Biographia Epistolaris, Volume 1.

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

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Hucks informed me that the two sisters walked by the window four or five
times, as if anxiously. Doubtless they think themselves deceived by some
face strikingly like me. God bless her! Her image is in the sanctuary of
my bosom, and never can it be torn from thence, but by the strings that
grapple my heart to life! This circumstance made me quite ill. I had
been wandering among the wild-wood scenery and terrible graces of the
Welsh mountains to wear away, not to revive, the images of the
past;--but love is a local anguish; I am fifty miles distant, and am not
half so miserable.

At Denbigh is the finest ruined castle in the kingdom; it surpassed
everything I could have conceived. I wandered there two hours in a still
evening, feeding upon melancholy. Two well dressed young men were
roaming there. "I will play my flute here," said the first; "it will
have a romantic effect." "Bless thee, man of genius and sensibility," I
silently exclaimed. He sate down amid the most awful part of the ruins;
the moon just began to make her rays pre-dominant over the lingering
daylight; I preattuned my feelings to emotion;--and the romantic youth
instantly struck up the sadly pleasing tunes of "Miss Carey"--"The
British Lion is my sign--A roaring trade I drive on", &c.

Three miles from Denbigh, on the road to St. Asaph, is a fine bridge
with one arch of great, great grandeur. Stand at a little distance, and
through it you see the woods waving on the hill-bank of the river in a
most lovely point of view.

A "beautiful" prospect is always more picturesque when seen at some
little distance through an arch. I have frequently thought of Michael
Taylor's way of viewing a landscape between his thighs. Under the arch
was the most perfect echo I ever heard. Hucks sang "Sweet Echo" with
great effect.

At Holywell I bathed in the famous St. Winifred's Well. It is an
excellent cold bath. At Rudland is a fine ruined castle. Abergeley is a
large village on the sea-coast. Walking on the sea sands I was surprised
to see a number of fine women bathing promiscuously with men and boys
perfectly naked. Doubtless the citadels of their chastity are so
impregnably strong, that they need not the ornamental bulwarks of
modesty; but, seriously speaking, where sexual distinctions are least
observed, men and women live together in the greatest purity.
Concealment sets the imagination a-working, and as it were,
"cantharadizes" our desires.

Just before I quitted Cambridge, I met a countryman with a strange
walking-stick, five feet in length. I eagerly bought it, and a most
faithful servant it has proved to me. My sudden affection for it has
mellowed into settled friendship. On the morning of our leaving
Abergeley, just before our final departure, I looked for my stick in the
place in which I had left it over night. It was gone. I alarmed the
house; no one knew any thing of it. In the flurry of anxiety I sent for
the Crier of the town, and gave him the following to cry about the town
and the beach, which he did with a gravity for which I am indebted to
his stupidity.

"Missing from the Bee Inn, Abergeley, a curious walking-stick. On one
side it displays the head of an eagle, the eyes of which represent
rising suns, and the ears Turkish crescents; on the other side is the
portrait of the owner in wood-work. Beneath the head of the eagle is a
Welsh wig, and around the neck of the stick is a Queen Elizabeth's ruff
in tin. All down it waves the line of beauty in very ugly carving. If
any gentleman (or lady) has fallen in love with the above described
stick, and secretly carried off the same, he (or she) is hereby
earnestly admonished to conquer a passion, the continuance of which must
prove fatal to his (or her) honesty. And if the said stick has slipped
into such gentleman's (or lady's) hand through inadvertence, he (or she)
is required to rectify the mistake with all convenient speed. God save
the king."

Abergeley is a fashionable Welsh watering place, and so singular a
proclamation excited no small crowd on the beach, among the rest a lame
old gentleman, in whose hands was descried my dear stick. The old
gentleman, who lodged at our inn, felt great confusion, and walked
homewards, the solemn Crier before him, and a various cavalcade behind
him. I kept the muscles of my face in tolerable subjection. He made his
lameness an apology for borrowing my stick, supposed he should have
returned before I had wanted it, &c. &c. Thus it ended, except that a
very handsome young lady put her head out of a coach-window, and begged
my permission to have the bill which I had delivered to the Crier. I
acceded to the request with a compliment, that lighted up a blush on her
cheek, and a smile on her lip.

We passed over a ferry to Aberconway. We had scarcely left the boat ere
we descried Brookes and Berdmore, with whom we have joined parties, nor
do we mean to separate. Our tour through Anglesea to Caernarvon has been
repaid by scarcely one object worth seeing. To-morrow we visit Snowdon.
Brookes, Berdmore, and myself, at the imminent hazard of our lives,
scaled the very summit of Penmaenmaur. It was a most dreadful
expedition. I will give you the account in some future letter.

I sent for Bowles's Works while at Oxford. How was I shocked! Every
omission and every alteration disgusted taste, and mangled sensibility.
Surely some Oxford toad had been squatting at the poet's ear, and
spitting into it the cold venom of dulness. It is not Bowles; he is
still the same, (the added poems will prove it) descriptive, dignified,
tender, sublime. The sonnets added are exquisite. Abba Thule has marked
beauties, and the little poem at Southampton is a diamond; in whatever
light you place it, it reflects beauty and splendour. The "Shakespeare"
is sadly unequal to the rest. Yet in whose poems, except those of
Bowles, would it not have been excellent? Direct to me, to be left at
the Post Office, Bristol, and tell me everything about yourself, how you
have spent the vacation, &c.

Believe me, with gratitude and fraternal friendship,

Your obliged S. T. COLERIDGE.

[Footnote 1: Long portions of this letter appear in a letter to Southey
of 15 September 1794. See "Letters", p. 74.]

[Footnote 2: Hucks published, in 1795, an account of the holiday
entitled "Tour in North Wales".]

On his return from this excursion Coleridge went, by appointment, to
Bristol for the purpose of meeting Southey, whose person and
conversation had excited in him the most lively admiration. This was at
the end of August or beginning of September. Southey, whose mother then
lived at Bath, came over to Bristol accordingly to receive his new
friend, who had left as deep an impression on him, and in that city
introduced Coleridge to Robert Lovell, a young Quaker, then recently
married to Mary Fricker, and residing in the Old Market. After a short
stay at Bristol, where he first saw Sarah Fricker, Mrs. Lovell's elder
sister, Coleridge accompanied Southey on his return to Bath. There he
remained for some weeks, principally engaged in making love, and in
maturing, with his friend, the plan, which he had for some time
cherished, of a social community to be established in America upon what
he termed a pantisocratical basis.

Much discussion has taken place regarding the origin of Pantisocracy,
most writers on the subject attributing the scheme to Coleridge. A
perusal of the letters of Southey, however, leads to a different
conclusion. Southey was enamoured during his stay at Oxford with Plato,
and especially with the "Republic" of the Greek philosopher; and he
frequently quotes from the work or refers to its principles in his
correspondence with Grosvenor and Horace W. Bedford between 11th
November 1793 and 12th June 1794. Before his meeting with Southey no
trace of ideal Republicanism appears in the letters of Coleridge. His
leaning notwithstanding this was already towards Republicanism, and the
friendship struck up between him and Southey was a natural consequence
of flint coming into contact with steel. The next two letters, to
Southey, indicate the fiery nature of the young Republicans.

LETTER 9. To SOUTHEY

6 Sept. 1794.

The day after my arrival I finished the first act: I transcribed it. The
next morning Franklin (of Pembroke Coll. Cam., a "ci-devant Grecian" of
our school--so we call the first boys) called on me, and persuaded me to
go with him and breakfast with Dyer, author of "The Complaints of the
Poor, A Subscription", &c. &c. I went; explained our system. He was
enraptured; pronounced it impregnable. He is intimate with Dr.
Priestley, and doubts not that the Doctor will join us. He showed me
some poetry, and I showed him part of the first act, which I happened to
have about me. He liked it hugely; it was "a nail that would drive...."
Every night I meet a most intelligent young man, who has spent the last
five years of his life in America, and is lately come from thence as an
agent to sell land. He was of our school. I had been kind to him: he
remembers it, and comes regularly every evening to "benefit by
conversation," he says. He says L2,000 will do; that he doubts not we
can contract for our passage under L400; that we shall buy the land a
great deal cheaper when we arrive at America than we could do in
England; "or why," he adds, "am I sent over here?" That twelve men may
"easily" clear 300 acres in four or five months; and that, for 600
dollars, a thousand acres may be cleared, and houses built on them. He
recommends the Susquehanna, from its excessive beauty and its security
from hostile Indians. Every possible assistance will be given us; we may
get credit for the land for ten years or more, as we settle upon. That
literary characters make "money" there: &c. &c. He never saw a "bison"
in his life, but has heard of them: they are quite backwards. The
mosquitos are not so bad as our gnats; and, after you have been there a
little while, they don't trouble you much.

LETTER 10. TO SOUTHEY

18 Sept. 1794.

Since I quitted this room what and how important events have been
evolved! America! Southey! Miss Fricker!... Pantisocracy! Oh! I shall
have such a scheme of it! My head, my heart, are all alive. I have drawn
up my arguments in battle array: they shall have the "tactician"
excellence of the mathematician, with the enthusiasm of the poet. The
head shall be the mass; the heart, the fiery spirit that fills, informs
and agitates the whole. SHAD GOES WITH US: HE IS MY BROTHER!! I am
longing to be with you: make Edith my sister. Surely, Southey, we shall
be frendotatoi meta frendous--most friendly where all are friends. She
must, therefore, be more emphatically my sister.... C----, the most
excellent, the most Pantisocratic of aristocrats, has been laughing at
me. Up I arose, terrible is reasoning. He fled from me, because "he
would not answer for his own sanity, sitting so near a madman of
genius." He told me that the strength of my imagination had intoxicated
my reason, and that the acuteness of my reason had given a directing
influ-* *ence to my imagination. Four months ago the remark would not
have been more elegant than just: now it is nothing. [1]

[Footnote 1: This letter is given in full in "Letters", No. XXXIV.]

These letters show that Pantisocracy was now the all absorbing topic.

The following letter written at this time by Coleridge to Mr. Charles
Heath, of Monmouth, is a curious evidence of his earnestness upon this
subject:

LETTER 11. To CHARLES HEATH OF MONMOUTH [1]

(----1794).

Sir,

Your brother has introduced my name to you; I shall therefore offer no
apology for this letter. A small but liberalized party have formed a
scheme of emigration on the principles of an abolition of individual
property. Of their political creed, and the arguments by which they
support and elucidate it they are preparing a few copies--not as meaning
to publish them, but for private distribution. In this work they will
have endeavoured to prove the exclusive justice of the system and its
practicability; nor will they have omitted to sketch out the code of
contracts necessary for the internal regulation of the Society; all of
which will of course be submitted to the improvements and approbation of
each component member. As soon as the work is printed, one or more
copies shall be transmitted to you. Of the characters of the individuals
who compose the party I find it embarrassing to speak; yet, vanity
apart, I may assert with truth that they have each a sufficient strength
of head to make the virtues of the heart respectable, and that they are
all highly charged with that enthusiasm which results from strong
perceptions of moral rectitude, called into life and action by ardent
feelings. With regard to pecuniary matters it is found necessary, if
twelve men with their families emigrate on this system, that L2,000
should be the aggregate of their contributions--but infer not from hence
that each man's "quota" is to be settled with the littleness of
arithmetical accuracy. No; all will strain every nerve; and then, I
trust, the surplus money of some will supply the deficiencies of others.
The "minutiae" of topographical information we are daily endeavouring to
acquire; at present our plan is, to settle at a distance, but at a
convenient distance, from Cooper's Town on the banks of the Susquehanna.
This, however, will be the object of future investigation. For the time
of emigration we have fixed on next March. In the course of the winter
those of us whose bodies, from habits of sedentary study or academic
indolence, have not acquired their full tone and strength, intend to
learn the theory and practice of agriculture and carpentry, according as
situation and circumstances make one or the other convenient.

Your fellow Citizen, S. T. COLERIDGE. [Footnote: Letter XXXV is dated 19
Sept. 1794.]

[Footnote 1: One of the Pantisocrats.]

The members of the society at that time were Coleridge himself, Southey,
Lovell, and George Burnett, a Somersetshire youth and fellow collegian
with Southey. Toward the beginning of September, Coleridge left Bath and
went, for the last time, as a student, to Cambridge, apparently with the
view of taking his degree of B.A. after the ensuing Christmas. Here he
published "The Fall of Robespierre" ("Lit. Remains", i, p.
1), of which the first act was written by himself, and the second and
third by Mr. Southey, and the particulars of the origin and authorship
of which may be found stated in an extract from a letter of Mr.
Southey's there printed. The dedication to Mr. Martin is dated at Jesus
College, 22nd of September 1794.

[The following is the Dedication:]

LETTER 12. To HENRY MARTIN, ESQ., OF JESUS COLLEGE, CAMBRIDGE.
DEDICATORY LETTER TO THE "FALL OF ROBESPIERRE," A DRAMA IN THREE ACTS BY
COLERIDGE AND SOUTHEY.

Dear Sir,

Accept as a small testimony of my grateful attachment, the following
Dramatic Poem, in which I have endeavoured to detail, in an interesting
form, the fall of a man whose great bad actions have cast a disastrous
lustre on his name. In the execution of the work, as intricacy of plot
could not have been attempted without a gross violation of recent facts,
it has been my sole aim to imitate the impassioned and highly figurative
language of the French Orators, and to develop the characters of the
chief actors on a vast stage of horrors.

Yours fraternally, S. T. COLERIDGE.

Jesus College, September 22, 1794.

[Note: Letters XXXVI-XLII follow No. 12.]

This dedicatory letter is no doubt an apology for a play destitute of
dramatic art. The declamatory speeches may be an intentional imitation
of the harangues of the Revolutionaries, but they are more likely to be
the product of the inflation of youth. The redeeming feature of the play
is the beautiful little lyric, "Domestic Peace", which is in rhythm
an imitation of Collins' "How Sleep the Brave".

The scheme of Pantisocracy was not much further forward at the close of
1794 than it had been in the summer; and Southey had been advised to try
it in Wales instead of on the banks of the Susquehanna. Coleridge writes
in December:

LETTER 13. TO SOUTHEY
--Dec. 1794.

For God's sake, my dear fellow, tell me what we are to gain by taking a
Welsh farm? Remember the principles and proposed consequences of
Pantisocracy, and reflect in what degree they are attainable by
Coleridge, Southey, Lovell, Burnett, and Co., some five men _going
partners_ together! In the next place, supposing that we have found
the preponderating utility of our aspheterising in Wales, let us by our
speedy and united inquiries discover the sum of money necessary. Whether
such a farm with so very large a house is to be procured without
launching our frail and unpiloted bark on a rough sea of anxieties? How
much money will be necessary for "furnishing" so large a house? How much
necessary for the maintenance of so large a family--eighteen people--for
a year at least?]

[Note: Letters XLIII gives the full text of this Letter 13. Letters
XLIV-L follow 13.]

In January 1795, he was to return--and then with Spring breezes to
repair to the banks of the Susquehanna! But his fate withstood;--he took
no degree, nor ever crossed the Atlantic. Michaelmas Term, 1794, was the
last he kept at Cambridge; the vacation following was passed in London
with Charles Lamb, and in the beginning of 1795 he returned with Southey
to Bristol, and there commenced man.

The whole spring and summer of this year he devoted to public Lectures
at Bristol, making in the intervals several excursions in Somersetshire,
one memorial of which remains in the "Lines composed while climbing
Brockley Combe". It was in one of these excursions that Mr. Coleridge
and Mr.Wordsworth first met at the house of Mr. Pinney. [1] The first
six of those Lectures constituted a course presenting a comparative view
of the Civil War under Charles I and the French Revolution. Three of
them, or probably the substance of four or five, were published at
Bristol in the latter end of 1795, the first two together, with the
title of "Conciones ad Populum", and the third with that of "The Plot
Discovered". The eloquent passage in conclusion of the first of these
Addresses was written by Mr. Southey. The tone throughout them all is
vehemently hostile to the policy of the great minister of that day; but
it is equally opposed to the spirit and maxims of Jacobinism. It was
late in life that, after a reperusal of these "Conciones", Coleridge
wrote on a blank page of one of them the following words:--"Except the
two or three pages involving the doctrine of philosophical necessity and
Unitarianism, I see little or nothing in these outbursts of my youthful
zeal to retract; and with the exception of some flame-coloured epithets
applied to persons, as to Mr. Pitt and others, or rather to
personifications--(for such they really were to me)--as little to
regret."

Another course of six Lectures followed, "On Revealed Religion, its
corruptions, and its political views". The Prospectus states--"that
these Lectures are intended for two classes of men, Christians and
Infidels;--the former, that they may be able to "give a reason for the
hope that is in them";--the latter, that they may not determine against
Christianity from arguments applicable to its corruptions only." Nothing
remains of these Addresses, nor of two detached Lectures on the Slave
Trade and the Hair Powder Tax, which were delivered in the interval
between the two principal courses. They were all very popular amongst
the opponents of the Governments; and those on religion in particular
were highly applauded by his Unitarian auditors, amongst whom Dr. and
Mrs. Estlin and Mr. Hort were always remembered by Coleridge with regard
and esteem.

The Transatlantic scheme, though still a favourite subject of
conversation, was now in effect abandoned by these young Pantisocrats.
Mr. C. was married at St. Mary Redcliff Church to Sarah Fricker on the
4th of October, 1795, and went to reside in a cottage at Clevedon on the
Bristol Channel; and six weeks afterwards Mr. Southey was also married
to Edith Fricker, and left Bristol on the same day on his route to
Portugal. At Clevedon Mr. and Mrs. Coleridge resided with one of Mrs.
C.'s unmarried sisters and Burnett until the beginning of December.

[Footnote 1: This statement of H. N. Coleridge, and a remark by
Wordsworth in a letter to Wrangham of November 20th, 1795, are the only
evidence on which rests the belief that Coleridge and Wordsworth met
before 1797. The letter is quoted in the "Athenaeum" of December 8th,
1894. See also Letter LXXXI, to Estlin, May 1798.]

CHAPTER III

THE WATCHMAN
(1795 to 1796)

Ah! quiet dell! dear cot, and mount sublime!
I was constrained to quit you. Was it right,
While my unnumbered brethren toiled and bled,
That I should dream away th' entrusted hours
On rose-leaf beds pampering the coward heart
With feelings all too delicate for use?
* * * * *
I therefore go, and join head, heart and hand
Active and firm, to fight the bloodless fight
Of science, freedom, and the truth in Christ.

Coleridge had in the course of the summer of 1795 become acquainted with
that excellent and remarkable man, the late Thomas Poole of Nether
Stowey, Somerset. In a letter written to him on the 7th of October, C.
speaks of the prospect from his cottage, and of his future plans in the
following way:

LETTER 14. To THOMAS POOLE

My Dear Sir,

God bless you-or rather God be praised for that he has blessed you! On
Sunday morning I was married at St. Mary's, Redcliff--from Chatterton's
church. The thought gave a tinge of melancholy to the solemn joy which I
felt, united to the woman, whom I love best of all created beings. We
are settled, nay, quite domesticated, at Clevedon,--our comfortable
cot! * * * The prospect around is perhaps more various than any in the
kingdom: mine eye gluttonizes. The sea, the distant islands, the
opposite coast!--I shall assuredly write rhymes, let the nine Muses
prevent it if they can. * * * I have given up all thoughts of the
Magazine for various reasons. It is a thing of monthly anxiety and
quotidian bustle. To publish a Magazine for one year would be nonsense,
and, if I pursue what I mean to pursue, my school-plan, I could not
publish it for more than one year. In the course of half a year I mean
to return to Cambridge--having previously taken my name off from the
University's control--and, hiring lodgings there for myself and wife,
finish my great work of "Imitations" in two volumes. My former
works may, I hope, prove somewhat of genius and of erudition; this will
be better; it will show great industry and manly consistency. At the end
of it I shall publish proposals for a School. * * * My next letter will
be long and full of something;--this is inanity and egotism. * * Believe
me, dear Poole, your affectionate and mindful--friend, shall I so soon
have to say? Believe me my heart prompts it. [1] S. T. COLERIDGE!

In spite of this letter Coleridge had not abandoned the project of
starting a magazine. His school-plan, as well as a project to become
tutor to the sons of the Earl of Buchan at Edinburgh (see Letter to
George Dyer, "Bookman" for May 1910), came to nothing. A meeting
was held among his chief friends "one evening," says Cottle, "at the
Rummer Tavern, to determine on the size, price, and time of publishing,
with all other preliminaries essential to the launching this first-rate
vessel on the mighty deep. Having heard of the circumstance the next
day, I rather wondered at not having also been requested to attend, and
while ruminating on the subject, I received from Mr. C. the following
communication."

[Footnote 1: Letter LI is our No. 14. LII is dated 13 November 1795.]

LETTER 15. To COTTLE

(--Dec. 1795).

My dear Friend,

I am fearful that you felt hurt at my not mentioning to you the proposed
"Watchman", and from my not requesting you to attend the meeting.
My dear friend, my reasons were these. All who met were expected to
become subscribers to a fund; I knew there would be enough without you,
and I knew, and felt, how much money had been drawn from you lately.

God Almighty love you!

S. T. C.

"It is unknown," says Cottle, "when the following letter was received
(although quite certain that it was not the evening in which Mr.
Coleridge wrote his "Ode to the Departing Year"), and it is printed
in this place at something of an uncertainty." The probable date is 1
January 1796.

LETTER 16. To COTTLE

January 1st (1796).

My dear Cottle,

I have been forced to disappoint not only you, but Dr. Beddoes, on an
affair of some importance. Last night I was induced by strong and joint
solicitation, to go to a cardclub to which Mr. Morgan belongs, and,
after the playing was over, to sup, and spend the remainder of the
night: having made a previous compact, that I should not drink; however
just on the verge of twelve, I was desired to drink only one wine glass
of punch, in honour of the departing year; and, after twelve, one other
in honour of the new year. Though the glasses were very small, yet such
was the effect produced during my sleep, that I awoke unwell, and in
about twenty minutes after had a relapse of my bilious complaint. I am
just now recovered, and with care, I doubt not, shall be as well as ever
to-morrow. If I do not see you then, it will be from some relapse, which
I have no reason, thank heaven, to anticipate.

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