Chapter LXXIII: Letter 187: To Allsop

January, 1821.

My dear young Friend,

The only impression left by you on my mind is an increased desire to see you again, and at shorter intervals. Were you my son by nature, I could not hold you dearer, or more earnestly desire to retain you the adopted of whatever within me will remain, when the dross and alloy of infirmity shall have been purged away. I feel the most entire confidence that no prosperous change of my outward circumstances would add to your _faith_ in the sincerity of this assurance; still, however, the average of men being what it is, and it being neither possible nor desirable to be fully conscious in our understanding of the habits of thinking and judging in the world around us, and yet to be wholly impassive and unaffected by them in our feelings, it would endear and give a new value to an honourable competence, that I should be able to evince the true nature and degree of my esteem and attachment beyond the suspicion even of the sordid, and separate from all that is accidental or adventitious. But yet the friendship I feel for you is so genial a warmth, and blends so undistinguishably with my affections, is so perfectly one of the family in the household of love, that I would not be otherwise than obliged to you; and God is my witness, that my wish for an easier and less embarrassed lot is _chiefly_ (I think I might have said _exclusively_) grounded on the deep conviction, that exposed to a less bleak aspect I should bring forth flowers and fruits both more abundant and more worthy of the unexampled kindness of your _faith_ in me. Interpreting the "wine" and the "ivy garland" as figures of poetry signifying competence, and the removal of the petty needs of the body that plug up the pipes of the playing fountain (and such it is too well known was the intent and meaning of the hardly used poet), and oh! how often, when my heart has begun to swell from the genial warmth of thought, as our northern lakes from the (so called) bottom winds, when all above and around is stillness and sunshine--how often have I repeated in my own name the sweet stanza of Edmund Spenser:

Thou kenst not, Percie, how the rhyme should rage.
O! if my temples were bedewed with wine,
And girt in garlands of wild ivy twine;
How I could rear the muse on stately stage,
And teach her tread aloft in buskin fine
With queint Bellona in her equipage.[112]

Read what follows as you would a note at the bottom of a page.

But ah! Mecænas is ywrapt in clay, and great Augustus long ago
is dead.

(This is a natural sigh, and natural too is the reflection that follows.)

And if that any buds of poesy
Yet of the old stock 'gin to shoot again,
'Tis or _self_-lost the worldling's meed to gain,
And with the rest to breathe its ribauldry,
Or as it sprung it wither must again;
Tom Piper makes them better melody.

But though natural, the complaint is not equally philosophical, were it only on this account,--that I know of no age in which the same has not been advanced, and with the same grounds. Nay, I retract; there never was a time in which the _complaint_ would be so little wise, though perhaps none in which the _fact_ is more prominent. Neither philosophy nor poetry ever did, nor as long as they are terms of comparative excellence and contradistinction, ever can be _popular_, nor honoured with the praise and favour of contemporaries. But, on the other hand, there never was a time in which either books, that were _held_ for excellent as poetic or philosophic, had so extensive and rapid a sale, or men reputed poets and philosophers of a high rank were so much _looked up_ to in society, or so munificently, almost profusely rewarded. Walter Scott's poems and novels (except only the two wretched abortions, _Ivanhoe_ and the _Bride of Ravensmuir_, or whatever its name may be) supply both instance and solution of the _present_ conditions and components of popularity, viz. to amuse without requiring any effort of thought, and without exciting any deep emotion. The age seems _sore_ from excess of stimulation, just as, a day or two after a thorough debauch and long sustained drinking match, a man feels all over like a bruise. Even to admire otherwise than _on the whole_, and where "I admire" is but a synonym for "I remember I _liked_ it very much _when I was reading it_," is too much an effort, would be too disquieting an emotion. Compare _Waverley_, _Guy Manner__ing_, and Co., with works that had an _immediate run_ in the last generation, _Tristram Shandy_, _Roderick Random_, _Sir Charles Grandison_, _Clarissa Harlowe_, and _Tom Jones_ (all of which became popular as soon as published, and therefore instances fairly in point), and you will be convinced that the difference of taste is real, and not any fancy or croaking of my own.

But enough of these generals. It was my purpose to open myself out to you in detail. My health, I have reason to believe, is so intimately connected with the state of my spirits, and these again so dependent on my thoughts, prospective and retrospective, that I should not doubt the being favoured with a sufficiency for my noblest undertaking, had I the ease of heart requisite for the necessary abstraction of the thoughts, and such a reprieve from the goading of the immediate exigencies as might make tranquillity possible. But, alas! I know by experience (and the knowledge is not the less because the regret is not unmixed with self-blame, and the consciousness of want of exertion and fortitude), that my health will continue to decline, as long as the pain from reviewing the barrenness of the past is great in an inverse proportion to any rational anticipations of the future. As I now am, however, from five to six hours devoted to actual writing and composition in the day is the utmost that my strength, not to speak of my nervous system, will permit; and the invasions on this portion of my time from applications, often of the most senseless kind, are such and so many as to be almost as ludicrous even to myself as they are vexatious. In less than a week I have not seldom received half-a-dozen packets or parcels, of works printed or manuscript, urgently requesting my candid _judgment_, or my correcting hand. Add to these, letters from lords and ladies, urging me to write reviews or puffs of heaven-born geniuses, whose whole merit consists in being ploughmen or shoemakers. Ditto from actors; entreaties for money, or recommendations to publishers, from ushers out of place, etc. etc.; and to _me_, who have neither interest, influence, nor money, and, what is still more _àpropos_, can neither bring myself to tell smooth falsehoods nor harsh truths, and, in the struggle, too often do both in the anxiety to do neither.--I have already the _written_ materials and contents, requiring only to be put together, from the loose papers and commonplace or memorandum books, and needing no other change, whether of omission, addition, or correction, than the mere act of arranging, and the opportunity of seeing the whole collectively bring with them of course,--I. Characteristics of Shakspeare's Dramatic Works, with a Critical Review of each Play; together with a relative and comparative Critique on the kind and degree of the Merits and Demerits of the Dramatic Works of Ben Jonson, Beaumont and Fletcher, and Massinger. The History of the English Drama; the accidental advantages it afforded to Shakespeare, without in the least detracting from the perfect originality or proper creation of the Shakspearian Drama; the contradistinction of the latter from the Greek Drama, and its still remaining _uniqueness_, with the causes of this, from the combined influences of Shakespeare himself, as man, poet, philosopher, and finally, by conjunction of all these, dramatic poet; and of the age, events, manners, and state of the English language. This work, with every art of compression, amounts to three volumes of about five hundred pages each.--II. Philosophical Analysis of the Genius and Works of Dante, Spenser, Milton, Cervantes, and Calderon, with similar, but more compressed Criticisms on Chaucer, Ariosto, Donne, Rabelais, and others, during the predominance of the Romantic Poetry.[113] In one large volume.--These two works will, I flatter myself, form a complete code of the principles of judgment and feeling applied to Works of Taste; and not of _Poetry_ only, but of Poesy in all its forms, Painting, Statuary, Music, etc. etc.--III. The History of Philosophy considered as a Tendency of the Human Mind to exhibit the Powers of the Human Reason, to discover by its own Strength the Origin and Laws of Man and the World from Pythagoras to Locke and Condillac. Two volumes.--IV. Letters on the Old and New Testament, and on the Doctrine and Principles held in common by the Fathers and Founders of the Reformation, addressed to a Candidate for Holy Orders; including Advice on the Plan and Subjects of Preaching, proper to a Minister of the Established Church.

To the completion of these four works I have literally nothing more to do than _to transcribe_; but, as I before hinted, from so many scraps and _Sibylline_ leaves, including margins of books and blank pages, that, unfortunately, I must be my own scribe, and not done by myself, they will be all but lost; or perhaps (as has been too often the case already) furnish feathers for the caps of others; some for this purpose, and some to plume the arrows of detraction, to be let fly against the luckless bird from whom they had been plucked or moulted.

In addition to these--of my GREAT WORK, to the preparation of which more than twenty years of my life have been devoted, and on which my hopes of extensive and permanent utility, of fame, in the noblest[114] sense of the word, mainly rest--that, by which I might,

As now by thee, by all the good be known,
When this weak frame lies moulder'd in the grave,
Which self-surviving I might call my own,
Which Folly cannot mar, nor Hate deprave--
The incense of those powers, which, risen in flame,
Might make me dear to Him from whom they came.

Of this work, to which all my other writings (unless I except my Poems, and these I can exclude in part only) are introductory and preparative; and the result of which (if the premises be, as I with the most tranquil assurance, am convinced they are--insubvertible, the deductions legitimate, and the conclusions commensurate, and only commensurate, with both), must finally be a revolution of all that has been called _Philosophy_ or Metaphysics in England and France since the era of the commencing predominance of the mechanical system at the restoration of our second Charles, and with this the present fashionable views, not only of religion, morals, and politics, but even of the modern physics and physiology. You will not blame the earnestness of my expressions, nor the high importance which I attach to this work; for how, with less noble objects, and less faith in their attainment, could I stand acquitted of folly, and abuse of time, talents, and learning, in a labour of three-fourths of my _intellectual_ life? Of this work, something more than a volume has been dictated by me, so as to exist fit for the press, to my friend and enlightened pupil, Mr. Green; and more than as much again would have been evolved and delivered to paper, but that, for the last six or eight months, I have been compelled to break off our weekly meeting, from the necessity of writing (alas! alas! of _attempting_ to write) for purposes, and on the subjects of the passing day.--Of my poetic works, I would fain finish the _Christabel_. Alas! for the proud time when I planned, when I had present to my mind, the materials, as well as the scheme, of the Hymns entitled _Spirit_, _Sun_, _Earth_, _Air_, _Water_, _Fire_, and _Man_: and the Epic Poem on--what still appears to me the one only fit subject remaining for an Epic Poem--_Jerusalem besieged and destroyed by Titus_.

And here comes, my dear friend--here comes my sorrow and my weakness, my grievance and my confession. Anxious to perform the duties of the day arising out of the wants of the day, these wants, too, presenting themselves in the most painful of all forms,--that of a debt owing to those who will not exact it, and yet need its payment, and the delay, the long (not live-long but _death_-long) behind-hand of my accounts to friends, whose utmost care and frugality on the one side, and industry on the other, the wife's management and the husband's assiduity are put in requisition to make both ends meet, I am at once forbidden to attempt, and too perplexed earnestly to pursue, the _accomplishment_ of the works worthy of me, those I mean above enumerated,--even if, savagely as I have been injured by one of the two influensive Reviews, and with more effective enmity undermined by the utter silence or occasional detractive compliments of the other,[115] I had the probable chance of disposing of them to the booksellers, so as even to liquidate my mere boarding accounts during the time expended in the transcription, arrangement, and proof correction. And yet, on the other hand, my heart and mind are for ever recurring to them. Yes, my conscience forces me to plead guilty, I have only by fits and starts even prayed. I have not prevailed on myself to pray to God in sincerity and entireness for the fortitude that might enable me to resign myself to the abandonment of all my life's best hopes, to say boldly to myself,--"Gifted with powers confessedly above mediocrity, aided by an education, of which, no less from almost unexampled hardships and sufferings than from manifold and peculiar advantages, I have never yet found a parallel, I have devoted myself to a life of unintermitted reading, thinking, meditating, and observing. I have not only sacrificed all worldly prospects of wealth and advancement, but have in my inmost soul stood aloof from temporary reputation. In consequence of these toils and this self-dedication, I possess a calm and clear consciousness, that in many and most important departments of truth and beauty I have outstrode my contemporaries--those at least of highest name; that the number of my printed works bears witness that I have not been idle, and the seldom acknowledged, but strictly _proveable_, effects of my labours appropriated to the immediate welfare of my age in the _Morning Post_ before and during the peace of Amiens, in _The Courier_ afterwards, and in the series and various subjects of my lectures at Bristol and at the Royal and Surrey Institutions, in Fetter Lane, at Willis's Rooms, and at the Crown and Anchor (add to which the unlimited freedom of my communications in colloquial life), may surely be allowed as evidence that I have not been useless in my generation. But, from circumstances, the _main_ portion of my harvest is still on the ground, ripe indeed, and only waiting, a few for the sickle, but a large part only for the _sheaving_, and carting, and housing; but from all this I must turn away, must let them rot as they lie, and be as though they never had been, for I must go and gather blackberries and earth-nuts, or pick mushrooms and gild oak-apples for the palates and fancies of chance customers. I must abrogate the name of philosopher and poet, and scribble as fast as I can, and with as little thought as I can, for _Blackwood's Magazine_, or as I have been employed for the last days, in writing MS. sermons for lazy clergymen, who stipulate that the composition must not be more than respectable, for fear they should be desired to publish the visitation sermon!" This I have not yet had courage to do. My soul sickens and my heart sinks; and thus, oscillating between both, I do neither, neither as it ought to be done, or to any profitable end. If I were to detail only the various, I might say capricious, interruptions that have prevented the finishing of this very scrawl, begun on the very day I received your last kind letter, you would need no other illustrations.

Now I see but one possible plan of rescuing my permanent utility. It is briefly this and plainly. For what we struggle with inwardly, we find at least easiest to _bolt out_ namely--that of engaging from the circle of those who think respectfully and hope highly of my powers and attainments a yearly sum, for three or four years, adequate to my actual support, with such comforts and decencies of appearance as my health and habits have made necessaries, so that my mind may be unanxious as far as the present time is concerned; that thus I should stand both enabled and pledged to begin with some one work of these above mentioned, and for two-thirds of my whole time to devote myself to this exclusively till finished, to take the chance of its success by the best mode of publication that would involve me in no risk, then to proceed with the next, and so on till the works above mentioned as already in full material existence should be reduced into formal and actual being; while in the remaining third of my time I might go on maturing and completing my great work, and (for if but easy in mind, I have no doubt either of the re-awakening power or of the kindling inclination), and my _Christabel_, and what else the happier hour might inspire--and without inspiration a barrel-organ may be played right deftly; but

All otherwise the state of _poet_ stands;
For lordly want is such a tyrant fell,
That where he rules all power he doth expel.
The vaunted verse a vacant head demands,
Ne wont with crabbed Care the muses dwell:
_Unwisely weaves who takes two webs_ IN HAND![116]

Now Mr. Green has offered to contribute from £30 to £40 yearly, for three or four years; my young friend and pupil, the son of one of my dearest old friends, £50; and I think that from £10 to £20 I could rely upon from another. The sum required would be about £200, to be repaid, of course, should the disposal or sale, and as far as the disposal and sale, of my writings produce the means.

I have thus placed before you at large, wanderingly, as well as diffusely, the statement which I am inclined to send in a compressed form to a few of those of whose kind dispositions towards me I have received assurances,--and to their interest and influence I must leave it--anxious, however, before I do this, to learn from you your very, very inmost feeling and judgment as to the previous questions. Am I entitled, have I earned _a right_ to do this? Can I do it without moral degradation? and, lastly, can it be done without loss of character in the eyes of my acquaintance, and of my friends' acquaintance, who may have been informed of the circumstances? That, if attempted at all, it will be attempted in such a way, and that such persons only will be spoken to, as will not expose me to indelicate rebuffs to be afterwards matter of gossip, I know those, to whom I shall entrust the statement, too well to be much alarmed about.

Pray let me either see or hear from you as soon as possible; for, indeed and indeed, it is no inconsiderable accession to the pleasure I anticipate from disembarrassment, that _you_ would have to contemplate in a more gracious form, and in a more ebullient play of the inward fountain, the mind and manners of,

My dear friend,
Your obliged and very affectionate friend,
S. T. COLERIDGE.
T. Allsop, Esq.[117]

Coleridge's animadversions on Scott's work are not justifiable. Although Sir Walter's poetry is not to be compared for literary technique to that of Coleridge, it has a merit not unlike some parts of Coleridge's own. Sir Walter may be designated the Poet of Romantic Association; much of his poetry is founded on the associations of localities celebrated in history. The _Second Part of Christabel_ and the _Knight's Tomb_ are clearly of this genre of poetry. A touch of jealousy of the success of Scott seems to enter into Coleridge's estimate of his brother poet. His criticism of the novels is of less importance; for Coleridge was always hostile to the novel as enticing men away from serious study and reading.]

FOOTNOTES:

[107] [Lockhart's _Life of Scott_, ch. xix, also Memoir of Hartley
Coleridge, xxxv, prefixed to Hartley Coleridge's _Poems_,
1851.]

[108] [The date of this or Letter 179, given by Allsop, must be
wrong, perhaps for 8th read 18th April.]

[109] [An echo of Schiller's

"a deeper import
Lurks in the legend told my infant years
Than lies upon that truth we live to learn," etc.
_The Piccolomini_, Act II, Scene 3.]

[110] [Letter CCXXVIII follows 180.]

[111] Here follows a detail of charges brought against one very
near, and deservedly dear, to the writer, originating with, or
adopted by the present Bishop of Llandaff. These charges were
afterwards, I believe, withdrawn; at all events compensation
was tendered to the party implicated [Allsop]. [This refers to
Hartley.]

[112] _Shepherd's Calendar. October._

[113] [See Coleridge's _Miscellaneous Works_, edited by T. Ashe:
Bohn Library.]

[114] Turn to Milton's _Lycidas_, sixth stanza--

Alas! what boots it with incessant care
To tend the homely slighted shepherd's trade,
And strictly meditate the thankless Muse?
Were it not better done as others use,
To sport with Amaryllis in the shade,
Or with the tangles of Neæra's hair?
Fame is the spur that the clear spirit doth raise
(That last infirmity of noble mind)
To scorn delights and live laborious days;
But the fair guerdon when we hope to find,
And think to burst out into sudden blaze,
Comes the blind Fury with the abhorred shears,
And slits the thin-spun life. But not the praise,
Phœbus replied, and touched my trembling ears;
Fame is no plant that grows on mortal soil,
Nor on the glistering foil
Set off to the world, nor in broad Rumour lies,
But lives and spreads aloft by those pure eyes,
And perfect witness of all-judging Jove;
As he pronounces lastly in each deed,
Of so much fame in heav'n expect thy meed.

The sweetest music does not fall sweeter on my ear than this
stanza on both mind and ear, as often as I repeat it aloud.

[115] Neither my _Literary Life_ (2 vols.), nor _Sibylline Leaves_
(1 vol.) nor _Friend_ (3 vols.), nor _Lay Sermons_, nor
_Zapolya_, nor _Christabel_, has ever been noticed by the
_Quarterly Review_, of which Southey is yet the main support.

[116] [_Shepherd's Calendar: October._]

[117] [Letter CCXXIX follows 173.]