Biographia Epistolaris, Volume 1.

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While your Son remains with me, he will, of course, be acquiring that
knowledge and those powers of Intellect which are necessary as the
'foundation' of excellence in all professions, rather than the
immediate science of 'any'. 'Languages' will engross one or
two hours in every day: the 'elements' of Chemistry, Geometry,
Mechanics, and Optics the remaining hours of study. After tolerable
proficiency in these, we shall proceed to the study of 'Man' and of
'Men'--I mean, Metaphysics and History--and finally, to a thorough
examination of the Jewish and Christian Dispensations, their doctrines
and evidences: an examination necessary for all men, but peculiarly so
to your son, if he be destined for a medical man. A Physician who should
be even a Theist, still more a 'Christian', would be a rarity
indeed. I do not know 'one'--and I know a 'great many'
Physicians. They are 'shallow' Animals: having always employed
their minds about Body and Gut, they imagine that in the whole system of
things there is nothing but Gut and Body. * * *

I hope your Health is confirmed, and that your Wife and children are
well. Present my well-wishes. You are blessed with children who are
'pure in Heart'--add to this Health, Competence, Social Affections,
and Employment, and you have a complete idea of Human Happiness.

Believe me,

With esteem and friendly-heartedness,

Your obliged

S. T. COLERIDGE.

Monday, November 14th (1796).

LETTER 46. To CHARLES LLOYD, SEN.

Dear Sir,

I think it my duty to acquaint you with the nature of my connection with
your Son. If he be to stay with me, I can neither be his tutor or
fellow-student, nor in any way impart a regular system of knowledge. My
'days' I shall devote to the acquirement of 'practical'
husbandry and horticulture, that as "to beg I am ashamed," I may at
least be able "to dig": and my evenings will be fully employed in
fulfilling my engagements with the 'Critical Review' and 'New
Monthly Magazine'. If, therefore, your Son occupy a room in my
cottage, he will be there merely as a Lodger and Friend; and the only
money I shall 'receive' from him will be the sum which his
'board' and 'lodging' will cost 'me', and which, by an
accurate calculation, I find will amount to half a guinea a week,
'exclusive' of his washing, porter, cyder, spirits, in short any
potation beyond table-beer--these he must provide himself with. I shall
keep no servant.

I must add that Charles Lloyd must 'furnish' his own bed-room. It
is not in my power to do it myself without running into debt; from which
may heaven amid its most angry dispensations preserve me!

When I mentioned the circumstances which rendered my literary engagement
impracticable, when, I say, I first mentioned them to Charles Lloyd, and
described the severe process of simplification which I had determined to
adopt, I never dreamt that he would have desired to continue with me:
and when at length he did manifest such a desire, I dissuaded him from
it. But his feelings became vehement, and in the present state of his
health it would have been as little prudent as humane in me to have
given an absolute refusal.

Will you permit me, Sir! to write of Charles Lloyd with freedom? I do
not think he ever will endure, whatever might be the consequences, to
practise as a physician, or to undertake any commercial employment. What
weight your authority might have, I know not: I doubt not he would
struggle to submit to it--but would he 'succeed' in any attempt to
which his temper, feelings, and principles are inimical? * * * What then
remains? I know of nothing but agriculture. If his attachment to it
'should' prove permanent, and he really acquired the steady
dispositions of a practical farmer, I think you could wish nothing
better for him than to see him married, and settled 'near you' as a
farmer. I love him, and do not think he will be well or happy till he is
married and settled.

I have written plainly and decisively, my dear Sir! I wish to avoid not
only evil, but the 'appearances' of evil. This is a world of
calumnies! Yea! there is an imposthume in the large tongue of this world
ever ready to break, and it is well to prevent the contents from being
sputtered into one's face. My Wife thanks you for your kind inquiries
respecting her. She and our Infant are well--only the latter has met
with a little accident--a burn, which is doing well.

To Mrs. Lloyd and all your children present my remembrances, and believe
me in all esteem and friendliness, Yours sincerely, S. T. COLERIDGE. [1]
Sunday, December 4, 1796.

[Footnote 1: To this letter Mr. Lloyd seems to have returned the
question, How could Coleridge live without companions? The answer came
quickly, as we learn from a letter from Coleridge to Poole
{'Letters', I, p. 186}, in which he mentions Mr. Lloyd's query and
quotes his own characteristic reply: "I shall have six companions: My
Sara, my babe, my own shaping and disquisitive mind, my books, my
beloved friend Thomas Poole, and lastly, Nature looking at me with a
thousand looks of beauty, and speaking to me in a thousand melodies of
love. If I were capable of being tired with all these, I should then
detect a vice in my nature, and would fly to habitual solitude to
eradicate it." Coleridge's letter to Mr. Lloyd, containing this passage,
seems to have been lost. Note by E. V. Lucas.]

The 'Ode to the Departing Year,' Coleridge tells us, was written on
24th, 25th, and 26th December, 1796. It was first printed in the
'Cambridge Intelligencer' of 31st December, and then republished, along
with the 'Lines to a Young Man who abandoned himself to a Causeless
Melancholy' (probably Charles Lloyd), in quarto form of 16 pages. It was
then prefaced by the following letter:

LETTER 47. TO THOMAS POOLE, OF STOWEY. DEDICATION
TO THE "ODE TO THE DEPARTING YEAR."

My dear Friend,

Soon after the commencement of this month, the editor of the 'Cambridge
Intelligencer' (a newspaper conducted with so much ability, and such
unmixed and fearless zeal for the interests of piety and freedom, that I
cannot but think my poetry honoured by being permitted to appear in it)
requested me, by letter, to furnish him with some lines for the last day
of this year. I promised him that I would make the attempt; but almost
immediately after, a rheumatic complaint seized on my head, and
continued to prevent the possibility of poetic composition till within
the last three days. So in the course of the last three days the
following Ode was produced. In general, when an author informs the
public that his production was struck off in a great hurry, he offers an
insult, not an excuse. But I trust that the present case is an
exception, and that the peculiar circumstances which obliged me to write
with such unusual rapidity give a propriety to my professions of it:
"nec nunc eam apud te jacto, sed et ceteris indico; ne quis asperiore
limae carmen examinet, et a confuso scriptum et quod frigidum erat ni
statim traderem." (I avail myself of the words of Statius, and hope that
I shall likewise be able to say of any weightier publication, what 'he'
has declared of his Thebaid, that it had been tortured with a laborious
polish.)

For me to discuss the 'literary' merits of this hasty composition were
idle and presumptuous. If it be found to possess that impetuosity of
transition, and that precipitation of fancy and feeling, which are the
'essential' excellencies of the sublimer Ode, its deficiency in less
important respects will be easily pardoned by those from whom alone
praise could give me pleasure: and whose minuter criticisms will be
disarmed by the reflection, that these lines were conceived "not in the
soft obscurities of retirement, or under the shelter of Academic Groves,
but amidst inconvenience and distraction, in sickness and in sorrow."[1]
I am more anxious lest the 'moral' spirit of the Ode should be mistaken.
You, I am sure, will not fail to recollect that among the ancients, the
Bard and the Prophet were one and the same character; and you 'know'
that although I prophesy curses, I pray fervently for blessings.
Farewell, Brother of my Soul!

--O ever found the same
And trusted and beloved!

Never without an emotion of honest pride do I subscribe myself

Your grateful and affectionate friend, S. T. COLERIDGE.

[Bristol, December 26, 1796.]

[Footnote 1: From the Preface to the first Edition of Johnson's
_Dictionary of the English Language._]

CHAPTER IV

CONTEMPORARY PORTRAITS OF COLERIDGE

(From Mr. Wordsworth's Stanzas written in my Pocket-copy of
Thomson's 'Castle of Indolence'.)

With him there often walked in friendly guise,
Or lay upon the moss by brook or tree,
A noticeable Man with large grey eyes,
And a pale face that seemed undoubtedly
As if a blooming face it ought to be;
Heavy his low-hung lip did oft appear,
Deprest by weight of musing Phantasy;
Profound his forehead was, though not severe;
Yet some did think that he had little business here:

Sweet heaven forefend! his was a lawful right:
Noisy he was, and gamesome as a boy;
His limbs would toss about him with delight,
Like branches when strong winds the trees annoy.
Nor lacked his calmer hours device or toy
To banish listlessness and irksome care;
He would have taught you how you might employ
Yourself; and many did to him repair,--
And certes not in vain; he had inventions rare.

For Josiah Wade, the gentleman to whom the letters, placed at the
beginning of the last chapter, were written, the fine portrait of Mr.
Coleridge by Allston, (nearly full length, in oils,) was painted at Rome
in 1806,[1]--I believe in the spring of that year. Mr. Allston himself
spoke of it, as in his opinion faithfully representing his friend's
features and expression, such as they commonly appeared. His
countenance, he added, in his high poetic mood, was quite beyond the
painter's art: "it was indeed "spirit made visible"."

Mr. Coleridge was thirty-three years old when this portrait was painted,
but it would be taken for that of a man of forty. The youthful, even
boyish look, which the original retained for some years after boyhood,
must rather suddenly have given place, to a premature appearance, first
of middle-agedness, then of old age, at least in his general aspect,
though in some points of personal appearance,--his fair smooth skin and
"large grey eyes," "at once the clearest and the deepest"--so a friend
lately described them to me,--"that I ever saw," he grew not old to the
last. Sergeant Talfourd thus speaks of what he was at three or four and
forty. "Lamb used to say that he was inferior to what he had been in his
youth; but I can scarcely believe it; at least there is nothing in his
early writing which gives any idea of the richness of his mind so
lavishly poured out at this time in his happiest moods. Although he
looked much older than he was, his hair being silvered all over, and his
person tending to corpulency, there was about him no trace of bodily
sickness or mental decay, but rather an air of voluptuous repose. His
benignity of manner placed his auditors entirely at their ease; and
inclined them to listen delighted to the sweet low tone in which he
began to discourse on some high theme. At first his tones were
conversational: he seemed to dally with the shallows of the subject and
with fantastic images which bordered it: but gradually the thought grew
deeper, and the voice deepened with the thought; the stream gathering
strength, seemed to bear along with it all things which opposed its
progress, and blended them with its current; and stretching away among
regions tinted with etherial colours, was lost at airy distance in the
horizon of fancy. Coleridge was sometimes induced to repeat portions of
'Christabel', then enshrined in manuscript from eyes profane, and gave a
bewitching effect to its wizard lines. But more peculiar in its beauty
than this was his recitation of 'Kubla Khan'. As he repeated the
passage--

A damsel with a dulcimer
In a vision once I saw:
It was an Abyssinian maid,
And on her dulcimer she played
Singing of Mount Abora!

--his voice seemed to mount and melt into air, as the images grew more
visionary, and the suggested associations more remote."[2]

Mr. De Quincey thus describes him at thirty-four, in the summer season
of 1807, about a year and a half after the date of Mr. Allston's
portrait.

"I had received directions for finding out the house where Coleridge was
visiting; and in riding down a main street of Bridgewater, I noticed a
gateway corresponding to the description given me. Under this was
standing, and gazing about him, a man whom I shall describe. In height
he might seem to be above five feet eight: (he was in reality about an
inch and a half taller;) his person was broad and full, and tended even
to corpulence: his complexion was fair, though not what painters
technically style fair, because it was associated with black hair: his
eyes were large and soft in their expression: and it was from the
peculiar appearance of haze or dreaminess, which mixed with their light,
that I recognised my object. This was Coleridge. I examined him
steadfastly for a minute or more: and it struck me that he saw neither
myself nor any object in the street.

He was in a deep reverie, for I had dismounted, made two or three
trifling arrangements at an inn door, and advanced close to him, before
he had apparently become conscious of my presence. The sound of my
voice, announcing my own name, first awoke him; he started, and for a
moment, seemed at a loss to understand my purpose or his own situation;
for he repeated rapidly a number of words which had no relation to
either of us. There was no 'mauvaise honte' in his manner, but simple
perplexity, and an apparent difficulty in recovering his position among
daylight realities. This little scene over, he received me with a
kindness of manner so marked that it might be called gracious.

Coleridge led me to a drawing room and rang the bell for refreshments,
and omitted no point of a courteous reception. He told me that there
would be a very large dinner party on that day, which perhaps might be
disagreeable to a perfect stranger; but, if not, he could assure me of a
most hospitable welcome from the family. I was too anxious to see him,
under all aspects, to think of declining this invitation. And these
little points of business being settled, Coleridge, like some great
river, the Orellana, or the St. Lawrence, that had been checked and
fretted by rocks or thwarting islands, and suddenly recovers its volume
of waters, and its mighty music, swept, at once, as if returning to his
natural business, into a continuous strain of eloquent dissertation,
certainly the most novel, the most finely illustrated, and traversing
the most spacious fields of thought, by transitions, the most just and
logical, that it was possible to conceive."

I will now present him as he appeared to William Hazlitt in the February
of 1798, when he was little more than five and twenty.

"It was in January, 1798, that I rose one morning before daylight, to
walk ten miles in the mud, to hear this celebrated person preach. Never,
the longest day I have to live, shall I have such another walk as this
cold, raw, comfortless one, in the winter of the year 1798. 'Il y a des
impressions que ni le temps ni les circonstances peuvent effacer.
Dusse-je vivre des siecles entiers, le doux temps de majeunesse ne pent
renatre pour moi, ni s'effacer jamais dans ma memoire.' When I got
there, the organ was playing the hundredth psalm, and when it was done,
Mr. Coleridge rose and gave out his text. "He departed again into a
mountain 'himself alone'." As he gave out this text his voice 'rose like
a stream of rich distilled perfumes;' and when he came to the two last
words, which he pronounced loud, deep, and distinct, it seemed to me,
who was then young, as if the sounds had echoed from the bottom of the
human heart, and as if that prayer might have floated in solemn silence
through the universe. The idea of St. John came into my mind, of one
crying in the wilderness, who had his loins girt about, and whose food
was locusts, and wild honey. The preacher then launched into his
subject, like an eagle dallying with the wind. The sermon was upon peace
and war--upon church and state--not their alliance, but their
separation--on the spirit of the world, and the spirit of Christianity,
not as the same, but as opposed to one another. He talked of those who
had inscribed the cross of Christ on banners dripping with human gore.
He made a poetical and pastoral excursion,--and to shew the fatal
effects of war, drew a striking contrast between the simple shepherd
boy, driving his team afield, or sitting under the hawthorn, piping to
his flock, as though he should never be old, and the same poor country
lad, crimped, kidnapped, brought into town, made drunk at an alehouse,
turned into a wretched drummer-boy, with his hair sticking on end with
powder and pomatum, a long cue at his back, and tricked out in the
finery of the profession of blood.

Such were the notes our once loved poet sung:

and for myself, I could not have been more delighted if I had heard the
music of the spheres. Poetry and Philosophy had met together, Truth and
Genius had embraced, under the eye and with the sanction of Religion.
This was even beyond my hopes. I returned home well satisfied. The sun
that was still labouring pale and wan through the sky, obscured by thick
mists, seemed an emblem of the 'good cause'; and the cold dank drops of
dew, that hung half melted on the beard of the thistle, had something
genial and refreshing in them." [3]

A glowing dawn was his, but noon's full blaze
Of 'perfect day' ne'er fill'd his heav'n with radiance.
Scarce were the flow'rets on their stems upraised
When sudden shadows cast an evening gloom
O'er those bright skies!--yet still those skies were lovely;
The roses of the morn yet lingered there
When stars began to peep,--nor yet exhaled
Fresh dew-drops glittered near the glowworm's lamp,
And many a snatch of lark-like melody
Birds of the shade trilled forth'mid plaintive warbling.

The principal portraits of Coleridge are, besides the one by Allston
referred to by Sara Coleridge, engraved by Samuel Cousins, one by Peter
Vandyke, painted in 1795; one by Hancock, drawn in 1796; another by
Allston, unfinished, painted in Rome; one by C. R. Leslie, taken before
1819, one by T. Phillips, belonging to Mr. John Murray, engraved for the
frontispiece of Murray's edition of the 'Table Talk'; another by
Phillips, in the possession of William Rennell Coleridge, of Salston,
Ottery St. Mary; and a crayon sketch by George Dawe, now at The
Chanter's House. These portraits have often been engraved for
biographies and editions of Coleridge's 'Poems'. Vandyke's portrait
appears in Brandl's Life and Dykes-Campbell's edition of the 'Poems';
Hancock's in the Aldine edition of the 'Poems'; and Leslie's in the Bohn
Library 'Friend' and in E. H. Coleridge's 'Letters of S. T. C'.
Allston's portrait of 1814 is given in Flagg's 'Life of Allston'. The
two best reproductions of Vandyke's and Hancock's portraits are to be
found in Cottle's 'Early Recollections'.

A small portrait in oils (three replicas), taken by a Bristol artist,
'circ.' 1798, engraved for Moxon's edition of 1863.

A portrait in oils by James Northcote, taken in 1804 for Sir G.
Beaumont, engraved in mezzotint by William Say.

A portrait in oils taken at the Argyll Baths, 'circ.' 1828 (see
'Letters', 1895, ii, 758).

A pencil sketch of S. T. C., et. 61, by J. Kayser (see 'Letters', ii,
frontispiece).

[Bust by Spurzheim. Bust by Hamo Thornycroft, Westminster Abbey.]

[Footnote 1: An error of Sara Coleridge. This portrait was painted for
Wade in Bristol, 1814: and is now in the National Portrait Gallery
(Flagg's 'Life of Allston', pp. 105-7). The portrait of 1806 was given
to Allston's niece, Miss R. Charlotte Dana, Boston.]

[Footnote 2: Talfourd's full description is found in "Final Memorials of
Ch. Lamb", last chapter.]

[Footnote 3: Hazlitt's full description is found in 'Essays of William
Hazlitt', Camelot Series, pp. 18-38.]

CHAPTER V

STOWEY

Learning, power, and time,
(Too much of all) thus wasting in vain war
Of fervid colloquy. "Sickness,'tis true,
'Whole years of weary days, besieged him close,
Even to the gates and inlets of his life!'
But it is true, no less, that strenuous, firm,
And with a natural gladness, he maintained
The citadel unconquered, and in joy
Was strong to follow the delightful Muse."

With the letter of Nov. 5, [1] the biographical sketch left by Mr.
Coleridge's late Editor comes to an end, and at the present time I can
carry it no further than to add, that in January, 1797, my Father
removed with his wife and child, the latter then four months' old, to a
cottage at Stowey, which was his home for three years; that from that
home, in company with Mr. and Miss Wordsworth, he went, in September,
1798, to Germany, and that he spent fourteen months in that country,
during which period the Letters called Satyrane's were written.

[Footnote 1: No. 43. Sara Coleridge now continues the narrative for ten
lines.]

Cottle, in his 'Reminiscences', says Mr. Coleridge sent him the
following letter from Stowey:

LETTER 48

(January, 1797.)

Dear Cottle,

I write under great agony of mind, Charles Lloyd being very ill. He has
been seized with his fits three times in the space of seven days: and
just as I was in bed last night, I was called up again; and from twelve
o'clock at night, to five this morning, he remained in one continued
state of agonized delirium. What with bodily toil, exerted in repressing
his frantic struggles, and what with the feelings of agony for his
sufferings, you may suppose that I have forced myself from bed, with
aching temples, and a feeble frame.* * *

We offer petitions, not as supposing we influence the Immutable; but
because to petition the Supreme Being, is the way most suited to our
nature, to stir up the benevolent affections in our hearts. Christ
positively commands it, and in St. Paul you will find unnumbered
instances of prayer for individual blessings; for kings, rulers, etc.
etc. We indeed should all join to our petitions: "But thy will be done,
Omniscient, All-loving Immortal God!"

Believe [1] me to have towards you, the inward and spiritual gratitude
and affection, though I am not always an adept in the outward and
visible signs.

God bless you,

S. T. C.

[Footnote 1: "My respects to your good mother, and to your father and
believe me," etc.--"Early Recollections".]

The next letter refers to the second edition of the poems, and must have
been written early in January, 1797.

LETTER 49

(3 January, 1797.)

My dear Cottle,

If you delay the press it will give me the opportunity I so much wish,
of sending my "Visions of the Maid of Arc" to Wordsworth, who lives [1]
not above twenty miles from this place; and to Charles Lamb, whose taste
and judgment, I see reason to think more correct and philosophical than
my own, which yet I place pretty high. * * *

We arrived safe. Our house is set to rights. We are all--wife,
bratling, and self, remarkably well. Mrs. Coleridge likes Stowey, and
loves Thomas Poole and his mother, who love her. A communication has
been made from our orchard into T. Poole's garden, and from thence to
Cruikshank's, a friend of mine, and a young married man, whose wife is
very amiable, and she and Sara are already on the most cordial terms;
from all this you will conclude we are happy. By-the-bye, what a
delightful poem, is Southey's "Musings on a Landscape of Caspar
Poussin". I love it almost better than his "Hymn to the Penates". In his
volume of poems, the following, namely,

"The Six Sonnets on the Slave Trade.--The Ode to the Genius of
Africa.--To my own Miniature Picture.--The Eight Inscriptions.--Elinor,
Botany-bay Eclogue.--Frederick", ditto.--"The Ten Sonnets". (pp.
107-116.) "On the death of an Old Spaniel.--The Soldier's Wife,
Dactylics,--The Widow, Sapphics.--The Chapel Bell.--The Race of
Banco.--"Rudiger".

All these Poems are worthy the Author of "Joan of Arc". And

"The Musings on a Landscape", etc. and "The Hymn to the Penates",

deserve to have been published after "Joan of Arc", as proofs of
progressive genius.

God bless you,

S. T. C.

[Footnote 1: Mr. Wordsworth lived at Racedown, before he removed to
Allfoxden. (Cottle.)] [The dates of Letters 49 and 50 are determined by
that of a letter from Lamb to Coleridge of 5th January 1797 ("Ainger",
i, 57). Letter 49 implies that Coleridge was now acquainted with
Wordsworth. A letter from Mrs. Wordsworth to Sara Coleridge of 7th Nov.
1845 (Knight's "Life of Wordsworth", i, iii) gives the date of the first
meeting of the poets as "about the year 1795." Professor Knight thinks
this should be 1796. In the letter of Wordsworth to Wrangham, referred
to in Note to Letter 13, Wordsworth does not say that he knew Coleridge
personally. Letter 49 is the only trustworthy "contemporary" evidence on
the subject.]

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