Biographia Epistolaris, Volume 1.

C >> Coleridge, ed. Turnbull >> Biographia Epistolaris, Volume 1.

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* * * * *

My littlest one is a very stout boy indeed. He is christened by the name
of "Derwent,"--a sort of sneaking affection you see for the poetical and
novellish, which I disguised to myself under the show, that my brothers
had so many children Johns, Jameses, Georges, etc. etc., that a handsome
Christian-like name was not to be had except by encroaching on the names
of my little nephews. If you are at Gunville at Christmas, I hold out
hopes to myself that I shall be able to pass a week with you there. I
mentioned to you at Upcott a kind of comedy that I had committed to
writing in part. This is in the wind.

Wordsworth's second vol. of the 'Lyrical Ballads' will, I hope, and
almost believe, afford you as unmingled pleasure as is in the nature of
a collection of very various poems to afford to one individual mind.
Sheridan has sent to him too--requests him to write a tragedy for Drury
Lane. But W. will not be diverted by anything from the prosecution of
his great work.

Southey's 'Thalaba', in twelve books, is going to the press.

Remember me with great affection to your brother, and present my kindest
respects to Mrs. Wedgwood. Your late governess wanted one thing, which
where there is health is I think indispensable in the moral character of
a young person--a light and cheerful heart. She interested me a good
deal. She appears to me to have been injured by going out of the common
way without any of that imagination, which if it be a Jack o' Lanthorn
to lead us out of our way, is however, at the same time a torch to light
us whither we are going. A whole essay might be written on the danger of
thinking without images. God bless you, my dear sir, and him who is with
grateful and affectionate esteem,

Yours ever,

S. T. COLERIDGE

Josiah Wedgwood.

Coleridge was still in money difficulties, and the following letter is
chiefly about his indebtedness to the Wedgwoods.

LETTER 100. TO JOSIAH WEDGWOOD

November 12, 1800.

My dear sir,

I received your kind letter, with the L20. My eyes are in such a state
of inflammation that I might as well write blindfold, they are so
blood-red. I have had leeches twice, and have now a blister behind my
right ear. How I caught the cold, in the first instance, I can scarcely
guess; but I improved it to its present glorious state, by taking long
walks all the mornings, spite of the wind, and writing late at night,
while my eyes were weak.

I have made some rather curious observations on the rising up of spectra
in the eye, in its inflamed state, and their influence on ideas, etc.,
but I cannot see to make myself intelligible to you. Present my kindest
remembrance to Mrs. W. and your brother. Pray did you ever pay any
particular attention to the first time of your little ones smiling and
laughing? Both I and Mrs. C. have carefully watched our little one, and
noticed down all the circumstances, under which he smiled, and under
which he laughed, for the first six times, nor have we remitted our
attention; but I have not been able to derive the least confirmation of
Hartley's or Darwin's Theory. You say most truly, my dear sir, that a
pursuit is necessary. Pursuit, for even praiseworthy employment, merely
for good, or general good, is not sufficient for happiness, nor fit for
man.

I have not at present made out how I stand in pecuniary ways, but I
believe that I have anticipated on the next year to the amount of Thirty
or Forty pounds, probably more. God bless you, my dear sir, and your
sincerely

Affectionate friend,

S. T. COLERIDGE.

Josiah Wedgwood, Esq.

The publication of the "Wallenstein" had brought on Coleridge the odium
of being an advocate of the German Theatre, at this time identified with
the melo-dramatic sentimentalism of Kotzbue and his school. English
opinion did not then discriminate between a Schiller and a Kotzebue. The
following curious disclaimer appeared in the "Monthly Review" on 18th
November 1800.

LETTER 101. TO THE EDITOR OF THE "MONTHLY REVIEW".

Greta Hall, Keswick,

Nov. 18, 1800.

In the review of my translation of Schiller's "Wallenstein" ("Rev". for
October), I am numbered among the partisans of the German theatre. As I
am confident there is no passage in my preface or notes from which such
an opinion can be legitimately formed, and as the truth would not have
been exceeded if the direct contrary had been affirmed, I claim it of
your justice that in your Answers to Correspondents you would remove
this misrepresentation. The mere circumstance of translating a
manuscript play is not even evidence that I admired that one play, much
less that I am a general admirer of the plays in that language.

I remain, etc.,

S. T. COLERIDGE.

During the latter half of 1800 Dorothy Wordsworth's "Journal" contains
many entries showing that Coleridge and the Wordsworths were in frequent
communication with each other. Coleridge thought nothing of traversing
the dozen miles between Keswick and Dove Cottage by the highway, or over
the hill passes. Wordsworth and Dorothy, too, went often to Keswick, and
occasionally stayed with the Coleridges ("Grasmere Journals", i, 43-60).

Amid these literary and poetic meetings between the poets and their
families, other correspondents were not forgotten by Coleridge. The
following two letters to Davy indicate that the poets were taking some
interest in science.

LETTER 102. TO DAVY

Greta Hall, Tuesday night, December 2, 1800.

My dear Davy,

By an accident I did not receive your letter till this evening. I would
that you had added to the account of your indisposition the probable
causes of it. It has left me anxious whether or no you have not exposed
yourself to unwholesome influences in your chemical pursuits. There are
"few" beings both of hope and performance, but few who combine the "are"
and the "will be." For God's sake, therefore, my dear fellow, do not rip
open the bird that lays the golden eggs. I have not received your book.
I read yesterday a sort of medical review about it. I suppose Longman
will send it to me when he sends down the "Lyrical Ballads" to
Wordsworth. I am solicitous to read the latter part. Did there appear to
you any remote analogy between the case I translated from the German
Magazine and the effects produced by your gas? Did Carlisle[1] ever
communicate to you, or has he in any way published his facts concerning
"pain", which he mentioned when we were with him? It is a subject which
"exceedingly interests" me. I want to read something by somebody
expressly on "pain", if only to give an "arrangement" to my own
thoughts, though if it were well treated, I have little doubt it would
revolutionize them. For the last month I have been trembling on through
sands and swamps of evil and bodily grievance. My eyes have been
inflamed to a degree that rendered reading and writing scarcely
possible; and strange as it seems, the act of metre composition, as I
lay in bed, perceptibly affected them, and my voluntary ideas were every
minute passing, more or less transformed into vivid spectra. I had
leeches repeatedly applied to my temples, and a blister behind my
ear--and my eyes are now my own, but in the place where the blister was,
six small but excruciating boils have appeared, and harass me almost
beyond endurance. In the meantime my darling Hartley has been taken with
a stomach illness, which has ended in the yellow jaundice; and this
greatly alarms me. So much for the doleful! Amid all these changes, and
humiliations, and fears, the sense of the Eternal abides in me, and
preserves unsubdued my cheerful faith, that all I endure is full of
blessings!

At times, indeed, I would fain be somewhat of a more tangible utility
than I am; but so I suppose it is with all of us--one while cheerful,
stirring, feeling in resistance nothing but a joy and a stimulus;
another while drowsy, self-distrusting, prone to rest, loathing our own
self-promises, withering our own hopes--our hopes, the vitality and
cohesion of our being!

I purpose to have 'Christabel' published by itself--this I publish
with confidence--but my travels in Germany come from me now with mortal
pangs. Nothing but the most pressing necessity could have induced
me--and even now I hesitate and tremble. Be so good as to have all that
is printed of 'Christabel' sent to me per post.

Wordsworth has nearly finished the concluding poem. It is of a mild,
unimposing character, but full of beauties to those short-necked men who
have their hearts sufficiently near their heads--the relative distance
of which (according to citizen Tourder, the French translator of
Spallanzani) determines the sagacity or stupidity of all bipeds and
quadrupeds.

There is a deep blue cloud over the heavens; the lake, and the vale, and
the mountains, are all in darkness; only the 'summits' of all the
mountains in long ridges, covered with snow, are bright to a dazzling
excess. A glorious scene! Hartley was in my arms the other evening,
looking at the sky; he saw the moon glide into a large cloud. Shortly
after, at another part of the cloud, several stars sailed in. Says he,
"Pretty creatures! they are going in to see after their mother moon."

Remember me kindly to King. Write as often as you can; but above all
things, my loved and honoured dear fellow, do not give up the idea of
letting me and Skiddaw see you.

God love you!

S. T. COLERIDGE.

Tobin writes me that Thompson [2] has made some lucrative discovery. Do
you know aught about it? Have you seen T. Wedgwood since his return? [3]

[Footnote 1: Afterwards Sir Antony, a distinguished surgeon.]

[Footnote 2: The late Mr. James Thompson, of Clitheroe.]

[Footnote 3: Letter CXIII is our 102; CXIV follows 102]

LETTER 103. TO DAVY

February 3, 1801.

My dear Davy--

I can scarcely reconcile it to my conscience to make you pay postage for
another letter. O, what a fine unveiling of modern politics it would be
if there were published a minute detail of all the sums received by
Government from the Post establishment, and of all the outlets in which
the sums so received flowed out again; and, on the other hand, all the
domestic affections that had been stifled, all the intellectual progress
that would have been, but is not, on account of the heavy tax, etc.,
etc. The letters of a nation ought to be paid for as an article of
national expense. Well! but I did not take up this paper to flourish
away in splenetic politics. A gentleman resident here, his name Calvert,
an idle, good-hearted, and ingenious man, has a great desire to commence
fellow-student with me and Wordsworth in chemistry. He is an intimate
friend of Wordsworth's, and he has proposed to W. to take a house which
he (Calvert) has nearly built, called Windy Brow, in a delicious
situation, scarce half a mile from Greta Hall, the residence of S. T.
Coleridge, Esq., and so for him (Calvert) to live with them, 'i.e.',
Wordsworth and his sister. In this case he means to build a little
laboratory, etc. Wordsworth has not quite decided, but is strongly
inclined to adopt the scheme, because he and his sister have before
lived with Calvert on the same footing, and are much attached to him:
because my health is so precarious and so much injured by wet, and his
health, too, is like little potatoes, no great things, and therefore
Grasmere ("thirteen" miles from Keswick) is too great a distance for us
to enjoy each other's society, without inconvenience, as much as it
would be profitable for us both: and likewise because he feels it more
necessary for him to have some intellectual pursuit less closely
connected with deep passion than poetry, and is of course desirous, too,
not to be so wholly ignorant of knowledge so exceedingly important.
However, whether Wordsworth come or no, Calvert and I have determined to
begin and go on. Calvert is a man of sense and some originality, and is
besides what is well called a handy man. He is a good practical
mechanic, etc., and is desirous to lay out any sum of money that is
necessary. You know how long, how ardently I have wished to initiate
myself in Chemical science, both for its own sake, and in no small
degree likewise, my beloved friend, that I may be able to sympathize
with all that you do and think. Sympathize blindly with it all I do even
"now", God knows! from the very middle of my heart's heart, but I would
fain sympathize with you in the light of knowledge. This opportunity is
exceedingly precious to me, as on my own account I could not afford the
least additional expense, having been already, by long and successive
illnesses, thrown behindhand, so much, that for the next four or five
months, I fear, let me work as hard as I can, I shall not be able to do
what my heart within me "burns" to do, that is, to "concenter" my free
mind to the affinities of the feelings with words and ideas under the
title of "Concerning Poetry, and the nature of the Pleasures derived
from it". I have faith that I do understand the subject, and I am sure
that if I write what I ought to do on it, the work would supersede all
the books of metaphysics, and all the books of morals too. To whom shall
a young man utter "his pride", if not to a young man whom he loves?

I beg you, therefore, my dear Davy, to write to me a long letter when
you are at leisure, informing me:--Firstly, What books it will be well
for me and Calvert to purchase. Secondly, Directions for a convenient
little laboratory. Thirdly, To what amount apparatus would run in
expense, and whether or no you would be so good as to superintend its
making at Bristol. Fourthly, Give me your advice how to "begin". And,
fifthly, and lastly, and mostly, do send a "drop" of hope to my parched
tongue, that you will, if you can, come and visit me in the spring.
Indeed, indeed, you ought to see this country, this beautiful country,
and then the joy you would send into me!

The shape of this paper will convince you with what eagerness I began
this letter; I really did not see that it was not a sheet.

I have been 'thinking' vigorously during my illness, so that I cannot
say that my long, long wakeful nights have been all lost to me. The
subject of my meditations has been the relations of thoughts to
things--in the language of Hume, of ideas to impressions. I may be truly
described in the words of Descartes: I have been "res cogitans, id est,
dubitans, affirmans, negans, pauca intelligens, multa ignorans, volens,
nolens, imaginans etiam, et sentiens." I please myself with believing
that you will receive no small pleasure from the result of these
broodings, although I expect in you (in some points) a determined
opponent, but I say of my mind in this respect: "Manet imperterritus
ille hostem magnanimum opperiens, et mole sua stat." Every poor fellow
has his proud hour sometimes, and this I suppose is mine.

I am better in every respect than I was, but am still 'very feeble'. The
weather has been woefully against me for the last fortnight, having
rained here almost incessantly. I take quantities of bark, but the
effect is (to express myself with the dignity of science) "x" = 0000000,
and I shall not gather strength, or that little suffusion of bloom which
belongs to my healthy state, till I can walk out.

God bless you, my dear Davy! and

Your ever affectionate friend,

S. T. COLERIDGE.

P.S.--An electrical machine, and a number of little nicknacks connected
with it, Mr. Calvert has.--"Write".[1]

[Footnote l: Letter CXV is our 103.]

Josiah Wade, the early Bristol friend of Coleridge, who probably was one
of the three friends who assisted him with funds to start 'The
Watchman', was now intending to travel in Germany. He applied to
Coleridge for advice regarding the mode of travelling, and Coleridge
tendered his counsel in the following characteristic epistle.

LETTER 104. To JOSIAH WADE

March 6, 1801.

My very dear friend,

I have even now received your letter. My habits of thinking and feeling,
have not hitherto inclined me to personify commerce in any such shape,
so as to tempt me to turn pagan, and offer vows to the goddess of our
isle. But when I read that sentence in your letter, "The time will come
I trust, when I shall be able to pitch my tent in your neighbourhood," I
was most potently commanded [1] to a breach of the second
commandment, and on my knees, to entreat the said goddess to touch your
bank notes and guineas with her magical multiplying wand. I could offer
such a prayer for you, with a better conscience than for most men,
because I know that you have never lost that healthy common sense, which
regards money only as the means of independence, and that you would
sooner than most men cry out, enough! enough! To see one's children
secured against want, is doubtless a delightful thing; but to wish to
see them begin the world as rich men, is unwise to ourselves, for it
permits no close of our labours, and is pernicious to them; for it
leaves no motive to their exertions, none of those sympathies with the
industrious and the poor, which form at once the true relish and proper
antidote of wealth.

* * * Is not March rather a perilous month for the voyage from
Yarmouth to Hamburg? Danger there is very little, in the packets, but I
know what inconvenience rough weather brings with it; not from my own
feelings, for I am never sea-sick, but always in exceeding high spirits
on board ship, but from what I see in others. But you are an old sailor.
At Hamburg I have not a shadow of acquaintance. My letters of
introduction produced for me, with one exception, viz., Klopstock, the
brother of the poet, no real service, but merely distant and
ostentatious civility. And Klopstock will by this time have forgotten my
name, which indeed he never properly knew, for I could speak only
English and Latin, and he only French and German. At Ratzeburg, 35
English miles N.E. from Hamburg, on the road to Lubec, I resided four
months; and I should hope, was not unbeloved by more than one family,
but this is out of your route. At Gottingen I stayed near five months,
but here I knew only students, who will have left the place by this
time, and the high learned professors, only one of whom could speak
English; and they are so wholly engaged in their academical occupations,
that they would be of no service to you. Other acquaintance in Germany I
have none, and connexion I never had any. For though I was much
entreated by some of the Literati to correspond with them, yet my
natural laziness, with the little value I attach to literary men, as
literary men, and with my aversion from those letters which are to be
made up of studied sense, and unfelt compliments, combined to prevent me
from availing myself of the offer. Herein, and in similar instances,
with English authors of repute, I have ill consulted the growth of my
reputation and fame. But I have cheerful and confident hopes of myself.
If I can hereafter do good to my fellow-creatures as a poet, and as a
metaphysician, they will know it; and any other fame than this, I
consider as a serious evil, that would only take me from out the number
and sympathy of ordinary men, to make a coxcomb of me.

As to the inns or hotels at Hamburg, I should recommend you to some
German inn. Wordsworth and I were at the "Der Wilde Man," and dirty as
it was, I could not find any inn in Germany very much cleaner, except at
Lubec. But if you go to an English inn, for heaven's sake, avoid the
"Shakspeare," at Altona, and the "King of England," at Hamburg. They are
houses of plunder rather than entertainment. "The Duke of York" hotel,
kept by Seaman, has a better reputation, and thither I would advise you
to repair; and I advise you to pay your bill every morning at breakfast
time: it is the only way to escape imposition. What the Hamburg
merchants may be I know not, but the tradesmen are knaves. Scoundrels,
with yellow-white phizzes, that bring disgrace on the complexion of a
bad tallow candle. Now as to carriage, I know scarcely what to advise;
only make up your mind to the very worst vehicles, with the very worst
horses, drawn by the very worst postillions, over the very worst roads,
and halting two hours at each time they change horses, at the very worst
inns; and you have a fair, unexaggerated picture of travelling in North
Germany. The cheapest way is the best; go by the common post wagons, or
stage coaches. What are called extraordinaries, or post-chaises, are
little wicker carts, uncovered, with moveable benches or forms in them,
execrable in every respect. And if you buy a vehicle at Hamburg, you can
get none decent under thirty or forty guineas, and very probably it will
break to pieces on the infernal roads. The canal boats are delightful,
but the porters everywhere in the United Provinces, are an impudent,
abominable, and dishonest race. You must carry as little luggage as you
well can with you, in the canal boats, and when you land, get
recommended to an inn beforehand, and bargain with the porters first of
all, and never lose sight of them, or you may never see your portmanteau
or baggage again.

My Sarah desires her love to you and yours. God bless your dear little
ones! Make haste and get rich, dear friend! and bring up the little
creatures to be playfellows and school-fellows with my little ones!

Again and again, sea serve you, wind speed you, all things turn out good
to you! God bless you,

S. T. COLERIDGE. [2]

John Stoddart, a friend of Coleridge, visited him while at Keswick in
the month of October, 1800, and saw the Wordsworths at Grasmere (Dorothy
Wordsworth's 'Journal', i, 55)--It was then that Stoddart obtained a
copy of 'Christabel', and read it shortly afterwards [3] to Sir Walter
Scott, then busy with his 'Border Minstrelsy'. The beauty of
'Christabel' touched Sir Walter's romantic imagination, and echoes of
the poem are discernible in the 'Lay of the Last Minstrel' and the
'Bridal of Tryermain'.

But Coleridge, in spite of many attempts, could not complete the piece,
and had to give up the endeavour. In a letter to Godwin of 25th March
1801, Coleridge thus laments what was practically the end of his career
as a poet:

[Footnote 1: "Tempted," E.R., ii, 18.]

[Footnote 2: Letters CXVI-CXVII follow 104.]

[Footnote 3: In 1802.]

LETTER 105. To GODWIN.

Wednesday, March 25, 1801.

Dear Godwin,

I fear your tragedy [1] will find me in a very unfit state of mind to
sit in judgment on it. I have been during the last three months
undergoing a process of intellectual exsiccation. During my long illness
I had compelled into hours of delight many a sleepless painful hour of
darkness by chasing down metaphysical game, and since then I have
continued the hunt, till I found myself, unaware, at the root of pure
mathematics, and up that tall smooth tree, whose few poor branches are
all at the very summit, am I climbing by pure adhesive strength of arms
and thighs, still slipping down, still renewing my ascent. You would not
know me! All sounds of similitude keep at such a distance from each
other in my mind, that I have forgotten how to make a rhyme. I look at
the mountains (that visible God Almighty that looks in at all my
windows)--I look at the mountains only for the curves of their outlines;
the stars, as I behold them, form themselves into triangles; and my
hands are scarred with scratches from a cat, whose back I was rubbing in
the dark in order to see whether the sparks from it were refrangible by
a prism. The Poet is dead in me; my imagination (or rather the Somewhat
that had been imaginative) lies like a cold snuff on the circular rim of
a brass candlestick, without even a stink of tallow to remind you that
it was once clothed and mitred with flame. That is past by. I was once a
volume of gold leaf, rising and riding on every breath of Fancy, but I
have beaten myself back into weight and density, and now I sink in
quicksilver and remain squat and square on the earth amid the hurricane
that makes oaks and straws join in one dance, fifty yards high in the
element.

However I will do what I can. Taste and feeling have I none, but what I
have, give I unto thee. But I repeat that I am unfit to decide on any
but works of severe logic.

I write now to beg that, if you have not sent your tragedy, you may
remember to send 'Antonio' with it, which I have not yet seen, and
likewise my Campbell's 'Pleasures of Hope', which Wordsworth wishes to
see.

Have you seen the second volume of the 'Lyrical Ballads', and the
preface prefixed to the first? I should judge of a man's heart and
intellect precisely according to the degree and intensity of the
admiration with which he read these poems. Perhaps, instead of heart I
should have said Taste; but, when I think of 'The Brothers', of 'Ruth',
and of 'Michael', I recur to the expression and am enforced to say
heart. If I die, and the booksellers will give you anything for ray
life, be sure to say, "Wordsworth descended on him like the [Greek:
Gnothi seauton] from heaven; by showing to him what true poetry was, he
made him know that he himself was no Poet."

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