Biographia Epistolaris, Volume 1.
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Coleridge, ed. Turnbull >> Biographia Epistolaris, Volume 1.
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In your next letter you will, perhaps, give me some hints respecting
your prose plans.
God bless you, and
S. T. COLERIDGE.
Greta Hall, Keswick.
P.S.--What is a fair price--what might an author of reputation fairly
ask from a bookseller, for one edition, of a thousand copies, of a
five-shilling book?
[I congratulate you on the settlement of Davy in London. I hope that his
enchanting manners will not draw too many idlers about him, to harass
and vex his mornings.]
[Footnote: 1 This tragedy was entitled Abbas.]
PART II
THE PERMANENT
I will write for "The Permanent", or not at all." (Letter to Sir G.
Beaumont, "Coleorton Memorials", ii, 162.) "Woe is me! that at 46 I am
under the necessity of appearing as a lecturer, and obliged to regard
every hour given to "The Permanent", whether as poet or philosopher, an
hour stolen from others as well as from my own maintenance." (Letter to
Mudford, Brandl's "Life of Coleridge", p. 359.)
* * * * *
The conventional view of Coleridge that opium killed the poet in him
does not commend itself to the scientific consciousness. Opium has the
tendency to stimulate rather than to deaden the poetic imagination, as
the history of De Quincey can testify; and one of Coleridge's most
imaginative pieces, "Kubla Khan", is said to have been occasioned by an
overdose of the drug.
The poet in Coleridge was extinguished by a very different thing than
opium. Coleridge's poetic faculty was suspended by the loss of hope and
also by the growth of his intellect, by the development of his reasoning
and philosophic powers, and by the multiplication of the interests which
appealed to him, and the many problems which presented themselves for
his solution. He was, constitutionally, the most comprehensive mind of a
new age, and just because he was its greatest thinker he was perplexed
and attracted by the majority of the problems which arose around him,
and which he himself helped to raise. Poetry, the poetry of the Romantic
Movement, in which he far excelled all his contemporaries, was no longer
capable of grappling with the philosophic, theological, political and
social questions now on the horizon or which Coleridge felt would soon,
by the development of international affinities, be on the horizon of the
English mind. Hence Coleridge's thirst for the new lore of the German
philosophy, which seemed to him to supply a want in the Intellectualism
of his native country.
In spite of this, Coleridge knew that in being deserted by the poetic
spirit, he was leaving a high artistic realm for one of lesser glory;
and hence his letter to Godwin of 25th March 1801, and, later on, his
dirge over himself in "Dejection".
Coleridge, in choosing to follow Wordsworth to the Lake District in
preference to remaining at Nether Stowey with Poole, had experienced
some contrition, for Poole, after all, was a more profound appreciator
of his many-sidedness and the Cervantean vein of his character than
Wordsworth, who appreciated Coleridge only from that side of him which
resembled himself.
Tom Poole regretted, like others, that Coleridge had no permanent
calling, or could not fix upon an undertaking worthy of his powers.
Poole looked upon Coleridge's devotion to journalism while he was
engaged upon the "Morning Post" as a "turning aside of his powers from
higher ends" ("T. Poole and his Friends", ii, 2), and wished him to give
himself up to something more "permanently" useful to society ("T. Poole
and his Friends", ii, 3). The correspondence of Coleridge and Poole from
1800 onwards, often turns upon the subject ("T. Poole and his Friends",
ii, 66, 68, 122, 177, 187, 205, 226, 247); and Coleridge admitted a
"distracting manifoldness" in his objects and attainments ("T. Poole and
his Friends", ii, 122). "You," said Coleridge, "are nobly employed--most
worthy of you. "You" are made to endear yourself to mankind as an
immediate benefactor: I must throw my bread on the waters" ("T. Poole
and his Friends", ii, 122).
While engaged in these argumentations with his best friend, Coleridge
was striving to think out in his deep philosophic and musing mind many
problems of the time; and there arose in his imagination the Idea of the
Permanent. He was henceforth no longer the Poet of Romanticism, whose
significance he had exhausted, but the philosopher of the Permanent,
which presented itself as a splendid possibility in all departments of
human knowledge and activity. In his prose works and letters we find a
continual reference to what Coleridge now calls "The Permanent"--the
permanent principles of Morals, Philosophy, and Religion, and of the
permanent principles of criticism as applied to Poetry and the Fine
Arts. Everything is now adjusted by Coleridge to this idea. Art, morals,
religion, and politics are tried by its standard, to find if they are
founded in the permanent principles of human nature.
It is in the light of this Idea, the ideal of Coleridge's later life,
that we must judge Coleridge and weigh him. To continue to see in opium
the sole or even the principal cause of his failure, is to misjudge him
altogether. To compare him with others of different powers who
accomplished more in one direction in the matter of literary output,
with Sir Walter Scott or Byron, for instance, is misleading. It is the
man of profound genius, who in his own time, is feeling on all sides
into the Future, who is least likely to give forth "finished
productions," as they are called, in which the subjects of which they
treat are often exhausted, and please the ear of the Present. Coleridge
is such a man of genius; nearly all his works are fragmentary,
unfinished, suggestive rather than "complete," just because they verge
upon that Transcendentalism which he was the first to make audible to
English ears in his day. Ill health, and opium in conjunction with ill
health, contributed no doubt to enfeeble his utterance; but to assert
that opium was the cause or the main cause of Coleridge's inability to
do what he wanted himself to do, or what his friends and contemporaries
expected him to do, is a gross perversion of the facts of the case.
Coleridge's inability arose from his multiplicity of motive, his
visionary faculty of seeing in the light of a new principle a host of
problems rise up on all sides, all claiming recognition and solution.
"That is the disease of my mind--it is comprehensive in its conceptions,
and wastes itself in the contemplations of the many things which it
might do." (Letter to Poole, 4th January 1799, "Letters", p. 270). A
greater than Coleridge had felt this tendency before him, and created
as its embodiment "Hamlet"; and Coleridge has been called the Hamlet of
literature.
CHAPTER X
ILL HEALTH; SOUTHEY COMES TO KESWICK
On 13th April 1801 Coleridge wrote to Southey the
following letter, and Southey replied in cordial terms,
from which it will be gathered a reconciliation had been
made since the Lloyd and Lamb quarrel. [1]
[Footnote 1: See "Letters", vol. i, 304.]
LETTER 106. TO ROBERT SOUTHEY, ESQ.
Greta Hall, Keswick; April 13. 1801.
My dear Southey,
I received your kind letter on the evening before last, and I trust that
this will arrive at Bristol just in time to rejoice with them that
rejoice. Alas! you will have found the dear old place sadly "minus"ed by
the removal of Davy. It is one of the evils of long silence, that when
one recommences the correspondence, one has so much to say that one can
say nothing. I have enough, with what I have seen, and with what I have
done, and with what I have suffered, and with what I have heard,
exclusive of all that I hope and all that I intend--I have enough to
pass away a great deal of time with, were you on a desert isle, and I
your "Friday". But at present I purpose to speak only of myself
relatively to Keswick and to you.
Our house stands on a low hill, the whole front of which is one field
and an enormous garden, nine-tenths of which is a nursery garden. Behind
the house is an orchard, and a small wood on a steep slope, at the foot
of which flows the river Greta, which winds round and catches the
evening lights in the front of the house. In front we have a giant's
camp--an encamped army of tent-like mountains, which by an inverted arch
gives a view of another vale. On our right the lovely vale and the
wedge-shaped lake of Bassenthwaite; and on our left Derwentwater and
Lodore full in view, and the fantastic mountains of Borrodale. Behind us
the massy Skiddaw, smooth, green, high, with two chasms and a tentlike
ridge in the larger. A fairer scene you have not seen in all your
wanderings. Without going from our own grounds we have all that can
please a human being. As to books, my landlord, who dwells next door,[1]
has a very respectable library, which he has put with mine; histories,
encyclopaedias, and all the modern gentry. But then I can have, when I
choose, free access to the princely library of Sir Guilfred Lawson,
which contains the noblest collection of travels and natural history of,
perhaps, any private library in England; besides this, there is the
Cathedral library of Carlisle, from whence I can have any books sent to
me that I wish; in short, I may truly say that I command all the
libraries in the county. ...
Our neighbour is a truly good and affectionate man, a father to my
children, and a friend to me. He was offered fifty guineas for the house
in which we are to live, but he preferred me for a tenant at
twenty-five; and yet the whole of his income does not exceed, I believe,
L200 a year. A more truly disinterested man I never met with; severely
frugal, yet almost carelessly generous; and yet he got all his money as
a common carrier[2], by hard labour, and by pennies. He is one instance
among many in this country of the salutary effect of the love of
knowledge--he was from a boy a lover of learning. The house is full
twice as large as we want; it hath more rooms in it than Allfoxden; you
might have a bed-room, parlour, study, etc., etc., and there would
always be rooms to spare for your or my visitors. In short, for
situation and convenience,--and when I mention the name of Wordsworth,
for society of men of intellect,--I know no place in which you and Edith
would find yourselves so well suited.
S. T. C.
[Footnote 1: Greta Hall was at this time divided into two houses, which
were afterwards thrown together.]
[Footnote 2: This person, whose name was Jackson, was the "master" in
Wordsworth's poem of 'The Waggoner', the circumstances of which are
accurately correct.]
The remainder of this letter, as well as another of later date, was
filled with a most gloomy account of his own health, to which Southey
refers in the commencement of his reply.
SOUTHEY TO COLERIDGE
Bristol, July 11, 1801.
Yesterday I arrived, and found your letters; they did depress me, but I
have since reasoned or dreamt myself into more cheerful anticipations. I
have persuaded myself that your complaint is gouty; that good living is
necessary, and a good climate. I also move to the south; at least so it
appears: and if my present prospects ripen, we may yet live under one
roof. ...
You may have seen a translation of "Persius", by Drummond, an M.P. This
man is going ambassador, first to Palermo and then to Constantinople: if
a married man can go as his secretary, it is probable that I shall
accompany him. I daily expect to know. It is a scheme of Wynn's to
settle me in the south, and I am returned to look about me. My salary
will be small--a very trifle; but after a few years I look on to
something better, and have fixed my mind on a consulship. Now, if we go,
you must join us as soon as we are housed, and it will be marvellous if
we regret England. I shall have so little to do, that my time may be
considered as wholly my own: our joint amusements will easily supply us
with all expenses. So no more of the Azores; for we will see the Great
Turk, and visit Greece, and walk up the Pyramids, and ride camels in
Arabia. I have dreamt of nothing else these five weeks. As yet every
thing is so uncertain, for I have received no letter since we landed,
that nothing can be said of our intermediate movements. If we are not
embarked too soon, we will set off as early as possible for Cumberland,
unless you should think, as we do, that Mahomet had better come to the
mountain; that change of all externals may benefit you; and that bad as
Bristol weather is, it is yet infinitely preferable to northern cold and
damp. Meet we must, and will.
You know your old Poems are a third time in the press; why not set forth
a second volume? * * * Your "Christabel", your "Three Graces",[1] which
I remember as the very consummation of poetry. I must spur you to
something, to the assertion of your supremacy; if you have not enough to
muster, I will aid you in any way--manufacture skeletons that you may
clothe with flesh, blood, and beauty; write my best, or what shall be
bad enough to be popular;--we will even make plays "a-la-mode"
Robespierre. * * * Drop all task-work, it is ever unprofitable; the same
time, and one twentieth part of the labour, would produce treble
emolument. For "Thalaba" I received L115; it was just twelve months'
"intermitting" work, and the after-editions are my own. ...
I feel here as a stranger; somewhat of Leonard's feeling. God bless
Wordsworth for that poem![2] What tie have I to England? My London
friends? There, indeed, I have friends. But if you and yours were with
me, eating dates in a garden at Constantinople, you might assert that we
were in the best of all possible places; and I should answer, Amen: and
if our wives rebelled, we would send for the chief of the black eunuchs,
and sell them to the Seraglio. Then should Moses [3] learn Arabic, and we
would know whether there was anything in the language or not. We would
drink Cyprus wine and Mocha coffee, and smoke more tranquilly than ever
we did in the Ship in Small Street.
Time and absence make strange work with our affections; but mine are
ever returning to rest upon you. I have other and dear friends, but none
with whom the whole of my being is intimate--with whom every thought and
feeling can amalgamate. Oh! I have yet such dreams! Is it quite clear
that you and I were not meant for some better star, and dropped, by
mistake, into this world of pounds, shillings, and pence? ...
God bless you!
ROBERT SOUTHEY.
[Footnote 1: "The Three Graves".]
[Footnote 2: "The Brothers" is the title of this poem.]
[Footnote 3: Hartley Coleridge.]
SOUTHEY TO COLERIDGE
July 25.
In about ten days we shall be ready to set forward for Keswick; where,
if it were not for the rains, and the fogs, and the frosts, I should,
probably, be content to winter; but the climate deters me. It is
uncertain when I may be sent abroad, or where, except that the south of
Europe is my choice. The appointment hardly doubtful, and the probable
destination Palermo or Naples. We will talk of the future, and dream of
it, on the lake side. * * * I may calculate upon the next six months at
my own disposal; so we will climb Skiddaw this year, and scale Etna the
next; and Sicilian air will keep us alive till Davy has found out the
immortalising elixir, or till we are very well satisfied to do without
it, and be immortalised after the manner of our fathers. My pocket-book
contains more plans than will ever be filled up; but whatever becomes of
those plans, this, at least, is feasible. * * * Poor H----, he has
literally killed himself by the law: which, I believe, kills more than
any disease that takes its place in the bills of mortality. Blackstone
is a needful book, and my Coke is a borrowed one; but I have one law
book whereof to make an auto-da-fe; and burnt he shall be: but whether
to perform that ceremony, with fitting libations, at home, or fling him
down the crater of Etna directly to the Devil, is worth considering at
leisure.
I must work at Keswick; the more willingly, because with the hope,
hereafter, the necessity will cease. My Portuguese materials must lie
dead, and this embarrasses me. It is impossible to publish any thing
about that country now, because I must one day return there,--to their
libraries and archives; otherwise I have excellent stuff for a little
volume; and could soon set forth a first vol. of my History, either
civil or literary. In these labours I have incurred a heavy and serious
expense. I shall write to Hamilton, and review again, if he chooses to
employ me. * * * It was Cottle who told me that your Poems were
reprint"ing" in a "third" edition: this cannot allude to the "Lyrical
Ballads", because of the number and the participle present. * * * I am
bitterly angry to see one new poem [1] smuggled into the world in the
"Lyrical Ballads", where the 750 purchasers of the first can never get
at it. At Falmouth I bought Thomas Dermody's "Poems", for old
acquaintance sake; alas! the boy wrote better than the man! * * * Pye's
"Alfred" (to distinguish him from Alfred the pious [2]) I have not yet
inspected; nor the wilful murder of Bonaparte, by Anna Matilda; nor the
high treason committed by Sir James Bland Burgess, Baronet, against our
lion-hearted Richard. Davy is fallen stark mad with a play, called the
"Conspiracy of Gowrie", which is by Rough; an imitation of "Gebir", with
some poetry; but miserably and hopelessly deficient in all else: every
character reasoning, and metaphorising, and metaphysicking the reader
most nauseously. By the by, there is a great analogy between hock,
laver, pork pie, and the "Lyrical Ballads",--all have a "flavour", not
beloved by those who require a taste, and utterly unpleasant to
dram-drinkers, whose diseased palates can only feel pepper and brandy. I
know not whether Wordsworth will forgive the stimulant tale of
"Thalaba",--'tis a turtle soup, highly seasoned, but with a flavour of
its own predominant. His are sparagrass (it ought to be spelt so) and
artichokes, good with plain butter, and wholesome.
I look on "Madoc" with hopeful displeasure; probably it must be
corrected, and published now; this coming into the world at seven months
is a bad way; with a Doctor Slop of a printer's devil standing ready for
the forced birth, and frightening one into an abortion. * * * Is there
an emigrant at Keswick, who may make me talk and write French? And I
must sit at my almost forgotten Italian, and read German with you; and
we must read Tasso together.
God bless you!
Yours,
R. S.
[Footnote 1: Coleridge's poem of "Love".]
[Footnote 2: This alludes to Mr. Cottle's "Alfred".]
The next two letters to Davy indicate that Coleridge's health was now of
the worst, and that he was thinking seriously of emigrating for some
time.
LETTER 107. TO DAVY
Monday, May 4, 1801.
My dear Davy,
I heard from Tobin the day before yesterday--nay, it was Friday. From
him I learn that you are giving lectures on galvanism. Would to God I
were one of your auditors! My motive muscles tingled and contracted at
the news, as if you had bared them, and were 'zincifying' their
life-mocking fibres.
When you have leisure and impulse--perfect leisure and a complete
impulse--write to me, but only then. For though there does not exist a
man on earth who yields me greater pleasure by writing to me, yet I have
neither pain nor disquietude from your silence. I have a deep faith in
the guardianship of Nature over you--of the Great Being whom you are
manifesting. Heaven bless you, my dear Davy!
I have been rendered uneasy by an account of the Lisbon packet's
non-arrival, lest Southey should have been on board it. Have you heard
from him lately?
It would seem affectation to write to you and say nothing of my health;
but in truth I am weary of giving useless pain. Yesterday I should have
been incapable of writing you this scrawl, and to-morrow I may be as
bad. "'Sinking, sinking, sinking!' I feel that I am 'sinking'." My
medical attendant says that it is irregular gout, with nephritic
symptoms. 'Gout', in a young man of twenty-nine!! Swollen knees, and
knotty fingers, a loathing stomach, and a dizzy head. Trust me, friend,
I am at times an object of moral disgust to my own mind! But that this
long illness has impoverished me, I should immediately go to St.
Miguels, one of the Azores--the baths and the delicious climate might
restore me--and if it were possible, I would afterwards send over for my
wife and children, and settle there for a few years; it is exceedingly
cheap. On this supposition Wordsworth and his sister have with generous
friendship offered to settle there with me--and happily our dear Southey
would come too. But of this I pray you, my dear fellow, do not say a
syllable to any human being, for the scheme, from the present state of
my circumstances, is rather the thing of a "wish" than of a "hope".
If you write to me, pray in a couple of sentences tell me whether
Herschell's thermometric "spectrum" (in the "Philos. Trans.") will lead
to any revolution in the chemical philosophy. As far as "words" go, I
have become a formidable chemist--having got by heart a prodigious
quantity of terms, etc., to which I attach "some" ideas, very scanty in
number, I assure you, and right meagre in their individual persons. That
which must discourage me in it is, that I find all "power" of vital
attributes to depend on modes of "arrangement", and that chemistry
throws not even a distant rushlight glimmer upon this subject. The
"reasoning", likewise, is always unsatisfactory to me. I am perpetually
saying, probably there are many agents hitherto undiscovered. This
cannot be reasoning: we must have a deep conviction that all the "terms"
have been exhausted. This is saying no more than that (with Dr.
Beddoes's leave) chemistry can never possess the same kind of certainty
with the mathematics--in truth, it is saying nothing. I grow, however,
exceedingly interested in the subject.
God love you, my dear friend! From Tobin's account, I fear that I must
give up a very sweet vision--that of seeing you this summer. The summer
after, my ghost perhaps may be a gas.
Yours affectionately,
S. T. COLERIDGE. [1]
[Footnote 1: Letter CXVIII follows No. 107.]
LETTER 108. TO DAVY
Greta Hall, Keswick, May 20, 1801.
My dear Davy,
Though we of the north must forego you, yet I shall rejoice when I
receive a letter from you from Cornwall. I must believe that you have
made some important discoveries in galvanism, and connected the facts
with other more interesting ones, or I should be puzzled to conceive how
that subject could furnish matter for more than one lecture. If I
recollect aright, you have identified it with electricity, and that
indeed is a wide field. I shall dismiss my 'British Critic' and take in
'Nicholson's Journal', and then I shall know something about you. I am
sometimes apprehensive that my passion for science is scarcely true and
genuine--it is but 'Davyism'! that is, I fear that I am more delighted
at 'your' having discovered facts than at the facts having been
discovered.
My health is better. I am indeed eager to believe that I am really
beginning to recover, though I have had so many short recoveries
followed by severe relapses, that I am at times almost afraid to hope.
But cheerful thoughts come with genial sensations; and hope is itself no
mean medicine.
I am anxious respecting Robert Southey. Why is he not in England?
Remember me kindly to Tobin. As soon as I have anything to communicate I
will write to him. But, alas! sickness turns large districts of time
into dreary uniformity of sandy desolation. Alas, for Egypt--and Menou!
However, I trust the 'English' will keep it, if they take it, and
something will be gained to the cause of human nature.
Heaven bless you!
S. T. COLERIDGE.
The next letter to Godwin renews his complaints about health.
LETTER 109. To GODWIN
Greta Hall, Keswick.
Dear Godwin,
I have had, during the last three weeks, such numerous interruptions of
my "uninterrupted rural retirement," such a succession of visitors, both
indigenous and exotic, that verily I wanted both the time and composure
necessary to answer your letter of the first of June--at present I am
writing to you from my bed. For, in consequence of a very sudden change
in the weather from intense heat to a raw and scathing chillness, my
bodily health has suffered a relapse as severe as it was unexpected....
I have not yet received either "Antonio", or your pamphlet, in answer to
Dr. Parr and the Scotch gentleman [1] (who is to be professor of morals
to the young nabobs at Calcutta, with an establishment of L3,000 a
year!). Stuart was so kind as to send me Fenwick's review of it in a
paper called the "Albion", and Mr. Longman has informed me that, by your
orders, the pamphlet itself has been left for me at his house. The
extracts which I saw pleased me much, with the exception of the
introduction, which is incorrectly and clumsily worded. But, indeed, I
have often observed that, whatever you write, the first page is always
the worst in the book. I wish that instead of six days you had employed
six months, and instead of a half-crown pamphlet, had given us a good
half-guinea octavo. But you may yet do this. It strikes me, that both in
this work, and in the second edition of the "Political Justice", your
retractations have been more injudicious than the assertions or dogmas
retracted. But this is no fit subject for a mere letter. If I had time,
which I have not, I would write two or three sheets for your sole
inspection, entitled "History of the Errors and Blunders of the Literary
Life of William Godwin". To the world it would appear a paradox to say
that you are at all too persuadable, but you yourself know it to be the
truth.
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