Chapter LXXVII: Letter 189: To Allsop

May 4th, 1821. My dear Friend,

Mr. and Mrs. Gillman's kind love, and we beg that the good lady's late remembering that (as often the very fullness and vividness of the purpose and intention to do a thing imposes on the mind a sort of counterfeit feeling of quiet, similar to the satisfaction which the having done it would produce) you had not been written to, will not prejudice the present attempt at "better late than never." We have a party _to-morrow_, in which, because we believed it would interest you, you stood included. In addition to a neighbour Robert Sutton, and ourselves, and Mrs. Gillman's most un-Mrs. Gillmanly sister (but _n. b._ this is a secret to all who are both blind and deaf), there will be the Mathews (Mr. and Mrs.) _at home_, Mathews I mean, and Charles and Mary Lamb.

Of myself the best thing that I can say is that, in the belief of those well qualified to judge, I am not so ill as I fancy myself. Be this as it may,

I am always, my dearest friend,
With highest esteem and regard,
Your affectionate friend,
S. T. COLERIDGE.
T. Allsop, Esq.

* * * * *

"Of this day and the one following," Allsop says, "I have a few notes, which appear to me of interest. It must be borne constantly in mind, that much of what is preserved has relation to positions enforced by others, which Coleridge held to be untenable on the particular grounds urged, not as being untrue in themselves."

* * * * *

Had Lord Byron possessed perseverance enough to undergo the drudgery of research, and had his theological studies and attainments been at all like mine, he would have been able to unsettle all the evidences of Christianity, upheld as it is at present by simple confutation. Is it possible to assent to the doctrine of redemption as at present promulgated, that the moral death of an _unoffending_ being should be a consequence of the transgression of humanity[119] _and its atonement_?

* * * * *

Walter Scott's novels are chargeable with the same faults as Bertram, _et id omne genus_, viz., that of ministering to the depraved appetite for excitement, and, though in a far less degree, creating sympathy for the vicious and infamous, solely because the fiend is _daring_. Not twenty lines of Scott's poetry will ever reach posterity; it has relation to nothing.

* * * * *

When I wrote a letter upon the scarcity, it was generally said that it was the production of an immense cornfactor, and a letter was addressed to me under that persuasion, beginning "Crafty Monopolist."

* * * * *

It is very singular that no _true poet_ should have arisen from the lower classes, when it is considered that every peasant who can read knows more of books now than did Æschylus, Sophocles, or Homer; yet if we except Burns, none[120] such have been.

* * * * *

Crashaw seems in his poems to have given the first ebullience of his imagination, unshapen into form, or much of, what we now term, sweetness. In the poem, _Hope_, by way of question and answer, his superiority to Cowley is self-evident. In that on the name of Jesus equally so; but his lines on St. Theresa are the finest.

Where he does combine richness of thought and diction nothing can excel, as in the lines you so much admire--

Since 'tis not to be had at home,
She'l travel to a martyrdome.
No home for her confesses she,
But where she may a martyr be.
She'l to the Moores, and trade with them
For this invalued diadem,
She offers them her dearest breath
With Christ's name in't, in change for death.
She'l bargain with them, and will give
Them God, and teach them how to live
In Him, or if they this deny,
For Him she'l teach them how to die.
So shall she leave amongst them sown,
The Lord's blood, or, at least, her own.
Farewell then, all the world--adieu,
Teresa is no more for you:
Farewell all pleasures, sports and joys,
Never till now esteemed toys--
Farewell whatever dear'st may be,
Mother's arms or father's knee;
Farewell house, and farewell home,
She's for the Moores and martyrdom.

These verses were ever present to my mind whilst writing the second part of _Christabel_; if, indeed, by some subtle process of the mind they did not suggest the first thought of the whole poem.--Poetry, as regards small poets, may be said to be, in a certain sense, conventional in its accidents and in its illustrations; thus Crashaw uses an image:--

As sugar melts in tea away,

which, although _proper then_, and _true now_, was in bad taste at that time equally with the present. In Shakspeare, in Chaucer there was nothing of this.

The wonderful faculty which Shakspeare above all other men possessed, or rather the power which possessed him in the highest degree, of anticipating everything, evidently is the result--at least partakes--of meditation, or that mental process which consists in the submitting to the operation of thought every object of feeling, or impulse, or passion observed _out_ of it. I would be willing to live only as long as Shakspeare were the mirror to nature.

* * * * *

What can be finer in any poet than that beautiful passage in Milton--

----Onward he moved
And thousands of his saints around.

This is grandeur, but it is grandeur without completeness: but he adds--

Far off their coming shone;

which is the highest sublime. There is _total_ completeness.

So I would say that the Saviour praying on the Mountain, the Desert on one hand, the Sea on the other, the city at an immense distance below, was sublime. But I should say of the Saviour looking towards the City, his countenance full of pity, that he was majestic, and of the situation that it was grand.

When the whole and the parts are seen at once, as mutually producing and explaining each other, as unity in multiety, there results shapeliness--_forma formosa_. Where the perfection of _form_ is combined with pleasurableness in the sensations, excited by the matters or substances so formed, there results the Beautiful.

_Corollary._--Hence colour is eminently subservient to beauty, because it is susceptible of forms, _i.e._ outline, and yet is a sensation. But a rich mass of scarlet clouds, seen without any attention to the _form_ of the mass or of the parts, may be a _delightful_ but not a beautiful object or colour.

When there is a deficiency of unity in the line forming the whole (as angularity, for instance), and of number in the plurality or the parts, there arises the Formal.

When the parts are numerous, and impressive, and predominate, so as to prevent or greatly lessen the attention to the whole, there results the Grand.

Where the impression of the whole, _i.e._ the sense of unity predominates, so as to abstract the mind from the parts--the Majestic.

Where the parts by their harmony produce an effect of a whole, but there is no seen form of a whole producing or explaining the parts, _i.e._ when the parts only are seen and distinguished, but the whole is felt--the Picturesque.

Where neither whole nor parts, but unity, as boundless or endless _allness_--the Sublime.

* * * * *

It often amuses me to hear men impute all their misfortunes to fate, luck, or destiny, whilst their successes or good fortune they ascribe to their own sagacity, cleverness, or penetration. It never occurs to such minds that light and darkness are one and the same, emanating from, and being part of, the same nature.

* * * * *

The word Nature, from its extreme familiarity, and in some instances, fitness, as well as from the want of a term, or _other_ name for God, has caused very much confusion in the thoughts and language of men. Hence a Nature-God, or God-Nature, not God in Nature; just as others, with as little reason, have constructed a natural and sole religion.

* * * * *

Is it then true, that Reason to man is the ultimate faculty, and that, to convince a _reasonable_ man, it is sufficient to adduce adequate reasons or arguments? How, if this be so, does it happen that we reject as insufficient the _reasoning_ of a friend in our affliction for this or that _cause or reason_, yet are comforted, soothed, and reassured, by similar or far less sufficient _reasons_, when urged by a friendly and affectionate woman? It is no answer to say that women were made _comforters_; that it is the tone, and, in the instance of man's chief, best comforter, the wife of his youth, the mother of his children, the oneness with himself, which gives value to the consolation; the _reasons_ are the same, whether urged by man, woman, or child. It must be, therefore, that there is something in the will itself, above and beyond, if not higher than, reason. Besides, is Reason or the reasoning always the same, even when free from passion, film, or fever? I speak of the same person. Does he hold the doctrine of temperance in equal reverence when hungry as after he is sated? Does he at forty retain the same _reason_, only extended and developed, as he possessed at four and twenty? Does he not love the meat in his youth which he cannot endure in his old age? But these are appetites, and therefore no part of him. Is not a man one to-day and another to-morrow? Do not the very ablest and wisest of men attach greater weight at one moment to an argument or a _reason_ than they do at another? Is this a want of sound and stable judgment? If so, what then is this perfect reason? for we have shown what it is not.

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It is prettily feigned, that when Plutus is sent from Jupiter, he limps and gets on very slowly at first; but when he comes from Pluto, he runs and is swift of foot. This, rightly taken, is a great sweetener of slow gains. Bacon (alas! the day) seems to have had this in mind when he says, "seek not proud gains, but such as thou mayst get justly, use soberly, distribute cheerfully, and leave contentedly." He that is covetous makes too much haste; and the wise man saith of him, "he cannot be innocent."

* * * * *

I have often been pained by observing in others, and was fully conscious in myself, of a _sympathy_ with those of rank and condition in preference to their inferiors, and never discovered the source of this sympathy until one day at Keswick I heard a thatcher's wife crying her heart out for the death of her little child. It was given me all at once to feel, that I sympathized equally with the poor and the rich in all that related to the best part of humanity--the affections; but that, in what relates to fortune, to _mental_ misery, struggles, and conflicts, we reserve consolation and sympathy for those who can appreciate its force and value.

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There are many men, especially at the outset of life, who, in their too eager desire for the end, overlook the difficulties in the way; there is another class, who see nothing else. The first class _may_ sometimes fail; the latter rarely succeed.