seems to imply that the ballad was then extant. Coleridge, as we know (see Letters, ii, 717), was engaged between 1822 and 1825 writing his Aids to Reflection, and the following curious passage occurs in Aphorism XXXI (Moral and Religious Aphorisms). Speaking of slander, he says: “It is not expressible how deep a wound a tongue sharpened to this work will give, with no noise and a very little word. This is the true white gunpowder, which the dreaming projectors of silent mischief and insensible poisons sought for in the laboratories of art and nature, in a world of good; but which was to be found in its most destructive form, in the world of evil, the Tongue” (Bohn Library edition, p. 70). Alice Du Clos, or the Forked Tongue, is the full title of the ballad; and it looks as if it had been written to illustrate the passage, though it has an affinity with Lewis’s Ellen of Eglantine and The Troubadour, or Lady Alice’s Bower (Tales of Terror and Wonder).[142]
In a letter to William Blackwood of 20th October 1829 Coleridge says he has among other poems for the Magazine, “a Lyrical Tale, 250 lines,” which he could give if desired (William Blackwood and his Sons, by Mrs. Oliphant, i, 415). The date of the poem may therefore be put down as 1822–1829.
Alice Du Clos ranks with the Ancient Mariner, Christabel, Kubla Khan, Love and the Ballad of the Dark Ladye, among Coleridge’s poems in which he rises out of his own subjectivity into the clear realm of objective art. The remark of Thomas Ashe (Preface to the Aldine Edition of the Poems, cxxxvi), that “the great fault of Coleridge is that he puts too much of himself, unidealized, into his verses,” is perfectly true. Coleridge was himself aware of this defect, and in Letter 167, speaking of the Hymn before Sunrise, he admits that there is in the Hymn too much of the idiosyncratic for true poetry, a piece of self-criticism that can be alleged against a great number of his poems, beautiful of their kind yet savouring too often of the Ego. The Lime Tree Bower, Dejection, an Ode, the Lines to Wordsworth, the Pains of Sleep, the Tombless Epitaph, Youth and Age, the Garden of Boccaccio, Work without Hope, are not exceptions. It is only in the Ancient Mariner, Christabel, Kubla Khan, The Three Graves, Love, The Ballad of the Dark Ladye, and Alice Du Clos, that Coleridge succeeds in hiding his own personal identity behind his melodious utterance, and attains to that simplicity which is truly classical. Most of his other poems are autobiographical, and can be thoroughly understood only as part of his epistolary correspondence. His finest ode, Dejection, is only a versified letter to Wordsworth, afterwards denuded of its most personal references, and addressed to a “Lady,” to give it a more artistic cast.
The relationship between Coleridge and Alaric Watts was not confined to the contributions to the Annuals. An agreeable social intimacy sprang up between the Highgate household and the Watts; and a correspondence between Mr. and Mrs. Watts and Coleridge took place. Five fine letters by Coleridge are contained in the Life of Alaric Watts, from which it seems Coleridge and Mr. Watts intended to collaborate in the issue of an edition of Shakespeare, which would have been a congenial task to Coleridge, and one can feel regret that it was not carried out. A feature of the edition was to be “properly critical notes, prefaces, and analyses, comprising the results of five and twenty years’ study: the object being to ascertain and distinguish what Shakespeare possessed in common with other great men of his age, or differing only in degree, and what was his, peculiar to himself” (Life of Alaric Watts, i, 243). This, of course, as any one acquainted with Coleridge’s Lectures on Shakespeare knows, was one of Coleridge’s favourite topics, and one which could have been better illustrated in an annotated edition than in popular lectures.
In one of his letters to Alaric Watts Coleridge gives the best account of the lack of voluntary power to open letters sent him; and counsels Watts if he wishes an immediate answer to his letters to send them under cover to Mrs. Gillman, who is his “outward conscience.” In another letter, sending contributions for the Annual, he encloses his poem entitled Limbo, which he says is a pretended fragment of the poet Lee.]
CHAPTER XXX
THE RHINE TOUR, AND LAST COLLECTED
EDITIONS OF THE POEMS
[Coleridge and Wordsworth, who, as we have seen, had had a serious estrangement in 1810, but gradually drew together again with the softening of the years, went on tour to the Rhine in 1828; and this was Coleridge’s third time on the Continent. On their way they met Thomas Colley Grattan, novelist and miscellaneous writer. He gave in his Beaten Paths some account of the two poets as they appeared at the time—partly reproduced in Knight’s Life of Wordsworth. This passage is the best description of the two poets in their later period and the most reliable, along with Clement Carlyon’s description of Coleridge in Germany. There is no attempt in Grattan to spin rhetoric out of Coleridge, such as we find in De Quincey, Hazlitt, and Carlyle. Another diarist gave a picture of the poets during the Rhine Tour, Julian Charles Young, who wrote the memoir of his brother, Charles Mayne Young, an actor of the time. This account is also partly reproduced in Knight’s Life of Wordsworth. Grattan says: “He was about five feet five[143] inches in height, of a full and lazy appearance but not actually stout. He was dressed in black, and wore short breeches, buttoned and tied at the knees, and black silk stockings. And in his costume (the same that he describes to have been worn in his earliest voyages and travels in the year 1798), he worked along, in public coaches or barges, giving the idea of his original profession, an itinerant preacher. His face was extremely handsome, its expression placid and benevolent. His mouth was particularly pleasing, and his grey eyes, neither large nor prominent, were full of intelligent softness. His hair, of which he had plenty, was entirely white. His forehead and cheeks were unfurrowed and the latter showed a healthy bloom” (Beaten Paths, ii, 108–109). On all topics touched by Coleridge he said something to be remembered. “In almost everything that fell from Coleridge there was a dash of deep philosophy—even in the outpourings of his egotism—touches not to be given without the whole of what they illustrated” (Beaten Paths, ii, 113). “Coleridge took evident delight in rural scenes. He was in ecstasies at a group of haymakers in a field we passed. He said the little girls, standing with their rakes, the handles resting on the ground, ‘looked like little saints.’ Half-a-dozen dust-covered children going by the roadside, with a garland of roses raised above their heads, threw him into raptures” (Beaten Paths, ii, 115).
Coleridge made a new collection of his Poems in 1828, which added to the Early Poems and Sibylline Leaves seventeen new pieces. The collection was published in three volumes by Pickering, and included Remorse, Zapolya, and Wallenstein. Coleridge made many careful revisions; his corrections are a study in verse making. Another edition was issued in 1829; and here again Coleridge made alterations in twenty-one of the poems, the chief of which were in the Monody on the Death of Chatterton. The last edition of Coleridge’s Poems prepared during his life was that of 1834, in three volumes, but though the first volume was out in May, the third volume was not issued from the press till after his demise on 25th July. The corrections extend to twenty-three poems. Some are merely restorations of former readings; but they constitute a real difference from the text of 1829, and must be accepted as belonging to the Textus Receptus. Henry Nelson Coleridge superintended the edition, but it is not likely, as Dykes Campbell supposed, that he made the alterations, for Coleridge was continually readjusting his texts.
The remainder of Coleridge’s life from 1829 was taken up with visits from his old friends, in composing a Commentary on the New Testament, writing marginalia on the English Divines, and holding his Thursday at-homes. In 1830 he published his noble pamphlet On the Constitution of Church and State. Many new friends flocked round the ageing poet, to be introduced to whose acquaintance was one of the highest literary treats of London life. Friendship had been the balm of Coleridge’s life; he had had his estrangements and misunderstandings. But he knew well that
Friendship is a Sheltering Tree,
the pathos of which line can be appreciated only when we recall to mind that its writer had been denied the full enjoyment of the deeper friendship called Love.
A good sized volume could be compiled of all the contemporary accounts of Coleridge. We have already had some of these. Another we must add by a young American. Coleridge was highly appreciated on the other side of the Atlantic; his monument in Westminster Abbey was the gift of an American; and the late Emperor of Brazil was an admirer and student of Coleridge. The following account is taken from The Nation, an American literary journal, of 14th July 1910:
“Henry Blake McLellan was born at Maidstone, Essex County, Vt., September 16, 1810. He was the son of Isaac and Eliza McLellan of Boston, and the grandson of Gen. William Hull of Newton, Mass. After a preparatory course at the Boston Latin School, McLellan entered Harvard University in 1825, and graduated in 1829. He studied for the ministry at Andover, 1829–31, and then went on a tour, which included Great Britain, France, Germany, Italy, and Switzerland. He left America September 16, 1831; started on his return April 18, 1833, and landed at Boston June 12. Then came the tragic ending to a bright young life. Eight weeks after his return he was stricken by typhus, and died four weeks later, in his twenty-third year.
“Such was the young and ardent spirit who went to see Coleridge in the filial spirit in which a disciple might have sat at the feet of an ancient philosopher. He writes this simple and affecting account of the interview:
“‘Saturday, April 27th, 1832.
“‘Walked to Highgate to call on Mr. Coleridge. I was ushered into the parlor while the girl carried up my letter to his room. She presently returned, and observed that her master was very poorly, but would be happy to see me, if I would walk up to his room, which I gladly did. He is short in stature, and appeared to be careless in his dress. I was impressed with the strength of his expression, his venerable locks of white, and his trembling frame. He remarked that he had for some time past suffered much bodily anguish. For many months (thirteen) seventeen hours each day had he walked up and down his chamber. I inquired whether his mental powers were affected by such intense suffering; “Not at all,” said he. “My body and head appear to hold no connexion; the pain of my body, blessed be God, never reaches my mind.” After some further conversation, and some inquiries respecting Dr. Chalmers, he remarked, “The Doctor must have suffered exceedingly at the strange conduct of our once dear brother laborer in Christ, Rev. Mr. Irving. Never can I describe how much it has wrung my bosom. I had watched with astonishment and admiration the wonderful and rapid development of his powers. Never was such unexampled advance in intellect as between his first and second volume of sermons, the first full of Gallicisms and Scottisms, and all other cisms, the second discovering all the elegance and power of the best writers of the Elizabethan age. And then so sudden a fall, when his mighty energies made him so terrible to sinners.” Of the mind of the celebrated Puffendorf he said, “his mind is like some mighty volcano, red with flame, and dark with tossing clouds of smoke, through which the lightnings play and glare most awfully.” Speaking of the state of the different classes of England, he remarked, “We are in a dreadful state. Care, like a foul hag, sits on us all; one class presses with iron foot upon the wounded heads beneath, and all struggle for a worthless supremacy, and all to rise to it move shackled by their expenses; happy, happy are you to hold your birthright in a country where things are different; you, at least at present, are in a transition state; God grant it may ever be so! Sir, things have come to a dreadful pass with us; we need most deeply a reform, but I fear not the horrid reform which we shall have. Things must alter; the upper classes of England have made the lower persons things; the people in breaking from this unnatural state will break from duties also.”
“‘He spoke of Mr. Allston with great affection and high encomium; he thought him in imagination and color almost unrivalled (pp. 230–232).’”[144]
The letters of Coleridge written during his last years breathe a pious and tender melancholy, but they are few, and what have been published are fragmentary. On 18th March 1833 he wrote to John Sterling, who, in spite of Carlyle’s assertion to the contrary, remained a disciple to the end: “With grief I tell you I have been, and now am, worse, far worse than when you left me. God have mercy on me, and not withdraw the influence of His Spirit from me!” Recommending Mr. Gillman’s son for the Living of Leiston he wrote:
“I have known the Revd James Gillman from his Childhood, as having been from that time to this a trusted Inmate of the Household of his dear and exemplary Parents. I have followed his progress at weekly Intervals from his entrance into the Merchants’ Taylors’ School, and traced his continued improvements under the excellent Mr. Bellamy to his Removal, as Head Scholar, to St. John’s College; and during his academic Career his Vacations were in the main passed under my eye.
“I was myself educated for the Church at Christ’s Hospital, and sent from that honoured and unique Institution to Jesus College, Cambridge, under the tutorage and discipline of the Revdτο αἰσθητικόν James Bowyer who has left an honoured name in the Church for the zeal and ability with which he formed and trained his Orphan Pupils to the Sacred Ministry, as Scholars, as Readers, as Preachers, and as sound Interpreters of the Word. May I add that I was the Junior Schoolfellow in the next place, the Protegé, and the Friend of the late venerated Dr Middleton, the first Bishop of Calcutta. And assuredly whatever under such Training and such Influence I learnt, or thro’ a long life mainly devoted to Scriptural, Theological and Ecclesiastical Studies, I have been permitted to attain, I have been anxious to communicate to the Son of my dearest Friends, with little less than paternal Solicitude. And at all events I dare attest, that the Revd James Gillman is pure and blameless in morals and unexceptionable in manners, equally impressed with the importance of the Pastoral Duties as of the Labours of the Desk and the Pulpit: and that his mind is made up to preach the whole truth in Christ.”[145]
Coleridge was always a lover of children. From his earliest years he was interested in the weak and small things of the earth, or as he expressed it at the conclusion of his immortal poem,
All things both great and small,
which embraced more than the babes; and there is an innate connection between his solicitude for children and that sentimental love of the “bird and beast” which characterized his poetical period (Brandl, p. 102). We have seen how he took notice of the young haymakers on the Rhine Tour, and how he loved to call the children of his friends by endearing pet names, Puckinella and the like. The last letter Coleridge wrote was to a child, not yet able to read, to whom he had stood godfather.
Letter 219. To Adam Steinmetz Kennard
To Adam Steinmetz Kennard,
My dear godchild,—I offer up the same fervent prayer for you now, as I did kneeling before the altar, when you were baptized into Christ, and solemnly received as a living member of his spiritual body, the church. Years must pass before you will be able to read with an understanding heart what I now write. But I trust that the all-gracious God, the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, the Father of mercies, who, by his only-begotten Son, (all mercies in one sovereign mercy!) has redeemed you from evil ground, and willed you to be born out of darkness, but into light; out of death, but into life; out of sin, but into righteousness; even into “the Lord our righteousness;” I trust that he will graciously hear the prayers of your dear parents, and be with you as the spirit of health and growth, in body and in mind. My dear godchild, you received from Christ’s minister, at the baptismal font, as your Christian name, the name of a most dear friend of your father’s, and who was to me even as a son, the late Adam Steinmetz, whose fervent aspirations, and paramount aim, even from early youth, was to be a Christian in thought, word, and deed; in will, mind, and affections. I too, your godfather, have known what the enjoyment and advantages of this life are, and what the more refined pleasures which learning and intellectual power can give; I now, on the eve of my departure, declare to you, and earnestly pray that you may hereafter live and act on the conviction, that health is a great blessing; competence, obtained by honourable industry, a great blessing; and a great blessing it is, to have kind, faithful, and loving friends and relatives; but that the greatest of all blessings, as it is the most ennobling of all privileges, is to be indeed a Christian. But I have been likewise, through a large portion of my later life, a sufferer, sorely affected with bodily pains, languor, and manifold infirmities, and for the last three or four years have, with few and brief intervals, been confined to a sick room, and at this moment, in great weakness and heaviness, write from a sick bed, hopeless of recovery, yet without prospect of a speedy removal. And I thus, on the brink of the grave, solemnly bear witness to you, that the Almighty Redeemer, most gracious in his promises to them that truly seek him, is faithful to perform what he has promised; and has reserved, under all pains and infirmities, the peace that passeth all understanding, with the supporting assurance of a reconciled God, who will not withdraw his spirit from me in the conflict, and in his own time will deliver me from the evil one. O my dear godchild! eminently blessed are they who begin early to seek, fear, and love, their God, trusting wholly in the righteousness and mediation of their Lord, Redeemer, Saviour, and everlasting High Priest, Jesus Christ. Oh, preserve this as a legacy and bequest from your unseen godfather and friend.
CHAPTER XXXI
CONCLUSION
After Mr. Coleridge’s death in July 1834,[147] four volumes of his Literary Remains were published by his late Editor. Vols. I and II appeared in 1836, Vol. III in 1838, Vol. IV in 1839. Vol. I contains The Fall of Robespierre and other poems, and poetical fragments, Notes of a Course of Lectures delivered in 1818, Marginal Notes on several books, Fragments of Essays, Mr. C.’s Contributions to the Omniana of Mr. Southey, published in 1812, and fifty-six other short articles on various subjects. Vol. II contains more Notes of Lectures on Shakespeare, including criticism on each of his Plays, with Introductory Matter on Poetry, the Drama, and the Stage, prefaced by extracts of letters relating to these Lectures: Notes on Ben Jonson, on Beaumont and Fletcher, on Fuller, on Sir Thomas Browne, an Essay on the Prometheus of Æschylus, and other miscellaneous writings.
Vol. III contains Formula Fidei de S. Trinitate, A Nightly Prayer, Notes on the Book of Common Prayer, on Hooker, Field, Donne, Henry More, Heinrichs, Hacket, Jeremy Taylor, The Pilgrim’s Progress, and John Smith, and a Letter to a Godchild.
Vol. IV contains Notes on Luther, St. Theresa, Bedell, Baxter, Leighton, Sherlock, Waterland, Shelton, Andrew Fuller, Whitaker, Oxlee, A Barrister’s Hints, Davison, Irving, and Noble, and an Essay on Faith. The present edition of the Literary Remains is nearly exhausted. In a fresh edition new matter will be added from marginal notes, probably in a fifth volume. Archdeacon Hare speaks of The Remains in the Preface to his Mission of the Comforter in a passage which may fitly be produced here.
“Of recent English writers, the one with whose sanction I have chiefly desired, whenever I could, to strengthen my opinions, is the great religious philosopher to whom the mind of our generation in England owes more than to any other man. My gratitude to him I have endeavoured to express by dedicating the following Sermons to his memory; and the offering is so far at least appropriate, in that the main work of his life was to spiritualize, not only our philosophy, but our theology, to raise them both above the empiricism into which they had long been dwindling, and to set them free from the technical trammels of logical systems. Whether he is as much studied by the genial young men of the present day, as he was twenty or thirty years ago, I have no adequate means of judging; but our theological literature teems with errors, such as could hardly have been committed by persons whose minds had been disciplined by his philosophical method, and had rightly appropriated his principles. So far too as my observation has extended, the third and fourth volumes of his Remains, though they were hailed with delight by Arnold on their first appearance, have not yet produced their proper effect on the intellect of the age. It may be that the rich store of profound and beautiful thought contained in them, has been weighed down, from being mixt with a few opinions on points of Biblical criticism, likely to be very offensive to persons who know nothing about the history of the Canon. Some of these opinions, to which Coleridge himself ascribed a good deal of importance, seem to me of little worth; some, to be decidedly erroneous. Philological criticism, indeed, all matters requiring a laborious and accurate investigation of details, were alien from the bent and habits of his mind; and his exegetical studies, such as they were, took place at a period when he had little better than the meagre Rationalism of Eickhorn and Bertholdt to help him. Of the opinions which he imbibed from them, some abode with him through life. These, however, along with everything else that can justly be objected to in the Remains, do not form a twentieth part of the whole, and may easily be separated from the remainder. Nor do they detract, in any way, from the sterling sense, the clear and far-sighted discernment, the power of tracing principles in their remotest operations, and of referring all things to their first principles which are manifested in almost every page, and from which we might learn so much.”
The last posthumous work of Mr. Coleridge, published September, 1840, is entitled Confessions of an Inquiring Spirit, and consists of seven letters on the Inspiration of the Scriptures. It should be understood that this work is intended not to undermine the belief that the Bible is the Word of God, or in any degree to lessen the deep reverence with which it is regarded by Christians, but to put that belief on a better foundation than it commonly rests upon. “Let it be distinctly understood,” the author says, “that my arguments and objections apply exclusively to the following Doctrine or Dogma. To the opinions which individual divines have advanced in lieu of this doctrine,”—for instance, I suppose, the strange fancy that the words of the Bible are not divinely dictated, that the language is human and yet exempt, by divine power, from any possible admixture of human error,—“my only objection, as far as I object, is—that I do not understand them.—I said that in the Bible there is more that finds me than I have experienced in all other books put together; that the words of the Bible find me at greater depths of my being; and that whatever finds me brings with it an irresistible evidence of its having proceeded from the Holy Spirit. But the Doctrine in question requires me to believe, that not only what finds me, but that all that exists in the sacred volume, which I am bound to find therein, was not alone inspired by, that is, composed by men under the actuating influence of the Holy Spirit, but likewise—dictated by an infallible intelligence;—that the writers, each and all, were divinely informed as well as inspired.——I can conceive no softenings here which would not nullify the Doctrine, and convert it to a cloud for each man’s fancy to shape and shift at will. And this doctrine, I confess, plants the vineyard of the word with thorns for me, and places snares in its pathways.” He proceeds to shew how the doctrine in question injures the true idea of the spirituality and divinity of the sacred volume, and directly or indirectly tends to alienate men from the outward Revelation. A second edition of this little work will soon be prepared.
The book has been denounced in strange style by some who do not profess to have read it. These reasoners assume in the first place that both the tendency and object of it is to overthrow Christianity—whereas any one who reads it, and not merely what a hostile spirit has predetermined to find in it, cannot fail to perceive that at least the writer’s object is to guard and exalt the religion of Christ. But, secondly, forgetting that the book is [not] intended to overthrow Christianity, they urge that Christianity has done very well hitherto without such views as it propounds, and that very great thinkers and good men have lived and died, in the faith and fear of the Lord, without the knowledge of them;—as if the wants of the Church were in all ages exactly alike; or as if there had not been in all ages clouds over the sunshine of faith, occasioned by the difficulties which the writer seeks to remove; or as if it were not true that the more light men obtain on one side of the region of thought the more they need on other sides; as if greatness and goodness, in their application to men, were not relative terms, and the best and wisest of mortals that have appeared upon earth had ever been free from error and imperfection! I should think there is hardly a foolish or evil notion on any subject which might not be screened from attack by such arguments as these. And, even were they not such mere weakness, of what force can they be with those, who take for their motto, as Mr. Coleridge did from first to last: That all men may know the truth and that the truth may set them free? Religious truth and religion are identified in Scripture, or at least represented as one and inseparable; and how can a man obey the truth or minister to it, except by setting forth, what, after the widest survey of the subject which he is capable of taking, he believes to be the truth?
The suggestion that no man should examine such subjects or call in question prevailing views in religion save one who starts from a high station of holiness and spiritual light, can be of little value unless accompanied by a criterion of holiness, both as to kind and degree, admitted by all men. Prevailing notions are often utterly erroneous, and if none might expose what they believe in their hearts to be wrong and injurious views, till it was proved, even to their adversaries’ satisfaction, that they were far advanced in true sanctity, wrong views would be the prevailing ones till the end of time. Providence works by finer means than enter into this sort of philosophy, making imperfection minister to the perfecting of what is good and purifying of what is evil.
Whether or no the views of St. Jerome and other ancient Fathers concerning Inspiration are, as has been affirmed, something far deeper and higher than we, in our inferior state of spirituality, can conceive, I do not presume to decide; but yet I would suggest, that high and spiritual views in general are capable of being set forth in words, and of gradually raising men up to some apprehension of them. They do not remain a light to lighten the possessor and mere darkness, or a light that closely resembles a shade, to the rest of the world. Things that pertain to reason and the spirit appeal to the rational and spiritual in mankind at large; they tend to elicit the reason and expand the understandings of men; deep calleth unto deep; and if the teaching of Paul and John is now in a wonderful manner apprehended by peasants and children, who hear the Gospel habitually, St. Jerome’s notions of Inspiration, if truly divine and evangelical, would by this time be generally apprehended by Christians in the same way, and by the wise and learned would be comprehended more intellectually and systematically. Whereas, can it be denied, that no consistent scheme of Inspiration has ever been gathered from the teaching of those ancient Fathers? They who believe that such a scheme is contained in their writings, explicitly or implicitly, will do well to unfold it. Merely to talk about such a thing in a style of indefinite grandeur is but to conjure up a mist, by the spell of solemn sounding words, to mock the eyes of men with a cloud castle for a season—a very little season it is during which any such piece of mist-magnificence can remain undispersed in times like the present, except for those who had rather gaze on painted vapours than on realities of a hue to which their eyes are unaccustomed.
I have not been able to obtain any exact account of all my Father’s courses of lectures, given after his visit to Germany, but find, from letters and other sources of information that he lectured in London, before going to Malta, in 1804; on his return from Malta, in 1807; again in 1808; in 1811; in 1814, in which year he also lectured at Bristol; in 1817; and, for the last time, I believe, in 1819. His early lectures at Bristol are mentioned in the biographical sketch.[148]
The poetic or imitative art, an ancient critic has observed, must needs describe persons either better than they are, at the present time, or worse, as they are exactly. The fact is, however, that in literary fiction individuals can seldom be exhibited exactly such as they are, the subtle interminglings of good and evil, the finely balanced qualities that exist in the actual characters of men, even those in whom the colours are deepest and the lines most strongly traced, being too fine and subtle for dramatic effect. Indeed it is scarcely possible to present a man as he truly is except in plain narrative; his mind cannot be properly manifested save in and through the very events and circumstances which gave utterance to his individual being and which his peculiar character helped to mould and produce. When taken out of these and placed in the alien framework of the novelist or dramatist it becomes another thing; the representation may convey truth of human nature in a broad way, and seem drawn to the life, if the writer have a lively wit, but as a portrait of a particular person it is often the more a falsehood the more natural it appears.
To poetic descriptions these remarks do not apply. They are, for the most part, mere views of a character in its elevated and poetic aspects—tributes of admiration to its beautiful qualities. Such are the fine stanzas, already quoted, in which the poet Coleridge is described by the great Poet, his Friend:[149] and such are some less known, composed by a poet of a later generation, who never saw my Father face to face. Of these the last four will serve for a conclusion to this sketch. I give them here for the sake of their poetic truth and the earnest sympathy they manifest with the studious poet—
though they are not among the very finest parts of their author’s thoughtful and beautiful poetry.
APPENDIX AND ADDITIONAL NOTES
APPENDIX
Letters contained in this work drawn from Joseph Cottle’s Early Recollections (1837), and his Reminiscences (1847)
Letters Nos. 17, 18, 19, 20, 21, 22, 23, 25, 30, 32, and 38 were included in the Biographical Supplement. The text of these eleven letters is that of the Supplement.
Letters in the Life of William Godwin, not included in this work nor in Letters of S. T. Coleridge(1895)
MEMORIALS OF COLEORTON (1887)
Letters by Coleridge to Sir George and Lady Beaumont, not included in Letters of S. T. Coleridge (1895)
Letters in Thomas Poole and his Friends, by Mrs. Henry Sandford (1888), not contained in the Biographical Supplement, nor in Letters of S. T. C. (1895).
| Vol. i, p.10, | S. T. Coleridge to Thomas Poole | —1799 |
| 154, | ” ” | ? Aug. 1796 |
| 179, | ” ” | 15 Nov. 1796 |
| 180, | ” ” | (Nov.) 1796 |
| 271, | ” ” | June 1798 |
| 295, | ” ” | 8 April 1799 |
| 300, | ” Mrs. Coleridge | 6 May 1799 |
| Vol. ii, 1–2, | ” Thomas Poole | — January 1800 |
| 5, | ” ” | 14 February 1800 |
| 7, | ” ” | — Mch. 1800 |
| 8–9, | ” ” | 31 Mch. 1800 |
| 10–11, | ” ” | 14 August 1800 |
| 15, | ” ” | — October 1800 |
| 22–3, | ” ” | 7 January 1801 |
| 26, | ” ” | 1 February 1801 |
| 30, | ” ” | 13 February 1801 |
| 40, | ” ” | Mch.-Apl. 1801 |
| 44, | ” ” | Apl.-May 1801 |
| 48, | ” ” | 17 May 1801 |
| 57, | ” ” | 1 July 1801 |
| 63, | ” ” | 7 Sept. 1801 |
| 66, | ” ” | 5 October 1801 |
| 71, | ” ” | 21 October 1801 |
| 79, | ” ” | 7 May 1802 |
| 99, | ” ” | 17 Dec. 1802 |
| 101, | ” ” | 29 Dec. 1802 |
| 226, | ” ” | 4 Dec. 1808 |
| 258, note, and 279–80, | ” ” | July 1821? |
| 280, | ” ” | 2 January 1827 |
Letters contained in Brandl’s Life of Coleridge (1887)
| P. 267, | Coleridge to Samuel Purkis, of Brentford. | (Autumn) 1800 |
| 323, | ” H. C. Robinson. | 18 Nov. 1811 |
| 362, | ” H. C. Robinson. | 20 June 1817 |
| 354, | ” H. C. Robinson. | 3 Decr. 1817 |
| 357, | ” John Morgan. | 5 January 1818 |
| 351, | ” John Taylor Coleridge. | 8 May 1825 |
| 373, | ” Basil Montagu. | 1 Feby. 1826 |
Letters contained in Professor Knight’s Life Of Wordsworth, not appearing in this work, or Letters of S. T. C. (1895)
| Vol. i, p. 180, | Coleridge to W. Wordsworth. | — 1798 |
| p. 184, | ” | — 1798 |
| p. 184, | ” | — 1799 |
| p. 184, | ” | — 1799 |
| p. 195, | ” | Summer 1799 |
| p. 198, | ” Dorothy Wordsworth | — 1799 |
| p. 201, | ” W. Wordsworth. | 12 Oct. 1799 |
| p. 201, | ” | Dec. 1799 |
| p. 202, | ” | Feby. 1800 |
| Vol. ii, p. 13, | ” | 16 Feby. 1804 |
| p. 14, | ” | 4 April 1804 |
| p. 100, | ” | Spring 1808 |
| p. 172, | ” John Morgan | 27 Mch. 1812 |
Letters contained in William Blackwood and His Sons, by Mrs. Oliphant (1897)
| Vol. i, p. 408, | S. T. Coleridge to William Blackwood. | (Spring) 1819 |
| ” 412, | ” ” | 230 June 1819 |
| ” 413, | ” ” | 224 Feby. 1826 |
| ” 414, | ” ” | 220 October 1829 |
| ” 416, | ” ” | 215 May 1830 |
| ” 419, | ” ” | 26 May 1832 |
Letters contained in the Life of Alaric Watts, By his son, Alaric Alfred Watts (1884)
| Vol. 1, p. 152, | S. T. Coleridge to Alaric Watts. | (1823–1824) |
| ” 243, | ” ” | (1827) |
| ” 288, | ” ” | (1827) |
| ” 288, | ” ” | (1827) |
| ” 290, | ” ” | 1 January 1828 |
| ” 291, | ” ” | 14 September 1828 |
Letters contained in John Hookham Frere and his Friends, by Gabrielle Festing, 1899.
| Chap. XI, p. 218, | S. T. Coleridge to J. H. Frere. | (—1816) |
| ” 220, | ” George Frere. | Dec. 1816 |
| ” 221, | ” ” | 19 Dec. 1816 |
| ” 222, | ” J. H. Frere. | 27 June 1817 |
| ” 224, | ” ” | 16 July 1817 |
| ” 227, | ” ” | (—1827) |
| ” 228, | ” ” | (no date) |
ADDITIONAL NOTES
Biographical Supplement.—The original Text of the Supplement of the Biographia Literaria, 2 vols., 1847, by Henry Nelson Coleridge and Sara Coleridge, is as follows:
| Pp. 311–35, | vol. i, pp. 1–29 to “5th of February 1791” | of this work. |
| 335–38, | ” 30–34 to “destined to turn” | of this work. |
| 338–44, | ” 35–41 to “pantisocratical basis” | of this work. |
| 344–45, | ” 44–46 to “22nd of September 1794” | of this work. |
| 345–48, | ” 47–51 to “S. T. Coleridge” | of this work. |
| 348–50, | ” 53–56 to “expected” | ” |
| 350–55, | ” 56–62 to “S. T. C.” | ” |
| 355–60, | ” 63–68 to “S. T. Coleridge” | ” |
| 360–62, | ” 71–74 to “S.T. Coleridge” | ” |
| 362–3, | ” 76–76 to “never arrived” | ” |
| 363–77, | ” 77–92 to “latest convictions” | ” |
| 377–86, | ” 96–105 to “S. C.” | ” |
| 386–90, | ” 114–119 to “plaintive warbling” | ” |
| 391, | ” 121 to “were written” | ” |
| 391–411, | vol. ii, 76–99 to “name behind” | ” |
| 411–21, | ” 104–115 to “candid” | ” |
| 422–25, | ” 280–284 to “Demosius and Mystes” | of this work. |
| 426–32, | ” 305–312 to “Fall of Rora” | of this work. |
Cottle’s Text.—Cottle has been severely blamed for tampering with the text of the letters of Coleridge. The most glaring changes occur in Letter 32, in which Cottle inserts the names of Lamb, Wordsworth and Dr. Parr, and in Letter 123, in which he alters his own name for that of Biggs, his partner. His changes consist mostly of omissions. Letters 99, 114, 117, 122, which are given in full in T. Litchfield’s Tom Wedgwood the First Photographer, are the principal sufferers from Cottle’s treatment. It cannot be said that these omissions amount to a serious charge against Cottle. They were made to avoid bringing in the names of people still alive or whose near relations might object to their names figuring in a publication, and also to avoid obtruding Coleridge’s complaints about his ill-health and his own treatment into notice. His tampering with the letters of Southey, in which he makes Southey say what he never wrote, is not, of course, defensible (see Dykes Campbell’s Life of Coleridge, p. 204 note). Cottle’s longest omission is in Letter 99, to Wedgwood, where Coleridge quotes what Lamb had written to him about Cottle’s own poem Alfred (see Ainger’s Letters of Lamb, i, 138). The omission of such a passage was only to be expected; Cottle was not going to act as his own hangman. Henry Nelson Coleridge, Thomas Noon Talfourd, and even Canon Ainger, and indeed nearly all editors of letters published during the first half of the nineteenth century, took the liberty to discriminate what should be communicated to the public in volumes such as Cottle’s.
Vol. I, p. 50.—The Summer of 1795 should be “the Autumn of 1794;” see Thomas Poole and his Friends, I, 95.
Vol. I, p. 62.—Letter 24 is placed by Cottle in the spring of 1796, but being dated from Stowey, it is possible that this letter may belong to 1797. The revision of the Religious Musings mentioned in the letter would suit 1797 as well as 1796, for the text of that poem differed very widely from that of the First Edition.
Vol. I, p. 97.—The numbered poems in Letter 42, are:
Vol. I, p. 292, Letter 117. Books from Wordsworth’s Library.—“Perhaps one of the most interesting books in the whole selection is Sir T. Browne’s Enquiries into Vulgar and Common Errors, the folio edition of 1658, which contains a long letter to Sara Hutchinson, relative principally to many curious passages in the work, also several MS. marginal notes and corrections, all in the handwriting of S. T. Coleridge, and autographs of Charles Lamb and Mary Wordsworth. The copy of Sir Thomas Browne’s Religio Medici, 1669, contains copious marginal and other MS. annotations by Coleridge, and has this inscription inside the cover, ‘Sara Hutchinson from S. T. C.’”—Athenæum, No. 3579, May 30, 1896.
Vol. II, p. 262, Contemplative melancholy.—The phrase is a variation of “speculative gloom,” which Coleridge used in his original prospectus of the Friend, objected to by Francis Jeffrey (see Letters, ii, 536, note), and afterwards changed into “Dejection of Mind” in the printed Prospectus (see Letter 143, vol. ii, p. 51). The phrase “speculative gloom” was derived from Warton’s Ode for the New Year 1786 (which Coleridge took as his model for his own Ode to the Departing Year):