Biographia Epistolaris, Volume 1.

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

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Wordsworth, too, wished, and in a very particular manner expressed the
wish, that I should write to him at large on a poetic subject, which he
has at present 'sub malleo ardentem et ignitum'. I made the attempt, but
I could not command my recollections. It seemed a dream that I had ever
'thought' on poetry, or had ever written it, so remote were my trains of
ideas from composition or criticism on composition. These two instances
will, in some manner, explain my non-performance; but, indeed, I have
been very ill, and that I have done anything in any way is a subject of
wonder to myself, and of no causeless self-complacency. Yet I am anxious
to do something which may convince you of my sincerity by zeal: and, if
you think that it will be of any service to you, I will send down for
the work; I will instantly give it a perusal 'con amore'; and partly by
my reverential love of Chaucer, and partly from my affectionate esteem
for his biographer (the summer, too, bringing increase of health with
it), I doubt not that my old mind will recur to me; and I will forthwith
write a series of letters, containing a critique on Chaucer, and on the
'Life of Chaucer', by W. Godwin, and publish them, with my name, either
at once in a small volume, or in the 'Morning Post' in the first
instance, and republish them afterwards.

The great thing to be done is to present Chaucer stripped of all his
adventitious matter, his translations, etc.; to analyse his own real
productions, to deduce his province and his rank; then to compare him
with his contemporaries, or with immediate prede- and suc- cessors, first
as an Englishman, and secondly as a European; then with Spenser and with
Shakespeare, between whom he seems to stand mid-way, with, however, a
manner of his own which belongs to neither, with a manner and an
excellence; lastly, to compare Dante and Chaucer, and inclusively
Spenser and Shakespere, with the ancients, to abstract the
characteristic differences, and to develop the causes of such
differences. (For instance, in all the writings of the ancients I
recollect nothing that, strictly examined, can be called humour; yet
Chaucer abounds with it, and Dante, too, though in a very different way.
Thus, too, the passion for personifications and, "me judice", strong,
sharp, practical good sense, which I feel to constitute a strikingly
characteristic difference in favour of the "feudal" poets.) As to
information, I could give you a critical sketch of poems, written by
contemporaries of Chaucer, in Germany; an epic to compare with his
"Palamon", and tales with his Tales, descriptive and fanciful poems with
those of the same kind in our own poet. In short, a Life of Chaucer
ought, in the work itself, and in the appendices of the work, to make
the poet explain his age, and to make the age both explain the poet, and
evince the superiority of the poet over his age. I think that the
publication of such a work would do "your" work some little service, in
more ways than one. It would occasion, necessarily, a double review of
it in all the Reviews; and there is a large class of fashionable men who
have been pleased of late to take me into high favour, and among whom
even my name might have some influence, and my praises of you weight.
But let me hear from you on the subject.

Now for my own business. As soon as you possibly can do something
respecting the abridgment of Tucker,[1] do so; you will, on my honour,
be doing "good", in the best sense of the word! Of course I cannot wish
you to do anything till after the 24th, unless it should be "put" in
your way to read that part of the letter to Phillips.

As to my own work, let me correct one or two conceptions of yours
respecting it. I could, no doubt, induce my friends to publish the work
for me, but I am possessed of facts that deter me. I know that the
booksellers not only do not encourage, but that they use unjustifiable
artifices to injure works published on the authors' own account. It
never answered, as far as I can find, in any instance. And even the sale
of a first edition is not without objections on this score--to this,
however, I should certainly adhere, and it is my resolution. But I must
do something immediately. Now, if I knew that any bookseller would
purchase the first edition of this work, as numerous as he pleased, I
should put the work out of hand at once, "totus in illo". But it was
never my intention to send one single sheet to the press till the whole
was "bona fide" ready for the printer--that is, both written, and fairly
written. The work is half written "out", and the materials of the other
half are all in paper, or rather on papers. I should not expect one
farthing till the work was delivered entire; and I would deliver it at
once, if it were wished. But, if I cannot engage with a bookseller for
this, I must do something else "first", which I should be sorry for.
Your division of the sorts of works acceptable to booksellers is just,
and what has been always my own notion or rather knowledge; but, though
I detailed the whole of the contents of my work so fully to you, I did
not mean to lay any stress with the bookseller on the first half, but
simply state it as preceded by a familiar introduction, and critical
history of logic. On the work itself I meant to lay all the stress, as a
work really in request, and non-existent, either well or ill-done, and
to put the work in the "same class" with "Guthrie" and books of
practical instruction--for the universities, classes of scholars,
lawyers, etc. etc. Its profitable sale will greatly depend on the
pushing of the booksellers, and on its being considered as a "practical"
book, "Organum vere Organum", a book by which the reader is to acquire
not only knowledge, but likewise "power". I fear that it may extend to
seven hundred pages; and would it be better to publish the Introduction
of History separately, either after or before? God bless you, and all
belonging to you, and your Chaucer. All happiness to you and your wife.

Ever yours, S. T. C.

P.S. If you read to Phillips any part of my letter respecting my own
work, or rather detailed it to him, you would lay all the stress on the
"practical".

[Footnote 1: Godwin exerted himself actively in the matter, as appears
by the correspondence of Charles Lamb.]

The ambitious scheme of the letters to Godwin did not exhaust
Coleridge's projects at this season. To Southey he wrote:

LETTER 121. To SOUTHEY [1]

Keswick, July, 1803.

My dear Southey,

... I write now to propose a scheme, or rather a rude outline of a
scheme, of your grand work. What harm can a proposal do? If it be no
pain to you to reject it, it will be none to me to have it rejected. I
would have the work entitled "Bibliotheca Britannica", or an History of
British Literature, bibliographical, biographical, and critical. The two
"last" volumes I would have to be a chronological catalogue of all
noticeable or extant books; the others, be the number six or eight, to
consist entirely of separate treatises, each giving a critical
biblio-biographical history of some one subject. I will, with great
pleasure, join you in learning Welsh and Erse: and you, I, Turner, and
Owen, might dedicate ourselves for the first half year to a complete
history of all Welsh, Saxon, and Erse books that are not translations,
that are the native growth of Britain. If the Spanish neutrality
continues, I will go in October or November to Biscay, and throw light
on the Basque.

Let the next volume contain the history of "English" poetry and poets,
in which I would include all prose truly poetical. The first half of the
second volume should be dedicated to great single names, Chaucer and
Spenser, Shakespeare, Milton and Taylor, Dryden and Pope; the poetry of
witty logic,--Swift, Fielding, Richardson, Sterne: I write "par hasard",
but I mean to say all great names as have either formed epochs in our
taste, or such, at least, as are representative; and the great object to
be in each instance to determine, first, the true merits and demerits of
the "books"; secondly, what of these belong to the age--what to the
author "quasi peculium". The second half of the second volume should be
a history of poetry and romances, everywhere interspersed with
biography, but more flowing, more consecutive, more bibliographical,
chronological, and complete. The third volume I would have dedicated to
English prose, considered as to style, as to eloquence, as to general
impressiveness; a history of styles and manners, their causes, their
birth-places and parentage, their analysis.

These three volumes would be so generally interesting, so exceedingly
entertaining, that you might bid fair for a sale of the work at large.
Then let the fourth volume take up the history of metaphysics, theology,
medicine, alchemy, common, canon, and Roman law, from Alfred to Henry
VII.; in other words, a history of the dark ages in Great Britain. The
fifth volume--carry on metaphysics and ethics to the present day in the
first half; the second half, comprise the theology of all the reformers.
In the fourth volume there would be a grand article on the philosophy of
the theology of the Roman Catholic religion. In this (fifth volume),
under different names,--Hooker, Baxter, Biddle, and Fox,--the spirit of
the theology of all the other parts of Christianity. The sixth and
seventh volumes must comprise all the articles you can get, on all the
separate arts and sciences that have been treated of in books since the
Reformation; and, by this time, the book, if it answered at all, would
have gained so high a reputation, that you need not fear having whom you
liked to write the different articles--medicine, surgery, chemistry,
etc., etc., navigation, travellers, voyagers, etc., etc. If I go into
Scotland, shall I engage Walter Scott to write the history of Scottish
poets? Tell me, however, what you think of the plan. It would have one
prodigious advantage: whatever accident stopped the work, would only
prevent the future good, not mar the past; each volume would be a great
and valuable work "per se". Then each volume would awaken a new
interest, a new set of readers, who would buy the past volumes of
course; then it would allow you ample time and opportunities for the
slavery of the catalogue volumes, which should be at the same time an
index to the work, which would be, in very truth, a pandect of
knowledge, alive and swarming with human life, feeling, incident. By the
bye, what a strange abuse has been made of the word encyclopaedia! It
signifies, properly, grammar, logic, rhetoric, and ethics and
metaphysics, which last, explaining the ultimate principles of
grammar--log., rhet., and eth.--formed a circle of knowledge. * * * To
call a huge unconnected miscellany of the "omne scibile", in an
arrangement determined by the accident of initial letters, an
encyclopaedia, is the impudent ignorance of your Presbyterian bookmakers.
Good night!

God bless you! S. T. C.

[Footnote 1: Southey's biographer says regarding this scheme: "Soon
after the date of the letter, my father paid a short visit to London,
the chief purpose of which was to negotiate with Messrs. Longman and
Rees respecting 'the management of a "Bibliotheca Britannica" upon a
very extensive scale, to be arranged chronologically, and made a
readable book by biography, criticism, and connecting chapters, to be
published like the Cyclopaedia in parts.'"]

SOUTHEY TO S. T. COLERIDGE, ESQ.

Bristol, Aug. 3, 1803.

Dear Coleridge,

I meant to have written sooner; but those little units of interruption
and preventions, which sum up to as ugly an aggregate as the items in a
lawyer's bill, have come in the way. ...

Your plan is too good, too gigantic, quite beyond my powers. If you had
my tolerable state of health, and that love of steady and productive
employment which is now grown into a necessary habit with me, if you
were to execute and would execute it, it would be, beyond all doubt, the
most valuable work of any age or any country; but I cannot fill up such
an outline. No man can better feel where he fails than I do; and to rely
upon you for whole quartos! Dear Coleridge, the smile that comes with
that thought is a very melancholy one; and if Edith saw me now, she
would think my eyes were weak again, when, in truth, the humour that
covers them springs from another cause.

For my own comfort, and credit, and peace of mind, I must have a plan
which I know myself strong enough to execute. I can take author by
author as they come in their series, and give his life and an account of
his works quite as well as ever it has yet been done. I can write
connecting paragraphs and chapters shortly and pertinently, in my way;
and in this way the labour of all my associates can be more easily
arranged. ... And, after all, this is really nearer the actual design
of what I purport by a bibliotheca than yours would be,--a book of
reference, a work in which it may be seen what has been written upon
every subject in the British language: this has elsewhere been done in
the dictionary form; whatever we get better than that form--"ponemus
lucro". [1]

[Footnote 1: Letter CXXXVIII is our 121. CXXXIX-CXLII follow 121.]

To Thomas Wedgwood Coleridge, on his return from the Scotch tour, wrote:

LETTER 122. To THOMAS WEDGWOOD

Keswick, September 16, 1803.

My dear Wedgwood,

I reached home on yesterday noon. William Hazlitt, is a thinking,
observant, original man; of great power as a painter of
character-portraits, and far more in the manner of the old painters than
any living artist, but the objects must be before him. He has no
imaginative memory; so much for his intellectuals. His manners are to
ninety-nine in one hundred singularly repulsive; brow-hanging;
shoe-contemplating--strange. Sharp seemed to like him, but Sharp saw
him only for half an hour, and that walking. He is, I verily believe,
kindly-natured: is very fond of, attentive to, and patient with
children, but he is jealous, gloomy, and of an irritable pride. With all
this there is much good in him. He is disinterested; an enthusiastic
lover of the great men who have been before us. He says things that are
his own, in a way of his own: and though from habitual shyness, and the
outside of bear skin, at least of misanthropy, he is strangely confused
and dark in his conversation, and delivers himself of almost all his
conceptions with a "Forceps", yet he "says" more than any man I ever
knew (you yourself only excepted) of that which is his own, in a way of
his own; and often times when he has warmed his mind, and the juice is
come out, and spread over his spirits, he will gallop for half an hour
together, with real eloquence. He sends well-feathered thoughts straight
forward to the mark with a twang of the bow-string. If you could
recommend him as a portrait painter, I should be glad. To be your
companion, he is, in my opinion utterly unfit. His own health is fitful.

I have written as I ought to do: to you most freely. You know me, both
head and heart, and I will make what deductions your reasons may dictate
to me. I can think of no other person (for your travelling
companion)--what wonder? For the last years, I have been shy of all new
acquaintance.

To live beloved is all I need,
And when I love, I love indeed.

I never had any ambition, and now, I trust I have almost as little
vanity.

For five months past my mind has been strangely shut up. I have taken
the paper with the intention to write to you many times, but it has been
one blank feeling;--one blank idealess feeling. I had nothing to
say;--could say nothing. How dearly I love you, my very dreams make
known to me. I will not trouble you with the gloomy tale of my health.
When I am awake, by patience, employment, effort of mind, and walking, I
can keep the Fiend at arm's length, but the night is my Hell!--sleep my
tormenting Angel. Three nights out of four, I fall asleep, struggling to
lie awake, and my frequent night-screams have almost made me a nuisance
in my own house. Dreams with me are no shadows, but the very calamities
of my life. * * *

In the hope of drawing the gout, if gout it should be, into my feet, I
walked previously to my getting into the coach at Perth, 263 miles, in
eight days, with no unpleasant fatigue; and if I could do you any
service by coming to town, and there were no coaches, I would undertake
to be with you, on foot in seven days. I must have strength somewhere.
My head is indefatigably strong: my limbs too are strong: but acid or
not acid, gout or not gout, something there is in my stomach. * * *

To diversify this dusky letter, I will write an "Epitaph", which I
composed in my sleep for myself while dreaming that I was dying. To the
best of my recollection I have not altered a word.

Here sleeps at length poor Col. and without screaming
Who died, as he had always lived, a dreaming:
Shot dead, while sleeping, by the gout within,
Alone, and all unknown, at E'nbro' in an Inn.

It was Tuesday night last, at the Black Bull, Edinburgh. Yours, dear
Wedgwood, gratefully, and

Most affectionately,

S. T. COLERIDGE.

Thomas Wedgwood, Esq.

The character of Hazlitt in this letter is as good as anything in La
Bruyere. The next letter (without date in Cottle's "Reminiscences", but
which must be 1803) is to Miss Cruikshank, of Nether Stowey. The
Penelope referred to is Penelope Poole, the cousin of Tom Poole.

LETTER 123. To MISS CRUIKSHANK

(No date, supposed to be 1803.[1])

My dear Miss Cruikshank,

With the kindest intentions, I fear you have done me some little
disservice, in borrowing the first edition of my poems from Miss B--. I
never held any principles indeed, of which, considering my age, I have
reason to be ashamed. The whole of my public life may be comprised in
eight or nine months of my 22nd year; and the whole of my political sins
during that time, consisted in forming a plan of taking a large farm in
common, in America, with other young men of my age. A wild notion
indeed, but very harmless.

As to my principles, they were, at all times, decidedly anti-jacobin and
anti-revolutionary, and my American scheme is a proof of this. Indeed at
that time, I seriously held the doctrine of passive obedience, though a
violent enemy of the first war. Afterwards, and for the last ten years
of my life, I have been fighting incessantly in the good cause, against
French ambition, and French principles; and I had Mr. Addington's
suffrage, as to the good produced by my Essays, written in the "Morning
Post", in the interval of the peace of Amiens, and the second war,
together with my two letters to Mr. Fox. [2]

Of my former errors, I should be no more ashamed, than of my change of
body, natural to increase of age; but in that first edition, there was
inserted (without my consent!) a Sonnet to Lord Stanhope, in direct
contradiction, equally, to my "then", as to my present principles. A
Sonnet written by me in ridicule and mockery of the bloated style of
French jacobinical declamation, and inserted by Biggs, (the fool of a
printer,) in order forsooth, that he might send the book, and a letter
to Earl Stanhope; who, to prove that he was not mad in all things,
treated both book and letter with silent contempt. I have therefore sent
Mr. Poole's second edition, and if it be in your power, I could wish you
to read the "dedication to my brother," at the beginning, to Lady E.
Perceval, to obtain whose esteem, so far at least as not to be
confounded with the herd of vulgar mob flatterers, I am not ashamed to
confess myself solicitous.

I would I could be with you, and your visitors. Penelope, you know, is
very high in my esteem. With true warmth of heart, she joins more
strength of understanding; and, to steady principle, more variety of
accomplishments, than it has often been my lot to meet with among the
fairer sex. When I praise one woman to another I always mean a
compliment to both. My tenderest regards to your dear mother, whom I
really long to spend a few hours with, and believe me with sincere good
wishes,

Yours, etc.,

S. T. COLERIDGE [3]

[Footnote 1: Dated "1807" in "Early Recollections".]

[Footnote 2: It appears from Sir James Macintosh's Life, published by
his son, that a diminution of respect towards Sir James was entertained
by Mr. Fox, arising from the above two letters of Mr. Coleridge, which
appeared in the "Morning Post". Some enemy of Sir James had informed Mr.
Fox that these two letters were written by Macintosh, and which
exceedingly wounded his mind. Before the error could be corrected, Mr.
Fox died. This occurrence was deplored by Sir James, in a way that
showed his deep feeling of regret, but which, as might be supposed, did
not prevent him from bearing the amplest testimony to the social worth
and surpassing talents of that great statesman. Mr. Coleridge's Bristol
friends will remember that once Mr. Fox was idolized by him as the
paragon of political excellence; and Mr. Pitt depressed in the same
proportion. [Note by Cottle.]]

[Footnote 3: Letter CXLIII follows 123.]

In the beginning of 1804 we find Coleridge in London, whither Poole,
too, had gone to superintend the compilation of an Abstract on the
condition of the Poor Laws.

LETTER 124. TO THOMAS WEDGWOOD

16, Abingdon Street, Westminster, Jan. 1804.

My dear friend,

Some divines hold, that with God to think, and to create, are one and
the same act. If to think, and even to compose had been the same as to
write with me, I should have written as much too much as I have written
too little. The whole truth of the matter is, that I have been very,
very ill. Your letter remained four days unread, I was so ill. What
effect it had upon me I cannot express by words. It lay under my pillow
day after day. I should have written forty times, but as it often and
often happens with me, my heart was too full, and I had so much to say
that I said nothing. I never received a delight that lasted longer upon
me--"Brooded on my mind and made it pregnant," than (from) the six last
sentences of your last letter,--which I cannot apologize for not having
answered, for I should be casting calumnies against myself; for, for the
last six or seven weeks, I have both thought and felt more concerning
you, and relating to you, than of all other men put together.

Somehow or other, whatever plan I determined to adopt, my fancy,
good-natured pander of our wishes, always linked you on to it; or I made
it your plan, and linked myself on. I left my home, December 20, 1803,
intending to stay a day and a half at Grasmere, and then to walk to
Kendal, whither I had sent all my clothes and viatica; from thence to go
to London, and to see whether or no I could arrange my pecuniary
matters, so as leaving Mrs. Coleridge all that was necessary to her
comforts, to go myself to Madeira, having a persuasion, strong as the
life within me, that one winter spent in a really warm, genial climate,
would completely restore me. Wordsworth had, as I may truly say, forced
on me a hundred pounds, in the event of my going to Madeira; and Stuart
had kindly offered to befriend me. During the days and affrightful
nights of my disease, when my limbs were swollen, and my stomach refused
to retain the food--taken in in sorrow, then I looked with pleasure on
the scheme: but as soon as dry frosty weather came, or the rains and
damps passed off, and I was filled with elastic health, from crown to
sole, then the thought of the weight of pecuniary obligation from so
many people reconciled me; but I have broken off my story.

I stayed at Grasmere (Mr. Wordsworth's) a month; three fourths of the
time bed-ridden;--and deeply do I feel the enthusiastic kindness of
Wordsworth's wife and sister, who sat up by me, one or the other, in
order to awaken me at the first symptoms of distressful feeling; and
even when they went to rest, continued often and often to weep and watch
for me even in their dreams. I left them January the 14th, and have
spent a very pleasant week at Dr. Crompton's, at Liverpool, and arrived
in London, at Poole's lodgings, last night at eight o'clock.

Though my right hand is so much swollen that I can scarcely keep my pen
steady between my thumb and finger, yet my stomach is easy, and my
breathing comfortable, and I am eager to hope all good things of my
health. That gained, I have a cheering, and I trust prideless confidence
that I shall make an active, and perseverant use of the faculties and
requirements that have been entrusted to my keeping, and a fair trial of
their height, depth, and width. Indeed I look back on the last four
months with honest pride, seeing how much I have done, with what steady
attachment of mind to the same subject, and under what vexations and
sorrows, from without, and amid what incessant sufferings. So much of
myself. When I know more, I will tell you more.

I find you are still at Cote-house. Poole tells me you talk of Jamaica
as a summer excursion. If it were not for the voyage, I would that you
would go to Madeira, for from the hour I get on board the vessel, to the
time that I once more feel England beneath my feet, I am as certain as
past and present experience can make me, that I shall be in health, in
high health; and then I am sure, not only that I should be a comfort to
you, but that I should be so without diminution of my activity, or
professional usefulness. Briefly, dear Wedgwood! I truly and at heart
love you, and of course it must add to my deeper and moral happiness to
be with you, if I can be either assistance or alleviation. If I find
myself so well that I defer my Madeira plan, I shall then go forthwith
to Devonshire to see my aged mother, once more before she dies, and stay
two or three months with my brothers. But, wherever I am, I never suffer
a day, (except when I am travelling) to pass without doing something.

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