I would make a shift by some means or other to visit you, if I thought that you and Edith Southey would return with me. I think—indeed, I am almost certain—that I could get a one-horse chaise free of all expense. I have driven back Miss Wordsworth over forty miles of execrable roads, and have been always very cautious, and am now no inexpert whip. And Wordsworth, at whose house I now am for change of air, has commissioned me to offer you a suite of rooms at this place, which is called “All-foxen;” and so divine and wild is the country that I am sure it would increase your stock of images, and three weeks’ absence from Christchurch will endear it to you; and Edith Southey and Sara may not have another opportunity of seeing one another, and Wordsworth is very solicitous to know you, and Miss Wordsworth is a most exquisite young woman in her mind and heart. I pray you write me immediately, directing Stowey, near Bridgewater, as before.

God bless you and your affectionate

S. T. Coleridge.

LXXV. TO JOHN THELWALL.

Saturday morning [October 16], 1797.

My dear Thelwall,—I have just received your letter, having been absent a day or two, and have already, before I write to you, written to Dr. Beddoes. I would to Heaven it were in my power to serve you; but alas! I have neither money or influence, and I suppose that at last I must become a Unitarian minister, as a less evil than starvation. For I get nothing by literature.... You have my wishes and, what is very liberal in me for such an atheist reprobate, my prayers. I can at times feel strongly the beauties you describe, in themselves and for themselves; but more frequently all things appear little, all the knowledge that can be acquired child’s play; the universe itself! what but an immense heap of little things? I can contemplate nothing but parts, and parts are all little! My mind feels as if it ached to behold and know something great, something one and indivisible. And it is only in the faith of that that rocks or waterfalls, mountains or caverns, give me the sense of sublimity or majesty! But in this faith all things counterfeit infinity.

It is but seldom that I raise and spiritualize my intellect to this height; and at other times I adopt the Brahmin creed, and say, “It is better to sit than to stand, it is better to lie than to sit, it is better to sleep than to wake, but Death is the best of all!” I should much wish, like the Indian Vishnu, to float about along an infinite ocean cradled in the flower of the Lotus, and wake once in a million years for a few minutes just to know that I was going to sleep a million years more. I have put this feeling in the mouth of Alhadra, my Moorish Woman. She is going by moonlight to the house of Velez, where the band turn off to wreak their vengeance on Francesco, but

A Moorish priest, who has been with her and then left her to seek the men, had just mentioned the owl, “Its note comes dreariest in the fall of the year.” This dwells on her mind, and she bursts into this soliloquy:—

I do not wonder that your poem procured you kisses and hospitality. It is indeed a very sweet one, and I have not only admired your genius more, but I have loved you better since I have read it. Your sonnet (as you call it, and, being a freeborn Briton, who shall prevent you from calling twenty-five blank verse lines a sonnet, if you have taken a bloody resolution so to do)—your sonnet I am much pleased with; but the epithet “downy” is probably more applicable to Susan’s upper lip than to her bosom, and a mother is so holy and divine a being that I cannot endure any corporealizing epithets to be applied to her or any body of her—besides, damn epithets! The last line and a half I suppose to be miswritten. What can be the meaning of “Or scarce one leaf to cheer,” etc.? “Cornelian virtues”—pedantry! The “melancholy fiend,” villainous in itself, and inaccurate; it ought to be the “fiend that makes melancholy.” I should have written it thus (or perhaps something better), “but with matron cares drives away heaviness;” and in your similes, etc., etc., a little compression would make it a beautiful poem. Study compression!

I presume you mean decorum by Harum Dick. An affected fellow at Bridgwater called truces “trusses.” I told him I admired his pronunciation, for that lately they had been found “to suspend ruptures without curing them.”

There appeared in the “Courier” the day before yesterday a very sensible vindication of the conduct of the Directory. Did you see it?

Your news respecting Mrs. E. did not surprise me. I saw it even from the first week I was at Darley. As to the other event, our non-settlement at Darley, I suspect, had little or nothing to do with it—but the cause of our non-settlement there might perhaps—O God! O God! I wish (but what is the use of wishing?)—I wish that Walter Evans may have talent enough to appreciate Mrs. Evans, but I suspect his intellect is not tall enough even to measure hers.

Hartley is well, and will not walk or run, having discovered the art of crawling with wonderful ease and rapidity. Wordsworth and his sister are well. I want to see your wife. God bless her!...

Oh, my Tragedy! it is finished, transcribed, and to be sent off to-day; but I have no hope of its success, or even of its being acted.

God bless, etc.,

S. T. Coleridge.

Mr. John Thelwall, Derby.

LXXVI. TO THE SAME.

Saturday morning, Bridgwater.
[Autumn, 1797.]

My dear Thelwall,—Yesterday morning I miss’d the coach, and was ill and could not walk. This morning the coach was completely full, but I was not ill, and so did walk; and here I am, footsore very, and weary somewhat. With regard to the business, I mentioned it at Howell’s; but I perceive he is absolutely powerless. Chubb I would have called on, but there are the Assizes, and I find he is surrounded in his own house by a mob of visitors whom it is scarcely possible for him to leave, long enough at least for the conversation I want with him. I will write him to-morrow morning, and shall have an answer the same day, which I will transmit to you on Monday, but you cannot receive it till Tuesday night. If, therefore, you leave Swansea before that time, or, in case of accident, before Wednesday night, leave directions with the postmaster to have your letter forwarded.

I go for Stowey immediately, which will make my walk forty-one miles. The Howells desire to be remembered to you kindly.

I am sad at heart about you on many accounts, but chiefly anxious for this present business. The aristocrats seem to persecute even Wordsworth.[174] But we will at least not yield without a struggle; and if I cannot get you near me, it shall not be for want of a trial on my part. But perhaps I am passing the worn-out spirits of a fag-walk for the real aspect of the business.

God love you, and believe me affectionately your friend,

S. T. Coleridge.

Mr. Thelwall,
To be left at the Post Office, Swansea, Glamorganshire.

LXXVII. TO THE SAME.

[Autumn, 1797.]

Dear Thelwall,—This is the first hour that I could write to you anything decisive. I have received an answer from Chubb, intimating that he will undertake the office of procuring you a cottage, provided it was thought right that you should settle here; but this (that is the whole difficulty) he left for T. Poole and me to settle, and he acquainted Poole with this determination. Consequently, the whole returns to its former situation; and the hope which I had entertained, that you could have settled without any the remotest interference of Poole, has vanished. To such interference on his part there are insuperable difficulties: the whole malignity of the aristocrats will converge to him as to the one point; his tranquillity will be perpetually interrupted, his business and his credit hampered and distressed by vexatious calumnies, the ties of relationship weakened, perhaps broken; and, lastly, his poor old mother made miserable—the pain of the stone aggravated by domestic calamity and quarrels betwixt her son and those neighbours with whom and herself there have been peace and love for these fifty years. Very great odium T. Poole incurred by bringing me here. My peaceable manners and known attachment to Christianity had almost worn it away when Wordsworth came, and he, likewise by T. Poole’s agency, settled here. You cannot conceive the tumult, calumnies, and apparatus of threatened persecutions which this event has occasioned round about us. If you, too, should come, I am afraid that even riots, and dangerous riots, might be the consequence. Either of us separately would perhaps be tolerated, but all three together, what can it be less than plot and damned conspiracy—a school for the propagation of Demagogy and Atheism? And it deserves examination, whether or no as moralists we should be justified in hazarding the certain evil of calling forth malignant passions for the contingent good, that might result from our living in the same neighbourhood? Add to which, that in point of the public interest, we must take into the balance the Stowey Benefit Club. Of the present utility of this T. Poole thinks highly; of its possible utility, very, very highly indeed; but the interests, nay, perhaps the existence of this club, is interwoven with his character as a peaceable and undesigning man; certainly, any future and greater excellence which he hopes to realize in and through the society will vanish like a dream of the morning. If, therefore, you can get the land and cottage near Bath of which you spoke to me, I would advise it on many accounts; but if you still see the arguments on the other side in a stronger light than those which I have stated, come, but not yet. Come in two or three months—take lodgings at Bridgwater—familiarise the people to your name and appearance, and, when the monstrosity of the thing is gone off, and the people shall have begun to consider you as a man whose mouth won’t eat them, and whose pocket is better adapted for a bundle of sonnets than the transportation or ambush place of a French army, then you may take a house; but indeed (I say it with a very sad but a very clear conviction), at present I see that much evil and little good would result from your settling here.

I am unwell. This business has, indeed, preyed much on my spirits, and I have suffered for you more than I hope and trust you will suffer yourself.

God love you and yours.

S. T. Coleridge.

Mr. Thelwall,
To be left at the Post Office, Swansea, Glamorganshire.

LXXVIII. TO WILLIAM WORDSWORTH.

Tuesday morning, January, 1798.

My dear Wordsworth,—You know, of course, that I have accepted the magnificent liberality of Josiah and Thomas Wedgwood.[175] I accepted it on the presumption that I had talents, honesty, and propensities to perseverant effort. If I have hoped wisely concerning myself, I have acted justly. But dismissing severer thoughts, believe me, my dear fellow! that of the pleasant ideas which accompanied this unexpected event, it was not the least pleasant, nor did it pass through my mind the last in the procession, that I should at least be able to trace the spring and early summer at Alfoxden with you, and that wherever your after residence may be, it is probable that you will be within the reach of my tether, lengthened as it now is. The country round Shrewsbury is rather tame. My imagination has clothed it with all its summer attributes; but I still can see in it no possibility beyond that of beauty. The Society here were sufficiently eager to have me as their minister, and, I think, would have behaved kindly and respectfully, but I perceive clearly that without great courage and perseverance in the use of the monosyllabic No! I should have been plunged in a very Maelstrom of visiting—whirled round, and round, and round, never changing yet always moving. Visiting with all its pomp and vanities is the mania of the place; and many of the congregation are both rich and expensive. I met a young man, a Cambridge undergraduate. Talking of plays, etc., he told me that an acquaintance of his was printing a translation of one of Kotzebue’s tragedies, entitled, “Benyowski.”[176] The name startled me, and upon examination I found that the story of my “Siberian Exiles” has been already dramatized. If Kotzebue has exhibited no greater genius in it than in his negro slaves, I shall consider this as an unlucky circumstance; but the young man speaks enthusiastically of its merits. I have just read the “Castle Spectre,” and shall bring it home with me. I will begin with its defects, in order that my “But” may have a charitable transition. 1. Language; 2. Character; 3. Passion; 4. Sentiment; 5. Conduct. (1.) Of styles, some are pleasing durably and on reflection, some only in transition, and some are not pleasing at all; and to this latter class belongs the “Castle Spectre.”[177] There are no felicities in the humorous passages; and in the serious ones it is Schiller Lewis-ized, that is, a flat, flabby, unimaginative bombast oddly sprinkled with colloquialisms. (2.) No character at all. The author in a postscript lays claim to novelty in one of his characters, that of Hassan. Now Hassan is a negro, who had a warm and benevolent heart; but having been kidnapped from his country and barbarously used by the Christians, becomes a misanthrope. This is all!! (3.) Passion—horror! agonizing pangs of conscience! Dreams full of hell, serpents, and skeletons; starts and attempted murders, etc., but positively, not one line that marks even a superficial knowledge of human feelings could I discover. (4.) Sentiments are moral and humorous. There is a book called the “Frisky Songster,” at the end of which are two chapters: the first containing frisky toasts and sentiments, the second, “Moral Toasts,” and from these chapters I suspect Mr. Lewis has stolen all his sentimentality, moral and humorous. A very fat friar, renowned for gluttony and lubricity, furnishes abundance of jokes (all of them abdominal vel si quid infra), jokes that would have stunk, had they been fresh, and alas! they have the very sæva mephitis of antiquity on them. But (5.) the Conduct of the Piece is, I think, good; except that the first act is wholly taken up with explanation and narration. This play proves how accurately you conjectured concerning theatric merit. The merit of the “Castle Spectre” consists wholly in its situations. These are all borrowed and all absolutely pantomimical; but they are admirably managed for stage effect. There is not much bustle, but situations for ever. The whole plot, machinery, and incident are borrowed. The play is a mere patchwork of plagiarisms; but they are very well worked up, and for stage effect make an excellent whole. There is a pretty little ballad-song introduced, and Lewis, I think has great and peculiar excellence in these compositions. The simplicity and naturalness is his own, and not imitated; for it is made to subsist in congruity with a language perfectly modern, the language of his own times, in the same way that the language of the writer of “Sir Cauline” was the language of his times. This, I think, a rare merit: at least, I find, I cannot attain this innocent nakedness, except by assumption. I resemble the Duchess of Kingston, who masqueraded in the character of “Eve before the Fall,” in flesh-coloured Silk. This play struck me with utter hopelessness. It would [be easy] to produce these situations, but not in a play so [constructed] as to admit the permanent and closest beauties of style, passion, and character. To admit pantomimic tricks, the plot itself must be pantomimic. Harlequin cannot be had unaccompanied by the Fool.

I hope to be with you by the middle of next week. I must stay over next Sunday, as Mr. Row is obliged to go to Bristol to seek a house. He and his family are honest, sensible, pleasant people. My kind love to Dorothy, and believe me, with affectionate esteem, yours sincerely,

S. T. Coleridge.[178]

LXXIX. TO JOSEPH COTTLE.

Stowey, March 8, 1798.

My dear Cottle,—I have been confined to my bed for some days through a fever occasioned by the stump of a tooth.... I thank you, my dear friend, for your late kindness, and in a few weeks will either repay you in money or by verses, as you like. With regard to Lloyd’s verses, it is curious that I should be applied to to be “persuaded to resign, and in hope that I might” consent to give up a number of poems which were published at the earnest request of the author, who assured me that the circumstance was “of no trivial import to his happiness.” Times change and people change; but let us keep our souls in quietness! I have no objection to any disposal of C. Lloyd’s poems, except that of their being republished with mine. The motto which I had prefixed, “Duplex,” etc.,[179] from Groscollius, has placed me in a ridiculous situation; but it was a foolish and presumptuous start of affectionateness, and I am not unwilling to incur punishments due to my folly. By past experiences we build up our moral being. How comes it that I have never heard from dear Mr. Estlin, my fatherly and brotherly friend? This idea haunted me through my sleepless nights, till my sides were sore in turning from one to the other, as if I were hoping to turn from the idea. The Giant Wordsworth—God love him! Even when I speak in the terms of admiration due to his intellect, I fear lest those terms should keep out of sight the amiableness of his manners.... He has written more than 1,200 lines of a blank verse, superior, I hesitate not to aver, to anything in our language which any way resembles it. Poole (whom I feel so consolidated with myself that I seem to have no occasion to speak of him out of myself) thinks of it as likely to benefit mankind much more than anything Wordsworth has yet written. With regard to my poems, I shall prefix the “Maid of Orleans,” 1,000 lines, and three blank verse poems, making all three about 200, and I shall utterly leave out perhaps a larger quantity of lines; and I should think it would answer to you in a pecuniary way to print the third edition humbly and cheaply. My alterations in the “Religious Musings” will be considerable, and will lengthen the poem. Oh, Poole desires you not to mention his house to any one unless you hear from him again, as since I have been writing a thought has struck us of letting it to an inhabitant of the village, which we should prefer, as we should be certain that his manners would be severe, inasmuch as he would be a Stow-ic.

God bless you and

S. T. C.

LXXX. TO THE REV. GEORGE COLERIDGE.

April, 1798.

My dear Brother,—An illness, which confined me to my bed, prevented me from returning an immediate answer to your kind and interesting letter. My indisposition originated in the stump of a tooth over which some matter had formed; this affected my eye, my eye my stomach, my stomach my head, and the consequence was a general fever, and the sum of pain was considerably increased by the vain attempts of our surgeon to extract the offending member. Laudanum gave me repose, not sleep; but you, I believe, know how divine that repose is, what a spot of enchantment, a green spot of fountain and flowers and trees in the very heart of a waste of sands! God be praised, the matter has been absorbed; and I am now recovering apace, and enjoy that newness of sensation from the fields, the air, and the sun which makes convalescence almost repay one for disease. I collect from your letter that our opinions and feelings on political subjects are more nearly alike than you imagine them to be. Equally with you (and perhaps with a deeper conviction, for my belief is founded on actual experience), equally with you I deprecate the moral and intellectual habits of those men, both in England and France, who have modestly assumed to themselves the exclusive title of Philosophers and Friends of Freedom. I think them at least as distant from greatness as from goodness. If I know my own opinions, they are utterly untainted with French metaphysics, French politics, French ethics, and French theology. As to the Rulers of France, I see in their views, speeches, and actions nothing that distinguishes them to their advantage from other animals of the same species. History has taught me that rulers are much the same in all ages, and under all forms of government; they are as bad as they dare to be. The vanity of ruin and the curse of blindness have clung to them like an hereditary leprosy. Of the French Revolution I can give my thoughts most adequately in the words of Scripture: “A great and strong wind rent the mountains, and brake in pieces the rocks before the Lord; but the Lord was not in the wind; and after the wind an earthquake; and after the earthquake a fire; and the Lord was not in the fire;” and now (believing that no calamities are permitted but as the means of good) I wrap my face in my mantle and wait, with a subdued and patient thought, expecting to hear “the still small voice” which is of God. In America (I have received my information from unquestionable authority) the morals and domestic habits of the people are daily deteriorating; and one good consequence which I expect from revolution is that individuals will see the necessity of individual effort; that they will act as good Christians, rather than as citizens and electors; and so by degrees will purge off that error, which to me appears as wild and more pernicious than the πάγχρυσον and panacea of the alchemists, the error of attributing to governments a talismanic influence over our virtues and our happiness, as if governments were not rather effects than causes. It is true that all effects react and become causes, and so it must be in some degree with governments; but there are other agents which act more powerfully because by a nigher and more continuous agency, and it remains true that governments are more the effect than the cause of that which we are. Do not therefore, my brother, consider me as an enemy to government and its rulers, or as one who says they are evil. I do not say so. In my opinion it were a species of blasphemy! Shall a nation of drunkards presume to babble against sickness and the headache? I regard governments as I regard the abscesses produced by certain fevers—they are necessary consequences of the disease, and by their pain they increase the disease; but yet they are in the wisdom and goodness of Nature, and not only are they physically necessary as effects, but also as causes they are morally necessary in order to prevent the utter dissolution of the patient. But what should we think of a man who expected an absolute cure from an ulcer that only prevented his dying. Of guilt I say nothing, but I believe most steadfastly in original sin; that from our mothers’ wombs our understandings are darkened; and even where our understandings are in the light, that our organization is depraved and our volitions imperfect; and we sometimes see the good without wishing to attain it, and oftener wish it without the energy that wills and performs. And for this inherent depravity I believe that the spirit of the Gospel is the sole cure; but permit me to add, that I look for the spirit of the Gospel “neither in the mountain, nor at Jerusalem.”

You think, my brother, that there can be but two parties at present, for the Government and against the Government. It may be so. I am of no party. It is true I think the present Ministry weak and unprincipled men; but I would not with a safe conscience vote for their removal; I could point out no substitutes. I think very seldom on the subject; but as far as I have thought, I am inclined to consider the aristocrats as the most respectable of our three factions, because they are more decorous. The Opposition and the Democrats are not only vicious, they wear the filthy garments of vice.

I am prepared to suffer without discontent the consequences of my follies and mistakes; and unable to conceive how that which I am of Good could have been without that which I have been of evil, it is withheld from me to regret anything. I therefore consent to be deemed a Democrat and a Seditionist. A man’s character follows him long after he has ceased to deserve it; but I have snapped my squeaking baby-trumpet of sedition, and the fragments lie scattered in the lumber-room of penitence. I wish to be a good man and a Christian, but I am no Whig, no Reformist, no Republican, and because of the multitude of fiery and undisciplined spirits that lie in wait against the public quiet under these titles, because of them I chiefly accuse the present ministers, to whose folly I attribute, in a great measure, their increased and increasing numbers. You think differently, and if I were called upon by you to prove my assertions, although I imagine I could make them appear plausible, yet I should feel the insufficiency of my data. The Ministers may have had in their possession facts which alter the whole state of the argument, and make my syllogisms fall as flat as a baby’s card-house. And feeling this, my brother! I have for some time past withdrawn myself totally from the consideration of immediate causes, which are infinitely complex and uncertain, to muse on fundamental and general causes the “causæ causarum.” I devote myself to such works as encroach not on the anti-social passions—in poetry, to elevate the imagination and set the affections in right tune by the beauty of the inanimate impregnated as with a living soul by the presence of life—in prose to the seeking with patience and a slow, very slow mind, “Quid sumus, et quidnam victuri gignimus,”—what our faculties are and what they are capable of becoming. I love fields and woods and mountains with almost a visionary fondness. And because I have found benevolence and quietness growing within me as that fondness has increased, therefore I should wish to be the means of implanting it in others, and to destroy the bad passions not by combating them but by keeping them in inaction.

I have laid down for myself two maxims, and, what is more I am in the habit of regulating myself by them. With regard to others, I never controvert opinions except after some intimacy, and when alone with the person, and at the happy time when we both seem awake to our own fallibility, and then I rather state my reasons than argue against his. In general conversation to find out the opinions common to us, or at least the subjects on which difference of opinion creates no uneasiness, such as novels, poetry, natural scenery, local anecdotes, and (in a serious mood and with serious men) the general evidences of our religion. With regard to myself, it is my habit, on whatever subject I think, to endeavour to discover all the good that has resulted from it, that does result, or that can result. To this I bind down my mind, and after long meditation in this tract slowly and gradually make up my opinions on the quantity and nature of the evil. I consider this as the most important rule for the regulation of the intellect and the affections, as the only means of preventing the passions from turning reason into a hired advocate. I thank you for your kindness, and propose in a short time to walk down to you: but my wife must forego the thought, as she is within five or six weeks of lying-in. She and my child, whose name is David Hartley, are remarkably well. You will give my duty to my mother, and love to my brothers, to Mrs. S. and G. Coleridge.

Excuse my desultory style and illegible scrawl, for I have written you a long letter, you see, and am in truth too weary to write a fair copy of it, or rearrange my ideas, and I am anxious you should know me as I am.

God bless you, from your affectionate brother,

S. T. Coleridge.

LXXXI. TO REV. J. P. ESTLIN.[182]

May [? 1798].

My dear Friend,—I write from Cross, to which place I accompanied Mr. Wordsworth, who will give you this letter. We visited Cheddar, but his main business was to bring back poor Lloyd, whose infirmities have been made the instruments of another man’s darker passions. But Lloyd (as we found by a letter that met us in the road) is off for Birmingham. Wordsworth proceeds, lest possibly Lloyd may not be gone, and likewise to see his own Bristol friends, as he is so near them. I have now known him a year and some months, and my admiration, I might say my awe, of his intellectual powers has increased even to this hour, and (what is of more importance) he is a tried good man. On one subject we are habitually silent; we found our data dissimilar, and never renewed the subject. It is his practice and almost his nature to convey all the truth he knows without any attack on what he supposes falsehood, if that falsehood be interwoven with virtues or happiness. He loves and venerates Christ and Christianity. I wish he did more, but it were wrong indeed if an incoincidence with one of our wishes altered our respect and affection to a man of whom we are, as it were, instructed by one great Master to say that not being against us he is for us. His genius is most apparent in poetry, and rarely, except to me in tête-à-tête, breaks forth in conversational eloquence. My best and most affectionate wishes attend Mrs. Estlin and your little ones, and believe me, with filial and fraternal friendship, your grateful

S. T. Coleridge.

Rev. J. P. Estlin,
St. Michael’s Hill, Bristol.

LXXXII. TO THE SAME.

Monday, May 14, 1798.

My dear Friend,—I ought to have written to you before; and have done very wrong in not writing. But I have had many sorrows and some that bite deep; calumny and ingratitude from men who have been fostered in the bosom of my confidence! I pray God that I may sanctify these events by forgiveness and a peaceful spirit full of love. This morning, half-past one, my wife was safely delivered of a fine boy;[183] she had a remarkably good time, better if possible than her last, and both she and the child are as well as can be. By the by, it is only three in the morning now. I walked in to Taunton and back again, and performed the divine services for Dr. Toulmin. I suppose you must have heard that his daughter, in a melancholy derangement, suffered herself to be swallowed up by the tide on the sea-coast between Sidmouth and Bere. These events cut cruelly into the hearts of old men; but the good Dr. Toulmin bears it like the true practical Christian,—there is indeed a tear in his eye, but that eye is lifted up to the Heavenly Father. I have been too neglectful of practical religion—I mean, actual and stated prayer, and a regular perusal of scripture as a morning and evening duty. May God grant me grace to amend this error, for it is a grievous one! Conscious of frailty I almost wish (I say it confidentially to you) that I had become a stated minister, for indeed I find true joy after a sincere prayer; but for want of habit my mind wanders, and I cannot pray as often as I ought. Thanksgiving is pleasant in the performance; but prayer and distinct confession I find most serviceable to my spiritual health when I can do it. But though all my doubts are done away, though Christianity is my passion, it is too much my intellectual passion, and therefore will do me but little good in the hour of temptation and calamity.

My love to Mrs. E. and the dear little ones, and ever, O ever, believe me, with true affection and gratitude,

Your filial friend,
S. T. Coleridge.

LXXXIII. TO THOMAS POOLE.

Monday, May 14, 1798.
Morning, 10 o’clock.

My dearest Friend,—I have been sitting many minutes with my pen in my hand, full of prayers and wishes for you, and the house of affliction in which you have so trying a part to sustain—but I know not what to write. May God support you! May he restore your brother—but above all, I pray that he will make us able to cry out with a fervent sincerity: Thy will be done! I have had lately some sorrows that have cut more deeply into my heart than they ought to have done, and I have found religion, and commonplace religion too, my restorer and my comfort, giving me gentleness and calmness and dignity! Again and again, may God be with you, my best, dear friend! and believe me, my Poole! dearer, to my understanding and affections unitedly, than all else in the world!

It is almost painful and a thing of fear to tell you that I have another boy; it will bring upon your mind the too affecting circumstance of poor Mrs. Richard Poole! The prayers which I have offered for her have been a relief to my own mind; I would that they could have been a consolation to her. Scripture seems to teach us that our fervent prayers are not without efficacy, even for others; and though my reason is perplexed, yet my internal feelings impel me to a humble faith, that it is possible and consistent with the divine attributes.

Poor Dr. Toulmin! he bears his calamity like one in whom a faith through Jesus is the Habit of the whole man, of his affections still more than of his convictions. The loss of a dear child in so frightful a way cuts cruelly with an old man, but though there is a tear and an anguish in his eye, that eye is raised to heaven.

Sara was safely delivered at half past one this morning—the boy is already almost as large as Hartley. She had an astonishingly good time, better if possible than her last; and excepting her weakness, is as well as ever. The child is strong and shapely, and has the paternal beauty in his upper lip. God be praised for all things.

Your affectionate and entire friend,
S. T. Coleridge.

LXXXIV. TO THE SAME.

Sunday evening [May 20, 1798].

My dearest Poole,—I was all day yesterday in a distressing perplexity whether or no it would be wise or consolatory for me to call at your house, or whether I should write to your mother, as a Christian friend, or whether it would not be better to wait for the exhaustion of that grief which must have its way.

So many unpleasant and shocking circumstances have happened to me in my immediate knowledge within the last fortnight, that I am in a nervous state, and the most trifling thing makes me weep. Poor Richard! May Providence heal the wounds which it hath seen good to inflict!

Do you wish me to see you to-day? Shall I call on you? Shall I stay with you? or had I better leave you uninterrupted? In all your sorrows as in your joys, I am, indeed, my dearest Poole, a true and faithful sharer!

May God bless and comfort you all!

S. T. Coleridge.

LXXXV. TO CHARLES LAMB.[184]

[Spring of 1798.]

Dear Lamb,—Lloyd has informed me through Miss Wordsworth that you intend no longer to correspond with me. This has given me little pain; not that I do not love and esteem you, but on the contrary because I am confident that your intentions are pure. You are performing what you deem a duty, and humanly speaking have that merit which can be derived from the performance of a painful duty. Painful, for you would not without struggles abandon me in behalf of a man[185] who, wholly ignorant of all but your name, became attached to you in consequence of my attachment, caught his from my enthusiasm, and learned to love you at my fireside, when often while I have been sitting and talking of your sorrows and afflictions I have stopped my conversations and lifted up wet eyes and prayed for you. No! I am confident that although you do not think as a wise man, you feel as a good man.

From you I have received little pain, because for you I suffer little alarm. I cannot say this for your friend; it appears to me evident that his feelings are vitiated, and that his ideas are in their combination merely the creatures of those feelings. I have received letters from him, and the best and kindest wish which, as a Christian, I can offer in return is that he may feel remorse.

Some brief resentments rose in my mind, but they did not remain there; for I began to think almost immediately, and my resentments vanished. There has resulted only a sort of fantastic scepticism concerning my own consciousness of my own rectitude. As dreams have impressed on him the sense of reality, my sense of reality may be but a dream. From his letters it is plain that he has mistaken the heat and bustle and swell of self-justification for the approbation of his conscience. I am certain that this is not the case with me, but the human heart is so wily and inventive that possibly it may be cheating me, who am an older warrior, with some newer stratagem. When I wrote to you that my Sonnet to Simplicity[186] was not composed with reference to Southey, you answered me (I believe these were the words): “It was a lie too gross for the grossest ignorance to believe;” and I was not angry with you, because the assertion which the grossest ignorance would believe a lie the Omniscient knew to be truth. This, however, makes me cautious not too hastily to affirm the falsehood of an assertion of Lloyd’s that in Edmund Oliver’s[187] love-fit, leaving college, and going into the army he had no sort of allusion to or recollection of my love-fit, leaving college, and going into the army, and that he never thought of my person in the description of Oliver’s person in the first letter of the second volume. This cannot appear stranger to me than my assertion did to you, and therefore I will suspend my absolute faith.

I wrote to you not that I wish to hear from you, but that I wish you to write to Lloyd and press upon him the propriety, nay the necessity, of his giving me a meeting either tête-à-tête or in the presence of all whose esteem I value. This I owe to my own character; I owe it to him if by any means he may even yet be extricated. He assigned as reasons for his rupture my vices; and he is either right or wrong. If right, it is fit that others should know it and follow his example; if wrong, he has acted very wrong. At present, I may expect everything from his heated mind rather than continence of language, and his assertions will be the more readily believed on account of his former enthusiastic attachment, though with wise men this would cast a hue of suspicion over the whole affair; but the number of wise men in the kingdom would not puzzle a savage’s arithmetic—you may tell them in every [community] on your fingers. I have been unfortunate in my connections. Both you and Lloyd became acquainted with me when your minds were far from being in a composed or natural state, and you clothed my image with a suit of notions and feelings which could belong to nothing human. You are restored to comparative saneness, and are merely wondering what is become of the Coleridge with whom you were so passionately in love; Charles Lloyd’s mind has only changed his disease, and he is now arraying his ci-devant Angel in a flaming San Benito—the whole ground of the garment a dark brimstone and plenty of little devils flourished out in black. Oh, me! Lamb, “even in laughter the heart is sad!” My kindness, my affectionateness, he deems wheedling; but, if after reading all my letters to yourself and to him, you can suppose him wise in his treatment and correct in his accusations of me, you think worse of human nature than poor human nature, bad as it is, deserves to be thought of.

God bless you and
S. T. Coleridge.

CHAPTER IV
A VISIT TO GERMANY
1798-1799

CHAPTER IV
A VISIT TO GERMANY
1798-1799

The letters which Coleridge wrote from Germany were, with few exceptions, addressed either to his wife or to Poole. They have never been published in full, but during his life and since his death various extracts have appeared in print. The earlier letters descriptive of his voyage, his two visits to Hamburg, his interviews with Klopstock, and his settlement at Ratzeburg were published as “Satyrane’s Letters,” first in November-December, 1809, in Nos. 14, 16, and 18 of “The Friend,” and again, in 1817, in the “Biographia Literaria” (ii. 183-253). Two extracts from letters to his wife, dated respectively January 14 and April 8, 1799, appeared in No. 19 of “The Friend,” December 28, 1809, as “Christmas Indoors in North Germany,” and “Christmas Out of Doors.” In 1828, Coleridge placed a selection of unpublished letters from Germany in the hands of the late S. C. Hall, who printed portions of two (dated “Clausthal, May 17, 1799”) in the “Amulet” of 1829, under the title of “Fragments of a Journal of a Tour over the Brocken, by S. T. Coleridge.” The same extract is included in Gillman’s “Life of Coleridge,” pp. 125, 138.

After Coleridge’s death, Mr. Hall published in the “New Monthly Magazine” (1835, No. 45, pp. 211-226) the three last letters from Germany, dated May 17, 18, and 19, which include the “Tour over the Brocken.” Selections from Coleridge’s letters to Poole of April 8 and May 6, 1799, were published by Mrs. Sandford in “Thomas Poole and his Friends” (i. 295-299), and four letters from Poole to Coleridge are included in the same volume (pp. 277-294). A hitherto unpublished letter from Coleridge to his wife, dated January 14, 1799, appeared in “The Illustrated London News,” April 29, 1893. For further particulars relative to Coleridge’s life in Germany, see Carlyon’s “Early Years,” etc., 1856, i. 26-198, passim, and Brandl’s “Life of Coleridge,” 1887, pp. 230-252.

LXXXVI. TO THOMAS POOLE.

September 15, 1798.

My very dear Poole,—We have arrived at Yarmouth just in time to be hurried into the packet—and four or five letters of recommendation have been taken away from me, owing to their being wafered. Wedgwood’s luckily were not.

I am at the point of leaving my native country for the first time—a country which God Almighty knows is dear to me above all things for the love I bear to you. Of many friends whom I love and esteem, my head and heart have ever chosen you as the friend—as the one being in whom is involved the full and whole meaning of that sacred title. God love you, my dear Poole! and your faithful and most affectionate

S. T. Coleridge.

P. S. We may be only two days, we may be a fortnight going. The same of the packet that returns. So do not let my poor Sara be alarmed if she do not hear from me. I will write alternately to you and her, twice every week during my absence. May God preserve us, and make us continue to be joy, and comfort, and wisdom, and virtue to each other, my dear, dear Poole!

LXXXVII. TO HIS WIFE.

Hamburg, September 19, 1798.

Over what place does the moon hang to your eye, my dearest Sara? To me it hangs over the left bank of the Elbe, and a long trembling road of moonlight reaches from thence up to the stern of our vessel, and there it ends. We have dropped anchor in the middle of the stream, thirty miles from Cuxhaven, where we arrived this morning at eleven o’clock, after an unusually fine passage of only forty-eight hours. The Captain agreed to take all the passengers up to Hamburg for ten guineas; my share amounted only to half a guinea. We shall be there, if no fogs intervene, to-morrow morning. Chester was ill the whole voyage; Wordsworth shockingly ill; his sister worst of all, and I neither sick nor giddy, but gay as a lark. The sea rolled rather high, but the motion was pleasant to me. The stink of a sea cabin in a packet (what with the bilge-water, and what from the crowd of sick passengers) is horrible. I remained chiefly on deck. We left Yarmouth Sunday morning, September 16, at eleven o’clock. Chester and Wordsworth ill immediately. Our passengers were: ‡Wordsworth, ✴Chester, S. T. Coleridge, a Dane, second Dane, third Dane, a Prussian, a Hanoverian and ✴his servant, a German tailor and his ✴wife, a French ‡emigrant and ✴French servant, ✴two English gentlemen, and ‡a Jew. All these with the prefix ✴ were sick, those marked ‡ horribly sick. The view of Yarmouth from the sea is interesting; besides, it was English ground that was flying away from me. When we lost sight of land, the moment that we quite lost sight of it and the heavens all round me rested upon the waters, my dear babes came upon me like a flash of lightning; I saw their faces[188] so distinctly! This day enriched me with characters, and I passed it merrily. Each of those characters I will delineate to you in my journal, which you and Poole alternately will receive regularly as soon as I arrive at any settled place, which will be in a week. Till then I can do little more than give you notice of my safety and my faithful affection to you (but the journal will commence from the day of my arrival at London, and give every day’s occurrence, etc.). I have it written, but I have neither paper or time to transcribe it. I trust nothing to memory. The Ocean is a noble thing by night; a beautiful white cloud of foam at momentary intervals roars and rushes by the side of the vessel, and stars of flame dance and sparkle and go out in it, and every now and then light detachments of foam dart away from the vessel’s side with their galaxies of stars and scour out of sight like a Tartar troop over a wilderness. What these stars are I cannot say; the sailors say they are fish spawn, which is phosphorescent. The noisy passengers swear in all their languages, with drunken hiccups, that I shall write no more, and I must join them. Indeed, they present a rich feast for a dramatist. My kind love to Mrs. Poole (with what wings of swiftness would I fly home if I could find something in Germany to do her good!). Remember me affectionately to Ward, and my love to the Chesters (Bessy, Susan, and Julia) and to Cruickshank, etc., etc., Ellen and Mary when you see them, and to Lavinia Poole and Harriet and Sophy, and be sure to give my kind love to Nanny. I associate so much of Hartley’s infancy with her, so many of his figures, looks, words, and antics with her form, that I shall never cease to think of her, poor girl! without interest. Tell my best good friend, my dear Poole! that all his manuscripts, with Wordsworth’s Tragedy, are safe in Josiah Wedgwood’s hands; and they will be returned to him together. Good-night, my dear, dear Sara!—“every night when I go to bed, and every morning when I rise,” I will think with yearning love of you and of my blessed babies! Once more, my dear Sara! good-night.

Wednesday afternoon, four o’clock.—We are safe in Hamburg—an ugly city that stinks in every corner, house, and room worse than cabins, sea-sickness, or bilge-water! The hotels are all crowded. With great difficulty we have procured a very filthy room at a large expense; but we shall move to-morrow. We get very excellent claret for a trifle—a guinea sells at present for more than twenty-three shillings here. But for all particulars I must refer your patience to my journal, and I must get some proper paper—I shall have to pay a shilling or eighteenpence with every letter. N. B. Johnson the bookseller, without any poems sold to him, but purely out of affection conceived for me, and as part of anything I might do for him, gave me an order on Remnant at Hamburg for thirty pounds. The “Epea Pteroenta,” an Essay on Population, and a “History of Paraguay,” will come down for me directed to Poole, and for Poole’s reading. Likewise I have desired Johnson to print in quarto[189] a little poem of mine, one of which quartos must be sent to my brother, Rev. G. C., Ottery St. Mary, carriage paid. Did you receive my letter directed in a different hand, with the 30l. banknote? The “Morning Post” and Magazine will come to you as before. If not regularly, Stuart desires that you will write to him. I pray you, my dear love! read Edgeworth’s “Essay on Education”—read it heart and soul, and if you approve of the mode, teach Hartley his letters. I am very desirous that you should teach him to read; and they point out some easy modes. J. Wedgwood informed me that the Edgeworths were most miserable when children; and yet the father in his book is ever vapouring about their happiness. However, there are very good things in the work—and some nonsense.

Kiss my Hartley and Bercoo baby brodder (kiss them for their dear father, whose heart will never be absent from them many hours together). My dear Sara! I think of you with affection and a desire to be home, and in the full and noblest sense of the word, and after the antique principles of Religion, unsophisticated by Philosophy, will be, I trust, your husband faithful unto death,

S. T. Coleridge.

Wednesday night, eleven o’clock.—The sky and colours of the clouds are quite English, just as if I were coming out of T. Poole’s homeward with you in my arm.

LXXXVIII. TO THE SAME.

[Ratzeburg], October 20, 1798.

... But I must check these feelings and write more collectedly. I am well, my dear Love! very well, and my situation is in all respects comfortable. My room is large and healthy; the house commands an enchanting prospect. The pastor is worthy and a learned man—a widower with eight children, five of whom are at home. The German language is spoken here in the utmost purity. The children often stand round my sofa and chatter away; and the little one of all corrects my pronunciation with a pretty pert lisp and self-sufficient tone, while the others laugh with no little joyance. The Gentry and Nobility here pay me almost an adulatory attention. There is a very beautiful little woman—less, I think, than you—a Countess Kilmansig;[190] her father is our Lord Howe’s cousin. She is the wife of a very handsome man, and has two fine little children. I have quite won her heart by a German poem which I wrote. It is that sonnet, “Charles! my slow heart was only sad when first,” and considerably dilated with new images, and much superior in the German to its former dress. It has excited no small wonder here for its purity and harmony. I mention this as a proof of my progress in the language—indeed, it has surprised myself; but I want to be home, and I work hard, very hard, to shorten the time of absence. The little Countess said to me, “Oh! Englishmen be always sehr gut fathers and husbands. I hope dat you will come and lofe my little babies, and I will sing to you and play on the guitar and the pianoforte; and my dear huspan he sprachs sehr gut English, and he lofes England better than all the world.” (Sehr gut is very good; sprach, speaks or talks.) She is a sweet little woman, and, what is very rare in Germany, she has perfectly white, regular, French teeth. I could give you many instances of the ridiculous partiality, or rather madness, for the English. One of the first things which strikes an Englishman is the German cards. They are very different from ours; the court cards have two heads, a very convenient thing, as it prevents the necessity of turning the cards and betraying your hand, and are smaller and cost only a penny; yet the envelope in which they are sold has “Wahrlich Englische Karten,” that is, genuine English cards. I bought some sticking-plaister yesterday; it cost twopence a very large piece, but it was three-halfpence farthing too dear—for indeed it looked like a nasty rag of black silk which cat or mouse dung had stained and spotted—but this was “Königl. Pat. Engl. Im. Pflaster,” that is, Royal Patent English Ornament Plaister. They affect to write English over their doors. One house has “English Lodgement and Caffee Hous!” But the most amusing of all is an advertisement of a quack medicine of the same class with Dr. Solomon’s and Brody’s, for the spirits and all weakness of mind and body. What, think you? “A wonderful and secret Essence extracted with patience and God’s blessing from the English Oaks, and from that part thereof which the heroic sailors of that Great Nation call the Heart of Oak. This invaluable and infallible Medicine has been godlily extracted therefrom by the slow processes of the Sun and magnetical Influences of the Planets and fixed Stars.” This is a literal translation. At the concert, when I entered, the band played “Britannia rule the waves,” and at the dinner which was given in honour of Nelson’s victory, twenty-one guns were fired by order of the military Governor, and between each firing the military band played an English tune. I never saw such enthusiasm, or heard such tumultuous shouting, as when the Governor gave as a toast, “The Great Nation.” By this name they always designate England, in opposition to the same title self-assumed by France. The military Governor is a pleasant man, and both he and the Amtmann (i. e. the civil regent) are particularly attentive to me. I am quite domesticated in the house of the latter; his first wife was an English woman, and his partiality for England is without bounds. God bless you, my Love! Write me a very, very long letter; write me all that can cheer me; all that will make my eyes swim and my heart melt with tenderness! Your faithful and affectionate husband,

S. T. Coleridge.

P. S. A dinner lasts not uncommonly three hours!

LXXXIX. TO THE SAME.

Ratzeburg, November 26, 1798.

Another and another and yet another post day; and still Chester greets me with, “No letters from England!” A knell, that strikes out regularly four times a week. How is this, my Love? Why do you not write to me? Do you think to shorten my absence by making it insupportable to me? Or perhaps you anticipate that if I received a letter I should idly turn away from my German to dream of you—of you and my beloved babies! Oh, yes! I should indeed dream of you for hours and hours; of you, and of beloved Poole, and of the infant that sucks at your breast, and of my dear, dear Hartley. You would be present, you would be with me in the air that I breathe; and I should cease to see you only when the tears rolled out of my eyes, and this naked, undomestic room became again visible. But oh, with what leaping and exhilarated faculties should I return to the objects and realities of my mission. But now—nay, I cannot describe to you the gloominess of thought, the burthen and sickness of heart, which I experience every post day. Through the whole remaining day I am incapable of everything but anxious imaginations, of sore and fretful feelings. The Hamburg newspapers arrive here four times a week; and almost every newspaper commences with, “Schreiben aus London—They write from London.” This day’s, with schreiben aus London, vom November 13. But I am certain that you have written more than once; and I stumble about in dark and idle conjectures, how and by what means it can have happened that I have not received your letters. I recommence my journal, but with feelings that approach to disgust—for in very truth I have nothing interesting to relate.