Biographia Epistolaris, Volume 1.

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

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On Monday night I had an attack in my stomach and right side, which in
pain, and the length of its continuance appeared to me by far the
severest I ever had. About one o'clock the pain passed out of my
stomach, like lightning from a cloud, into the extremities of my right
foot. My toe swelled and throbbed, and I was in a state of delicious
ease, which the pain in my toe did not seem at all to interfere with. On
Tuesday I was uncommonly well all the morning, and ate an excellent
dinner; but playing too long and too rompingly with Hartley and Derwent,
I was very unwell that evening. On Wednesday I was well, and after
dinner wrapped myself up warm, and walked with Sarah Hutchinson, to
Lodore. I never beheld anything more impressive than the wild outline of
the black masses of mountain over Lodore, and so on to the gorge of
Borrowdale. Even through the bare twigs of a grove of birch trees,
through which the road passes; and on emerging from the grove a red
planet, so very red that I never saw a star so red, being clear and
bright at the same time. It seemed to have sky behind it. It started, as
it were from the heavens, like an eye-ball of fire. I wished aloud at
that moment that you had been with me.

The walk appears to have done me good, but I had a wretched night;
shocking pains in my head, occiput, and teeth, and found in the morning
that I had two blood-shot eyes. But almost immediately after the receipt
and perusal of your letter the pains left me, and I am bettered to this
hour; and am now indeed as well as usual saving that my left eye is very
much blood-shot. It is a sort of duty with me, to be particular
respecting facts that relate to my health. I have retained a good sound
appetite through the whole of it, without any craving after exhilarants
or narcotics, and I have got well as in a moment. Rapid recovery is
constitutional with me; but the former circumstances, I can with
certainty refer to the system of diet, abstinence from vegetables, wine,
spirits, and beer, which I have adopted by your advice.

I have no dread or anxiety respecting any fatigue which either of us is
likely to undergo, even in continental travelling. Many a healthy man
would have been laid up with such a bout of thorough wet, and intense
cold at the same time, as I had at Kirkstone. Would to God that also for
your sake I were a stronger man, but I have strong wishes to be with
you. I love your society, and receiving much comfort from you, and
believing likewise that I receive much improvement, I find a delight
very great, my dear friend! indeed it is, when I have reason to imagine
that I am in return an alleviation to your destinies, and a comfort to
you. I have no fears and am ready to leave home at a two days' warning.
For myself I should say two hours, but bustle and hurry might disorder
Mrs. Coleridge. She and the three children are quite well.[1]

I grieve that there is a lowering in politics. The 'Moniteur' contains
almost daily some bitter abuse of our minister and parliament, and in
London there is great anxiety and omening. I have dreaded war from the
time that the disastrous fortunes of the expedition to Saint Domingo,
under Le Clerc, was known in France. Write me one or two lines, as few
as you like.

I remain, my dear Wedgwood, with most affectionate esteem, and grateful
attachment,

Your sincere friend,

S. T. COLERIDGE.

Thomas Wedgwood, Esq.

[Footnote 1: Sara had been born 23rd December 1802.]

LETTER 115. TO THOMAS WEDGWOOD

Nether Stowey, Feb. 10, 1803.

Dear Wedgwood,

Last night Poole and I fully expected a few lines from you. When the
newspaper came in, without your letter, we felt as if a dull neighbour
had been ushered in after a knock at the door which had made us rise up
and start forward to welcome some long absent friend. Indeed in Poole's
case, this simile is less over-swollen than in mine, for in contempt of
my convictions and assurance to the contrary, Poole, passing off the
Brummagem coin of his wishes for sterling reasons, had persuaded himself
fully that he should see you in 'propria persona'. The truth is, we had
no right to expect a letter from you, and I should have attributed your
not writing to your having nothing to write, to your bodily dislike of
writing, or, though with reluctance, to low spirits, but that I have
been haunted with the fear that your sister is worse, and that you are
at Cote-House, in the mournful office of comforter to your brother. God
keep us from idle dreams. Life has enough of real pains.

I wrote to Captain Wordsworth to get me some Bang. The captain in an
affectionate letter answers me: "The Bang if possible shall be sent. If
any country ship arrives I shall certainly get it. We have not got
anything of the kind in our China ships." If you would rather wait till
it can be brought by Captain Wordsworth himself from China, give me a
line that I may write and tell him. We shall hope for a letter from you
to-night. I need not say, dear Wedgwood, how anxious I am to hear the
particulars of your health and spirits.

Poole's account of his conversations, etc., in France, are very
interesting and instructive. If your inclination lead you hither you
would be very comfortable here. But I am ready at an hour's warning;
ready in heart and mind, as well as in body and moveables.

I am, dear Wedgwood, most truly yours,

S. T. COLERIDGE.

Thomas Wedgwood, Esq.

LETTER 116. TO THOMAS WEDGWOOD.

Stowey, Feb. 10, 1803.

My dear Wedgwood,

With regard to myself and my accompanying you, let me say thus much. My
health is not worse than it was in the North; indeed it is much better.
I have no fears. But if you fear that, my health being what you know it
to be, the inconveniences of my being with you will be greater than the
advantages; (I feel no reluctance in telling you so) [1] it is so
entirely an affair of spirits and feeling that the conclusion must be
made by you, not in your reason, but purely in your spirit and feeling.
Sorry indeed should I be to know that you had gone abroad with one, to
whom you were comparatively indifferent. Sorry if there should be no one
with you, who could with fellow-feeling and general like-mindedness,
yield you sympathy in your sunshiny moments. Dear Wedgwood, my heart
swells within me as it were. I have no other wish to accompany you than
what arises immediately from my personal attachment, and a deep sense in
my own heart, that let us be as dejected as we will, a week together
cannot pass in which a mind like yours would not feel the want of
affection, or be wholly torpid to its pleasurable influences. I cannot
bear to think of your going abroad with a mere travelling companion;
with one at all influenced by salary, or personal conveniences. You will
not suspect me of flattering you, but indeed dear Wedgwood, you are too
good and too valuable a man to deserve to receive attendance from a
hireling, even for a month together, in your present state.

If I do not go with you, I shall stay in England only such time as may
be necessary for me to raise the travelling money, and go immediately to
the south of France. I shall probably cross the Pyrenees to Bilboa, see
the country of Biscay, and cross the north of Spain to Perpignan, and so
on to the north of Italy, and pass my next winter at Nice. I have every
reason to believe that I can live, even as a traveller, as cheap as I
can in England. God bless you. I will repeat no professions, even in the
superscription of a letter. You know me, and that it is my serious,
simple wish, that in everything respecting me, you would think
altogether of yourself, and nothing of me, and be assured that no
resolve of yours, however suddenly adopted, or however nakedly
communicated, will give me any pain, any at least arising from my own
bearings.

Yours ever,

S. T. COLERIDGE.

Thomas Wedgwood, Esq.

P. S. Perhaps Leslie will go with you.

[Footnote 1: Should be "Feel no reluctance in telling me so."]

LETTER 117. TO THOMAS WEDGWOOD.

Poole's, Feb. 17, 1803.

My dear Wedgwood,

I do not know that I have anything to say that justifies me in troubling
you with the postage and perusal of this scrawl. I received a short and
kind letter from Josiah last night. He is named the sheriff. Poole, who
has received a very kind invitation from your brother John, in a letter
of last Monday, and which was repeated in last night's letter, goes with
me, I hope in the full persuasion that you will be there (at Cote-House)
before he be under the necessity of returning home. Poole is a very,
very good man, I like even his incorrigibility in little faults and
deficiencies. It looks like a wise determination of nature to let well
alone.

Are you not laying out a scheme which will throw your travelling in
Italy, into an unpleasant and unwholesome part of the year? From all I
can gather, you ought to leave this country at the first of April at the
latest. But no doubt you know these things better than I. If I do not go
with you, it is very probable we shall meet somewhere or other. At all
events you will know where I am, and I can come to you if you wish it.
And if I go with you, there will be this advantage, that you may drop me
where you like, if you should meet any Frenchman, Italian, or Swiss,
whom you liked, and who would be pleasant and profitable to you. But
this we can discuss at Gunville.

As to ----,[1] I never doubted that he means to fulfil his engagements
with you, but he is one of those weak moralled men, with whom the
meaning to do a thing means nothing. He promises with ninety parts out
of a hundred of his whole heart, but there is always a speck of cold at
the core that transubstantiates the whole resolve into a lie.

I remain in comfortable health,--warm rooms, an old friend, and
tranquillity, are specifics for my complaints. With all my ups and downs
I have a deal of joyous feeling, and I would with gladness give a good
part of it to you, my dear friend. God grant that spring may come to you
with healing on her wings.

God bless you, my dear Wedgwood. I remain with most affectionate esteem,
and regular attachment, and good wishes.

Yours ever,

S. T. COLERIDGE.

Thomas Wedgwood, Esq.

P. S. If Southey should send a couple of bottles, one of the red
sulphate, and one of the compound acids for me, will you be so good as
to bring them with you?

[Footnote 1: Mackintosh.]

LETTER 118. TO THOMAS WEDGWOOD.

Stowey, Feb. 17, 1803.

My dear Wedgwood,

Last night I received a four ounce parcel letter, by the post, which
Poole and I concluded was the mistake or carelessness of the servant,
who had put the letter into the post office, instead of the coach
office. I should have been indignant, if dear Poole had not set me
laughing. On opening it, it contained my letter from Gunville, and a
small parcel of "Bang," from Purkis. I will transcribe the parts of his
letter which relate to it.

Brentford, Feb. 7, 1803.

My dear Coleridge,

I thank you for your letter, and am happy to be the means of obliging
you. Immediately on the receipt of yours, I wrote to Sir Joseph Banks,
who I verily believe is one of the most excellent and useful men of this
country, requesting a small quantity of Bang, and saying it was for the
use of Mr. T. Wedgwood. I yesterday received the parcel which I now
send, accompanied with a very kind letter, and as part of it will be
interesting to you and your friend, I will transcribe it. "The Bang you
ask for is the powder of the leaves of a kind of hemp that grows in the
hot climates. It is prepared, and I believe used, in all parts of the
east, from Morocco to China. In Europe it is found to act very
differently on different constitutions. Some it elevates in the extreme;
others it renders torpid, and scarcely observant of any evil that may
befal them. In Barbary it is always taken, if it can be procured, by
criminals condemned to suffer amputation, and it is said, to enable
those miserables to bear the rough operations of an unfeeling
executioner, more than we Europeans can the keen knife of our most
skilful chirurgeons. This it may be necessary to have said to my friend
Mr. T. Wedgwood, whom I respect much, as his virtues deserve, and I know
them well. I send a small quantity only as I possess but little. If
however, it is found to agree, I will instantly forward the whole of my
stock, and write without delay to Barbary, from whence it came, for
more."

Sir Joseph adds, in a postscript: "It seems almost beyond a doubt, that
the Nepenthe was a preparation of the Bang, known to the Ancients."

Now I had better take the small parcel with me to Gunville; if I send it
by the post, besides the heavy expense, I cannot rely on the Stowey
carriers, who are a brace of as careless and dishonest rogues as ever
had claims on that article of the hemp and timber trade, called the
gallows. Indeed I verily believe that if all Stowey, Ward excepted, does
not go to hell, it will be by the supererogation of Poole's sense of
honesty.--Charitable!

We will have a fair trial of Bang. Do bring down some of the Hyoscyamine
pills, and I will give a fair trial of Opium, Henbane, and Nepenthe.
By-the-bye I always considered Homer's account of the Nepenthe as a
'Banging' lie.

God bless you, my dear friend, and

S.T. COLERIDGE. [1]

[Footnote 1: Letter CXXXVI follows 118.]

The last four letters were written from Stowey, whither Coleridge had
gone on a visit to Poole.

During the same period some events had taken place which changed the
aspect of things. He had become acquainted with William Sotheby, the
poet, translator of Homer and Wieland, to whom he communicated in long
letters his views on Wordsworth's theory of poetic diction, indicating a
widening divergence from his brother poet. He had also made for the
satisfaction of Sotheby a translation in blank verse of Gessner's 'Erste
Schiffer', which has been lost ('Letters', 369-401). He had likewise
paraphrased one of Gessner's Idylls, published as the 'Picture of The
Lover's Resolution', in the 'Morning Post' of 6th September 1802.
'Dejection, an Ode', the 'Hymn before Sunrise', and the beautiful
dramatic fragment, the 'Night Scene', are the last products of
Coleridge's chilled poetic imagination. A third edition (1803) of the
Early Poems was issued under the superintendence of Lamb ('Ainger', i,
199-206). He had made a second tour in Wales in company with Tom
Wedgwood in November and December 1802 ('Letters', 410-417) returning to
find that Sara had been born on 23rd December 1802. In August 1803
Coleridge went on tour to Scotland with the Wordsworths ('Letters', 451,
and Dorothy Wordsworth's 'Journal'). It is impossible for us to give all
the correspondence of this busy, mental period, but on 4th June 1803,
Coleridge writes to Godwin.

LETTER 119. To GODWIN

Saturday Night, June 4, 1803.

Greta Hall, Keswick.

My dear Godwin,

I trust that my dear friend, C. Lamb, will have informed you how
seriously ill I have been. I arrived at Keswick on Good Friday, caught
the influenza, have struggled on in a series of convalescence and
relapse, the disease still assuming new shapes and symptoms; and, though
I am certainly better than at any former period of the disease, and more
steadily convalescent, yet it is not mere 'low spirits' that makes me
doubt whether I shall ever wholly surmount the effects of it. I owe,
then, explanation to you, for I quitted town, with strong feelings of
affectionate esteem towards you, and a firm resolution to write to you
within a short time after my arrival at my home. During my illness I was
exceedingly affected by the thought that month had glided away after
month, and year after year, and still had found and left me only
'preparing' for the experiments which are to ascertain whether the hopes
of those who have hoped proudly of me have been auspicious omens or mere
delusions; and the anxiety to realize something, and finish something,
has, no doubt, in some measure retarded my recovery. I am now, however,
ready to go to the press with a work which I consider as introductory to
a 'system', though to the public it will appear altogether a thing by
itself. I write now to ask your advice respecting the time and manner of
its publication, and the choice of a publisher, I entitle it

'Organum Vera Organum, or an Instrument of Practical Reasoning in the
Business of Real Life'; [1] to which will be prefixed,
1. A familiar introduction to the common system of Logic, namely, that
of Aristotle and the Schools.
2. A concise and simple, yet full statement of the Aristotelian Logic,
with reference annexed to the authors, and the name and page of the work
to which each part may be traced, so that it may be at once seen what is
Aristotle's, what Porphyry's, what the addition of the Greek
Commentators, and what of the Schoolmen.
3. An outline of the History of Logic in general,
1st Chapter. The Origin of Philosophy in general, and of Logic 'speciatim'.
2d Chap. Of the Eleatic and Megaric Logic.
3d Chap. of the Platonic Logic.
4th Chap, of Aristotle, containing a fair account of the "*[Greek:
Orhganon]--of which Dr. Reid, in 'Kaimes' Sketches of Man', has given
a most false, and not only erroneous, but calumnious statement--in as
far as the account had not been anticipated in the second part of my
work, namely, the concise and simple, yet full, etc. etc.
5th Chap. A philosophical examination of the truth and of the value of
the Aristotelian System of Logic, including all the after-additions to
it.
6th Chap. On the characteristic merits and demerits of Aristotle and
Plato as philosophers in general, and an attempt to explain the fact
of the vast influence of the former during so many ages; and of the
influence of Plato's works on the restoration of the Belles Lettres,
and on the Reformation.
7th Chap. Raymund Lully.
8th Chap. Peter Ramus.
9th Chap. Lord Bacon, or the Verulamian Logic. both Chap. Examination
of the same, and comparison of it with the Logic of Plato (in which I
attempt to make it probable that, though considered by Bacon himself
as the antithesis and the antidote of Plato, it is 'bona fide' the
same, and that Plato has been misunderstood).[2]
10th Chap. Descartes,
11th Chap. Condillac, and a philosophical examination of 'his' logic,
'i.e.' the logic which he basely purloined from Hartley.
Then follows my own 'Organum Vera Organum', which consists of a
*[Greek: Eustaema] of all 'possible' modes of true, probable, and false
reasoning, arranged philosophically, 'i.e.' on a strict analysis of
those operations and passions of the mind in which they originate, or by
which they act; with one or more striking instances annexed to each,
from authors of high estimation, and to each instance of false
reasoning, the manner in which the sophistry is to be detected, and the
words in which it may be exposed.

The whole will conclude with considerations of the value of the work, or
its practical utility in scientific investigations (especially the first
part, which contains the strictly demonstrative reasonings, and the
analysis of all the acts and passions of the mind which may be employed
to the discovery of truth) in the arts of healing, especially in those
parts that contain a catalogue, etc. of probable reasoning; lastly, to
the senate, the pulpit, and our law courts, to whom the whole--but
especially the latter three-fourths of the work, on the probable and the
false--will be useful, and finally instructive, how to form a
commonplace book by the aid of this Instrument, so as to read with
practical advantage, and (supposing average talents) to 'ensure' a
facility and rapidity in proving and in computing. I have thus amply
detailed the contents of my work, which has not been the labour of one
year or of two, but the result of many years' meditations, and of very
various reading. The size of the work will, printed at thirty lines a
page, form one volume octavo, 500 pages to the volume; and I shall be
ready with the first half of the work for the printer at a fortnight's
notice. Now, my dear friend, give me your thoughts on the subject: would
you have me to offer it to the booksellers, or, by the assistance of my
friends, print and publish on my own account? If the former, would you
advise me to sell the copyright at once, or only one or more editions?
Can you give me a general notion what terms I have a right to insist on
in either case? And, lastly, to whom would you advise me to apply?
Phillips is a pushing man, and a book is sure to have fair play if it be
his 'property'; and it could not be other than pleasant to me to have
the same publisher with yourself, 'but'----. Now if there be anything of
impatience, that whether truth and justice ought to follow that "'but'"
you will inform me. It is not my habit to go to work so seriously about
matters of pecuniary business; but my ill health makes my life more than
ordinarily uncertain, and I have a wife and three little ones. If your
judgment leads you to advise me to offer it to Phillips, would you take
the trouble of talking with him on the subject, and give him your real
opinion, whatever it may be, of the work and of the powers of the
author?

When this book is fairly off my hands, I shall, if I live and have
sufficient health, set seriously to work in arranging what I have
already written, and in pushing forward my studies and my investigations
relative to the 'omne scibile' of human nature--'what' we are, and 'how
we become' what we are; so as to solve the two grand problems--how,
being acted upon, we shall act; how, acting, we shall be acted upon. But
between me and this work there may be death.

I hope your wife and little ones are well. I have had a sick family. At
one time every individual--master, mistress, children, and
servants--were all laid up in bed, and we were waited on by persons
hired from the town for the week. But now all are well, I only excepted.
If you find my paper smell, or my style savour of scholastic quiddity,
you must attribute it to the infectious quality of the folio on which I
am writing--namely, 'Scotus Erigena de Divisione Naturae', the
forerunner, by some centuries, of the schoolmen. I cherish all kinds of
honourable feelings towards you; and I am, dear Godwin,

Yours most sincerely,

S. T. COLERIDGE.

[Footnote 1 Extant in MS. See 'Athenaeum', 26th October 1895.]

[Footnote 2: See the 'Friend', Bohn Library, pp. 319-345.]

You know the high character and present scarcity of 'Tuckers Light of
Nature'. "I have found in this writer" (says Paley, in his preface to his
'Moral and Political Philosophy') "more original thinking and
observation upon the several subjects he has taken in hand than in any
other, not to say in all others put together". His talent also for
illustration is unrivalled. But his thoughts are diffused through a
long, various, and irregular work. And a friend of mine, every way
calculated by his taste and private studies for such a work,[1] is
willing to abridge and systematize that work from eight to two
volumes--in the words of Paley, "to dispose into method, to collect into
heads and articles, and to exhibit in more compact and tangible masses,
what in that otherwise excellent performance is spread over too much
surface." I would prefix to it an essay containing the whole substance
of the first volume of Hartley; entirely defecated from all the
corpuscular hypothesis, with more illustrations. I give my name to the
essay. Likewise I will revise every sheet of the abridgment. I should
think the character of the work, and the above quotations from so high
an authority (with the present public, I mean) as Paley, would ensure
its success. If you will read or transcribe, and send this to Mr.
Phillips, or to any other publisher (Longman and Rees excepted) you
would greatly oblige me; that is to say, my dear Godwin, you would
essentially serve a young man of profound genius and original mind, who
wishes to get his 'Sabine' subsistence by some employment from the
booksellers, while he is employing the remainder of his time in nursing
up his genius for the destiny which he believes appurtenant to it. "Qui
cito facit, bis facit." Impose any task on me in return. [2]

[Footnote 1: Hazlitt. The abridgment was made, and published in 1807.]

[Footnote 2: Letter CXXXVII follows 119.]

Godwin published his 'Life of Chaucer' in 1803. The next letter refers
to this work.

LETTER 120. TO GODWIN

Friday, July 10, 1803.

Greta Hall.

My dear Godwin,

Your letter has this moment reached me, and found me writing for Stuart,
to whom I am under a positive engagement to produce three essays by the
beginning of next week. To promise, therefore, to do what I could not do
would be worse than idle; and to attempt to do what I could not do well,
from distraction of mind, would be trifling with my time and your
patience. If I could convey to you any tolerably distinct notion of the
state of my spirits of late, and the train or the sort of my ideas
consequent on that state, you would feel instantly that my
non-performance of the promise is matter of 'regret' with me indeed, but
not of 'compunction'. It was my full intention to have prepared
immediately a second volume of poems for the press; but, though the
poems are all either written or composed, excepting only the conclusion
of one poem (equal to four days' common work) and a few corrections, and
though I had the most pressing motives for sending them off, yet after
many attempts I was obliged to give up the very hope--the attempts acted
so perniciously on my disorder.

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