Ralph Henry Barbour - "Left End Edwards"

Samuel Wilberforce - "The Rocky Island"

George Oliver Smith - "Highways in Hiding"

Harriet S. Caswell - "Stories and Sketches"

Annual Bibliography of Commonwealth Literature 2007
This paper argues that discourses of love in Ghanaian market literature for youth offer a view into complex negotiations of agency and empowerment. Drawing on Deborah Durham's notion of youth as "social `shifters'" and Francis Nyamnjoh's conception of the "interconnectedness" of agency, I take Ghanaian market literature as one specific case of how African literature for youth foregrounds questions of continuity and change as African societies enter into increasingly complex global relations. In this literature for youth, received notions of love, often constructed out of impressions from American pop and hip hop music, carry new notions of agency that compete with existing "domesticated" forms. Authors like Ike Tandoh and Evelyn Tay employ discourses of love to offer youth alternative avenues for empowerment in a context of socio-economic disenfranchizement. In a creative process of "straddling", this writing both reveals and reproduces the contradictions that obtain in youth configurations of agency.

Reminiscences of Samuel Taylor Coleridge and Robert Southey

J >> Joseph Cottle >> Reminiscences of Samuel Taylor Coleridge and Robert Southey




Having heard, with the deepest concern, that Mr. Southey's mind was
affected, I addressed a kind letter to him, to inquire after his health,
and requested only one line from him, to relieve my anxiety, if only the
signing of his name. I received a letter in reply, from his kindest
friend, of which the following is an extract.


"... With deep and affectionate interest he read and re-read your letter,
and many times in the course of the evening he received it I observed
tears in his eyes. 'I will write to Cottle,' he has often repeated since,
but alas! the purpose remains unfulfilled, and from me, dear sir, you
must receive the explanation of his silence...."


On communicating this melancholy intelligence to my old and valued
friend, Mr. Foster, he thus replied.


"My dear sir,

I am obliged for your kind note, and the letter, which I here return. I
can well believe that you must feel it a mournful communication. A friend
in early life: a friend ever since; a man highly, and in considerable
part, meritoriously conspicuous in the literature of the age; and now at
length prostrated, and on the borders of the grave; for there can be no
doubt the bodily catastrophe will soon follow the mental one. It is a
most wonderful career that he has run in literary achievement, and it is
striking to see such a man disabled at last, even to write a letter to an
old friend! It is interesting to myself, as it must be to every one
accustomed to contemplate the labours and productions of mind, to see
such a spirit finally resigning its favourite occupations, and retiring
from its fame!..."


Mr. Foster, referring to the death of his friends, thus afterwards wrote.


"Stapleton, June 22, 1842.

My dear sir,

... How our old circle is narrowing around us. Going back just three
years and a-half, I was recounting yesterday eleven persons departed
within that space of time; three-fourths of those who had formed, till
then, the list of my old friends and acquaintance, leaving just a few,
how few, of those who are my coevals, or approaching to that standard.
You are within one, and he at a great distance, whom I may never see
again, the oldest in both senses, of the almost solitary remainder. Our
day is not far off. Oh, may we be prepared to welcome its arrival...."


The following is an extract from another letter of Mr. Foster's
containing the same train of thought.


"My dear sir,

... My thoughts are often pensively turning on the enumeration of those I
may call my coevals; and many of them of long acquaintance who have been
called away within these few years. An old, and much valued friend at
Worcester, Mr. Stokes, from whose funeral I returned little more than in
time to attend that of our estimable friend, your brother-in-law, Mr.
Hare; since then, your excellent sister Mary. Mr. Coles, of Bourton,
known and esteemed almost forty years. Mr. Addington. Lately in Scotland,
the worthy Mr. Dove; and now last of all, so unexpectedly, Mr. Roberts. I
dined with him at Mr. Wade's, perhaps not more than ten days before his
death....

With friendly regards, I remain, my dear sir,

Most truly yours,

John Foster."


A letter of mine to Mr. Foster, referring chiefly to Mr. Southey, may not
inappropriately be here introduced.


"July 6, 1842.

To the Rev. John Foster,

My dear Sir,--I sympathize with you on the comparatively recent loss of
so large a proportion of your early friends and acquaintance. I can, to a
great extent, participate in similar feelings. Yourself and Mr.
Wordsworth are the only two survivors, of all with whom in early life I
joined in familiar intercourse, for poor dear Southey since I last wrote
to you concerning him, is worse than dead. Mr. W., who dined with me last
summer, told me that he does not now know his own children. He said, he
had a short time previously called upon him, and he fancied that a slight
glimpse of remembrance crossed his mind, when, in a moment, he silently
passed to his library, and taking down a book, (from mechanical habit)
turned over the pages, without reading, or the power of reading. Pardon
prolixity, where the heart is so full. Surely the world does not present
a more melancholy, or a more humiliating sight, than the prostration of
so noble a mind as that of my old and highly-prized friend, Robert
Southey. When I first knew him, he had all that Westminster and Oxford
could give him. He was, as the Mores said, to whom I had introduced him,
'brimfull of literature:' decisive and enthusiastic in all his
sentiments, and impetuous in all his feelings, whether of approval or
dislike. I never knew one more uncompromising in what he believed either
to be right, or wrong; thereby marking the integrity of his mind, which
ever shrunk from the most distant approximation to duplicity or meanness.

This disposition manifested itself almost in infancy, for his mother, an
acute and very worthy woman, told me, in the year 1798, that whenever any
mischief or accident occurred amongst the children, which some might wish
to conceal, she always applied to Robert, who never hesitated, or
deviated from the truth, though he himself might have been implicated.
And in after life, whatever sentiments he avowed, none who knew the
confirmed fidelity of his mind, could possibly doubt that they were the
genuine dictates of his heart.

There was in Southey, alas! his sun is set!--I must, write in the third
person!--one other quality which commands admiration; an habitual
delicacy in his conversation, evidencing that cheerfulness and wit might
exist without ribaldry, grossness, or profanation. He neither violated
decorum himself, nor tolerated it in others. I have been present when a
trespasser of the looser class, has received, a rebuke, I might say a
castigation, well deserved, and not readily forgotten. His abhorrence
also of injustice, or unworthy conduct, in its diversified shapes, had
all the decision of a Roman censor; while this apparent austerity was
associated, when in the society he liked, with so bland and playful a
spirit, that it abolished all constraint, and rendered him one of the
most agreeable, as well as the most intelligent of companions.

It must occasionally have been exemplified in your experience, that some
writers who have acquired a transient popularity, perchance, more from
adventitious causes, than sterling merit, appear at once to occupy an
increased space, and fancy that he who fills his own field of vision,
occupies the same space in the view of others. This disposition will
almost invariably be found in those who most readily depreciate those
whom they cannot excel; as if every concession to the merits of another
subtracted from their own claims. Southey was eminently exempt from this
little feeling. He heartily encouraged genius, wherever it was
discoverable; whether, 'with all appliances,' the jewel shone forth from
academic bowers, or whether the gem was incrusted with extraneous matter,
and required the toil of polishing; indifferent to him, it met with the
encouraging smile, and the fostering care.

It may be truly said, Mr. Southey exacted nothing, and consequently his
excellencies were the more readily allowed; and this merit was the
greater, since, as Mr. Coleridge remarked, "he had written on so many
subjects, and so well on all." Although his company was sought by men of
the first rank and talent, from whom he always received that
acknowledgment, if not deference, which is due to great attainments and
indisputable genius, yet such honours excited no plebeian pride. It
produced none of that morbid inflation, which, wherever found,
instinctively excites a repulsive feeling. It was this unassuming air,
this suavity of deportment, which so attached Southey to his friends, and
gave such permanence to their regard.

It seems almost invidious to single out one distinguishing quality in his
mind, when so many deserve notice, but I have often been struck with the
quickness of his perception; the promptitude with which he discovered
whatever was good or bad in composition, either in prose or verse. When
reading the production of another, the tones of his voice became a
_merit-thermometer_, a sort of _Aeolian-harp-test_; in the flat parts his
voice was unimpassioned, but if the gust of genius swept over the wires,
his tones rose in intensity, till his own energy of feeling and
expression kindled in others a sympathetic impulse, which the dull were
forced to feel, whilst his animated recitations threw fresh meaning into
the minds of the more discerning.

What an emblem of human instability! The idea of Robert Southey's altered
state can hardly force itself on my imagination. The image of one lately
in full vigour, who appeared, but as yesterday, all thought and
animation, whose mind exhibited a sort of rocky firmness, and seemed made
almost for perpetuity; I say it is hard to conceive of faculties so
strong and richly matured, reduced now even to imbecility! The image of
death I could withstand, for it is the lot of mortals, but the spectacle
of such a mind associated with living extinction, appears incongruous,
and to exceed the power of possible combination. Those who witnessed the
progressive advances of this mournful condition were prepared for the
event by successive changes, but with my anterior impressions, if in his
present state I were to be abruptly presented to Robert Southey, and met
the vacant and cold glance of indifference, the concussion to my feelings
would so overwhelm, that--merciful indeed would be the power which
shielded me from a like calamity.

Southey spent a week with me, four or five years ago, when he manifested
the same kind and cordial behaviour, which he had uniformly displayed for
nearly half a century, and which had never during that long period been
interrupted for a moment. Nor was steadfastness in friendship one of his
least excellencies. From the kindliness of his spirit, he excited an
affectionate esteem in his friends, which they well knew no
capriciousness on his part would interrupt: to which, it might be added,
his mind was well balanced, presenting no unfavourable eccentricities,
and but few demands for the exercise of charity. Justly also, may it be
affirmed, that he was distinguished for the exemplary discharge of all
the social and relative virtues; disinterestedly generous, and
scrupulously conscientious, presenting in his general deportment,
courteousness without servility, and dignity without pride. There was in
him so much kindliness and sincerity, so much of upright purpose, and
generous feeling, that the belief is forced on the mind, that, through
the whole range of biographical annals, few men, endowed with the higher
order of intellect, have possessed more qualities commanding esteem than
Robert Southey; who so happily blended the great with the amiable, or
whose memory will become more permanently fragrant to the lovers of
genius, or the friends of virtue. Nor would Southey receive a fair
measure of justice by any display of personal worth, without noticing the
application of his talents. His multifarious writings, whilst they embody
such varied excellence, display wherever the exhibition was demanded, or
admissible, a moral grandeur, and reverence of religion, which indirectly
reflects on some, less prodigally endowed, who do, and have, corrupted by
their prose, or disseminated their pollutions through the sacred, but
desecrated medium of song.

It was always a luxury with Southey to talk of old times, places, and
persons; and Bristol, with its vicinities, he thought the most beautiful
city he had ever seen. When a boy he was almost a resident among St.
Vincent's rocks, and Leigh Woods. The view, from the Coronation Road, of
the Hotwells, with Clifton, and its triple crescents, he thought
surpassed any view of the kind in Europe. He loved also to extol his own
mountain scenery, and, at his last visit, upbraided me for not paying him
a visit at Greta Hall, where, he said, he would have shown me the glories
of the district, and also have given me a sail on the lake, in his own
boat, 'The Royal Noah.' After dwelling on his entrancing water-scenes,
and misty eminences, he wanted much, he said to show me his library,
which at that time consisted of fourteen thousand volumes, which he had
been accumulating all his life, from the rare catalogues of all nations:
but still, he remarked, he had a list of five hundred other volumes to
obtain, and after possessing these, he said, he should be satisfied.
Alas! he little knew, how soon the whole would appear to him--less than
the herbage of the desert!

At this time, Mr. S. mentioned a trifling occurrence, arising out of what
happened to be the nature of our conversation, although it is hardly
worth naming to you, who so lightly esteem human honours. He said, some
years before, when he chanced to be in London, he accepted an invitation
to dine with the Archbishop of Canterbury but, subsequently, he received
an invitation for the same day, from the Duchess of Kent, to dine at
Kensington Palace; and as invitations from Royalty supersede all others,
he sent an apology to the Archbishop, and dined with more Lords and
Ladies than he could remember. At the conclusion of the repast, before
the Ladies retired, _she_ who was destined to receive _homage_, on proper
occasions, had learnt to pay _respect_, for the young Princess (our
present gracious Queen Victoria) came up to him, and curtseying, very
prettily said, 'Mr. Southey, I thank you for the pleasure I have received
in reading your Life of Lord Nelson.'

I must mention one other trait in Southey, which did him peculiar honour,
I allude to the readiness with which he alluded to any little acts of
kindness which he might have received from any of his friends, in past
years. To the discredit of human nature, there is in general a laborious
endeavour to bury all such remembrances in the waters of Lethe: Southey's
mind was formed on a different model.

The tear which dims my eye, attests the affection which I still bear to
poor dear Southey. Few knew him better than myself, or more highly
estimated the fine qualities of his head and heart; and still fewer can
be oppressed with deeper commiseration for his present forlorn and
hopeless condition.... My dear sir,

Most truly yours,

Joseph Cottle.

Rev. John Foster."


I have now to present the Reader with a series of letters from Mr.
Coleridge to the late Josiah and Thomas Wedgewood, Esqrs.; obligingly
communicated to me by Francis Wedgewood, Esq., of Etruria, son of Mr.
Josiah Wedgewood.


"May 21st, 1799. Gottingen.

My dear sir,

I have lying by my side six huge letters, with your name on each of them,
and all, excepting one, have been written for these three months. About
this time Mr. Hamilton, by whom I send this and the little parcel for my
wife, was, as it were, setting off for England; and I seized the
opportunity of sending them by him, as without any mock-modesty I really
thought that the expense of the postage to me and to you would be more
than their worth. Day after day, and week after week, was Hamilton going,
and still delayed. And now that it is absolutely settled that he goes
to-morrow, it is likewise absolutely settled that I shall go this day
three weeks, and I have therefore sent only this and the picture by him,
but the letters I will now take myself, for I should not like them to be
lost, as they comprize the only subject on which I have had an
opportunity of making myself thoroughly informed, and if I carry them
myself, I can carry them without danger of their being seized at
Yarmouth, as all my letters were, yours to ---- excepted, which were,
luckily, not sealed. Before I left England, I had read the book of which
you speak. I must confess that it appeared to me exceedingly illogical.
Godwin's and Condorcet's extravagancies were not worth confuting; and yet
I thought that the Essay on 'Population' had not confuted them. Professor
Wallace, Derham, and a number of German statistic, and
physico-theological writers had taken the same ground, namely, that
population increases in a geometrical, but the accessional nutriment only
in arithmetical ratio--and that vice and misery, the natural consequences
of this order of things, were intended by providence as the counterpoise.
I have here no means of procuring so obscure a book, as Rudgard's; but to
the best of my recollection, at the time that the Fifth Monarchy
enthusiasts created so great a sensation in England, under the
Protectorate, and the beginning of Charles the Second's reign, Rudgard,
or Rutgard (I am not positive even of the name) wrote an Essay to the
same purpose, in which he asserted, that if war, pestilence, vice, and
poverty, were wholly removed, the world could not exist two hundred
years, &c. Seiffmilts, in his great work concerning the divine order and
regularity in the destiny of the human race, has a chapter entitled a
confutation of this idea; I read it with great eagerness, and found
therein that this idea militated against the glory and goodness of God,
and must therefore be false,--but further confutation found I none!--This
book of Seiffmilts has a prodigious character throughout Germany; and
never methinks did a work less deserve it. It is in three huge octavos,
and wholly on the general laws that regulate the population of the human
species--but is throughout most unphilosophical, and the tables, which he
has collected with great industry, prove nothing. My objections to the
Essay on Population you will find in my sixth letter at large--but do
not, my dear sir, suppose that because unconvinced by this essay, I am
therefore convinced of the contrary. No, God knows, I am sufficiently
sceptical, and in truth more than sceptical, concerning the possibility
of universal plenty and wisdom; but my doubts rest on other grounds. I
had some conversation with you before I left England, on this subject;
and from that time I had purposed to myself to examine as thoroughly as
it was possible for me, the important question. Is the march of the human
race progressive, or in cycles? But more of this when we meet.

What have I done in Germany? I have learned the language, both high and
low German, I can read both, and speak the former so fluently, that it
must be a fortune for a German to be in my company, that is, I have words
enough and phrases enough, and I arrange them tolerably; but my
pronunciation is hideous. 2ndly, I can read the oldest German, the
Frankish, and the Swabian. 3rdly, I have attended the lectures on
Physiology, Anatomy, and Natural History, with regularity, and have
endeavoured to understand these subjects. 4thly, I have read and made
collections for a history of the. 'Belles Lettres,' in Germany, before
the time of Lessing: and 5thly, very large collections for a 'Life of
Lessing;' to which I was led by the miserably bad and unsatisfactory
biographies that have been hitherto given, and by my personal
acquaintance with two of Lessing's friends. Soon after I came into
Germany, I made up my mind fully not to publish anything concerning my
travels, as people call them; yet I soon perceived that with all possible
economy, my expenses would be greater than I could justify, unless I did
something that would to a moral certainty repay them. I chose the 'Life
of Lessing' for the reasons above assigned, and because it would give me
an opportunity of conveying under a better name than my own ever will be,
opinions which I deem of the highest importance. Accordingly, my main
business at Gottingen, has been to read all the numerous controversies in
which Lessing was engaged, and the works of all those German poets before
the time of Lessing, which I could not afford to buy. For these last four
months, with the exception of last week, in which I visited the Hartz, I
have worked harder than I trust in God Almighty, I shall ever have
occasion to work again: this endless transcription is such a
body-and-soul-wearying purgatory. I shall have bought thirty pounds'
worth of books, chiefly metaphysics, and with a view to the one work, to
which I hope to dedicate in silence, the prime of my life; but I believe
and indeed doubt not, that before Christmas I shall have repaid myself.

I never, to the best of my recollection, felt the fear of death but once;
that was yesterday when I delivered the picture to Hamilton. I felt, and
shivered as I felt it, that I should not like to die by land or water
before I see my wife and the little one; that I hope yet remains to me.
But it was an idle sort of feeling, and I should not like to have it
again. Poole half mentioned, in a hasty way, a circumstance that
depressed my spirits for many days:--that you and Thomas were on the
point of settling near Stowey, but had abandoned it. "God Almighty! what
a dream of happiness it held out to me!" writes Poole. I felt
disappointment without having had hope.

In about a month I hope to see you. Till then may heaven bless and
preserve us! Believe me, my dear sir, with every feeling of love, esteem,
and gratitude,

Your affectionate friend,

S. T. Coleridge.

Josiah Wedgewood, Esq."


"21, Buckingham Street, Strand, January, 1800.

My dear sir,

I am sitting by a fire in a rug great coat. Your room is doubtless to a
greater degree air tight than mine, or your notions of Tartarus would
veer round to the Greenlander's creed. It is most barbarously cold, and
you, I fear, can shield yourself from it, only by perpetual imprisonment.
If any place in the southern climates were in a state of real quiet, and
likely to continue so, should you feel no inclination to migrate? Poor
Southey, from over great industry, as I suspect, the industry too of
solitary composition, has reduced himself to a terrible state of
weakness, and is determined to leave this country as soon as he has
finished the poem on which he is now employed. 'Tis a melancholy thing
that so young a man, and one whose life has ever been so simple and
self-denying....

O, for a peace, and the south of France! I could almost wish for a
Bourbon king, if it were only that Sieyes and Buonaparte might finish
their career in the old orthodox way of hanging. Thank God, _I have my
health perfectly_, and I am working hard; yet the present state of human
affairs presses on me for days together, so as to deprive me of all my
cheerfulness. It is probable that a man's private and personal connexions
and interests ought to be uppermost in his daily and hourly thoughts, and
that the dedication of much hope and fear to subjects which are perhaps
disproportionate to our faculties and powers, is a disease. But I have
had this disease so long, and my early education was so undomestic, that
I know not how to get rid of it; or even to wish to get rid of it. Life
were so flat a thing without enthusiasm, that if for a moment it leaves
me, I have a sort of stomach sensation attached to all my thoughts, _like
those which succeed to the pleasurable operations of a dose of opium._

Now I make up my mind to a sort of heroism in believing the
progressiveness of all nature, during the present melancholy state of
humanity, and on this subject _I am now writing_; and no work on which I
ever employed myself makes me so happy while I am writing.

I shall remain in London till April. The expenses of my last year made it
necessary for me to exert my industry, and many other good ends are
answered at the same time. Where I next settle I shall, continue, and
that must be in a state of retirement and rustication. It is therefore
good for me to have a run of society, and that, various, and consisting
of marked characters. Likewise, by being obliged to write without much
elaboration, I shall greatly improve myself in naturalness and facility
of style, and the particular subjects on which I write for money are
nearly connected with my future schemes. My mornings I give to
compilations which I am sure cannot be wholly useless, and for which, by
the beginning of April I shall have earned nearly L150. My evenings to
the _Theatres_, as I am to conduct a sort of Dramaterye or series of
Essays on the Drama, both its general principles, and likewise in
reference to the present state of the English Theatres. This I shall
publish in the 'Morning Post.' My attendance on the theatres costs me
nothing, and Stuart, the Editor, covers my expenses in London. Two
mornings, and one whole day, I dedicate to these Essays on the possible
progressiveness of man, and on the principles of population. In April I
retire to my greater works,--'The Life of Lessing.' My German chests are
arrived, but I have them not yet, but expect them from Stowey daily; when
they come I shall send a letter.

I have seen a good deal of Godwin, who has just published a Novel. I like
him for thinking so well of Davy. He talks of him every where as the most
extraordinary of human beings he had ever met with. I cannot say that,
for I know _one_ whom I feel to be the superior, but I never met with so
extraordinary a _young man_. I have likewise dined with Horne Tooke. He
is a clear-headed old man, as every man must needs be who attends to the
real import of words, but there is a sort of charlatanry in his manner
that did not please me. He makes such a mystery out of plain and palpable
things, and never tells you any thing without first exciting, and
detaining your curiosity. But it were a bad heart that could not pardon
worse faults than these in the author of 'The Diversions of Purley.'

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