to explain the growth of +the Soul, from its rudimental strivings in its fallen condition to the +development of its spiritual capabilities and to trace its ascent to +the conception of the Idea of God. The argument--if we may apply so +definite a name to a process which is continually forced to appeal to +something that may perhaps be higher, but is certainly _other_ than the +ratiocinative faculty--is founded partly on moral and partly on +intellectual considerations. By an analysis of the moral phenomena +associated with the action of the human will, and, in particular, of +the conflict which arises between "the tendency of all Will to make +itself absolute," and the consciousness that, under the conditions of +man's fallen state, nothing but misery could result both to the +individual and the race from the fulfilment of this tendency,--Mr. +Green shows how the Soul, or the Reason, or the Speculative Intellect +(for he seems to use all three expressions indiscriminately) is morally +prepared for the reception of the truth which his Understanding alone +could never have compassed,--the Idea of God. This is in effect neither +more nor less than a restatement of that time-honoured argument for the +existence of some Being of perfect holiness which has always weighed so +much with men of high spirituality as to blind them to the fact of its +actually enhancing the intellectual difficulties of the situation. Man +possesses a Will which longs to fulfil itself; but it is coupled with a +nature which constantly impels him to those gratifications of will +which tend not to self-preservation and progress, but to their +contraries. Surely, then, on the strength of the mere law of life, +which prevails everywhere, here must be some higher archetypal Will, to +which human wills, or rather certain selected examples of them, may +more and more conform themselves, and in which the union of unlimited +efficiency in operation with unqualified purity of aim has been once +for all effected. Or to put it yet another way: The life of the +virtuous man is a life auxiliary to the preservation and progress of +the race; but his will is under restraint. The will of the vicious man +energises freely enough, but his life is hostile to the preservation +and progress of the race. Now the natural and essential _nisus_ of all +Will is towards absolute freedom. But nothing in life has a natural and +essential _nisus_ towards that which tends to its deterioration and +extinction. Therefore, there must be some ultimate means of reconciling +absolute freedom of the Will with perfectly salutary conditions of its +exercise. And since Mr. Green, like his master and all other +Platonists, is incapable of stopping here, and contenting himself with +assuming the existence of a "stream of tendency" which will gradually +bring the human will into the required conditions, he here makes the +inevitable Platonic jump, and proceeds to conclude that there must be a +self-existent ideal Will in which absolute freedom and power concur +with perfect purity and holiness. + +So much for the moral part of Mr. Green's proof, which so far fails, it +will be observed, to carry us much beyond the Pantheistic position. It +has, that is to say, to be proved that the "power not ourselves," which +has been called Will, originates in some source to which we should be +rationally justified in giving the name of "God;" and, singular as such +a thing may seem, it is impossible at any rate for the logic of the +understanding to regard Mr. Green's argument on this point as otherwise +than hopelessly circular. The half-dozen pages or so which he devotes +to the refutation of the Pantheistic view reduce themselves to the +following simple _petitio principii:_ the power is first assumed to be +a Will; it is next affirmed with perfect truth that the very notion of +Will would escape us except under the condition of Personality; and +from this the existence of a personal God as the source of the power in +question deduced. And the same vice underlies the further argument by +which Mr. Green meets the familiar objection to the personality of the +Absolute as involving contradictory conceptions. An infinite Person, he +argues, is no contradiction in terms, unless "finition or limitation" +be regarded as identical with "negation" (which, when applied to a +hypothetical Infinite, one would surely think it is); and an Absolute +Will is not the less absolute from being self-determined _ab intra._ +For how, he asks, can any Will which is causative of reality be +conceived as a Will except by conceiving it as _se finiens,_ +predetermining itself to the specific processes required by the act of +causation? How, indeed? But the answer of a Pantheist would of course +be that the very impossibility of conceiving of Will except as _se +finiens_ is his very ground for rejecting the notion of a volitional +(in the sense of a personal) origin of the cosmos. + +However, it is beyond my purposes to enter into any detailed criticism +of Mr. Green's position, more especially as I have not yet reached the +central and capital point of his spiritual philosophy--the construction +of the Christian theology on the basis of the Coleridgian metaphysics. +Having deduced the Idea of God from man's consciousness of an +individual Will perpetually affirming itself, Mr. Green proceeds to +evolve the Idea of the Trinity, by (as he considers it) an equally +necessary process from two of the invariable accompaniments of the +above-mentioned introspective act. "For as in our consciousness," he +truly says, "we are under the necessity of distinguishing the relation +of 'myself,' now as the _subject_ thinking and now as the _object_ +contemplated in the manifold of thought, so we might express the +relations in the Divine instance as _Deus Subjectivus_ and _Deus +Objectimis,_--that is, the Absolute Subjectivity or Supreme Will, +uttering itself as and contemplating itself in the Absolute Objectivity +or plenitude of Being eternally and causatively realised in his +Personality." Whence it follows (so runs or seems to run the argument) +that the Idea of God the Father as necessarily involves the Idea of God +the Son as the "I" who, as the thinking subject, contemplate myself, +implies the contemplated "Me" as the object thought of. Again, the man +who reflects on the fact of his consciousness, "which discloses to him +the unavoidable opposition of subject and object in the self of which +he is conscious, cannot fail to see that the conscious mind requires +not only the distinction in order to the act of reflection in itself, +but the continual sense of the relative nature of the distinction and +of the essential oneness of the mind itself." Whence it follows (so +runs or seems to run the argument) that the Idea of the first two +Persons of the Trinity as necessarily involves the Idea of the Third +Person, as the contemplation of the "Me" by the "I" implies the +perpetual consciousness that the contemplator and the contemplated--the +"I" and the "Me"--are one. In this manner is the Idea of the Trinity +shown to be involved in the Idea of God, and to arise out of it by an +implication as necessary as that which connects together the three +phases of consciousness attendant upon every self-contemplative act of +the individual mind. [1] + +It may readily be imagined that after the Speculative Reason has been +made to perform such feats as these the remainder of the work proposed +to it could present no serious difficulty. And in the half-dozen +chapters which follow it is made to evolve in succession the doctrine +of the Incarnation, the Advent, and the Atonement of Christ, and to +explain the mysteries of the fall of man and of original sin. +Considered in the aspect in which Coleridge himself would have +preferred to regard his pupil's work, namely as a systematic attempt to +lead the minds of men to Christianity by an intellectual route, no more +hopeless enterprise perhaps could have been conceived than that +embodied in these volumes. It is like offering a traveller a guide-book +written in hieroglyphics. Upon the most liberal computation it is +probable that not one-fourth part of educated mankind are capable of so +much as comprehending the philosophic doctrine upon which Coleridge +seeks to base Christianity, and it is doubtful whether any but a still +smaller fraction of these would admit that the foundation was capable +of supporting the superstructure. That the writings of the pupil, like +the teachings of the master whom he interprets, may serve the cause of +religion in another than an intellectual way is possible enough. Not a +few of the functions assigned to the Speculative Reason will strike +many of us as moral and spiritual rather than intellectual in their +character, and the appeal to them is in fact an appeal to man to +chasten the lower passions of his nature, and to discipline his unruly +will. Exhortations of that kind are religious all the world of +philosophy over, and will succeed in proportion to the moral fervour +and oratorical power which distinguish them. But if the benefits of +Coleridge's theological teachings are to be reduced to this, it would +of course have been much better to have dissociated them altogether +from the exceedingly abstruse metaphysic to which they have been wedded. + + +FOOTNOTES + +1. Were it not hazardous to treat processes of the Speculative Reason +as we deal with the vulgar dialectic of the Understanding, one would be +disposed to reply that if the above argument proves the existence of +three persons in the Godhead, it must equally prove the existence of +three persons in every man who reflects upon his conscious self. That +the Divine Mind, when engaged in the act of self-contemplation, must be +conceived under three relations is doubtless as true as that the human +mind, when so engaged, must be so conceived; but that these three +relations are so many objective realities is what Mr. Green asserts +indeed a few pages farther on, but what he nowhere attempts to prove. + + + + +CHAPTER XII. + +Coleridge's position in his later years--His discourse--His influence +on contemporary thought--Final review of his intellectual work. + + +The critic who would endeavour to appreciate the position which +Coleridge fills in the history of literature and thought for the first +half of the nineteenth century must, if he possesses ordinary candour +and courage, begin, I think, with a confession. He must confess an +inability to comprehend the precise manner in which that position was +attained, and the precise grounds on which it was recognised. For vast +as were Coleridge's powers of thought and expression, and splendid, if +incomplete, as is the record which they have left behind them in his +works, they were never directed to purposes of instruction or +persuasion in anything like that systematic and concentrated manner +which is necessary to him who would found a school. Coleridge's +writings on philosophical and theological subjects were essentially +discursive, fragmentary, incomplete. Even when he professes an +intention of exhausting his subject and affects a logical arrangement, +it is not long before he forgets the design and departs from the order. +His disquisitions are in no sense connected treatises on the subjects +to which they relate. Brilliant _apercus,_ gnomic sayings, flights of +fervid eloquence, infinitely suggestive reflections--of these there is +enough and to spare; but these, though an ample equipment for the +critic, are not sufficient for the constructive philosopher. Nothing, +it must be frankly said, in Coleridge's philosophical and theological +writings--nothing, that is to say, which appeals in them to the mere +intelligence--suffices to explain, at least to the appreciation of +posterity, the fact that he was surrounded during these closing years +of his life by an eager crowd of real or supposed disciples, including +two, at any rate, of the most remarkable personalities of the time. And +if nothing in Coleridge's writings serves to account for it, so neither +does anything traceable or tangible in the mere matter of his +conversations. This last point, however, is one which must be for the +present reserved. I wish for the moment to confine myself to the fact +of Coleridge's position during his later life at Highgate. To this we +have, as we all know, an extremely eminent witness, and one from whose +evidence most people, one may suppose, are by this time able to make +their own deductions in all matters relating to the persons with whom +he was brought into contact. Carlyle on Charles Lamb, few as the sour +sentences are, must always warn us to be careful how we follow Carlyle +"on" anybody whomsoever. But there is no evidence of any ill feeling on +Carlyle's part towards Coleridge--nothing but a humorous, +kindly-contemptuous compassion for his weaknesses and eccentricities; +and the famous description in the _Life of Sterling_ may be taken +therefore as a fairly accurate account of the man and the circumstances +to which it refers:-- + +"Coleridge sat on the brow of Highgate Hill in those years, looking +down on London and its smoke tumult like a sage escaped from the +inanity of life's battle, attracting towards him the thoughts of +innumerable brave souls still engaged there. His express contributions +to poetry, philosophy, or any specific province of human literature or +enlightenment had been small and sadly intermittent; but he had, +especially among young inquiring men, a higher than literary, a kind of +prophetic or magician character. He was thought to hold--he alone in +England--the key of German and other Transcendentalisms; knew the +sublime secret of believing by the 'reason' what the 'understanding' +had been obliged to fling out as incredible; and could still, after +Hume and Voltaire had done their best and worst with him, profess +himself an orthodox Christian, and say and print to the Church of +England, with its singular old rubrics and surplices at Allhallowtide, +_Esto perpetua._ A sublime man; who alone in those dark days had saved +his crown of spiritual manhood, escaping from the black materialisms +and revolutionary deluges with 'God, Freedom, Immortality,' still his; +a king of men. The practical intellects of the world did not much heed +him, or carelessly reckoned him a metaphysical dreamer; but to the +rising spirits of the young generation he had this dusky sublime +character, and sat there as a kind of Magus, girt in mystery and +enigma; his Dodona oak-grove (Mr. Gillman's house at Highgate) +whispering strange things, uncertain whether oracles or jargon." + +The above quotation would suffice for my immediate purpose, but it is +impossible to deny oneself or one's readers the pleasure of a refreshed +recollection of the noble landscape-scene and the masterly portrait +that follow: + +"The Gillmans did not encourage much company or excitation of any sort +round their sage; nevertheless, access to him, if a youth did +reverently wish it, was not difficult. He would stroll about the +pleasant garden with you, sit in the pleasant rooms of the +place--perhaps take you to his own peculiar room, high up, with a +rearward view, which was the chief view of all. A really charming +outlook in fine weather. Close at hand wide sweeps of flowing leafy +gardens, their few houses mostly hidden, the very chimney-pots veiled +under blossoming umbrage, flowed gloriously down hill; gloriously +issuing in wide-tufted undulating plain country, rich in all charms of +field and town. Waving blooming country of the brightest green, dotted +all over with handsome villas, handsome groves crossed by roads and +human traffic, here inaudible, or heard only as a musical hum; and +behind all swam, under olive-tinted haze, the illimitable limitary +ocean of London, with its domes and steeples definite in the sun, big +Paul's and the many memories attached to it hanging high over all. +Nowhere of its kind could you see a grander prospect on a bright summer +day, with the set of the air going southward--southward, and so +draping with the city smoke not _you_ but the city." + +Then comes the invariable final touch, the one dash of black--or green, +shall we call it--without which the master left no picture that had a +human figure in the foreground:-- + +"Here for hours would Coleridge talk concerning all conceivable or +inconceivable things; and liked nothing better than to have an +intelligent, or, failing that, even a silent and patient human +listener. He distinguished himself to all that ever heard him as at +least the most surprising talker extant in this world,--and to some +small minority, by no means to all, as the most excellent." + +Then follows the well-known, wonderfully vivid, cynically pathetic, +sketch of the man:-- + +"The good man--he was now getting old, towards sixty perhaps, and gave +you the idea of a life that had been full of sufferings; a life +heavy-laden, half-vanquished, still swimming painfully in seas of +manifold physical and other bewilderment. Brow and head were round and +of massive weight, but the face was flabby and irresolute. The deep +eyes, of a light hazel, were as full of sorrow as of inspiration; +confused pain looked mildly from them, as in a kind of mild +astonishment. The whole figure and air, good and amiable otherwise, +might be called flabby and irresolute; expressive of weakness under +possibility of strength. He hung loosely on his limbs, with knees bent, +and stooping attitude; in walking he rather shuffled than decisively +stept; and a lady once remarked he never could fix which side of the +gardenwalk would suit him best, but continually shifted, corkscrew +fashion, and kept trying both; a heavy-laden, high-aspiring, and surely +much-suffering man. His voice, naturally soft and good, had contracted +itself into a plaintive snuffle and singsong; he spoke as if +preaching--you could have said preaching earnestly and almost +hopelessly the weightiest things. I still recollect his 'object' and +'subject,' terms of continual recurrence in the Kantean province; and +how he sang and snuffled them into 'om-m-ject' and 'sum-m-mject,' with +a kind of solemn shake or quaver as he rolled along. [1] No talk in his +century or in any other could be more surprising." + +Such, as he appeared to this half-contemptuous, half-compassionate, but +ever acute observer, was Coleridge at this the zenith of his influence +over the nascent thought of his day. Such to Carlyle seemed the +_manner_ of the deliverance of the oracles; in his view of their +matter, as we all know from an equally well-remembered passage, his +tolerance disappears, and his account here, with all its racy humour, +is almost wholly impatient. Talk, "suffering no interruption, however +reverent," "hastily putting aside all foreign additions, annotation, or +most ingenuous desires for elucidation, as well-meant superfluities +which would never do;" talk "not flowing anywhither, like a river, but +spreading everywhither in inextricable currents and regurgitations like +a lake or sea;" a "confused unintelligible flood of utterance, +threatening to submerge all known landmarks of thought and drown the +world with you"--this, it must be admitted, is not an easily +recognisable description of the Word of Life. Nor, certainly, does +Carlyle's own personal experience of its preaching and effects--he +having heard the preacher talk "with eager musical energy two stricken +hours, his face radiant and moist, and communicate no meaning +whatsoever to any individual of his hearers,"--certain of whom, the +narrator for one, "still kept eagerly listening in hope, while the most +had long before given up and formed (if the room was large enough) +humming groups of their own." "He began anywhere," continues this +irresistibly comic sketch; "you put some question to him, made some +suggestive observation; instead of answering this, or decidedly setting +out towards an answer of it, he would accumulate formidable apparatus, +logical swim-bladders, transcendental life-preservers, and other +precautionary and vehiculatory gear for setting out; perhaps did at +last get under way--but was swiftly solicited, turned aside by the +flame of some radiant new game on this hand or on that into new +courses, and ever into new; and before long into all the universe, +where it was uncertain what game you would catch, or whether any." He +had, indeed, according to the dissatisfied listener, "not the least +talent for explaining this or anything to them; and you swam and +fluttered on the mistiest, wide, unintelligible deluge of things for +most part in a rather profitless uncomfortable manner." And the few +vivid phrases of eulogy which follow seem only to deepen by contrast +the prevailing hue of the picture. The "glorious islets" which were +sometimes seen to "rise out of the haze," the "balmy sunny islets of +the blest and the intelligible, at whose emergence the secondary +humming group would all cease humming and hang breathless upon the +eloquent words, till once your islet got wrapped in the mist again, and +they would recommence humming"--these, it seems to be suggested, but +rarely revealed themselves; but "eloquent, artistically expressive +words you always had; piercing radiances of a most subtle insight came +at intervals; tones of noble pious sympathy recognisable as pious +though strangely coloured, were never wanting long; but, in general, +you could not call this aimless cloud-capt, cloud-bound, lawlessly +meandering discourse, by the name of excellent talk, but only of +surprising.... The moaning sing-song of that theosophico-metaphysical +monotony left in you at last a very dreary feeling." + +It is tolerably clear, I think, that some considerable discount must be +allowed upon the sum of disparagement in this famous criticism. We have +learnt, indeed, to be more on the look-out for the disturbing +influences of temperament in the judgments of this atrabilious observer +than was the case when the _Life of Sterling_ was written, and it is +difficult to doubt that the unfavourable strokes in the above-quoted +description have been unduly multiplied and deepened, partly in the +mere waywardness of a sarcastic humour, and partly perhaps from a less +excusable cause. It is always dangerous to accept one remarkable +talker's view of the characteristics of another; and if this is true of +men who merely compete with each other in the ordinary give-and-take of +the dinner-table epigrammatist and _raconteur,_ the caution is doubly +necessary in the case of two rival prophets--two competing oracles. +There are those among us who hold that the conversation of the Chelsea +sage, in his later years, resembled his own description of the Highgate +philosopher's, in this, at any rate, that it was mightily intolerant of +interruption; and one is apt to suspect that at no time of his life did +Carlyle "understand duologue" much better than Coleridge. It is +probable enough, therefore, that the young lay-preacher did not quite +relish being silenced by the elder, and that his account of the sermons +was coloured by the recollection that his own remained undelivered. +There is an abundance of evidence that the "glorious islets" emerged +far more often from the transcendental haze than Carlyle would have us +suppose. Hazlitt, a bitter assailant of Coleridge's, and whose caustic +remark that "his talk was excellent if you let him start from no +premisses and come to no conclusion" is cited with approval by Carlyle, +has elsewhere spoken of Coleridge as the only person from whom he ever +learned anything, has said of him that though he talked on for ever you +wished him to talk on for ever, that "his thoughts did not seem to come +with labour and effort, but as if borne on the gusts of genius, and as +if the wings of his imagination lifted him from his feet." And besides +this testimony to the eloquence which Carlyle only but inadequately +recognises, one should set for what it is worth De Quincey's evidence +to that consequence of thought which Carlyle denies altogether. To De +Quincey the complaint that Coleridge wandered in his talk appeared +unjust. According to him the great discourser only "seemed to wander," +and he seemed to wander the most "when in fact his resistance to the +wandering instinct was greatest, viz. when the compass and huge circuit +by which his illustrations moved travelled farthest into remote regions +before they began to revolve. Long before this coming round commenced +most people had lost him, and, naturally enough, supposed that he had +lost himself. They continued to admire the separate beauty of the +thoughts, but did not see their relations to the dominant theme." De +Quincey however, declares positively in the faith of his "long and +intimate knowledge of Coleridge's mind, that logic the most severe was +as inalienable from his modes of thinking as grammar from his language." + +Nor should we omit the testimony of another, a more partial, perhaps, +but even better informed judge. The _Table Talk_, edited by Mr. Nelson +Coleridge, shows how pregnant, how pithy, how full of subtle +observation, and often also of playful humour, could be the talk of the +great discourser in its lighter and more colloquial forms. The book +indeed is, to the thinking of one, at any rate, of its frequent +readers, among the most delightful in the world. But thus speaks its +editor of his uncle's conversation in his more serious moods:-- + +"To pass an entire day with Coleridge was a marvellous change indeed +[from the talk of daily life]. It was a Sabbath past expression, deep +and tranquil and serene. You came to a man who had travelled in many +countries and in critical times; who had seen and felt the world in +most of its ranks and in many of its vicissitudes and weaknesses; one +to whom all literature and art were absolutely subject; and to whom, +with a reasonable allowance as to technical details, all science was, +in a most extraordinary degree, familiar. Throughout a long-drawn +summer's day would this man talk to you in low, equable, but clear and +musical tones concerning things Iranian and divine; marshalling all +history, harmonising all experiment, probing the depths of your +consciousness, and revealing visions of glory and terror to the +imagination; but pouring withal such floods of light upon the mind that +you might for a season, like Paul, become blind in the very act of +conversion. And this he would do without so much as one allusion to +himself, without a word of reflection upon others, save when any given +art fell naturally in the way of his discourse; without one anecdote +that was not proof and illustration of a previous position; +--gratifying no passion, indulging no caprice, but, with a calm mastery +over your soul, leading you onward and onward for ever through a +thousand windings, yet with no pause, to some magnificent point in +which, as in a focus, all the parti-coloured rays of his discourse +should converge in light. In all these he was, in truth, your teacher +and guide; but in a little while you might forget that he was other +than a fellow-student and the companion of your way--so playful was his +manner, so simple his language, so affectionate the glance of his eye!" + +Impressive, however, as these displays may have been, it is impossible +to suppose that their direct didactic value as discourses was at all +considerable. Such as it was, moreover, it was confined in all +probability to an extremely select circle of followers. A few mystics +of the type of Maurice, a few eager seekers after truth like Sterling, +may have gathered, or fancied they gathered, distinct dogmatic +instruction from the Highgate oracles; and no doubt, to the extent of +his influence over the former of these disciples, we may justly credit +Coleridge's discourses with having exercised a real if only a +transitory directive effect upon nineteenth-century thought. But the +terms in which his influence is sometimes spoken of appear, as far as +one can judge of the matter at this distance of time, to be greatly +exaggerated. To speak of it in the same way as we are--or +were--accustomed to speak of the influence of Carlyle, is to subject it +to an altogether inappropriate comparison. It is not merely that +Coleridge founded no recognisable school, for neither did Carlyle. It +is that the former can show absolutely nothing at all resembling that +sort of power which enabled the latter to lay hold upon all the +youthful minds of his time--minds of the most disparate orders and +associated with the utmost diversities of temperament, and detain them +in a captivity which, brief as it may have been in some cases, has in +no case failed to leave its marks behind it. Over a few spirits already +prepared to receive them Coleridge's teachings no doubt exerted power, +but he led no soul captive against its will. There are few middle-aged +men of active intelligence at the present day who can avoid a +confession of having "taken" Carlylism in their youth; but no mental +constitutions not predisposed to it could ever have caught Coleridgism +at all. There is indeed no moral theory of life, there are no maxims of +conduct, such as youth above all things craves for, in Coleridge's +teaching. Apart from the intrinsic difficulties of the task to which he +invites his disciples, it labours under a primary and essential +disadvantage of postponing moral to intellectual liberation. Contrive +somehow or other to attain to just ideas as to the capacities and +limitations of the human consciousness, considered especially in +relation to its two important and eternally distinct functions, the +Reason and the Understanding: and peace of mind shall in due time be +added unto you. That is in effect Coleridge's answer to the inquirer +who consults him; and if the distinction between the Reason and the +Understanding were as obvious as it is obscure to the average +unmetaphysical mind, and of a value as assured for the purpose to which +Coleridge applies it as it is uncertain, the answer would nevertheless +send many a would-be disciple sorrowful away. His natural impulse is to +urge the oracle to tell him whether there be not some one moral +attitude which he can wisely and worthily adopt towards the universe, +whatever theory he may form of his mental relations to it, or without +forming any such theory at all. And it was because Carlyle supplied, or +was believed to supply an answer, such as it was, to this universal +question, that his train of followers, voluntary and involuntary, +permanent and temporary, has been so large. + +It appears to me, therefore, on as careful an examination of the point +as the data admit of, that Coleridge's position in these latter days of +his life has been somewhat mythically exalted by the generation which +succeeded him. There are, I think, distinct traces of a Coleridgian +legend which has only slowly died out. The actual truth I believe to be +that Coleridge's position from 1818 or 1820 till his death, though one +of the greatest eminence, was in no sense one of the highest, or even +of any considerable influence. Fame and honour, in the fullest measure, +were no doubt his: in that matter, indeed, he was only receiving +payment of long-delayed arrears. The poetic school with which he was, +though not with entire accuracy, associated had outlived its period of +contempt and obloquy. In spite of the two quarterlies, the Tory review +hostile, its Whig rival coldly silent, the public had recognised the +high imaginative merit of _Christabel;_ and who knows but that if the +first edition of the _Lyrical Ballads_ had appeared at this date +instead of twenty years before, it would have obtained a certain number +of readers even among landsmen? [2] But over and above the published +works of the poet there were those extraordinary personal +characteristics to which the fame of his works of course attracted a +far larger share than formerly of popular attention. A remarkable man +has more attractive power over the mass of mankind than the most +remarkable of books, and it was because the report of Coleridge among +those who knew him was more stimulating to public curiosity than even +the greatest of his poems, that his celebrity in these latter years +attained such proportions. Wordsworth said that though "he had seen +many men do wonderful things, Coleridge was the only wonderful man he +had ever met," and it was not the doer of wonderful things but the +wonderful man that English society in those days went out for to see. +Seeing would have been enough, but for a certain number there was +hearing too, with the report of it for all; and it is not surprising +that fame of the marvellous discourser should, in mere virtue of his +extraordinary power of improvised speech, his limitless and untiring +mastery of articulate words, have risen to a height to which writers +whose only voice is in their pens can never hope to attain. + +A reputation of that kind, however, must necessarily perish with its +possessor; and Coleridge's posthumous renown has grown, his place in +English literature has become more assured, if it has not been even +fixed higher, since his death than during his lifetime. This is, in +part no doubt, one among the consequences of those very defects of +character which so unfortunately limited his actual achievements. He +has been credited by faith, as it were, with those famous "unwritten +books" of which he assured Charles Lamb that the titles alone would +fill a volume, and such "popular reputation," in the strict sense of +the word, as he has left behind him, is measured rather by what he was +thought capable of doing than by what he did. By serious students, +however, the real worth of Coleridge will be differently estimated. For +them his peculiar value to English literature is not only undiminished +by the incompleteness of his work; it has been, in a certain sense, +enhanced thereby. Or, perhaps, it would be more strictly accurate to +say that the value could not have existed without the incompleteness. A +Coleridge with the faculty of concentration, and the habit of method +superadded--a Coleridge capable of becoming possessed by any one form +of intellectual energy to the exclusion of all others--might, indeed, +have left behind him a more enduring reputation as a philosopher, and +possibly (although this, for reasons already stated, is, in my own +opinion, extremely doubtful) bequeathed to his countrymen more poetry +destined to live; but, unquestionably, he would never have been able to +render that precise service to modern thought and literature which, in +fact, they owe to him. To have exercised his vivifying and fertilising +influence over the minds of others his intellect was bound to be of the +dispersive order; it was essential that he should "take all knowledge +to be his province," and that that eager, subtle, and penetrative mind +should range as freely as it did over subject after subject of human +interest;--illuminating each of them in turn with those rays of true +critical insight which, amid many bewildering cross-lights and some few +downright _ignes fatui,_ flash forth upon us from all Coleridge's work. + +Of the personal weaknesses which prevented the just development of the +powers, enough, perhaps, has been incidentally said in the course of +this volume. But, in summing up his history, I shall not, I trust, be +thought to judge the man too harshly in saying that, though the natural +disadvantages of wretched health, almost from boyhood upward, must, in +common fairness, be admitted in partial excuse for his failure, they do +not excuse it altogether. It is difficult not to feel that Coleridge's +character, apart altogether from defects of physical constitution, was +wanting in manliness of fibre. His willingness to accept assistance at +the hands of others is too manifestly displayed even at the earlier and +more robust period of his life. It would be a mistake, of course, in +dealing with a literary man of Coleridge's era, to apply the same +standards as obtain in our own days. Wordsworth, as we have seen, made +no scruple to accept the benevolences of the Wedgwoods. Southey, the +type of independence and self-help, was, for some years, in receipt of +a pension from a private source. But Coleridge, as Miss Meteyard's +disclosures have shown, was at all times far more willing to depend +upon others, and was far less scrupulous about soliciting their bounty, +than was either of his two friends. Had he shared more of the spirit +which made Johnson refuse to owe to the benevolence of others what +Providence had enabled him to do for himself, it might have been +better, no doubt, for the world and for the work which he did therein. + +But when we consider what that work was, how varied and how wonderful, +it seems idle--nay, it seems ungrateful and ungracious--to speculate +too curiously on what further or other benefits this great intellect +might have conferred upon mankind, had its possessor been endowed with +those qualities of resolution and independence which he lacked. That +Coleridge so often only _shows_ the way, and so seldom guides our steps +along it to the end, is no just ground of complaint. It would be as +unreasonable to complain of a beacon-light that it is not a steam-tug, +and forget in the incompleteness of its separate services the glory of +their number. It is a more reasonable objection that the light itself +is too often liable to obscuration,--that it stands erected upon a rock +too often enshrouded by the mists of its encircling sea. But even this +objection should not too greatly weigh with us. It would be wiser and +better for us to dwell rather upon its splendour and helpfulness in the +hours of its efficacy, to think how vast is then the expanse of waters +which it illuminates, and its radiance how steady and serene. + + +FOOTNOTES + +1. No one who recollects the equally singular manner in which another +most distinguished metaphysician--the late Dean Hansel--was wont to +quaver forth his admirably turned and often highly eloquent phrases of +philosophical exposition, can fail to be reminded of him by the above +description. No two temperaments or histories however could be more +dissimilar. The two philosophers resembled each other in nothing save +the "om-mject" and "sum-mject" of their studies. + +2. The Longmans told Coleridge that the greater part of the first +edition of the Lyrical Ballads had been sold to seafaring men, who, +having heard of the _Ancient Mariner_, took the volume for a naval +song-book. + + + +INDEX + + +Adams, Dr., + +_Aeolian Harp,_ + circumstances under which it was written, + Coleridge's opinion of, + +_Aids to Reflection,_ its popularity, + its value as a spiritual manual, + its inferiority from a literary point of view, + +Allan Bank, + +Allsop, Mr. Thomas, + +_Ancient Mariner,_ + how and when first conceived, + its uniqueness, + Wordsworth's account of its origin + and of his suggestions, + a sublime "pot-boiler," + realistic force of its narrative, + its vividness of imagery, + its wonderful word-pictures, + its evenness of execution, + examples of its consummate art, + its chief characteristics, + +Anecdotes, + +Ball, Sir Alexander, + +Beaumont, Lady, + +Berkeley, + +_Biographia Literaria,_ + its interest, critical and illustrative, + its main value, + its analysis of the principles of poetry, + its examination of Wordsworth's theory, + its contents, + +_Blackwood's Magazine,_ + Coleridge's contributions to, + +Bonaparte, + +_Borderers_ (Wordsworth's), + +Bowles, William Lisle, + +Burke, + sonnet to, + +Byron, + +Calne, Coleridge at, + +_Cambridge Intelligencer _(Flower's), + +Carlyle, description of Coleridge by, + +Carrlyon, Dr., + reminiscences of Coleridge in Germany by, + +_Christabel,_ + Coleridge's opinion of, + its unfinished condition, + the lines on the "spell," + its high place as a work of creative art, + its fragmentary beauties, + the description of Christabel's chamber, + its main idea, + outline of the unfinished parts, + Lamb and Hartley Coleridge on, + its perfection from the metrical point of view, + publication of the second part, + its popularity, + Coleridge's great desire to complete it, + +_Circassian Love Chant_, + its charm of melody, + +Coleridge, Samuel Taylor. + His biographers, + birth and family history, + his boyhood and school days, + early childhood, + death of his father, + goes to Christ's Hospital, + goes to Jesus College, Cambridge, + wins the Browne Gold Medal, + leaves Cambridge suddenly and enlists in the army, + his discharge, + returns to Cambridge, + his meeting with Southey and Sara Fricker (his future wife), + writes the _Fall of Robespierre_ with Southey, + leaves Cambridge, + delivers the Bristol lectures, + marries Sara Fricker at Bristol, + writes the _Aeolian Harp_, + plunges into politics and journalism, + projects the _Watchman_ and goes on a canvassing tour, + preaches Unitarian sermons by the way, + brings out the _Watchman_, + retires to a cottage in Somersetshire with Charles Lloyd, + his meeting with Wordsworth, + cooling of his revolutionary enthusiasm, + his intercourse with Wordsworth, + writes _Osorio_, + his rambles with Wordsworth among the Quantock Hills, + projects the _Lyrical Ballads_, + writes the _Ancient Mariner_, + _Christabel_, + _Love_, + _Kubla Khan_, + undertakes the duties of a Unitarian preacher at Shrewsbury, + accepts an annuity from the two Wedgwoods, + goes to Germany with the Wordsworths, + returns to England after a year's absence, + translates Schiller's _Wallenstein_, + devotes himself again to journalism, + goes to the Lake country, + takes opium as an anodyne, + writes the _Ode to Dejection_, + goes on a tour with Thomas Wedgwood, + visits the Wordsworths at Grasmere, + his illness there, + goes to Malta, + ill effects of his stay there, + becomes Secretary to the Governor of the island, + goes to Italy, + returns to England after two and a half years' absence, + his wretched condition of mind and body, + estrangement from his wife, + domestic unhappiness, + meeting with De Quincey, + pecuniary embarrassments, + his lectures at the Royal Institution, + lives with Wordsworth at Allan Bank, + founds and edits the _Friend_, + delivers lectures on Shakespeare, + returns to journalism, + his necessities, + loses his annuity, + neglect of his family, + successful production of his play _Remorse_, + lectures again at Bristol, + retires to Calne with Mr. Morgan, + more financial troubles, + lives with Dr. Gillman at Highgate, + undergoes medical treatment for the opium habit, + returning health and vigour, + renewed literary activity, + writes the _Biographia Literaria_, + lectures again in London, + more money troubles, + publishes _Aids to Reflection_, + accompanies Wordsworth on a tour up the Rhine, + his declining years, + contemplation of his approaching end, + his death, + +Poet and Thinker. + His early bent towards poetry and metaphysics, + his prose style, + his early poems, their merits and defects, + his sonnets, + Coleridge at his best, + untimely decline of his poetic impulse, + Wordsworth's great influence on him, + Coleridge's mastery of the true ballad manner, + estimate of his poetic work, + comparison with Byron and Wordsworth, + his wonderful power of melody, + his great projects, + his critical powers, + his criticism of Shakespeare, + his philosophy, + his contemplated "Great Work," + his materials for various poems, + his metaphysics and theology, + his discourses, + exaggerated notions of his position and influence, + his "unwritten books," + + Precocious boyhood, + descriptions of him at various times, + his voice, + his conduct as a husband, + religious nature, + revolutionary enthusiasm, + consciousness of his great powers, + generous admiration for the gifts of others, + his womanly softness, + his pride in his personal appearance, + his contempt for money, + his ill-health, + his opium-eating, + his restlessness, + best portrait of him, + his unbusinesslike nature, + sorrows of his life, + his laudanum excesses, + his talk, + his weaknesses, + +Coleridge, Mrs., + +Coleridge, Rev. Derwent, + +Coleridge, Rev. George, + +Coleridge, Hartley, + +Coleridge, Rev. John, + +Coleridge, Luke, + +Coleridge, Nelson, + +Coleridge, Sarah, + +_Coleridge and Opium Eating_ (De Quincey's), + +_Condones ad Populum _(Bristol Lectures), + their warmth of language, + evidence of deep thought and reasoning in, + their crudeness, + +Consulate, Coleridge on the French, + +Cottle, Joseph, + +_Courier, The,_ + +_Dark Ladie,_ + +_Dejection, Ode to,_ + Coleridge's swan song, + its promise, + Coleridge's spiritual and moral losses bewailed in, + stanzas from, + biographical value of, + +De Quincey, + +Descartes, + +_Descriptive Sketches _(Wordsworth's), + +_Devil's Thoughts,_ + +_Early Years and Late Reflections_ (Dr. Carrlyon's), + +_Effusions,_ + +Erasmus, + +_Essays on his own Times,_ + +_Eve of St Agnes_ (Keats's), + +_Excursion_ (Wordsworth's), + +_Fall of Robespierre_, + +_Fears in Solitude_, + +_Fire, Famine and Slaughter_, + +Fox, Letters to, + +France, Coleridge on, + ode to, + +Fricker, Edith, + Mary, + Sara, + +_Friend, The_, + Coleridge's object in starting it, + its short-lived career, + causes of its failure, + compared with the _Spectator_, + +_Frost at Midnight_ (lines), + +Georgiana, Duchess of Devonshire, + Ode to, + +Germany, Coleridge and Wordsworth in, + +Gibbon, + +Gillman, Mr., + +Green, Mr. J. H., + +Grenville, Lord, + +Greta Hall, description of, + +_Group of Englishmen_ (Miss Meteyard's), + +Harz Mountains, Coleridge's tour through the, + +Hazlitt, + +Hume, + +_Joan of Arc_ (Southey's), Coleridge's contribution to, + +Johnson, Samuel, + +_Juvenile Poems_, + +Kean, + +Keats, Coleridge's meeting with and description of, + +Keswick, + +_Kosciusko_ (Sonnet), + +_Kubla Khan_, 39; a wild dream-poem, + its curious origin, + when written, + +_Lake Poets_ (De Quincey's), + +Lamb, Charles, + +Lamb, Mary, + +_Lay Sermons_, + +"Lear,": Coleridge on, + +Lectures, Coleridge's, + at Bristol, + at the Royal Institution, + on Shakespeare and Milton, + at Flower de Luce Court, + extempore lecture, + +Le Grice, Charles, + +_Liberal, The_, + +_Lines on ascending the Bracken_, + +_Lines to William Wordsworth_, + +_Literary Remains_, + +Lloyd, Charles, + +Locke, + +_Love_, + fascination of melody in, + +Lovell, Robert, + +_Lover's Resolution_, + +Luther, + +_Lyrical Ballads_, + origin of, + Coleridge's contributions to, + appearance of, + anecdote concerning, + +Malta, Coleridge's stay at, + +Maurice, + +Metaphysics and theology; Coleridge's, + +Meteyard, Miss, + +Milton, lectures on Shakespeare and, + +_Monody on the Death of Chatterton_, + +Montagu, Mr. and Mrs., + +Morgan, Mr. John, + +_Morning Post, The_, Coleridge's connection with, + +Nether Stowey, Coleridge at, + +_New Monthly Magazine_, + +_Nightingale_, + +_Omniana_ (Southey's), Coleridge's contribution to, + +Opium, + Coleridge's resort to, + origin of the habit, + De Quincey on, + + +_Pains of Sleep_, + +"Pantisocraey," + +Parry, Coleridge's fellow-student in Germany, + +_Peau de Chagrin_ (Balzac's), + +Philosophy, Coleridge's, + (see _Spiritual Philosophy_) + +_Pilgrimage_ (Purchas's), + +Pitt, + sonnet to, + +Pius VII., Pope, + +_Poems on Various Subjects_, + +_Poetical and Dramatic Works_, + +Poetry and the Fine Arts, Coleridge's lectures on, + +"Polonius," Coleridge's estimate of the character of, + +Poole, Mr. Thomas, + +_Prometheus_, Coleridge's paper on, + +Quantock Hills, Coleridge and Wordsworth among the, + +_Recantation_, + +_Recollections_ (Cottle's), + +_Recollections of a Literary Life_ (Miss Mitford's) + +_Reflections on having left a Place of Retirement_, + +_Religious Musings_, + +_Remorse_, + +Revolution, the French, + +_Robbers_, + +Rome, Coleridge in, + +Rousseau, + +Royal Institution, Coleridge's lectures at the, + +Schiller, + +Schlegel, + +Scott, Sir Walter, + +_Sermons, Lay_, + +Shakespeare, + lectures on, + criticisms on, + +Shakespearianism, German, + +Shelley, + +Sheridan, + +Shrewsbury, Coleridge's preaching in, + +_Sibylline Leaves_, + +Slave Trade, Coleridge's Greek Ode on the, + +_Songs of the Pixies_, + +_Sonnets on Eminent Characters_, + +Sotheby, Mr., + +Southey, + +Southey, Cuthbert, + +Southey, Edith, + +_Spectator_, + +_Spiritual Philosophy_ (Green's), + an exposition of Coleridge's Philosophy, + Coleridge's great fundamental principle, + the reason and the understanding, + will, not thought, the ultimate fact of self-consciousness, + a philosophy of Realism, + philosophy valued by Coleridge mainly as an organon of religion, + growth of the soul, + the idea of God, + idea of the Trinity, + "a guidebook written in hieroglyphics," + +_Statesman's Manual_, + +_Sterling, Life of_ (Carlyle's), + +Sterne, + +Stuart, Mr. Daniel, + +Swinburne's praise of Coleridge's lyrics, + +_Table Talk_, + +Theology and metaphysics, Coleridge's system of, + +Unitarian, Coleridge as a, + +_Visionary Hope_, + +Voltaire, + +_Voyages_ (Shelvocke's), + +_Wallenstein_, Coleridge's translation of, + +Warburton, + +_Watchman_, + +Wedgwood, Josiah, + +Wedgwood, Thomas, + +Wordsworth, + +Wordsworth, Dorothy, + +_Year, Ode to the Departing_, + +_Zapolya_, + + +THE END. + + + + + + + + + + +End of Project Gutenberg's English Men of Letters: Coleridge, by H. D. Traill + +*** END OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK ENGLISH MEN OF LETTERS: COLERIDGE *** + +***** This file should be named 6916.txt or 6916.zip ***** +This and all associated files of various formats will be found in: + http://www.gutenberg.org/6/9/1/6916/ + +Produced by Curtis A. Weyant, Charles Franks, and the +Distributed Proofreading Team. + +Updated editions will replace the previous one--the old editions will +be renamed. + +Creating the works from print editions not protected by U.S. copyright +law means that no one owns a United States copyright in these works, +so the Foundation (and you!) can copy and distribute it in the United +States without permission and without paying copyright +royalties. Special rules, set forth in the General Terms of Use part +of this license, apply to copying and distributing Project +Gutenberg-tm electronic works to protect the PROJECT GUTENBERG-tm +concept and trademark. 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