CCXIX. TO CHARLES AUGUSTUS TULK.[163]

Highgate, Thursday evening, 1818.

Dear Sir,—As an innocent female often blushes not at any image which had risen in her own mind, but from a confused apprehension of some x y z that might be attributed to her by others, so did I feel uncomfortable at the odd coincidence of my commending to you the late Swedenborgian advertisement. But when I came home I simply asked Mrs. G. if she remembered my having read to her such an address. She instantly replied not only in the affirmative, but mentioned the circumstance of my having expressed a sort of half-inclination, half-intention of addressing a letter to the chairman mentioning my receipt of a book of which I highly approved, and requesting him to transmit my acknowledgments, if, as was probable, the author was known to him or any of the gentlemen with him. I asked her then if she had herself read the advertisement? “Yes, and I carried it to Mr. Gillman, saying how much you had been pleased with the style and the freedom from the sectarian spirit.” “And do you recollect the name of the Chairman?” “No! why, bless me! could it be Mr. Tulk?” Very nearly the same conversation took place with Mr. Gillman afterwards. I can readily account for the fact in myself; for first I never recollect any persons by their names, and have fallen into some laughable perplexities by this specific catalepsy of memory, such as accepting an invitation in the streets from a face perfectly familiar to me, and being afterwards unable to attach the name and habitat thereto; and secondly, that the impression made by a conversation that appeared to me altogether accidental and by your voice and person had been completed before I heard your name; and lastly, the more habitual thinking is to any one, the larger share has the relation of cause and effect in producing recognition. But it is strange that neither Mrs. or Mr. Gillman should have recollected the name, though probably the accidentality of having made your acquaintance, and its being at Little Hampton, and associated with our having at the same time and by a similar accidental rencontre become acquainted with the Rev. Mr. Cary and his family, overlaid any former relique of a man’s name in Mrs. G. as well as myself.

I return you Blake’s poesies,[164] metrical and graphic, with thanks. With this and the book, I have sent a rude scrawl as to the order in which I was pleased by the several poems.

With respectful compliments to Mrs. Tulk, I remain, dear sir, your obliged

S. T. Coleridge.

Thursday evening, Highgate.

Blake’s Poems.—I begin with my dyspathies that I may forget them, and have uninterrupted space for loves and sympathies. Title-page and the following emblem contain all the faults of the drawings with as few beauties as could be in the compositions of a man who was capable of such faults and such beauties. The faulty despotism in symbols amounting in the title-page to the μισητὸν, and occasionally, irregular unmodified lines of the inanimate, sometimes as the effect of rigidity and sometimes of exossation like a wet tendon. So likewise the ambiguity of the drapery. Is it a garment or the body incised and scored out? The lumpness (the effect of vinegar on an egg) in the upper one of the two prostrate figures in the title-page, and the straight line down the waistcoat of pinky goldbeaters’ skin in the next drawing, with the I don’t-know-whatness of the countenance, as if the mouth had been formed by the habit of placing the tongue not contemptuously, but stupidly, between the lower gums and the lower jaw—these are the only repulsive faults I have noticed. The figure, however, of the second leaf, abstracted from the expression of the countenance given it by something about the mouth, and the interspace from the lower lip to the chin, is such as only a master learned in his art could produce.

N. B. I signifies “It gave me great pleasure.” Ɨ, “Still greater.” ƗƗ, “And greater still,” Θ, “In the highest degree.” O, “In the lowest.”

Shepherd, I; Spring, I (last stanza, Ɨ); Holy Thursday, ƗƗ; Laughing Song, Ɨ; Nurse’s Song, I; The Divine Image, Θ; The Lamb, Ɨ; The little black Boy, Θ yea Θ+Θ; Infant Joy, ƗƗ (N. B. For the three last lines I should write, “When wilt thou smile,” or “O smile, O smile! I’ll sing the while.” For a babe two days old does not, cannot smile, and innocence and the very truth of Nature must go together. Infancy is too holy a thing to be ornamented). “The Echoing Green,” I, (the figures Ɨ, and of the second leaf, ƗƗ); “The Cradle Song,” I; “The School Boy,” ƗƗ; Night, Θ; “On another’s Sorrow,” I; “A Dream,” ?; “The little boy lost,” I (the drawing, Ɨ); “The little boy found,” I; “The Blossom,” O; “The Chimney Sweeper,” O; “The Voice of the Ancient Bard,” O.

Introduction, Ɨ; Earth’s Answer, Ɨ; Infant Sorrow, I; “The Clod and the Pebble,” I; “The Garden of Love,” Ɨ; “The Fly,” I; “The Tyger,” Ɨ; “A little boy lost,” Ɨ; “Holy Thursday,” I; [p. 13, O; “Nurse’s Song,” O?]; “The little girl lost and found” (the ornaments most exquisite! the poem, I); “Chimney Sweeper in the Snow,” O; “To Tirzah, and the Poison Tree,” I—and yet O; “A little Girl lost,” O. (I would have had it omitted, not for the want of innocence in the poem, but from the too probable want of it in many readers.) “London,” I; “The Sick Rose,” I; “The little Vagabond,” O. Though I cannot approve altogether of this last poem, and have been inclined to think that the error which is most likely to beset the scholars of Emanuel Swedenborg is that of utterly demerging the tremendous incompatibilities with an evil will that arise out of the essential Holiness of the abysmal A-seity[165] in the love of the Eternal Person, and thus giving temptation to weak minds to sink this love itself into Good Nature, yet still I disapprove the mood of mind in this wild poem so much less than I do the servile blind-worm, wrap-rascal scurf-coat of fear of the modern Saint (whose whole being is a lie, to themselves as well as to their brethren), that I should laugh with good conscience in watching a Saint of the new stamp, one of the first stars of our eleemosynary advertisements, groaning in wind-pipe! and with the whites of his eyes upraised at the audacity of this poem! Anything rather than this degradation I of Humanity, and therein of the Incarnate Divinity!

S. T. C.

O means that I am perplexed and have no opinion.

I, with which how can we utter “Our Father”?

CCXX. TO J. H. GREEN.

Spring Garden Coffee House, [May 2, 1818.]

My dear Sir,—Having been detained here till the present hour, and under requisition for Monday morning early, I have decided on not returning to Highgate in the interim. I propose, therefore, to have the pleasure of passing the fore-dinner hours, from eleven o’clock to-morrow morning, with you in Lincoln’s Inn Square, unless I should hear from you to the contrary.

The Cotton-children Bill[166] (an odd irony to children bred up in cotton!) which has passed the House of Commons, would not, I suspect, have been discussed at all in the House of Lords, but have been quietly assented to, had it not afforded that Scotch coxcomb, the plebeian Earl of Lauderdale,[167] too tempting an occasion for displaying his muddy three inch depths in the gutter (? Guttur) of his Political Economy. Whether some half-score of rich capitalists are to be prevented from suborning suicide and perpetuating infanticide and soul-murder is, forsooth, the most perplexing question which has ever called forth his determining faculties, accustomed as they are well known to have been, to grappling with difficulties. In short, he wants to make a speech almost as much as I do to have a release signed by conscience from the duty of making or anticipating answers to such speeches.

Verily the World is mighty! and for all but the few the orb of Truth labours under eclipse from the shadow of the world!

With kind respects to Mrs. Green, believe me, my dear sir, with sincere and affectionate esteem,

Yours,
S. T. Coleridge.

CCXXI. TO MRS. GILLMAN.

J. Green’s, Esq., St. Lawrence, nr. Maldon,
Wednesday, July 19, 1818.

My very dear Sister and Friend,—The distance from the post and the extraordinary thinness of population in this district (especially of men and women of letters) which affords only two days in the seven for sending to or receiving from Maldon, are the sole causes of your not hearing oftener from me. The cross roads from Margretting Street to the very house are excellent, and through the first gate we drove up between two large gardens, that on the right a flower and fruit garden not without kitchenery, and that on the left, a kitchen garden not without fruits and flowers, and both in a perfect blaze of roses. Yet so capricious is our, at least my, nature, that I feel I do not receive the fifth part of the delight from this miscellany of Flora, flowers at every step, as from the economized glasses and flower-pots at Highgate so tended and worshipped by me, and each the gift of some kind friend or courteous neighbour. I actually make up a flower-pot every night, in order to imitate my Highgate pleasures. The country road is very beautiful. About a quarter of a mile from the garden, all the way through beautiful fields in blossom, we come to a wood, full of birds and not uncharmed by the nightingales, and which the old workman, to please his mistress, has romanticised with, I dare say, fifty seats and honeysuckle bowers and green arches made by twisting the branches of the trees across the paths. The view from the hilly field above the wood commanding the arm of the sea, and ending in the open sea, reminded me very much of the prospects from Stowey and Alfoxden, in Somersetshire. The cottagers seem to be and are in possession of plenty of comfort. Poverty I have seen no marks of, nor of the least servility, though they are courteous and respectful. We have abundance of cream. The Farm must, I should think, be a valuable estate; and the parents are anxious to leave it as complete as possible for Joseph, their only child (for it is Mrs. J. Green’s sisters that we have seen—G. himself has no sister). There is no society hereabouts. I like it the better therefore. The clergyman, a young man, is lost in a gloomy vulgar Calvinism, will read no book but the Bible, converse on nothing but the state of the soul, or rather he will not converse at all, but visit each house once in two months, when he prays and admonishes, and gives a lecture every evening at his own rooms. On being invited to dine with us, the sad and modest youth returned for answer, that if Mr. Green and I should be here when he visited the house, he should have no objection to enter into the state of our souls with us, and if in the mean time we desired any instruction from him, we might attend at his daily evening lecture! Election, Reprobation, Children of the Devil, and all such flowers of rhetoric, and flour of brimstone, form his discourses both in church and parlour. But my folly in not filling the snuff canister is a subject of far more serious and awful regret with me, than the not being in the way of being thus led by the nose of this Pseudo-Evangelist. Nothing but Scotch; and that five miles off. O Anne! it was cruel in you not to have calculated the monstrous disproportion between the huge necessities of my nostrils, or rather of my thumb and forefinger, and that vile little vial three fourths empty of snuff! The flat of my thumb, yea, the nail of my forefinger is not only clean; it is white! white as the pale flag of famine![168]

Now for my health.... Ludicrous as it may seem, yet it is no joke for me, that from the marshiness of these sea marshes, and the number of unnecessary fish ponds and other stagnancies immediately around the house, the gnats are a very plague of Egypt, and suspicious, with good reason, of an erysipelatous tendency, I am anxious concerning the effects of the irritation produced by these canorous visitants. While awake (and two thirds of last night I was kept awake by their bites and trumpetings) I can so far command myself as to check the intolerable itching by a weak mixture of goulard and rosewater; but in my sleep I scratch myself as if old Scratch had lent me his best set of claws. This is the only drawback from my comforts here, for nothing can be kinder or more cordial than my treatment. I like Mrs. J. Green better and better; but feel that in twenty years it would never be above or beyond liking. She is good-natured, lively, innocent, but without a soothingness, or something I do not know what that is tender. As to my return, I do not think it will be possible, without great unkindness, to be with you before Tuesday evening or Wednesday, calculating wholly by the progress of the manuscript; and we have been hard at it. Do not take it as words, of course, when I say and solemnly assure you, that if I followed my own wishes, I should leave this place on Saturday morning: for I feel more and more that I can be well off nowhere away from you and Gillman. May God bless him! For a dear friend he is and has been to be. Remember me affectionately to the Milnes and Betsy, if they are at Highgate. Love to James. Kisses for the Fish of Five Waters,[169] none of which are stagnant, and I hope that Mary, Dinah, and Lucy are well, and that Mary is quite recovered. Again and again and again, God bless you, my most dear friends; for I am, and ever trust to remain, more than can be expressed, my dear Anne! your affectionate, obliged, and grateful

S. T. Coleridge.

P. S. Not to put Essex after Maldon.

CCXXII. TO W. COLLINS, ESQ., A. R. A.

Highgate, December, 1818.

My dear Sir,—I at once comply with, and thank you for, your request to have some prospectuses. God knows I have so few friends, that it would be unpardonable in me not to feel proportionably grateful towards those few who think the time not wasted in which they interest themselves in my behalf. There is an old Latin adage, Vis videri pauper, et pauper es! Poor you profess yourself to be, and poor therefore you are, and will remain. The prosperous feel only with the prosperous, and if you subtract from the whole sum of their feeling for all the gratifications of vanity, and all their calculations of lending to the Lord, both of which are best answered by confessing the superfluity of their superfluities on advertised and advertisable distress, or on such cases as are known to be in all respects their inferior, you will have, I fear, but a scanty remainder. All this is too true; but then, what is that man to do whom no distress can bribe to swindle or deceive? who cannot reply as Theophilus Cibber did to his father, Colley Cibber, who, seeing him in a rich suit of clothes whispered to him as he passed, “The! The! I pity thee!” “Pity me! pity my tailor!”

Spite of the decided approbation which my plan of delivering lectures has received from several judicious and highly respectable individuals, it is still too histrionic, too much like a retail dealer in instruction and pastime, not to be depressing. If the duty of living were not far more awful to my conscience than life itself is agreeable to my feelings, I should sink under it. But, getting nothing by my publications, which I have not the power of making estimable by the public without loss of self-estimation, what can I do? The few who have won the present age, while they have secured the praise of posterity, as Sir Walter Scott, Mr. Southey, Lord Byron, etc., have been in happier circumstances. And lecturing is the only means by which I can enable myself to go on at all with the great philosophical work to which the best and most genial hours of the last twenty years of my life have been devoted. Poetry is out of the question. The attempt would only hurry me into that sphere of acute feelings from which abstruse research, the mother of self-oblivion, presents an asylum. Yet sometimes, spite of myself, I cannot help bursting out into the affecting exclamation of our Spenser (his “wine” and “ivy garland” interpreted as competence and joyous circumstances):—

But God’s will be done. To feel the full force of the Christian religion it is, perhaps, necessary for many tempers that they should first be made to feel, experimentally, the hollowness of human friendship, the presumptuous emptiness of human hopes. I find more substantial comfort now in pious George Herbert’s “Temple,” which I used to read to amuse myself with his quaintness, in short, only to laugh at, than in all the poetry since the poems of Milton. If you have not read Herbert, I can recommend the book to you confidently. The poem entitled “The Flower” is especially affecting; and, to me, such a phrase as “and relish versing” expresses a sincerity, a reality, which I would unwillingly exchange for the more dignified “and once more love the Muse,” etc. And so, with many other of Herbert’s homely phrases.

We are all anxious to hear from, and of, our excellent transatlantic friend.[171] I need not repeat that your company, with or without our friend Leslie,[172] will gratify

Your sincere
S. T. Coleridge.

CCXXIII. TO THOMAS ALLSOP.

The origin of Coleridge’s friendship with Thomas Allsop, a young city merchant, dates from the first lecture which he delivered at Flower de Luce Court, January 27, 1818. A letter from Allsop containing a “judicious suggestion” with regard to the subject advertised, “The Dark Ages of Europe,” was handed to the lecturer, who could not avail himself of the hint on this occasion, but promised to do so before the close of the series. Personal intercourse does not seem to have taken place till a year later, but from 1819 to 1826 Coleridge and Allsop were close and intimate friends. In 1825 the correspondence seems to have dropped, but I am not aware that then or afterwards there was any breach of friendship. In 1836 Allsop published the letters which he had received from Coleridge. Partly on account of the personal allusions which some of the letters contain, and partly because it would seem that Coleridge expressed himself to his young disciple with some freedom on matters of religious opinion, the publication of these letters was regarded by Coleridge’s friends as an act of mala fides. Allsop was kindness itself to Coleridge, but, no doubt, the allusions to friends and children, which were of a painful and private nature, ought, during their lifetime at least, to have been omitted. The originals of many of these letters were presented by the Allsop family to the late Emperor of Brazil, an enthusiastic student and admirer of Coleridge.[173]

December 2, 1818.

My dear Sir,—I cannot express how kind I felt your letter. Would to Heaven I had had many with feelings like yours, “accustomed to express themselves warmly and (as far as the word is applicable to you, even) enthusiastically.” But, alas! during the prime manhood of my intellect I had nothing but cold water thrown on my efforts. I speak not now of my systematic and most unprovoked maligners. On them I have retorted only by pity and by prayer. These may have, and doubtless have, joined with the frivolity of “the reading public” in checking and almost in preventing the sale of my works; and so far have done injury to my purse. Me they have not injured. But I have loved with enthusiastic self-oblivion those who have been so well pleased that I should, year after year, flow with a hundred nameless rills into their main stream, that they could find nothing but cold praise and effective discouragement of every attempt of mine to roll onward in a distinct current of my own; who admitted that the “Ancient Mariner,” the “Christabel,” the “Remorse,” and some pages of “The Friend” were not without merit, but were abundantly anxious to acquit their judgements of any blindness to the very numerous defects. Yet they knew that to praise, as mere praise, I was characteristically, almost constitutionally, indifferent. In sympathy alone I found at once nourishment and stimulus; and for sympathy alone did my heart crave. They knew, too, how long and faithfully I had acted on the maxim, never to admit the faults of a work of genius to those who denied or were incapable of feeling and understanding the beauties; not from wilful partiality, but as well knowing that in saying truth I should, to such critics, convey falsehood. If, in one instance, in my literary life, I have appeared to deviate from this rule, first, it was not till the fame of the writer (which I had been for fourteen years successively toiling like a second Ali to build up) had been established; and, secondly and chiefly, with the purpose and, I may safely add, with the effect of rescuing the necessary task from malignant defamers, and in order to set forth the excellences and the trifling proportion which the defects bore to the excellences. But this, my dear sir, is a mistake to which affectionate natures are liable, though I do not remember to have ever seen it noticed, the mistaking those who are desirous and well-pleased to be loved by you, for those who love you. Add, as a mere general cause, the fact that I neither am nor ever have been of any party. What wonder, then, if I am left to decide which has been my worse enemy,—the broad, predetermined abuse of the “Edinburgh Review,” etc., or the cold and brief compliments, with the warm regrets of the “Quarterly”? After all, however, I have now but one sorrow relative to the ill success of my literary toils (and toils they have been, though not undelightful toils), and this arises wholly from the almost insurmountable difficulties which the anxieties of to-day oppose to my completion of the great work, the form and materials of which it has been the employment of the best and most genial hours of the last twenty years to mature and collect.

If I could but have a tolerably numerous audience to my first, or first and second Lectures on the History of Philosophy,[174] I should entertain a strong hope of success, because I know that these lectures will be found by far the most interesting and entertaining of any that I have yet delivered, independent of the more permanent interests of rememberable instruction. Few and unimportant would the errors of men be, if they did but know, first, what they themselves meant; and, secondly, what the words mean by which they attempt to convey their meaning; and I can conceive no subject so well fitted to exemplify the mode and the importance of these two points as the History of Philosophy, treated as in the scheme of these lectures. Trusting that I shall shortly have the pleasure of seeing you here,

I remain, my dear sir, yours most sincerely,
S. T. Coleridge.

CCXXIV. TO J. H. GREEN.

[Postmark, January 16, 1819.]

My dear Green,—I forgot both at the Lecture Room and at Mr. Phillips’s to beg you to leave out for me Goethe’s “Zur Farbenlehre.” It is for a passage in the preface in which he compares Plato with Aristotle, etc., as far as I recollect, in a spirited manner. The books are at your service again, after the lecture. Either Mr. Cary or some messenger will call for them to-morrow! I piously resolve on Tuesday to put my books in some order, but at all events to select yours and send all of them that I do not want (and I do not recollect any that I do, unless perhaps the little volume edited by Tieck of his friend’s composition), back to you. I am more and more delighted with Chantrey. The little of his conversation which I enjoyed ex pede Herculem, left me no doubt of the power of his insight. Light, manlihood, simplicity, wholeness. These are the entelechy of Phidian Genius; and who but must see these in Chantrey’s solar face, and in all his manners? Item: I am bewitched with your wife’s portrait. So very like and yet so ideal a portrait I never remember to have seen. But as Mr. Phillips[175] said: “Why, sir! she was a sweet subject, sir! That’s a great thing.”

As to my own, I can form no judgment. In its present state, the eyes appear too large, too globose, and their colour must be made lighter, and I thought that the face, exclusive of the forehead, was stronger, more energetic than mine seems to be when I catch it in the glass, and therefore the forehead and brow less so—not in themselves, but in consequence of the proportion. But of course I can form no notion of what my face and look may be when I am animated in friendly conversation. My kind and respectful remembrances to your Mother, and believe me, most affectionately,

Your obliged friend,
S. T. Coleridge.

CCXXV. TO JAMES GILLMAN.

[Ramsgate, Postmark, August 20, 1819.]

My dear Friend,—Whether from the mere intensity of the heat, and the restless, almost sleepless, nights in consequence, or from incautious exposure to draughts; or whether simply the change of air and the sea bath was repairing the intestinal canal (and bad indeed must the road be which is not better than a road a-mending, a hint which our revolutionary reformers would do well to attend to) or from whatever cause, I have been miserably unwell for the last three days—but last night passed a tolerably good night, and, finding myself convalescent this morning, I bathed, and now am still better, having had a glorious tumble in the waves, though the water is still not cold enough for my liking. The weather, however, is evidently on the change, and we have now a succession of flying April showers, and needle rains. My bath is about a mile and a quarter from the Lime Grove, a wearisome travail by the deep crumbly sands, but a very pleasant breezy walk along the top of the cliff, from which you descend through a deep steep lane cut through the chalk rocks. The tide comes up to the end of the lane, and washes the cliff, but a little before or a little after high-tide there are nice clean seats of rock with foot-baths, and then an expanse of sand, greater than I need; and exactly a hundred of my strides from the end of the lane there is a good, roomy, arched cavern, with an oven or cupboard in it, where one’s clothes may be put free from the sand.... I find that I can write no more if I am to send this by the to-day’s post. Pray, if you can with any sort of propriety, do come down to me—to us, I suppose I ought to say. We are all as should be Βυτ μονστρουσλι φορμαλ....

God bless you and
S. T. C.

CCXXVI. TO MRS. ADERS. [?][176]

[Highgate, October 28, 1819.]

Dear Madam,—I wish from my very heart that you could teach me to express my obligations to you with half the grace and delicacy with which you confer them! But not to the Giver does the evening cloud indicate the rich lights, which it has received and transmits and yet retains. For other eyes it must glow: and what it cannot return it will strive to represent, the poor proxy of the gracious orb which is departing. I would that the simile were less accurate throughout, and with those of Homer’s lost its likeness as it approached to its conclusion! This, I fear, is somewhat too selfish; but we cannot have attachment without fear or grief.

says Nature’s child, our best Shakespeare; and that Humanity cannot grieve without a portion of selfishness, Nature herself says. To take up my allegoric strain with a slight variation, even in the fairest shews and liveliest demonstrations of grateful and affectionate leave-taking from a generous friend or disinterested patron or benefactor, we are like evening rainbows, that at once shine and weep, things made up of reflected splendour and our own tears.[177]

The storm[179] now louring and muttering in our political atmosphere might of itself almost forbid me to regret your leaving England. For I have no apprehension of any serious or extensive danger to property or to the coercive powers of the Law. Both reason and history preclude the fear of any revolution, where none of the constituent states of a nation are arrayed against the others. The risk is still less in Great Britain where property is so widely diffused and so closely interlinked and co-organized. But I dare not promise as much for personal safety. The struggle may be short, the event certain; yet the mischief in the interim appalling!

I confess that I read the poem from which these lines are extracted (“Fears in Solitude”) and now cite them with far other than an author’s feelings; those, I trust, of a patriot, I am sure, those of a Christian.

You will not, I know, fail to assure Miss Harding[181] of the kind feelings and wishes with which I accompany her; but my sense of the last boon, which I owe to her, I shall convey, my dear madam! by hands less likely to make extenuating comments on my words than your tongue or hand. Before I subscribe my name, I must tell you that had my wish been the chooser and had taken a month to deliberate on the choice, I could not have received a keepsake so in all respects gratifying to me, as the exquisite impressions of cameo’s and intaglio’s.[182] First, it enables me to entertain and gratify so many friends, my own and Mr. and Mrs. Gillman’s; secondly, every little gem is associated with my recollections, or more or less recalls the images and persons seen and met with during my own stay in the Mediterranean and Italy; thirdly, they stand in the same connection with the places of your past and future sojourn, and therefore, lastly, supply me with the means and the occasion of expressing to others more strongly, perhaps, but not more warmly or sincerely than I now do to yourself, with how much respect and regard I remain, dear madam,

Your obliged friend and servant,
S. T. Coleridge.

Saturday, 28th Octr. 1819. On the 20th of this month completed my 49th year.

CCXXVII. TO J. H. GREEN.

January 14, 1820.

My dear Green,—Charles Lamb has just written to inform me that he and his sister will pay me their New Year’s visit on Sunday next, and may perhaps bring a friend to see me, though certainly not to dine, and hopes I may not be engaged. I must therefore defer our philosophical intercommune till the Sunday after; but if you have no more pleasant way of passing the ante-prandial or, still better, the day including prandial and post-prandial, I trust that it will be no anti-philosophical expenditure of time, and I need not say an addition to the pleasure of all this household. I should like, too, to arrange some plan of going with you to Covent Garden Theatre, to see Miss Wensley, the new actress, whose father (a merchant of Bristol, at whose house I had once been, but whom the capricious Nymph of Trade has unhorsed from his seat) has called on me, a compound of the Oratorical, the Histrionic, and the Exquisite! All the dull colours in the colour-shop at the sign of the Bluecoat Boy would not suffice to neutralize the glare of his Colorit into any tolerably fair likeness that would not be scouted as Caricature! Gillman will give you a slight sketch of him. Since I saw you, we have dined and spent the night (for it was near one when we broke up) at Mathews’, and heard and saw his forthcoming “At Home.” There were present, besides G. and myself, Mrs. and young Mathews, and Mr. and Mrs. Chisholm, James Smith of Rej. Add. notoriety, and the author of (all the trash of) Mathews’ Entertainment, for the good parts are his own, (What a pity that you dare not offer a word of friendly sensible advice to such men as M., but you may be certain that it will be useless to them and attributed to envy or some vile selfish object in the adviser!) Mr. Dubois,[183] the author of “Vaurien,” “Old Nic,” “My Pocket Book,” and a notable share of the theatrical puffs and slanders of the periodical press; and, lastly, Mr. Thomas Hill,[184] quondam drysalter of Thames Street, whom I remember twenty-five years ago with exactly the same look, person, and manners as now. Mathews calls him the Immutable. He is a seemingly always good-natured fellow who knows nothing and about everything, no person, and about and all about everybody—a complete parasite, in the old sense of a dinner-hunter, at the tables of all who entertain public men, authors, players, fiddlers, booksellers, etc., for more than thirty years. It was a pleasant evening, however.

Be so good as to remember the drawing from the Alchemy Book.

Mrs. Gillman desires her love to Mrs. Green; and we hope that the twin obstacles, ague and the boreal weather, to our seeing her here, will vanish at the same time. Mrs. G. bids me tell her that she grumbles at the doctors, her husband included, and is confident that her husband would have made a cure long ago. A faithful wife is a common blessing, I trust: but what a treasure to have a wife full of faith! By the bye, I have lit on some (ὡς ἔμοιγε δοκεῖ analogous) cases in which the nauseating plan, even for a short time, appears to have had a wonderful effect in breaking the chain of a morbid tendency; and the almost infallible specific of seasickness in curing an old ague is surely a confirmation as far as it goes.

Yours most affectionately,
S. T. Coleridge.

CCXXVIII. TO THE SAME.

[May 25, 1820.]

My dear Green,—I was greatly affected in finding how ill you had been, and long ere this should have let you know it, but that I have myself been in no usual degree unwell. I wish I could with truth underline the words have been, and in the hope of being able to do so it was that I delayed answering your note. Unless a speedy change for the better takes place, I should culpably deceive myself if I did not interpret my present state as a summons. God’s will be done! I cannot pretend that I have not received countless warnings; and for my neglect and for the habits, and all the feebleness and wastings of the moral will which unfit the soul for spiritual ascent, and must sink it, of moral necessity, lower and lower, if it be essentially imperishable, my only ray of hope is this, that in my inmost heart, as far as my consciousness can sound its depths, I plead nothing but my utter and sinful helplessness and worthlessness on one side, and the infinite mercy and divine Humanity of our Creator and Redeemer crucified from the beginning of the world, on the other! I use no comparatives, nor indeed could I ever charitably interpret the penitential phrases (“I am the vilest of sinners, worse than the wickedest of my fellow-men,” etc.) otherwise than as figures of speech, the whole purport of which is, “In relation to God I appear to myself the same as the very worst man, if such there be, would appear to an earthly tribunal.” I mean no comparatives; for what have a man’s permanent concerns to do with comparison? What avails it to a bird shattered and irremediably disorganized in one wing, that another bird is similarly conditioned in both wings? Or to a man in the last stage of ulcerated lungs, that his neighbour is liver-rotten as well as consumptive? Both find their equation, the birds as to flight, the men as to life. In o o o’s there is no comparison.

My nephew, the Revd. W. Hart Coleridge, came and stayed here from Monday afternoon to Tuesday noon, in order to make Derwent’s acquaintance, and brought with him by accident Marsh’s Divinity Lecture, No 3rd, on the authenticity and credibility of the Books collected in the New Testament. As I could not sit with the party after tea, I took the pamphlet with me into my bedroom, and gave it an attentive perusal, knowing the Bishop’s intimate acquaintance with the investigations of Eichhorn, Paulus, and their numerous scarcely less celebrated scholars, and myself familiar with the works of the Göttingen Professor (Eichhorn), the founder and head of the daring school. I saw or seemed to see more management in the Lecture than proof of thorough conviction. I supplied, however, from my own reasonings enough of what appeared wanting or doubtful in the Bishop’s to justify the conclusion that the Gospel History beginning with the Baptism of John, and the Doctrines contained in the fourth Gospel, and in the Epistles, truly represent the assertions of the Apostles and the faith of the Christian Church during the first century; that there exists no tenable or even tolerable ground for doubting the authenticity of the Books ascribed to John the Evangelist, to Mark, to Luke, and to Paul; nor the authority of Matthew and the author of the Epistle to the Hebrews; and lastly, that a man need only have common sense and a good heart to be assured that these Apostles and Apostolic men wrote nothing but what they themselves believed. And yet I have no hesitation in avowing that many an argument derived from the nature of man, nay, that many a strong though only speculative probability, pierces deeper, pushes more home, and clings more pressingly to my mind than the whole sum of merely external evidence, the fact of Christianity itself alone excepted. Nay, I feel that the external evidence derives a great and lively accession of force, for my mind, from my previous speculative convictions or presumptions; but that I cannot find that the latter are at all strengthened or made more or less probable to me by the former. Besides, as to the external evidence I make up my mind once for all, and merely as evidence think no more about it; but those facts or reflections thereon which tend to change belief into insight, can never lose their effect, any more than the distinctive sensations of disease, compared with a more perceived correspondence of symptoms with the diagnostics of a medical book.

I was led to this remark by reflecting on the awful importance of the physiological question (so generally decided one way by the late most popular writers on insanity), Does the efficient cause of disease and disordered action, and, collectively, of pain and perishing, lie entirely in the organs, and then, reawakening the active principle in me, depart—that all pain and disease would be removed, and I should stand in the same state as I stood in previous to all sickness, etc., to the admission of any disturbing forces into my nature? Or, on the contrary, would such a repaired Organismus be no fit organ for my life, as if, for instance, a worn lock with an equally worn key—[the key] might no longer fit the lock. The repaired organs might from intimate in-correspondence be the causes of torture and madness. A system of materialism, in which organisation stands first, whether compared by Nature, or God and Life, etc., as its results (even as the sound is the result of a bell), such a system would, doubtless, remove great part of the terrors which the soul makes out of itself; but then it removes the soul too, or rather precludes it. And a supposition of coexistence, without any wechselwirkung, it is not in our power to adopt in good earnest; or, if we did, it would answer no purpose. For which of the two, soul or body, am I to call “I”? Again, a soul separate from the body, and yet entirely passive to it, would be so like a drum playing a tattoo on the drummer, that one cannot build any hope on it. If then the organisation be primarily the result, and only by reaction a cause, it would be well to consider what the cases are in this life, in which the restoration of the organisation removes disease. Is the organisation ever restored, except as continually reproduced? And in the remaining number are they not cases into which the soul never entered as a conscious or rather a moral conscionable agent? The regular reproduction of scars, marks, etc., the increased susceptibility of disease in an organ, after a perfect apparent restoration to healthy structure in action; the insusceptibility in other cases, as in the variolous—these and many others are fruitful subjects, and even imperfect as the induction may be, and must be in our present degree of knowledge, we might yet deduce that a suicide, under the domination of disorderly passions and erroneous principles, plays a desperately hazardous game, and that the chance is, he may re-house himself in a worse hogshead, with the nails and spikes driven inward—or, sinking below the organising power, be employed fruitlessly in a horrid appetite of re-skinning himself, after he had succeeded in fleaing his life and leaving all its sensibilities bare to the incursive powers without even the cortex of a nerve to shield them? Would it not follow, too, from these considerations, that a redemptive power must be necessary if immortality be true, and man be a disordered being? And that no power can be redemptive which does not at the same time act in the ground of the life as one with the ground, that is, must act in my will and not merely on my will; and yet extrinsically, as an outward power, that is, as that which outward Nature is to the organisation, viz. the causa correspondens et conditio perpetua ab extra? Under these views, I cannot read the Sixth Chapter of St. John without great emotion. The Redeemer cannot be merely God, unless we adopt Pantheism, that is, deny the existence of a God; and yet God he must be, for whatever is less than God, may act on, but cannot act in, the will of another. Christ must become man, but he cannot become us, except as far as we become him, and this we cannot do but by assimilation; and assimilation is a vital real act, not a notional or merely intellective one. There are phenomena, which are phenomena relatively to our present five senses, and these Christ forbids us to understand as his meaning, and, collectively, they are entitled the Flesh that perishes. But does it follow that there are no other phenomena? or that these media of manifestation might not stand to a spiritual world and to our enduring life in the same relation as our visible mass of body stands to the world of the senses, and to the sensations correspondent to, and excited by, the stimulants of that world. Lastly, would not the sum of the latter phenomena (the spiritual) be appropriately named, the Flesh and Blood of the divine Humanity? If faith be a mere apperception, eine blösse Wahrnehmung, this, I grant, is senseless. For it is evident, that the assimilation in question is to be carried on by faith. But if faith be an energy, a positive act, and that too an act of intensest power, why should it necessarily differ in toto genere from any other act, ex. gr. from that of the animal life in the stomach? It will be found easier to laugh or stare at the question than to prove its irrationability. Enough for the present. I had been told that Dr. Leach[185] was a Lawrencian, a materialist, and I know not what. I met him at Mr. Abernethy’s, and with sincere delight I found him the very contrary in every respect. Except yourself, I have never met so enlarged or so bold a love of truth in an English physiologist. The few minutes of conversation that I had the power of enjoying have left a strong wish in my mind to see more of him.

Give my kind love to Mrs. Green. Mr. and Mrs. Gillman are anxious to see you. I assure you they were very much affected by the account of your health. Young Allsop behaves more like a dutiful and anxious son than an acquaintance. He came up yester-night at ten o’clock, and left the house at eight this morning, in order to urge me to go to some sea-bathing place, if it was thought at all advisable.

Derwent goes on in every respect to my satisfaction and comfort.

Again and again, God bless you and your sincerely affectionate friend,

S. T. Coleridge.

CCXXIX. TO CHARLES AUGUSTUS TULK.

February 12, 1821.

My dear Sir,—“They say, Coleridge! that you are a Swedenborgian!” “Would to God,” I replied fervently, “that they were anything.” I was writing a brief essay on the prospects of a country where it has become the mind of the nation to appreciate the evil of public acts and measures by their next consequences or immediate occasions, while the principle violated, or that a principle is thereby violated, is either wholly dropped out of the consideration, or is introduced but as a garnish or ornamental commonplace in the peroration of a speech! The deep interest was present to my thoughts of that distinction between the Reason, as the source of principles, the true celestial influx and porta Dei in hominem æternum, and the Understanding; with the clearness of the proof, by which this distinction is evinced, viz. that vital or zoo-organic power, instinct, and understanding fall all three under the same definition in genere, and the very additions by which the definition is applied from the first to the second, and from the second to the third, are themselves expressive of degrees only, and in degree only deniable of the preceding. (Ex. gr. 1. Reflect on the selective power exercised by the stomach of the caterpillar on the undigested miscellany of food, and, 2, the same power exercised by the caterpillar on the outward plants, and you will see the order of the conceptions.) 1. Vital Power = the power by which means are adapted to proximate ends. 2. Instinct = the power which adapts means to proximate ends. 3. Understanding = the power which adapts means to proximate ends according to varying circumstances. May I not safely challenge any man to peruse Huber’s “Treatise on Ants,” and yet deny their claim to be included in the last definition. But try to apply the same definition, with any extension of degree, to the reason, the absurdity will flash upon the conviction. First, in reason there is and can be no degree. Deus introit aut non introit. Secondly, in reason there are no means nor ends, reason itself being one with the ultimate end, of which it is the manifestation. Thirdly, reason has no concern with things (that is, the impermanent flux of particulars), but with the permanent Relations; and is to be defined even in its lowest or theoretical attribute, as the power which enables man to draw necessary and universal conclusions from particular facts or forms, ex. gr. from any three-cornered thing, that the two sides of a triangle are and must be greater than the third. From the understanding to the reason, there is no continuous ascent possible; it is a metabasis εἰς ἄλλο γένος even as from the air to the light. The true essential peculiarity of the human understanding consists in its capability of being irradiated by the reason, in its recipiency; and even this is given to it by the presence of a higher power than itself. What then must be the fate of a nation that substitutes Locke for logic, and Paley for morality, and one or the other for polity and theology, according to the predominance of Whig or Tory predilection. Slavery, or a commotion is at hand! But if the gentry and clerisy (including all the learned and educated) do this, then the nation does it, or a commotion is at hand. Acephalum enim, aurâ quamvis et calore vitali potiatur, morientem rectius dicimus, quam quod vivit. With these thoughts was I occupied when I received your very kind and most acceptable present, and the results I must defer to the next post. With best regards to Mrs. Tulk,

Believe me, in the brief interval, your obliged and grateful

S. T. Coleridge.

C. A. Tulk, Esq., M. P., Regency Park.

CHAPTER XIV
THE PHILOSOPHER AND DIVINE
1822-1832

CHAPTER XIV
THE PHILOSOPHER AND DIVINE
1822-1832

CCXXX. TO JOHN MURRAY.

Highgate, January 18, 1822.

Dear Sir,—If not with the works, you are doubtless familiar with the name of that “wonderful man” (for such, says Doddridge, I must deliberately call him), Archbishop Leighton. It would not be easy to point out another name, which the eminent of all parties, Catholic and Protestant, Episcopal and Presbyterian, Whigs and Tories, have been so unanimous in extolling. “There is a spirit in Archbishop Leighton I never met with in any human writings; nor can I read many lines in them without impressions which I could wish always to retain,” observes a dignitary of our Establishment and F. R. S. eminent in his day both as a philosopher and a divine. In fact, it would make no small addition to the size of the volume, if, as was the fashion in editing the classics, we should collect the eulogies on his writings passed by bishops only and church divines, from Burnet to Porteus. That this confluence of favourable opinions is not without good cause, my own experience convinces me. For at a time when I had read but a small portion of the Archbishop’s principal work, when I was altogether ignorant of its celebrity, much more of the peculiar character attributed to his writings (that of making and leaving a deep impression on readers of all classes), I remember saying to Mr. Southey[186] “that in the Apostolic Epistles I heard the last hour of Inspiration striking, and in Arch. Leighton’s commentary the lingering vibration of the sound.” Perspicuous, I had almost said transparent, his style is elegant by the mere compulsion of the thoughts and feelings, and in despite, as it were, of the writer’s wish to the contrary. Profound as his conceptions often are, and numerous as the passages are, where the most athletic thinker will find himself tracing a rich vein from the surface downward, and leave off with an unknown depth for to-morrow’s delving—yet there is this quality peculiar to Leighton, unless we add Shakespeare—that there is always a scum on the very surface which the simplest may understand, if they have head and heart to understand anything. The same or nearly the same excellence characterizes his eloquence. Leighton had by nature a quick and pregnant fancy, and the august objects of his habitual contemplation, and their remoteness from the outward senses, his constant endeavour to see or to bring all things under some point of unity, but, above all, the rare and vital union of head and heart, of light and love, in his own character,—all these working conjointly could not fail to form and nourish in him the higher power, and more akin to reason, the power, I mean, of imagination. And yet in his freest and most figurative passages there is a subduedness, a self-checking timidity in his colouring, a sobering silver-grey tone over all; and an experienced eye may easily see where and in how many instances Leighton has substituted neutral tints for a strong light or a bold relief—by this sacrifice, however, of particular effects, giving an increased permanence to the impression of the whole, and wonderfully facilitating its soft and quiet illapse into the very recesses of our convictions. Leighton’s happiest ornaments of style are made to appear as efforts on the part of the author to express himself less ornamentally, more plainly.

Since the late alarm respecting Church Calvinism and Calvinistic Methodism (a cry of Fire! Fire! in consequence of a red glare on one or two of the windows, from a bonfire of straw and stubble in the church-yard, while the dry rot of virtual Socinianism is snugly at work in the beams and joists of the venerable edifice) I have heard of certain gentle doubts and questions as to the Archbishop’s perfect orthodoxy—some small speck in the diamond which had escaped the quick eye of all former theological jewellers from Bishop Burnet to the outrageously anti-Methodistic Warburton. But on what grounds I cannot even conjecture, unless it be, that the Christianity which Leighton teaches contains the doctrines peculiar to the Gospel as well as the truths common to it with the (so-called) light of nature or natural religion, that he dissuades students and the generality of Christians from all attempts at explaining the mysteries of faith by notional and metaphysical speculations, and rather by a heavenly life and temper to obtain a closer view of these truths, the full light and knowledge of which it is in Heaven only that we shall possess. He further advises them in speaking of these truths to proper scripture language; but since something more than this had been made necessary by the restless spirit of dispute, to take this “something more” in the sound precise terms of the Liturgy and Articles of the Established Church. Enthusiasm? Fanaticism? Had I to recommend an antidote, I declare on my conscience that above all others it should be Leighton. And as to Calvinism, L.’s exposition of the scriptural sense of election ought to have prevented the very [suspicion of its presence]. You will long ago, I fear, have [been asking yourself], To what does all this tend? Briefly then, I feel strongly persuaded, perhaps because I strongly wish it, that the Beauties of Archbishop Leighton, selected and methodized, with a (better) Life of the Author, that is, a biographical and critical introduction as Preface, and Notes, would make not only a useful but an interesting Pocket Volume. “Beauties” in general are objectionable works—injurious to the original author, as disorganizing his productions, pulling to pieces the well-wrought crown of his glory to pick out the shining stones, and injurious to the reader, by indulging the taste for unconnected, and for that reason unretained single thoughts, till it fares with him as with the old gentleman at Edinburgh, who eat six kittywakes by way of whetting his appetite—“whereas” (said he) “it proved quite the contrary: I never sat down to a dinner with so little.” But Leighton’s principal work, that which fills two volumes and a half of the four, being a commentary on St. Peter’s Epistles, verse by verse, and varying, of course, in subject, etc., with almost every paragraph, the volume, I propose, would not only bring together his finest passages, but these being afterwards arranged on a principle wholly independent of the accidental place of each in the original volumes, and guided by their relative bearings, it would give a connection or at least a propriety of sequency, that was before of necessity wanting. It may be worth noticing, that the editions, both the one in three, and the other in four volumes, are most grievously misprinted and otherwise disfigured. Should you be disposed to think this worthy your attention, I would even send you the proof transcribed, sheet by sheet, as it should be printed, though doubtless by sacrificing one copy of Leighton’s works, it might be effected by references to volume, page, and line, I having first carefully corrected the copy. Or, should you think another more likely to execute the plan better, or that another name would better promote its sale, I should by no means resent the preference, nor feel any mortification for which, the having occasioned the existence of such a work, tastefully selected and judiciously arranged, would not be sufficient compensation for,

Dear sir, your obliged
S. T. Coleridge.

CCXXXI. TO JAMES GILLMAN.

October 28, 1822.

Dear Friend,—Words, I know, are not wanted between you and me. But there are occasions so awful, there may be instances and manifestations so affecting, and drawing up with them so long a train from behind, so many folds of recollection, as they come onward on one’s mind, that it seems but a mere act of justice to one’s self, a debt we owe to the dignity of our moral nature, to give them some record—a relief, which the spirit of man asks and demands to contemplate in some outward symbol of what it is inwardly solemnizing. I am still too much under the cloud of past misgivings;[187] too much of the stun and stupor from the recent peals and thunder-crash still remains to permit me to anticipate other than by wishes and prayers what the effect of your unweariable kindness may be on poor Hartley’s mind and conduct. I pray fervently, and I feel a cheerful trust that I do not pray in vain, that on my own mind and spring of action it will be proved not to have been wasted. I do inwardly believe that I shall yet do something to thank you, my dear Gillman, in the way in which you would wish to be thanked, by doing myself honour.

Mrs. Gillman has been determined by your letter, and the heavenly weather, and moral certainty of the continuance of bathing-weather at least, to accept her sister’s offer of coming into Ramsgate and to take a house, for a fortnight certain, at a guinea a week, in the buildings next to Wellington Crescent, and having a certain modicum and segment of sea-peep. You remember the house (the end one) with a balcony at the window, almost in a line with the Duke of W. ... in wood, lignum vitæ, like as life. I had thought of keeping my present bedroom at 10s. 6d. a week, but on consulting Mrs. Rogers, she did not think that this would satisfy the etiquette of the world, though the two houses are on different cliffs; and I felt so confident of the effect of the bathing and Ramsgate transparent water, the sands, the pier, etc., that as there was no alternative but of giving up the bathing (for Mrs. G. would not stay by herself, partly, if not chiefly, because she feared I might add more to your anxiety than your comfort in your bachelor state and with only Bessy of Beccles) or having Jane, I voted for the latter, and will do my very best to keep her in good humour and good spirits.

Dear Friend, and Brother of my Soul, God only knows how truly and in the depth you are loved and prized by your affectionate friend,

S. T. Coleridge.

CCXXXII. TO MISS BRENT.[188]

July 7, 1823.

My dear Charlotte,—I have been many times in town within the last three or four weeks; but with one exception, when I was driven in and back by Mr. Gillman to hear the present idol of the world of fashion, the Revd. Mr. Irving, the super-Ciceronian, ultra-Demosthenic pulpiteer of the Scotch Chapel in Cross Street, Hatton Garden, I have been always at the West End of the town, and mostly dancing attendance on a proud bookseller, and I fear to little purpose—weary enough of my existence, God knows! and yet not a tittle the more disposed to better it at the price of apostacy or suppression of the truth. If I could but once get off the two works, on which I rely for the proof that I have not lived in vain, and had those off my mind, I could then maintain myself well enough by writing for the purpose of what I got by it; but it is an anguish I cannot look in the face, to abandon just as it is completed the work of such intense and long-continued labour; and if I cannot make an agreement with Murray, I must try Colbourn, and if with neither, owing to the loud calumny of the “Edinburgh,” and the silent but more injurious detraction of the “Quarterly Review,” I must try to get them published by subscription. But of this when we meet. I write at present and to you as the less busy sister, to beg you will be so good as to send me the volume of Southey’s “Brazil,” which I am now in particular want of, by the Highgate Stage that sets off just before Middle Row. “Mr. Coleridge, or J. Gillman, Esq. (either will do), Highgate.”

My kind love to Mary. I have little doubt that I shall see you in the course of next week.

Do you think of taking rooms out of the smoke during this summer for any time?

God bless you, my dear Charlotte, and your affectionate

S. T. Coleridge.