Highgate, July 23, 1823.
My dear Edward,—From Carlisle to Keswick there are several routes possible, and neither of these without some attraction. The choice, however, lies between two; which to prefer, I find it hard to decide, and if, as on the whole I am disposed to do, I advise the former, it is not from thinking the other of inferior interest. On the contrary, if your laking were comprised between Carlisle and Keswick, I should not hesitate to recommend the latter in preference, but because the first will bring you soonest to Keswick, where Mr. Southey still is, having, as your cousin Sara writes me, deferred his journey to town, on account of his book on “The Church,” which has outgrown its intended dimensions; and because the sort of “scenery” (to use that slang word best confined to the creeking Daubenies of the Theatre) on the latter route, is what you will have abundant opportunities of seeing with the one leg of your compass fixed at Keswick.
First then, you may go from Carlisle to Rose Castle, and spend an hour in seeing that and its circumferency; and from thence to Caldbeck, its waterfalls and faery caldrons, with the Pulpit and Clerk’s Desk Rocks, over which the Cata-, or rather Kitten-ract, flings itself, and the cavern to the right of the fall, as you front it; and from Caldbeck to the foot of Bassenthwaite, when you are in the vale of Keswick and not many miles from Greta Hall. The second route is from Carlisle to Penrith (a road of little or no interest), but from Carlisle you would go to Lowther (Earl of Lonsdale’s seat and magnificent grounds), the village of Lowther, Hawes Water, and from Hawes Water you might pass over the mountains into Ulleswater, and when there, you might go round the head of the lake (that is, Patterdale), and, if on foot and strong enough and the weather is fine, pass over Helvellyn, and so get into the high road between Grasmere and Keswick, or, passing lower down on the lake, cross over by Graystock, or with a guide or manual instructions, over the fells so as to come out at or not far from Threlkeld, which is but three or four miles from Keswick. At least in good weather there is, I believe, a tolerably equitible (that is, horse or pony-tolerating) track. But at Patterdale you would receive the best direction. There is an inn at Patterdale where you might sleep, so as to make one day of it from Penrith to the Lake Head, viâ Lowther and Hawes Water; and thence to Keswick would take good part of a second. There is one consideration in favour of this plan, that from Carlisle to Penrith, or even to Lowther, you might go by the coach, and I question whether you could reach Greta Hall by the Caldbeck Route in one day when at Keswick. When at Keswick, I would advise you to go to Wastdale through Borrowdale, and if you could return by Crummock and through the vale of Newlands, the inverted arch of which (on the A͜B (A B) of which I once saw the two legs of a rich rainbow so as to form with the arch a perfect circle) faces Greta Hall, you will have seen the very pith and marrow of the Lakes, especially as your route to Chester or Liverpool will take you that heavenly road through Thirlmere, Grasmere, Rydal (where you will, of course, pay your respects to Mr. Wordsworth), Ambleside, and the striking half of Windermere.
God bless you! Pray take care of yourself, were it only that you know how fearful and anxious your father and Fanny[190] are respecting your chest and lungs, in case of cold or over-exertion.
I have heard from Sara and from Mr. Watson (a friend of mine who has just come from the North) a very comfortable account of Hartley.
Believe me, dear Edward, with every kind wish, your affectionate uncle and sincere friend,
[S. T. Coleridge.]
P. S. Your query respecting the poem I can only answer by a Nescio. Irving (the Scotch preacher, so blackguarded in the “John Bull” of last Sunday), certainly the greatest orator I ever heard (N. B. I make and mean the same distinction between oratory and eloquence as between the mouth + the windpipe and the brain + heart), is, however, a man of great simplicity, of overflowing affections, and enthusiastically in earnest; and I have reason to believe, deeply regrets his conjunction of Southey with Byron, as far as the men (and not the poems) are in question.
Grove, Highgate, February 15, 1824.
I mentioned to you, I believe, Basil Montagu’s kind endeavour to have an associateship of the Royal Society of Literature (a yearly £100 versus a yearly essay) conferred on me. I knew nothing of the particulars till this morning, or rather till within this hour, when I received a list of names (electors) from Mr. Montagu, with advice to write to such and such and such—while he, and he, and he had promised “for us”—in short, a regular canvass, or rather sackcloth with the ashes on it pulled out of the dust holes, moistened with cabbage-water, and other culinary excretions of the same kidney. Of course, I jibbed and with proper (if not equa; yet) mulanimity returned for answer—that what a man’s friends did sub rosâ, and what one friend might say to another in favour of an individual, was one thing—what a man did in his own name and person was another—and that I would not, could not, solicit a single vote. I should think it an affrontive interference with a decision, in which there ought to be neither ground or motive, but the elector’s own judgement, and conscience, and all for what? It is hard if, in the same time as I could produce an essay of the sort required, I could not get the same sum by compiling a school-book.
However, I fear, that having allowed my name, at Montagu’s instance, to be proposed, which it was by a Mr. Jerdan (N. B. Neither the one sub cubili, nor that in Palestine; but the Jerdan of Michael’s Grove, Brompton, No. 1), I cannot now withdraw my name without appearing to trifle with my friends, and without hurting Montagu—so I must submit to the probability of being black-balled as the penalty of having given my assent before I had ascertained the conditions. So I have decided to let the thing take its own course. But as Montagu wishes to have Mr. Chantrey’s vote for us, if you see and feel no objection (an objectiuncula will be quite sufficient), you will perhaps write him a line to state the circumstances. It comes on on Thursday next.
I look forward with a feel of regeneration to the Sundays.
My best and most affectionate respects to Mrs. J. Green, and to your dear and excellent mother if she be with you.
And till we meet, may God bless you and your obliged and sincere friend,
S. T. Coleridge.
Ædes Nemorosæ, apud Portm Altam,
May 19, 1824.
Mr. S. T. Coleridge, F. R. S. L., R. A., H. M., P. S. B., etc., etc., has the honour of avowing the high gratification he will receive should any answer from him be thought “to oblige Lincoln’s Inn Fields.” When he reflects indeed on their many and cogent claims on his admiration and gratitude, what a Fund of Literature they contain, what a Royal Society, what Royal Associates—not to speak of those as yet in the egg of futurity, the unhatched Decemvirate and Spes Altera Phœbi! What a royal College, where philosophy and eloquence unite to display their fresh and vernal green! what a conjunction of the Fine Arts with the Sciences, Law and Physique, Glossurgery and Chirurgery! when he remembers that if the Titanic Roc should take up the Great Pyramid in his beak, and drop the same with due skill, the L. I. F. would fit as cup to ball, bone to bone; though if S. T. C. might dare advise so great and rare a bird, the precious transport should be let fall point downwards, and thus prevent the adulteration of their intellectual splendours with “the light of common day,” while a duplicate of the Elysium below might be reared on its ample base in mid air—(ah! if a duplicate of No. 22 could be found)!—when S. T. C. ponders on these proud merits, what is there he would not do to “oblige Lincoln’s Inn Fields”? In vain does Gillman talk of a stop being put thereto! Between oblige and Lincoln’s Inn Fields continuity alone can intervene for the heart’s eye of their obliged and counter-obliging
S. T. Coleridge,
who, with his friends Mr. and Mrs. G., will, etc., on June 3rd.
J. H. Green, Esq., 22, Lincoln’s Inn Fields.
Ramsgate, November 2, 1824.
My dear Friend,—That so much longer an interval has passed between this and my last letter you will not, I am sure, attribute to any correspondent interval of oblivion. I do not, indeed, think that any two hours of any one day, taken at sixteen, have elapsed in which you, past or future, or myself in connection with you, were not for a longer or shorter space my uppermost thought. But the two days following James’s safe arrival by the coach I was so depressively unwell, so unremittingly restless, etc., and so exhausted by a teasing cough, and by two of these bad nights that make me moan out, “O for a sleep for sleep itself to rest in!” that I was quite disqualified for writing. And since then, I have been waiting for the Murrays to take a parcel with them, who were to have gone on Monday morning. But again not hearing from them, and remembering your injunction not to mind postage, I have resolved that no more time shall pass on and should have written to-day, even though Mrs. Gillman had not been dreaming about you last night, and about some letter, etc. Upon my seriousness, I do declare that I cannot make out certain dream-devils or damned souls that play pranks with me, whenever by the operation of a cathartic pill or from the want of one, a ci-devant dinner in its metempsychosis is struggling in the lower intestines. I cannot comprehend how any thoughts, the offspring or product of my own reflection, conscience, or fancy, could be translated into such images, and agents and actions, and am half-tempted (N. B. between sleeping and waking) to regard with some favour Swedenborg’s assertion that certain foul spirits of the lowest order are attracted by the precious ex-viands, whose conversation the soul half appropriates to itself, and which they contrive to whisper into the sensorium. The Honourable Emanuel has repeatedly caught them in the fact, in that part of the spiritual world corresponding to the guts in the world of bodies, and driven them away. I do not pass this Gospel; but upon my honour it is no bad apocrypha. I am at present in my best sort and state of health, bathed yesterday, and again this morning in spite of the rain, and in so deep a bath, that having thrown myself forward from the first step of the machine ladder, and only taken two strokes after my re-immersion, I had at least ten strokes to take before I got into my depth again, so that it is no false alarm when those who cannot swim are warned that a person may be drowned a very few yards from the machine. I returned to fetch out our ladies to see the huge lengthy Columbus, with the two steam vessels,[191] before and behind, the former to tow, and the latter to, God knows what. By aid of a good glass, we saw it “quite stink,” as the poor woman said, the people on board, etc. It is 310 feet long, and 50 wide, and looks exactly like a Brobdingnag punt, and on our return we had (from Mrs. Jones) the “Morning Herald,” with Fauntleroy’s trial, which (if he be not a treble-damned liar) completely bears out my assertion that nothing short of a miracle could acquit the partners of virtual accompliceship; this on my old principle, that the absence of what ought to have been present is all but equivalent to the presence of what ought to have been absent. Qui non prohibet quod prohibere potest et debet, facit.
Sir Alexander Johnston[192] has payed me great attention. There is a Lady Johnston not unlike Miss Sara Hutchinson in face and mouth, only that she is taller. Sir A. himself is a fine gentlemanly man, young-looking for his age, and with exception of one not easily describable motion of his head that makes him look as if he had been accustomed to have a pen behind his ear, a sort of “Torney’s” clerk look, he might remind you of J. Hookham Frere. He is a sensible well-informed man, specious in no bad sense of the word, but (I guess) not much depth. In all probability, you will see him. We have talked a good deal together about you and me, and me and you, in consequence of occasion given. Sir A. is one of the leading men in our Royal Society of Literature, and beyond doubt, a man of influence in town. I am apt to forget superfluities, but a voice from above asks, “if I have said that we begin to be anxious to hear from you.” But probably before you can sit down to answer this, you will have received another, and, I flatter myself, more amusing, at least pleasure-giving Scripture from me. (N. B. “Coleridge’s Scriptures”—a new title.)
[No signature.]
Highgate, Monday, December 14, 1824.
My dear Friend,—The gentleman, Mr. Gabriel Rossetti,[193] whose letter to you I enclose, is a friend of my friend, Mr. J. H. Frere, with whom he lived in habits of intimacy at Malta and Naples. He seems to me what from Mr. Frere’s high opinion of him I should have confidently anticipated, a gentleman, a scholar, and a man of talents. The nature of his request you will learn from the letter, namely, a perusal of his Manuscript on the spirit of Dante and the mechanism and interpretation of the “Divina Commedia,” of which he believes himself to have the filum Ariadneum in his hand, and a frank opinion of the merits of his labours. My dear friend! I know by experience what is asked in this twofold request, and that the weight increases in proportion to the kindness and sensibility and the shrinking from the infliction of pain of the person on whom it is enjoined. The name of Mr. John Hookham Frere would alone have sufficed to make me undertake this office, had the request been directed to myself. It would have been my duty. But I would not, knowing your temper and habits and avocations, have sought to engage you, or even have put you to the discomfort of excusing yourself had I not been strongly impressed by Mr. Rossetti’s manners and conversation with the belief that the interests of literature are concerned, and that Mr. Rossetti has a claim on all the services which the sons of the Muses, and more particularly the cultivators of ancient Italian Literature, and most particularly Dante’s “English Duplicate and Re-incarnation” can render him. If your health and other duties allow your accession to this request (for the recommendation of the work to the booksellers is quite a secondary consideration, of minor importance in Mr. Rossetti’s estimation, and I have, besides, explained to him how very limited our influence is), you will be so good as to let me hear from you, and where and when Mr. Rossetti might wait on you. He will be happy to attend you at Chiswick. He understands English, and, he speaking Italian and I our own language, we had no difficulty in keeping up an animated conversation.
Make mine and all our cordial remembrances to Mrs. Cary, and believe me, dear friend, with perfect esteem and most affectionate regard, yours,
S. T. Coleridge.
P. S. Both Mrs. G. and myself have returned much benefited by our sea-sojourn. Mr. Rossetti has, I find, an additional merit in good men’s thoughts. He is a poet who has been driven into exile for the high morale of his writings. For even general sentiments breathing the spirit of nobler times are treasons in the present Neapolitan and Holy Alliance Codes! Wretches!! I dare even pray against them, even with Davidian bitterness. Do not forget to let me have an answer to this, if possible, by next day’s post.
Monday Night, ? 1824 ? 1829.
Dear Wordsworth,—Three whole days the going through the first book cost me, though only to find fault. But I cannot find fault, in pen and ink, without thinking over and over again, and without some sort of an attempt to suggest the alteration; and, in so doing, how soon an hour is gone! so many half seconds up to half minutes are lost in leaning back in one’s chair, and looking up, in the bodily act of contracting the muscles of the brow and forehead, and unconsciously attending to the sensation. Had I the MS. with me for five or six months, so as to amuse myself off and on, without any solicitude as to a given day, and, could I be persuaded that if as well done as the nature of the thing (viz., a translation of Virgil,[194] in English) renders possible, it would not raise but simply sustain your well-merited fame for pure diction, where what is not idiom is never other than logically correct, I doubt not that the irregularities could be removed. But I am haunted by the apprehension that I am not feeling or thinking in the same spirit with you, at one time, and at another too much in the spirit of your writings. Since Milton, I know of no poet with so many felicities and unforgettable lines and stanzas as you. And to read, therefore, page after page without a single brilliant note, depresses me, and I grow peevish with you for having wasted your time on a work so much below you, that you cannot stoop and take. Finally, my conviction is, that you undertake an impossibility, and that there is no medium between a prose version and one on the avowed principle of compensation in the widest sense, that is, manner, genius, total effect. I confine myself to Virgil when I say this.
I must now set to work with all my powers and thoughts to my Leighton,[195] and then to my logic, and then to my opus maximum! if indeed it shall please God to spare me so long, which I have had too many warnings of late (more than my nearest friends know of) not to doubt. My kind love to Dorothy.
S. T. Coleridge.
Grove, Highgate, Friday, April 8, 1825.
My dear Nephew,—I need not tell you that no attention in my power to offer shall be wanting to Dr. Reich. As a foreigner and a man of letters he might claim this in his own right; and that he came from you would have ensured it, even though he had been a Frenchman. But that he is a German, and that you think him a worthy and deserving man, and that his lot, like my own, has been cast on the bleak north side of the mountain, make me reflect with pain on the little influence I possess, and the all but zero of my direct means, to serve or to assist him. The prejudices excited against me by Jeffrey, combining with the mistaken notion of my German Metaphysics to which (I am told) some passages in some biographical gossip book about Lord Byron[196] have given fresh currency, have rendered my authority with the Trade worse than nothing. Of the three schemes of philosophy, Kant’s, Fichte’s, and Schelling’s (as diverse each from the other as those of Aristotle, Zeno, and Plotinus, though all crushed together under the name Kantean Philosophy in the English talk) I should find it difficult to select the one from which I differed the most, though perfectly easy to determine which of the three men I hold in highest honour. And Immanuel Kant I assuredly do value most highly; not, however, as a metaphysician, but as a logician who has completed and systematised what Lord Bacon had boldly designed and loosely sketched out in the Miscellany of Aphorisms, his Novum Organum. In Kant’s “Critique of the Pure Reason” there is more than one fundamental error; but the main fault lies in the title-page, which to the manifold advantage of the work might be exchanged for “An Inquisition respecting the Constitution and Limits of the Human Understanding.” I can not only honestly assert, but I can satisfactorily prove by reference to writings (Letters, Marginal Notes, and those in books that have never been in my possession since I first left England for Hamburgh, etc.) that all the elements, the differentials, as the algebraists say, of my present opinions existed for me before I had even seen a book of German Metaphysics, later than Wolf and Leibnitz, or could have read it, if I had. But what will this avail? A High German Transcendentalist I must be content to remain, and a young American painter, Leslie (pupil and friend of a very dear friend of mine, Allston), to whom I have been in the habit for ten years and more of shewing as cordial regards as I could to a near relation, has, I find, introduced a portrait of me in a picture from Sir W. Scott’s “Antiquary,” as Dr. Duster Swivil, or whatever his name is.[197] Still, however, I will make any attempt to serve Dr. Reich, which he may point out and which, I am not sure, would dis-serve him! I do not, of course, know what command he has over the English language. If he wrote it fluently, I should think that it would answer to any one of our great publishers to engage him in the translation of the best and cheapest Natural History in existence, viz., Okens, in three thick octavo volumes, containing the inorganic world, and the animals from the Πρωτόζωα and animalcula of Infusions, to man. The Botany was not published two years ago. Whether it is now I do not know. There is one thin quarto of plates. It is by far the most entertaining as well as instructive book of the kind I ever saw; and with a few notes and the omission (or castigation) of one or two of Oken’s adventurous whimsies, would be a valuable addition to our English literature. So much for this.
I will not disguise from you, my dearest nephew, that the first certain information of your having taken the “Quarterly”[198] gave me a pain, which it required all my confidence in the soundness of your judgement to counteract. I had long before by conversation with experienced barristers got rid of all apprehension of its being likely to injure you professionally. My fears were directed to the invidiousness of the situation, it being the notion of publishers that without satire and sarcasm no review can obtain or keep up a sale. Perhaps pride had some concern in it. For myself I have none, probably because I had time out of mind given it up as a lost cause, given myself over, I mean, a predestined author, though without a drop of true author blood in my veins. But a pride in and for the name of my father’s house I have, and those with whom I live know that it is never more than a dog-sleep, and apt to start up on the slight alarms. Now, though very sillily, I felt pain at the notion of any comparisons being drawn between you (to whom with your sister my heart pulls the strongest) and Mr. Gifford, even though they should be [to] your advantage; and still more, the thought that ... Murray should be or hold himself entitled to have and express an opinion on the subject. The insolence of one of his proposals to me, viz., that he would publish an edition of my Poems, on the condition that a gentleman in his confidence (Mr. Milman![199] I understand) was to select, and make such omissions and corrections as should be thought advisable—this, which offered to myself excited only a smile in which there was nothing sardonic, might very possibly have rendered me sorer and more sensitive when I boded even an infinitesimal ejusdem farinæ in connection with you.
But henceforward I shall look at the thing in a sunnier mood. Mr. Frere is strongly impressed with the importance and even dignity of the trust, and on the power you have of gradually giving a steadier and manlier tone to the feelings and principles of the higher classes. But I hope very soon to converse with you on this subject, as soon as I have finished my Essay for the Literary Society, (in which I flatter myself I have thrown some light on the passages in Herodotus respecting the derivation of the Greek Mythology from Egypt, and in what respect that paragraph respecting Homer and Hesiod is to be understood), and have, likewise, got my “Aids to Reflection” out of the Press. But I have more to do for the necessities of the day, and which are Nos non nobis, than I can well manage so as to go on with my own works, though I work from morning to night, as far as my health admits and the loss of my friendly amanuensis. For the slowness with which I get on with the pen in my own hand contrasts most strangely with the rapidity with which I dictate. Your kind letter of invitation did not reach me, but there was one which I ought to have answered long ago, which came while I was at Ramsgate. We have had a continued succession of illness in our family here, at one time six persons confined to their beds. I have been sadly afraid that we should lose Mrs. Gillman, who would be a loss indeed to the whole neighbourhood, young and old. But she seems, thank God! to recover strength, though slowly. As I hope to write again in a few days with my book, I shall now desire my cordial regards to Mrs. J. Coleridge, and with my affectionate love to the little ones.
With the warmest interest of affection and esteem, I am, my dear John, your sincere friend,
S. T. Coleridge.
J. T. Coleridge, Esq., 65, Torrington Square.
May 19, 1825.
My very dear Nephew,—You have left me under a painful and yet genial feeling of regret, that my lot in life has hitherto so much estranged me from the children of the sons of my father, that venerable countenance and name which form my earliest recollections and make them religious. It is not in my power to express adequately so as to convey it to others what a revolution has taken place in my mind since I have seen your sister, and John, and Henry, and lastly yourself. Yet revolution is not the word I want. It is rather the sudden evolution of a seed that had sunk too deep for the warmth and exciting air to reach, but which a casual spade had turned up and brought close to the surface, and I now know the meaning as well as feel the truth of the Scottish proverb, Blood is thicker than water.
My book will be out on Monday next, and Mr. Hessey hopes that he shall be able to have a copy ready for me by to-morrow afternoon, so that I may present it to the Bishop of London, whom (at his own request Lady B. tells me) with his angel-faced wife and Miss Howley[200] I am to meet at Sir George’s to-morrow at six o’clock. There are many on whose sincerity and goodness of heart I can rely. There are several in whose judgement and knowledge of the world I have greater trust than in my own. And among these few John Coleridge ranks foremost. It was, therefore, an indescribable comfort to me to hear from him, that the first draft of my “Aids to Reflection,” that is, all he had yet seen, had delighted him beyond measure. I can with severest truth declare that half a score flaming panegyrical reviews in as many works of periodical criticism would not have given me half the pleasure, nor one quarter the satisfaction.
I dine D. V. on Saturday next in Torrington Square, when doubtless we shall drink your health with appropriate adjuncts. Yesterday I had to inflict an hour and twenty-five minutes’ essay full of Greek and superannuated Metaphysics on the ears of the Royal Society of Literature, the subject being the Prometheus of Æschylus deciphered in proof and as instance of the connection of the Greek Drama with the Mysteries.[201] “Douce take it” (as Charles Lamb says in his Superannuated Man) if I did not feel remorseful pity for my audience all the time. For, at the very best, it was a thing to be read, not to read. God bless you or I shall be too late for the post.
Your affectionate uncle,
S. T. Coleridge.
P. S. I went yesterday to the Exhibition, and hastily “thrid” the labyrinth of the dense huddle, for the sole purpose of seeing our Bishop’s portrait.[202] My own by the same artist is very much better, though even in this the smile is exaggerated. But Fanny and your mother were in raptures with it while they too seemed very cold in their praise of William’s.
Postmark, July 9, 1825.
My dear Sir,—The bad weather had so far damped my expectations, that, though I regretted, I did not feel any disappointment at your not coming. And yet I hope you will remember our Highgate Thursday conversation evenings on your return to town; because, if you come once, I flatter myself, you will afterwards be no unfrequent visitor.
At least, I have never been at any of the town conversazioni, literary, or artistical, in which the conversation has been more miscellaneous without degenerating into pinches, a pinch of this, and a pinch of that, without the least connection between the subjects, and with as little interest. You will like Irving as a companion and a converser even more than you admire him as a preacher. He has a vigorous and (what is always pleasant) a GROWING mind, and his character is MANLY throughout. There is one thing, too, that I cannot help considering as a recommendation to our evenings, that, in addition to a few ladies and pretty lasses, we have seldom more than five or six in company, and these generally of as many professions or pursuits. A few weeks ago we had present, two painters, two poets, one divine, an eminent chemist and naturalist, a major, a naval captain and voyager, a physician, a colonial chief justice, a barrister, and a baronet; and this was the most numerous meeting we ever had.
It would more than gratify me to know from you, what the impressions are which my “Aids to Reflection” make on your judgment. The conviction respecting the character of the times expressed in the comment on Aph. vi., page 147, contains the aim and object of the whole book. I venture to direct your notice particularly to the note, page 204 to 207, to the note to page 218, and to the sentences respecting common sense in the last twelve lines of page 252, and the conclusion, page 377.
Lady Beaumont writes me that the Bishop of London has expressed a most favourable opinion of the book; and Blanco White was sufficiently struck with it, as immediately to purchase all my works that are in print, and has procured from Sir George Beaumont an introduction to me. It is well I should have some one to speak for it, for I am unluckily ill off ... and you will easily see what a chance a poor book of mine has in these days.
Such has been the influence of the “Edinburgh Review” that in all Edinburgh not a single copy of Wordsworth’s works or of any part of them could be procured a few months ago. The only copy Irving saw in Scotland belonged to a poor weaver at Paisley, who prized them next to his Bible, and had all the Lyrical Ballads by heart—a fact which would cut Jeffrey’s conscience to the bone, if he had any. I give you my honour that Jeffrey himself told me that he was himself an enthusiastic admirer of Wordsworth’s poetry, but it was necessary that a Review should have a character.
Forgive this egotism, and be pleased to remember me kindly and with my best respects to Mrs. Stuart, and with every cordial wish and prayer for you and yours, be assured that I am your obliged and affectionate friend,
S. T. Coleridge.
Friday, July 8, 1825.
[8 Plains of Waterloo, Ramsgate,]
October 10, 1825.
My dear Friend,—It is a flat’ning thought that the more we have seen, the less we have to say. In youth and early manhood the mind and nature are, as it were, two rival artists both potent magicians, and engaged, like the King’s daughter and the rebel genii in the Arabian Nights’ Entertainments, in sharp conflict of conjuration, each having for its object to turn the other into canvas to paint on, clay to mould, or cabinet to contain. For a while the mind seems to have the better in the contest, and makes of Nature what it likes, takes her lichens and weather-stains for types and printers’ ink, and prints maps and facsimiles of Arabic and Sanscrit MSS. on her rocks; composes country dances on her moonshiny ripples, fandangos on her waves, and waltzes on her eddy-pools, transforms her summer gales into harps and harpers, lovers’ sighs and sighing lovers, and her winter blasts into Pindaric Odes, Christabels, and Ancient Mariners set to music by Beethoven, and in the insolence of triumph conjures her clouds into whales and walruses with palanquins on their backs, and chases the dodging stars in a sky-hunt! But alas! alas! that Nature is a wary wily long-breathed old witch, tough-lived as a turtle and divisible as the polyp, repullulative in a thousand snips and cuttings, integra et in toto. She is sure to get the better of Lady Mind in the long run and to take her revenge too; transforms our to-day into a canvas dead-coloured to receive the dull, featureless portrait of yesterday: not alone turns the mimic mind, the ci-devant sculptress with all her kaleidoscopic freaks and symmetries! into clay, but leaves it such a clay to cast dumps or bullets in; and lastly (to end with that which suggested the beginning) she mocks the mind with its own metaphor, metamorphosing the memory into a lignum vitæ escritoire to keep unpaid bills and dun’s letters in, with outlines that had never been filled up, MSS. that never went further than the title-pages, and proof sheets, and foul copies of Watchmen, Friends, Aids to Reflection, and other stationary wares that have kissed the publishers’ shelf with all the tender intimacy of inosculation! Finis! and what is all this about? Why, verily, my dear friend! the thought forced itself on me, as I was beginning to put down the first sentence of this letter, how impossible it would have been fifteen or even ten years ago for me to have travelled and voyaged by land, river, and sea a hundred and twenty miles with fire and water blending their souls for my propulsion, as if I had been riding on a centaur with a sopha for a saddle, and yet to have nothing more to tell of it than that we had a very fine day and ran aside the steps in Ramsgate Pier at half-past four exactly, all having been well except poor Harriet, who during the middle third of the voyage fell into a reflecting melancholy.... She looked pathetic, but I cannot affirm that I observed anything sympathetic in the countenances of her fellow-passengers, which drew forth a sigh from me and a sage remark how many of our virtues originate in the fear of death, and that while we flatter ourselves that we are melting in Christian sensibility over the sorrows of our human brethren and sisteren, we are in fact, though perhaps unconsciously, moved at the prospect of our own end. For who ever sincerely pities seasickness, toothache, or a fit of the gout in a lusty good liver of fifty?
What have I to say? We have received the snuff, for which I thank your providential memory.... To Margate, and saw the caverns, as likewise smelt the same, called on Mr. Bailey, and got the Novum Organum. In my hurry, I scrambled up the Blackwood instead of a volume of Giovanni Battista Vico, which I left on the table in my room, and forgot my sponge and sponge-bag of oiled silk. But perhaps when I sit down to work, I may have to request something to be sent, which may come with them. I therefore defer it till then....
God bless you, my dear friend! You will soon hear again from
S. T. Coleridge.
December 9, 1825.
My dear Edward,—I write merely to tell you, that I have secured Charles Lamb and Mr. Irving to meet you, and wait only to learn the day for the endeavour to induce Mr. Blanco White to join us. Will you present Mr. and Mrs. Gillman’s regards to your brothers Henry and John, and that they would be most happy if both or either would be induced to accompany you?
I have had a very interesting conversation with Irving this evening on the present condition of the Scottish Church, the spiritual life of which, yea, the very core he describes as in a state of ossification. The greater part of the Scottish clergy, he complains, have lost the unction of their own church without acquiring the erudition and accomplishments of ours. Their sermons are all dry theological arguing and disputing, lifeless, pulseless,—a rushlight in a fleshless skull.
My kindest love to your sister, and kisses, prayers, and blessings for the little one.
[S. T. Coleridge.]
Thursday midnight.
I almost despair of John’s coming; but do persuade Henry if you can. I quite long to see him again.
May 3, 1827.
My dear Friend,—I received and acknowledge your this morning’s present both as plant and symbol, and with appropriate thanks and correspondent feeling. The rose is the pride of summer, the delight and the beauty of our gardens; the eglantine, the honeysuckle, and the jasmine, if not so bright or so ambrosial, are less transient, creep nearer to us, clothe our walls, twine over our porch, and haply peep in at our chamber window, with the crested wren or linnet within the tufts wishing good morning to us. Lastly the geranium passes the door, and in its hundred varieties imitating now this now that leaf, odour, blossom of the garden, still steadily retains its own staid character, its own sober and refreshing hue and fragrance. It deserves to be the inmate of the house, and with due attention and tenderness will live through the winter grave yet cheerful, as an old family friend, that makes up for the departure of gayer visitors, in the leafless season. But none of these are the myrtle![203] In none of these, nor in all collectively, will the myrtle find a substitute. All together and joining with them all the aroma, the spices, and the balsams of the hot-house, yet would they be a sad exchange for the myrtle! Oh, precious in its sweetness is the rich innocence of its snow-white blossoms! And dear are they in the remembrance; but these may pass with the season, and while the myrtle plant, our own myrtle plant remains unchanged, its blossoms are remembered the more to endear the faithful bearer; yea, they survive invisibly in every more than fragrant leaf. As the flashing strains of the nightingale to the yearning murmurs of the dove, so the myrtle to the rose! He who has once possessed and prized a genuine myrtle will rather remember it under the cypress tree than seek to forget it among the rose bushes of a paradise.
God bless you, my dearest friend, and be assured that if death do not suspend memory and consciousness, death itself will not deprive you of a faithful participator in all your hopes and fears, affections and solicitudes, in your unalterable
S. T. Coleridge.
Monday, January 14, 1828.
My dear Nephew,—An interview with your cousin Henry on Saturday and a note received from him last night had enabled me in some measure to prepare my mind for the awful and humanly afflicting contents of your letter, and I rose to the receiving of it from earnest suplication to “the Father of Mercies and God of all Comfort”—that He would be strong in the weakness of His faithful servant, and his effectual helper in the last conflict. My first impulse on reading your letter was to set off immediately, but on a re-perusal, I doubt whether I shall not better comply with your suggestion by waiting for your next. Assuredly, if God permit I will not forego the claim, which my heart and conscience justify me in making, to be one among the mourners who ever truly loved and honoured your father. Allow me, my dear nephew, in the swelling grief of my heart to say, that if ever man morning and evening and in the watches of the night had earnestly intreated through his Lord and Mediator, that God would shew him his sins and their sinfulness, I, for the last ten years at least of my life, have done so! But, in vain, have I tried to recall any one moment since my quitting the University, or any one occasion, in which I have either thought, felt, spoken, or intentionally acted of or in relation to my brother, otherwise than as one who loved in him father and brother in one, and who independent of the fraternal relation and the remembrance of his manifold goodness and kindness to me from boyhood to early manhood should have chosen him above all I had known as the friend of my inmost soul. Never have man’s feeling and character been more cruelly misrepresented than mine. Before God have I sinned, and I have not hidden my offences before him; but He too knows that the belief of my brother’s alienation and the grief that I was a stranger in the house of my second father has been the secret wound that to this hour never closed or healed up. Yes, my dear nephew! I do grieve, and at this moment I have to struggle hard in order to keep my spirit in tranquillity, as one who has long since referred his cause to God, through the grief at my little communication with my family. Had it been otherwise, I might have been able to shew myself, my whole self, for evil and for good to my brother, and often have said to myself, “How fearful an attribute to sinful man is Omniscience!” and yet have I earnestly wished, oh, how many times! that my brother could have seen my inmost heart, with every thought and every frailty. But his reward is nigh: in the light and love of his Lord and Saviour he will soon be all light and love, and I too shall have his prayers before the throne. May the Almighty and the Spirit the Comforter dwell in your and your mother’s spirit. I must conclude. Only, if I come and it should please God that your dear father shall be still awaiting his Redeemer’s final call, I shall be perfectly satisfied in all things to be directed by you and your mother, who will judge best whether the knowledge of my arrival though without seeing him would or would not be a satisfaction, would or would not be a disturbance to him.
Your affectionate uncle,
S. T. Coleridge.
Grove, Highgate.
Rev. George May Coleridge,
Warden House, Ottery St. Mary, Devon.
June 6, 1828.
My dear long known, and long loved friend,—Be assured that neither Mr. Irving nor any other person, high or low, gentle or simple, stands higher in my esteem or bears a name endeared to me by more interesting recollections and associations than yourself; and if gentle man or gentle woman, taking too literally the partial portraiture of a friend, has a mind to see the old lion in his sealed cavern, no more potent “Open, Sesame, Open” will be found than an introduction from George Dyer, my elder brother under many titles—brother Blue, brother Grecian, brother Cantab, brother Poet, and last best form of fraternity, a man who has never in his long life, by tongue or pen, uttered what he did not believe to be the truth (from any motive) or concealed what he did conceive to be such from other motives than those of tenderness for the feelings of others, and a conscientious fear lest what was truly said might be falsely interpreted,—in all these points I dare claim brotherhood with my old friend (not omitting grey hairs, which are venerable), but in one point, the long toilsome life of inexhaustible, unsleeping benevolence and beneficence, that slept only when there was no form or semblance of sentient life to awaken it, George Dyer must stand alone! He may have a few second cousins, but no full brother.
Now, with regard to your friends, I shall be happy to see them on any day they may find to suit their or your convenience, from twelve (I am not ordinarily visible before, or if the outward man were forced to make his appearance, yet from sundry bodily infirmities, my soul would present herself with unwashed face) till four, that is, after Monday next,—we having at present a servant ill in bed, you must perforce be content with a sandwich lunch or a glass of wine.
But if you could make it suit you to take your tea, an early tea, at or before six o’clock, and spend the evening, a long evening, with us on Thursday next, Mr. and Mrs. Gillman will be most happy to see you and Mrs. Dyer, with your friends, and you will probably meet some old friend of yours. On Thursday evening, indeed, at any time, between half-past five and eleven, you may be sure of finding us at home, and with a very fair chance of Basil Montagu taking you and Mrs. Dyer back in his coach.
I have long owed you a letter, and should have long since honestly paid my debt; but we have had a house of sickness. My own health, too, has been very crazy and out of repair, and I have had so much work accumulated on me that I have been like an overtired man roused from insufficient sleep, who sits on his bedside with one stocking on and the other in his hand, doing nothing, and thinking what a deal he has to do.
But I am ever, sick or well, weary or lively, my dear Dyer, your sincere and affectionate friend,
S. T. Coleridge.
Grove, Highgate, Thursday, August 14, 1828.
My dear Sir,—I have but this moment received yours of the 13th, and though there are but ten minutes in my power, if I am to avail myself of this day’s post, I will rather send you a very brief than not an immediate answer. I shall be much gratified by standing beside the baptismal font as one of the sponsors of the little pilgrim at his inauguration into the rights and duties of Immortality, and he shall not want my prayers, nor aught else that shall be within my power, to assist him in becoming that of which the Great Sponsor who brought light and immortality into the world has declared him an emblem.
There are one or two points of character belonging to me, so, at least, I believe and trust, which I would gladly communicate with the name,—earnest love of Truth for its own sake, and steadfast convictions grounded on faith, not fear, that the religion into which I was baptised is the Truth, without which all other knowledge ceases to merit the appellation. As to other things, which yet I most sincerely wish for him, a more promising augury might be derived from other individuals of the Coleridge race.
Any day, that you and your dear wife (to whom present my kindest remembrances and congratulations) shall find convenient, will suit me, if only you will be so good as to give me two or three days’ knowledge of it.
Believe me, my dear sir, with sincere respect and regard,
Your obliged
S. T. Coleridge.
P. S. I returned from my seven weeks’ Continental tour with Mr. Wordsworth and his daughter this day last week. We saw the Rhine as high up as Bingen, Holland, and the Netherlands.
Grove, Highgate, June 1, 1830.
My dear Friend,—Do you happen among your acquaintances and connections to know any one who knows any one who knows Sir Francis Freeling of the Post Office sufficiently to be authorised to speak a recommendatory word to him? Our Harriet,[206] whose love and willing-mindedness to me-ward during my long chain of bodily miserablenesses render it my duty no less than my inclination to shew to her that I am not insensible of her humbly affectionate attentions, has applied to me in behalf of her brother, a young man who can have an excellent character, from Lord Wynford and others, for sobriety, integrity, and discretion, and who is exceedingly ambitious to get the situation of a postman or deliverer of letters to the General Post Office. Perhaps, before I see you next, you will be so good as to tumble over the names of your acquaintances, and if any connection of Sir Francis’ should turn up, to tell me, and if it be right and proper, to make my request and its motive.
Dr. Chalmers with his daughter and his very pleasing wife honoured me with a call this morning, and spent an hour with me, which the good doctor declared on parting to have been “a refreshment” such as he had not enjoyed for a long season.[207] N. B.—There were no sandwiches; only Mrs. Aders was present, who is most certainly a bonne bouche for both eye and ear, and who looks as bright and sunshine-showery as if nothing had ever ailed her. The main topic of our discourse was Mr. Irving and his unlucky phantasms and phantis(ms). I was on the point of telling Dr. Chalmers, but fortunately recollected there were ladies and Scotch ladies present, that, while other Scotchmen were content with brimstone for the itch, Irving had a rank itch for brimstone, new-sublimated by addition of fire. God bless you and your
Ever obliged and affectionate friend,
S. T. Coleridge.
30 May? or 1 June? at all events.
Monday night, 11 o’clock.
P. S.—Kind remembrances to Mrs. Green. I continue pretty well, on the whole, considering, save the soreness across the base of my chest.
1830.
My dear Poole,—Mr. Stutfield Junr.[208] has been so kind as to inform me of his father’s purposed journey to Stowey, and to give me this opportunity of writing; though in fact I have little pleasant to say, except that I am advancing regularly and steadily towards the completion of my Opus Magnum on Revelation and Christianity, the Reservoir of my reflections and reading for twenty-five years past, and in health not painfully worse. I do not know, however, that I should have troubled you with a letter merely to convey this piece of information, but I have a great favour to request of you; that is, that, supposing you to have still in your possession the two letters of the biography of my own childhood which I wrote at Stowey for you, and a copy of the letter from Germany containing the account of my journey to the Harz and my ascent of Mount Brocken, you would have them transcribed, and send me the transcript addressed to me, James Gillman’s Esq., Highgate, London.
O that riches would but make wings for me instead of for itself, and I would fly to the seashore at Porlock and Lynmouth, making a good halt at dear, ever fondly remembered Stowey, of which, believe me, your image and the feelings and associations connected therewith constitute four fifths, to, my dear Poole,
Your obliged and affectionate friend,
S. T. Coleridge.
1830.
Dear Mrs. Gillman,—Wife of the friend who has been more than a brother to me, and who have month after month, yea, hour after hour, for how many successive years, united in yourself the affections and offices of an anxious friend and tender sister to me-ward!
May the Father of Mercies, the God of Health and all Salvation, be your reward for your great and constant love and loving-kindness to me, abiding with you and within you, as the Spirit of guidance, support, and consolation! And may his Grace and gracious Providence bless James and Henry for your sake, and make them a blessing to you and their father! And though weighed down by a heavy presentiment respecting my own sojourn here, I not only hope but have a steadfast faith that God will be your reward, because your love to me from first to last has begun in, and been caused by, what appeared to you a translucence of the love of the good, the true, and the beautiful from within me,—as a relic of glory gleaming through the turbid shrine of my mortal imperfections and infirmities, as a Light of Life seen within “the body of this Death,”—because in loving me you loved our Heavenly Father reflected in the gifts and influences of His Holy Spirit!
S. T. Coleridge.
December 15, 1831.
My dear Friend,—It is at least a fair moiety of the gratification I feel, that it will give you so much pleasure to hear from me, that I tacked about on Monday, continued in smooth water during the whole day, and with exceptions of about an hour’s muttering, as if a storm was coming, had a comfortable night. I was still better on Tuesday, and had no relapse yesterday. I have so repeatedly given and suffered disappointment, that I cannot even communicate this gleam of convalescence without a little fluttering distinctly felt at my heart, and a sort of cloud-shadow of dejection flitting over me. God knows with what aims, motives, and aspirations I pray for an interval of ease and competent strength! One of my present wishes is to form a better nomenclature or terminology. I have long felt the exceeding inconvenience of the many different meanings of the term objective,—sometimes equivalent to apparent or sensible, sometimes in opposition to it,—ex. gr. “The objectivity is the rain drops and the reflected light, the iris, is but an appearance.” Thus, sometimes it means real and sometimes unreal, and the worst is, that it forms an obstacle to the fixation of the great truth, that the perfect reality is predicable only where actual and real are terms of identity, that is, where there is no potential being, and that this alone is absolute reality; and further, of that most fundamental truth, that the ground of all reality, the objective no less than of the subjective, is the Absolute Subject. How to get out of the difficulty I do not know, save that some other term must be used as the antithet to phenomenal, perhaps noumenal.
James Gillman has passed an unusually strict and long examination for ordination with great credit, and was selected by the bishop to read the lessons in the service. The parents are, of course, delighted, and now, my dear friend, with affectionate remembrances to Mrs. Green, may God bless you and
S. T. Coleridge.
The Grove, February 24, 1832.
My dear Nephew, and by a higher tie, Son, I thank God I have this day been favoured with such a mitigation of the disease as amounts to a reprieve, and have had ease enough of sensation to be able to think of what you said to me from Lockhart, and the result is a wish that you should—that is, if it appears right to you, and you have no objection of feeling—write for me to Professor Wilson, offering the Essays, and the motives for the wish to have them republished, with the authority (if there be no breach of confidence) of Mr. Lockhart. I cannot with propriety offer them to Fraser, having for a series of years received “Blackwood’s Magazine” as a free gift to me, until I have made the offer to Blackwood. Of course, my whole and only object is the desire to see them put into the possibility of becoming useful. But, oh! this is a faint desire, my dear Henry, compared with that of seeing a fair abstract of the principles I have advanced respecting the National Church and its revenue, and the National Clerisy as a coördinate of the State, in the minor and antithetic sense of the term State!
I almost despair of the Conservative Party, too truly, I fear, and most ominously, self-designated Tories, and of course half-truthmen! One main omission both of senators and writers has been, ὡς ἔμοιγε δοκεῖ, that they have forgotten to level the axe of their argument at the root, the true root, yea, trunk of the delusion, by pointing out the true nature and operation and modus operandi of the taxes in the first instance, and then and not till then the utter groundlessness, the absurdity of the presumption that any House of Commons formed otherwise, and consisting of other men of other ranks, other views or with other interests, than the present has been for the last twenty years at least, would or could (from any imaginable cause) have a deeper interest or a stronger desire to diminish the taxes, as far as the abolition of this or that tax would increase the ability to pay the remainder. For what are taxes but one of the forms of circulation? Some a nation must have, or it is no nation. But he that takes ninepence from me instead of a shilling, but at the same time and by this very act prevents sixpence from coming into my pocket,—am I to thank him? Yet such are the only thanks that Mr. Hume and the Country Squires, his cowardly back-clapping flatterers, can fairly claim. In my opinion, Hume is an incomparably more mischievous being than O’Connell and the gang of agitators. They are mere symptomatic and significative effects, the roars of the inwardly agitated mass of the popular sea. But Hume is a fermenting virus. But I must end my scrawl. God bless my dear Sara. Give my love to Mrs. C. and kiss the baby for
S. T. Coleridge.
H. N. Coleridge, Esq., 1, New Court, Lincoln’s Inn.
March 22, 1832.
My dear Miss Lawrence,—You and dear, dear Mrs. Crompton are among the few sunshiny images that endear my past life to me, and I never think of you without heartfelt esteem, without affection, and a yearning of my better being toward you. I have for more than eighteen months been on the brink of the grave, the object of my wishes, and only not of my prayers, because I commit myself, poor dark creature, to an Omniscient and All-merciful, in whom are the issues of life and death,—content, yea, most thankful, if only His Grace will preserve within me the blessed faith that He is and is a God that heareth prayers, abundant in forgiveness, and therefore to be feared, no fate, no God as imagined by the Unitarians, a sort of, I know not what law-giving Law of Gravitation, to whom prayer would be as idle as to the law of gravity, if an undermined wall were falling upon me; but “a God that made the eye, and therefore shall He not see? who made the ear, and shall He not hear?” who made the heart of man to love Him, and shall He not love the creature whose ultimate end is to love Him?—a God who seeketh that which was lost, who calleth back that which had gone astray; who calleth through His own Name; Word, Son, from everlasting the Way and the Truth; and who became man that for poor fallen mankind he might be (not merely announced but be) the Resurrection and the Life,—“Come unto me, all ye that are weary and heavy-laden, and I will give you rest!” Oh, my dear Miss Lawrence! prize above all earthly things the faith. I trust that no sophistry of shallow infra-socinians has quenched it within you,—that God is a God that heareth prayers. If varied learning, if the assiduous cultivation of the reasoning powers, if an accurate and minute acquaintance with all the arguments of controversial writers; if an intimacy with the doctrines of the Unitarians, which can only be obtained by one who for a year or two in his early life had been a convert to them, yea, a zealous and by themselves deemed powerful supporter of their opinions; lastly, if the utter absence of any imaginable worldly interest that could sway or warp the mind and affections,—if all these combined can give any weight or authority to the opinion of a fellow-creature, they will give weight to my adjuration, sent from my sickbed to you in kind love. O trust, O trust, in your Redeemer! in the coeternal Word, the Only-begotten, the living Name of the Eternal I AM, Jehovah, Jesus!
I shall endeavour to see Mr. Hamilton.[211] I doubt not his scientific attainments. I have had proofs of his taste and feeling as a poet, but believe me, my dear Miss Lawrence! that, should the cloud of distemper pass from over me, there needs no other passport to a cordial welcome from me than a line from you importing that he or she possesses your esteem and regard, and that you wish I should shew attention to them. I cannot make out your address, which I read “The Grange;” but where that is I know not, and fear that the Post Office may be as ignorant as myself. I must therefore delay the direction of my letter till I see Mr. Hamilton; but in all places, and independent of place, I am, my dear Miss Lawrence, with most affectionate recollections,
Your friend,
S. T. Coleridge.
Miss S. Lawrence, The Grange, nr. Liverpool.