Biographia Epistolaris, Volume 1.

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

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I shall send back your manuscript on Friday, with my criticisms. You say
in your last, "How I wish you were here!" When I see how little I have
written of what I could have talked, I feel with you that a letter is
but "a mockery" to a full and ardent mind. In truth I feel this so
forcibly that, if I could be certain that I should remain in this
country, I should press you to come down, and finish the whole in my
house. But, if I can by any means raise the moneys, I shall go in the
first vessel that leaves Liverpool for the Azores (St. Michael's, to
wit), and these sail at the end of July. Unless I can escape one English
winter and spring I have not any rational prospect of recovery. You
"cannot help regarding uninterrupted rural retirement as a principal
cause" of my ill health. My ill health commenced at Liverpool, in the
shape of blood-shot eyes and swollen eyelids, while I was in the daily
habit of visiting the Liverpool literati--these, on my settling at
Keswick, were followed by large boils in my neck and shoulders; these,
by a violent rheumatic fever; this, by a distressing and tedious
hydrocele; and, since then, by irregular gout, which promises at this
moment to ripen into a legitimate fit. What uninterrupted rural
retirement can have had to do in the production of these outward and
visible evils, I cannot guess; what share it has had in consoling me
under them, I know with a tranquil mind and feel with a grateful heart.
O that you had now before your eyes the delicious picture of lake, and
river, and bridge, and cottage, and spacious field with its pathway, and
woody hill with its spring verdure, and mountain with the snow yet
lingering in fantastic patches upon it, even the same which I had from
my sick bed, even without raising my head from the pillow! O God! all
but dear and lovely things seemed to be known to my imagination only as
words; even the forms which struck terror into me in my fever-dreams
were still forms of beauty. Before my last seizure I bent down to pick
something from the ground, and when I raised my head, I said to Miss
Wordsworth, "I am sure, Rotha, that I am going to be ill;" for as I bent
my head there came a distinct, vivid spectrum upon my eyes; it was one
little picture--a rock, with birches and ferns on it, a cottage backed
by it, and a small stream. Were I a painter I would give an outward
existence to this, but it will always live in my memory.

By-the-bye, our rural retirement has been honoured by the company of Mr.
Sharp, and the poet Rogers; the latter, though not a man of very
vigorous intellect, won a good deal both on myself and Wordsworth, for
what he said evidently came from his own feelings, and was the result of
his own observation.

My love to your dear little one. I begin to feel my knee preparing to
make ready for the reception of the Lady Arthritis. God bless you and

S. T. COLERIDGE.

Tuesday Evening, June 23, 1801. [2]

[Footnote 1: Mackintosh]

[Footnote 2: Letters CXIX-CXXII follow No. 109.]

Coleridge, for want of funds, was unable for the present to carry out
his project of going abroad, and the next letter to Davy tells us that
he had resolved to go to London instead, and write for the daily papers
again.

LETTER 110. To DAVY

Greta Hall, Keswick, Cumberland, October 31, 1801.

My dear Davy,

I do not know by what fatality it has happened, but so it is; that I
have thought more often of you, and I may say, "yearned" after your
society more for the last three months than I ever before did, and yet I
have not written to you. But you know that I honour you, and that I love
whom I honour. Love and esteem with me have no dividual being; and
wherever this is not the case, I suspect there must be some lurking
moral superstition which nature gets the better of; and that the real
meaning of the phrase "I love him though I cannot esteem him," is--I
esteem him, but not according to my system of esteem. But you, my dear
fellow, 'all' men love and esteem--which is the only suspicious part of
your character--at least according to the 5th chapter of St.
Matthew.--God bless you.

And now for the business of this letter. 'If I can', I leave this place
so as to be in London on Wednesday, the 11th of next month; in London I
shall stay a fortnight; but as I am in feeble health, and have a perfect
'phobia' of inns and coffee-houses, I should rejoice if you or Southey
should be able to offer me a bed-room for the fortnight aforesaid. From
London I move southward. Now for the italicized words 'if I can'. The
cryptical and implicit import of which is--I have a damned thorn in my
leg, which the surgeon has not been yet able to extract--and but that I
have metaphysicized most successfully on 'Pain', in consequence of the
accident, by the Great Scatterer of Thoughts, I should have been half
mad. But as it is I have borne it 'like a woman', which, I believe, to
be two or three degrees at least beyond a 'stoic'. A suppuration is
going on, and I endure in hope.

I have redirected some of Southey's letters to you, taking it for
granted that you will see him immediately on his arrival in town; he
left us yesterday afternoon. Let me hear from you, if it be only to say
what I know already, that you will be glad to see me. O, dear friend,
thou one of the two human beings of whom I dare hope with a hope, that
elevates my own heart. O bless you!

S.T. COLERIDGE. [1]

[Footnote 1: Letters CXXIII-CXXXI follow No. 110.]

Sir Humphry Davy's description of Coleridge at this date is well known,
and we must quote it; "Coleridge has left London for Keswick. During his
stay in town I saw him seldomer than usual; when I did see him, it was
generally in the midst of large companies, where he is the image of
power and activity. His eloquence is unimpaired: perhaps it is softer
and stronger. His will is less than ever commensurate with his ability.
Brilliant images of greatness float upon his mind, like images of the
morning clouds on the waters. Their forms are changed by the motions of
the waves, they are agitated by every breeze, and modified by every
sunbeam. He talked in the course of an hour of beginning three works; he
recited the poem of 'Christabel' unfinished, and as I had before heard
it. What talent does he not waste in forming visions, sublime, but
unconnected with the real world! I have looked to his efforts, as to the
efforts of a creating being; but as yet he has not laid the foundation
for the new world of intellectual forms" ('Fragmentary Remains', p. 74).

Southey had now returned from Portugal, and was also in London
('Southey's Letters', i, 183). It was not till September, 1803, that
Southey came to Keswick ('Southey's Letters', i, 229-31). During the
interval Coleridge had written various things for the 'Morning Post',
the most outstanding contributions being the two powerful letters to Fox
of 4th and 9th November 1802, written on the occasion of that statesman
going to Paris and paying court to Napoleon. The next eight letters to
Thomas Wedgwood give the best impression of Coleridge between October
1802 and February 1803.

Letter 111 To Thomas Wedgwood

Keswick, Oct. 20, 1802.

My dear sir,

This is my birthday, my thirtieth. It will not appear wonderful to you,
when I tell you, that before the arrival of your letter, I had been
thinking with a great weight of different feelings, concerning you, and
your dear brother, for I have good reason to believe, that I should not
now have been alive, if in addition to other miseries, I had had
immediate poverty pressing upon me. I will never again remain silent so
long. It has not been altogether indolence, or my habit of
procrastination which have [1] kept me from writing, but an eager
wish,--I may truly say, a thirst of spirit, to have something honourable
to tell you of myself.

At present I must be content to tell you something cheerful. My health
is very much better. I am stronger in every respect, and am not injured
by study, or the act of sitting at my writing desk; but my eyes suffer
if at any time I have been intemperate in the use of candle-light. This
account supposes another, namely, that my mind is calm, and more at
ease. My dear sir, when I was last with you at Stowey, my heart was
often full, and I could scarcely keep from communicating to you the tale
of my distresses, but could I add to your depression, when you were low?
or how interrupt, or cast a shade on your good spirits, that were so
rare, and so precious to you? ...

I found no comfort but in the driest speculations;--in the 'Ode to
Dejection', which you were pleased with. These lines, in the original,
followed the line "My shaping spirit of imagination,"--

For not to think of what I needs must feel,
But to be still and patient, all I can,
And haply by abstruse research to steal
From my own nature all the natural man;
This was my sole resource, my only plan
And that which suits a part infests the whole,
And now is almost grown the temper [2] of my soul.

I give you these lines for the spirit, and not for the poetry. ...

But better days are arrived, and are still to come, I have had
Visitations of Hope--that I may yet be something of which those who love
me may be proud.

I cannot write that without recalling dear Poole. I have heard twice,
and written twice, and I fear by a strange fatality, one of the letters
will have missed him. Leslie [3] was here some time ago. I was very much
pleased with him. And now I will tell you what I am doing. I dedicate
three days in the week to the 'Morning Post', and shall hereafter write,
for the far greater part, such things as will be of as permanent
interest as any thing I can hope to write; and you will shortly see a
little essay of mine, justifying the writing in a newspaper.

My comparison of the French with the Roman Empire was very favourably
received. The poetry which I have sent is merely the emptying out of my
desk. The epigrams are wretched indeed, but they answered Stuart's
purpose, better than better things. I ought not to have given any
signature to them whatsoever. I never dreamt of acknowledging either
them, or the 'Ode to the Rain'. As to feeble expressions, and unpolished
lines--there is the rub! Indeed, my dear sir, I do value your opinion
very highly. I think your judgment on the sentiment, the imagery, the
flow of a poem, decisive; at least, if it differed from my own, and if
after frequent consideration mine remained different, it would leave me
at least perplexed. For you are a perfect electrometer in these
things--but in point of poetic diction, I am not so well satisfied that
you do not require a certain aloofness from the language of real life,
which I think deadly to poetry.

Very soon however I shall present you from the press with my opinions
full on the subject of style, both in prose and verse; and I am
confident of one thing, that I shall convince you that I have thought
much and patiently on the subject, and that I understand the whole
strength of my antagonist's cause. For I am now busy on the subject, and
shall in a very few weeks go to press with a volume on the prose
writings of Hall, Milton, and Taylor; and shall immediately follow it up
with an essay on the writings of Dr. Johnson and Gibbon, and in these
two volumes I flatter myself I shall present a fair history of English
Prose. If my life and health remain, and I do but write half as much,
and as regularly as I have done during the last six weeks, this will be
finished by January next; and I shall then put together my
memorandum-book on the subject of Poetry. In both I have endeavoured
sedulously to state the facts and the differences clearly and
accurately; and my reasons for the preference of one style to another
are secondary to this.

Of this be assured, that I will never give any thing to the world in
'propria persona' in my own name which I have not tormented with the
file. I sometimes suspect that my foul copy would often appear to
general readers more polished than my fair copy. Many of the feeble and
colloquial expressions have been industriously substituted for others
which struck me as artificial, and not standing the test; as being
neither the language of passion, nor distinct conceptions. Dear sir,
indulge me with looking still further on in my literary life.

I have, since my twentieth year, meditated an heroic poem on the 'Siege
of Jerusalem', by Titus. This is the pride and the stronghold of my
hope, but I never think of it except in my best moods. The work to which
I dedicate the ensuing years of my life, is one which highly pleased
Leslie, in prospective, and my paper will not let me prattle to you
about it. I have written what you more wished me to write, all about
myself.

Our climate (in the north) is inclement, and our houses not as compact
as they might be, but it is a stirring climate, and the worse the
weather, the more unceasingly entertaining are my study windows, and the
month that is to come is the glory of the year with us. A very warm
bed-room I can promise you, and one at the same time which commands the
finest lake and mountain view. If Leslie could not go abroad with you,
and I could in any way mould my manners and habits to suit you, I should
of all things like to be your companion. Good nature, an affectionate
disposition, and so thorough a sympathy with the nature of your
complaint, that I should feel no pain, not the most momentary, at being
told by you what your feelings require at the time in which they
required it; this I should bring with me. But I need not say that you
may say to me,--"You don't suit me," without inflicting the least
mortification. Of course this letter is for your brother, as for you;
but I shall write to him soon. God bless you,

S. T. COLERIDGE.

Thomas Wedgwood, Esq.

[Footnote 1: 'Sic.']

[Footnote 2: Cottle prints "temple," an error.]

[Footnote 3: The eminent Edinburg Professor. For three years the private
tutor of Mr. T. Wedgwood (Cottle). [For further information regarding
John, aftwards Sir John, Leslie (1766-1832) see 'Tom Wedgwood' by
Lichfield.]]

LETTER 112. TO THOMAS WEDGWOOD

Keswick, November 3, 1802.

Dear Wedgwood,

It is now two hours since I received your letter; and after the
necessary consultation, Mrs. Coleridge herself is fully of opinion that
to lose time is merely to lose spirits. Accordingly I have resolved not
to look the children in the face, (the parting from whom is the
downright bitter in the thing) but to go to London by to-morrow's mail.
Of course I shall be in London, God permitting, on Saturday morning. I
shall rest that day, and the next, and proceed to Bristol by the Monday
night's mail. At Bristol I will go to "Cote-House"[1] At all events,
barring serious illness, serious fractures, and the et cetera of serious
unforeseens, I shall be at Bristol, Tuesday noon, November 9.

You are aware that my whole knowledge of French does not extend beyond
the power of limping slowly, not without a dictionary crutch, through an
easy French book: and that as to pronunciation, all my organs of speech,
from the bottom of the Larynx to the edge of my lips, are utterly and
naturally anti-Gallican. If only I shall have been any comfort, any
alleviation to you I shall feel myself at ease--and whether you go
abroad or no, while I remain with you, it will greatly contribute to my
comfort, if I know you will have no hesitation, nor pain, in telling me
what you wish me to do, or not to do.

I regard it among the blessings of my life, that I have never lived
among men whom I regarded as my artificial superiors: that all the
respect I have at any time paid, has been wholly to supposed goodness,
or talent. The consequence has been that I have no alarms of pride; no
"cheval de frise" of independence. I have always lived among equals. It
never occurs to me, even for a moment, that I am otherwise. If I have
quarrelled with men, it has been as brothers or as school-fellows
quarrel. How little any man can give me, or take from me, save in
matters of kindness and esteem, is not so much a thought or conviction
with me, or even a distinct feeling, as it is my very nature. Much as I
dislike all formal declarations of this kind, I have deemed it well to
say this. I have as strong feelings of gratitude as any man. Shame upon
me if in the sickness and the sorrow which I have had, and which have
been kept unaggravated and supportable by your kindness, and your
brother's (Mr. Josiah Wedgwood) shame upon me if I did not feel a
kindness, not unmixed with reverence towards you both. But yet I never
should have had my present impulses to be with you, and this confidence,
that I may become an occasional comfort to you, if, independently of all
gratitude, I did not thoroughly esteem you; and if I did not appear to
myself to understand the nature of your sufferings; and within the last
year, in some slight degree to have felt myself, something of the same.

Forgive me, my dear sir, if I have said too much. It is better to write
it than to say it, and I am anxious in the event of our travelling
together that you should yourself be at ease with me, even as you would
with a younger brother, to whom, from his childhood you had been in the
habit of saying, "Do this Col." or "don't do that." All good be with
you.

S. T. COLERIDGE.

Thomas Wedgwood, Esq.[2]

[Footnote: 1 Westbury, near Bristol, the then residence of Mr. John
Wedgwood.]

[Footnote 2: Letters CXXXII-CXXXIV follow 112.]

LETTER 113. To THOMAS WEDGWOOD

Keswick, January 9, 1803.

My dear Wedgwood,

I send you two letters, one from your dear sister, the second from
Sharp, by which you will see at what short notice I must be off, if I go
to the "Canaries", If your last plan continue in full force, I have not
even the phantom of a wish thitherward struggling, but if aught have
happened to you, in the things without, or in the world within, to
induce you to change the place, or the plan, relatively to me, I think I
could raise the money. But I would a thousand-fold rather go with you
whithersoever you go. I shall be anxious to hear how you have gone on
since I left you. You should decide in favour of a better climate
somewhere or other. The best scheme I can think of, is to go to some
part of Italy or Sicily, which we both liked. I would look out for two
houses. Wordsworth and his family would take the one, and I the other,
and then you might have a home either with me, or if you thought of Mr.
and Mrs. Luff, under this modification, one of your own; and in either
case you would have neighbours, and so return to England when the home
sickness pressed heavy upon you, and back to Italy when it was abated,
and the climate of England began to poison your comforts. So you would
have abroad in a genial climate, certain comforts of society among
simple and enlightened men and women; and I should be an alleviation of
the pang which you will necessarily feel, as often as you quit your own
family.

I know no better plan: for travelling in search of objects is at best a
dreary business, and whatever excitement it might have had, you must
have exhausted it. God bless you, my dear friend. I write with dim eyes,
for indeed, indeed, my heart is very full of affectionate sorrowful
thoughts toward you.

I write with difficulty, with all the fingers but one of my right hand
very much swollen. Before I was half up the "Kirkstone" mountain, the
storm had wetted me through and through, and before I reached the top it
was so wild and outrageous, that it would have been unmanly to have
suffered the poor woman (guide) to continue pushing on, up against such
a torrent of wind and rain: so I dismounted and sent her home with the
storm in her back. I am no novice in mountain mischiefs, but such a
storm as this was, I never witnessed, combining the intensity of the
cold, with the violence of the wind and rain. The rain drops were pelted
or slung against my face by the gusts, just like splinters of flint, and
I felt as if every drop cut my flesh. My hands were all shrivelled up
like a washer-woman's, and so benumbed that I was obliged to carry my
stick under my arm. O, it was a wild business! Such hurry skurry of
clouds, such volleys of sound! In spite of the wet and the cold, I
should have had some pleasure in it, but for two vexations; first, an
almost intolerable pain came into my right eye, a smarting and burning
pain; and secondly, in consequence of riding with such cold water under
my seat, extremely uneasy and burthensome feelings attacked my groin, so
that, what with the pain from the one, and the alarm from the other, I
had "no enjoyment at all"!

Just at the brow of the hill I met a man dismounted, who could not sit
on horse-back. He seemed quite scared by the uproar, and said to me,
with much feeling, "O sir, it is a perilous buffeting, but it is worse
for you than for me, for I have it at my back." However I got safely
over, and immediately all was calm and breathless, as if it was some
mighty fountain put on the summit of Kirkstone, that shot forth its
volcano of air, and precipitated huge streams of invisible lava down the
road to Patterdale.

I went on to Grasmere. [1] I was not at all unwell, when I arrived
there, though wet of course to the skin. My right eye had nothing the
matter with it, either to the sight of others, or to my own feelings,
but I had a bad night, with distressful dreams, chiefly about my eye;
and waking often in the dark I thought it was the effect of mere
recollection, but it appeared in the morning that my right eye was
blood-shot, and the lid swollen. That morning however I walked home, and
before I reached Keswick, my eye was quite well, but "I felt unwell all
over". Yesterday I continued unusually unwell all over me till eight
o'clock in the evening. I took no "laudanum or opium", but at eight
o'clock, unable to bear the stomach uneasiness and achings of my limbs,
I took two large tea-spoons full of Ether in a wine glass of camphorated
gum-water, and a third teaspoon full at ten o'clock, and I received
complete relief; my body calmed; my sleep placid; but when I awoke in
the morning, my right hand, with three of the fingers, was swollen and
inflamed. The swelling in the hand is gone down, and of two of the
fingers somewhat abated, but the middle finger is still twice its
natural size, so that I write with difficulty. This has been a very
rough attack, but though I am much weakened by it, and look sickly and
haggard, yet I am not out of heart. Such a 'bout'; such a "periless
buffetting," was enough to have hurt the health of a strong man. Few
constitutions can bear to be long wet through in intense cold. I fear it
will tire you to death to read this prolix scrawled story.

Affectionately dear Friend, Yours ever,

S. T. COLERIDGE.[2]

[Footnote 1: The then residence of Mr. Wordsworth. [Cottle.]]

[Footnote 2: Letter CXXXV is our No. 110.]

LETTER 114. TO THOMAS WEDGWOOD

Friday night, Jan. 14, 1803

Dear Friend,

I was glad at heart to receive your letter, and still more gladdened by
the reading of it. The exceeding kindness which it breathed was
literally medicinal to me, and I firmly believe, cured me of a nervous
rheumatic affection, the acid and the oil, very completely at
Patterdale; but by the time it came to Keswick, the oil was all atop.

You ask me, "Why, in the name of goodness, I did not return when I saw
the state of the weather?" The true reason is simple, though it may be
somewhat strange. The thought never once entered my head. The cause of
this I suppose to be, that (I do not remember it at least) I never once
in my whole life turned back in fear of the weather. Prudence is a
plant, of which I no doubt possess some valuable specimens, but they are
always in my hothouse, never out of the glasses, and least of all things
would endure the climate of the mountains. In simple earnestness, I
never find myself alone, within the embracement of rocks and hills, a
traveller up an alpine road, but my spirit careers, drives, and eddies,
like a leaf in autumn; a wild activity of thoughts, imaginations,
feelings, and impulses of motion rises up from within me; a sort of
bottom wind, that blows to no point of the compass, comes from I know
not whence, but agitates the whole of me; my whole being is filled with
waves that roll and stumble, one this way, and one that way, like things
that have no common master. I think that my soul must have pre-existed
in the body of a chamois chaser. The simple image of the old object has
been obliterated, but the feelings, and impulsive habits, and incipient
actions, are in me, and the old scenery awakens them.

The further I ascend from animated nature, from men, and cattle, and the
common birds of the woods and fields, the greater becomes in me the
intensity of the feeling of life. Life seems to me then an universal
spirit, that neither has, nor can have an opposite. "God is everywhere,"
I have exclaimed, and works everywhere, and where is there room for
death? In these moments it has been my creed, that death exists only
because ideas exist; that life is limitless sensation; that death is a
child of the organic senses, chiefly of the sight; that feelings die by
flowing into the mould of the intellect becoming ideas, and that ideas
passing forth into action, reinstate themselves again in the world of
life. And I do believe that truth lies in these loose generalizations. I
do not think it possible that any bodily pains could eat out the love of
joy, that is so substantially part of me, towards hills, and rocks, and
steep waters; and I have had some trial.

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