Chapter VI: A Lake Poet

1800-1803

CX. TO THOMAS POOLE.

August 14, 1800.

MY DEAR POOLE,--Your two letters[235] I received exactly four days ago--some days they must have been lying at Ambleside before they were sent to Grasmere, and some days at Grasmere before they moved to Keswick.... It grieved me that you had felt so much from my silence. Believe me, I have been harassed with business, and shall remain so for the remainder of this year. Our house is a delightful residence, something less than half a mile from the lake of Keswick and something more than a furlong from the town. It commands both that lake and the lake of Bassenthwaite. Skiddaw is behind us; to the left, the right, and in front mountains of all shapes and sizes. The waterfall of Lodore is distinctly visible. In garden, etc., we are uncommonly well off, and our landlord, who resides next door in this twofold house, is already much attached to us. He is a quiet, sensible man, with as large a library as yours,--and perhaps rather larger,--well stored with encyclopædias, dictionaries, and histories, etc., all modern. The gentry of the country, titled and untitled, have all called or are about to call on me, and I shall have free access to the magnificent library of Sir Gilfrid Lawson. I wish you could come here in October after your harvesting, and stand godfather at the christening of my child. In October the country is in all its blaze of beauty.

We are well and the Wordsworths are well. The two volumes of the “Lyrical Ballads” will appear in about a fortnight or three weeks. Sara sends her best kind love to your mother. How much we rejoice in her health I need not say. Love to Ward, and to Chester, to whom I shall write as soon as I am at leisure. I was standing at the very top of Skiddaw, by a little shed of slate stones on which I had scribbled with a bit of slate my name among the other names. A lean-expression-faced man came up the hill, stood beside me a little while, then, on running over the names, exclaimed, “Coleridge! I lay my life that is the _poet Coleridge_!”

God bless you, and for God’s sake never doubt that I am attached to you beyond all other men.

S. T. COLERIDGE.

CXI. TO SIR H. DAVY.

Thursday night, October 9, 1800.

MY DEAR DAVY,--I was right glad, glad with a _stagger_ of the heart, to see your writing again. Many a moment have I had all my France and England curiosity suspended and lost, looking in the advertisement front column of the “Morning Post Gazeteer” for _Mr. Davy’s Galvanic habitudes of charcoal_.--Upon my soul I believe there is not a letter in those words round which a world of imagery does not circumvolve; your room, the garden, the cold bath, the moonlight rocks, Barristed, Moore, and simple-looking Frere, and dreams of wonderful things attached to your name,--and Skiddaw, and Glaramara, and Eagle Crag, and you, and Wordsworth, and me, on the top of them! I pray you do write to me immediately, and tell me what you mean by the possibility of your assuming a new occupation. Have you been successful to the extent of your expectations in your late chemical inquiries?

As to myself, I am doing little worthy the relation. I write for Stuart in the “Morning Post,” and I am compelled by the god Pecunia--which was one name of the supreme Jupiter--to give a volume of letters from Germany, which will be a decent _lounge_ book, and not an atom more. The “Christabel” was running up to 1,300 lines,[236] and was so much admired by Wordsworth, that he thought it indelicate to print two volumes with his name, in which so much of another man’s was included; and, which was of more consequence, the poem was in direct opposition to the very purpose for which the lyrical ballads were published, viz., an experiment to see how far those passions which alone give any value to extraordinary incidents were capable of interesting, in and for themselves, in the incidents of common life. We mean to publish the “Christabel,” therefore, with a long blank-verse poem of Wordsworth’s, entitled “The Pedlar.”[237] I assure you I think very differently of “Christabel.” I would rather have written “Ruth,” and “Nature’s Lady,” than a million such poems. But why do I calumniate my own spirit by saying “I would rather”? God knows it is as delightful to me that they _are_ written. I _know_ that at present, and I _hope_ that it _will be so_; my mind has _disciplined_ itself into a willing exertion of its powers, without any reference to their comparative value.

I cannot speak favourably of W.’s health, but, indeed, he has not done common justice to Dr. Beddoes’s kind prescriptions. I saw his countenance darken, and all his hopes vanish, when he saw the _prescriptions_--his _scepticism_ concerning medicines! nay, it is not enough _scepticism_! Yet, now that peas and beans are over, I have hopes that he will in good earnest make a fair and full trial. I rejoice with sincere joy at Beddoes’s recovery.

Wordsworth is fearful you have been much teased by the printers on his account, but you can sympathise with him. The works which I gird myself up to attack as soon as money concerns will permit me are the Life of Lessing, and the Essay on Poetry. The latter is still more at my heart than the former: its title would be an essay on the elements of poetry,--it would be in reality a disguised system of morals and politics. When you write,--and do write soon,--tell me how I can get your essay on the nitrous oxide. If you desired Johnson to have one sent to Lackington’s, to be placed in Mr. Crosthwaite’s monthly parcel for Keswick, I should receive it. Are your galvanic discoveries important? What do they lead to? All this is _ultra-crepidation_, but would to Heaven I had as much knowledge as I have sympathy!

My wife and children are well; the baby was dying some weeks ago, so the good people would have it baptized; his name is Derwent Coleridge,[238] so called from the river, for, fronting our house, the Greta runs into the Derwent. Had it been a girl the name should have been Greta. By the bye, Greta, or rather Grieta, is exactly the Cocytus of the Greeks. The word, literally rendered in modern English, is “the loud lamenter;” to griet in the Cambrian dialect, signifying to roar aloud for grief or pain, and it does _roar_ with a vengeance! I will say nothing about spring--a thirsty man tries to think of anything but the stream when he knows it to be ten miles off! God bless you!

Your most affectionate
S. T. COLERIDGE.

CXII. TO THE SAME.

October 18, 1800.

MY DEAR DAVY,--Our mountains northward end in the mountain Carrock,--one huge, steep, enormous bulk of stones, desolately variegated with the heath plant; at its foot runs the river Calder, and a narrow vale between it and the mountain Bowscale, so narrow, that in its greatest width it is not more than a furlong. But that narrow vale is _so_ green, _so_ beautiful, there are moods in which a man might weep to look at it. On this mountain Carrock, at the summit of which are the remains of a vast Druid circle of stones, I was wandering, when a thick cloud came on, and wrapped me in such darkness that I could not see ten yards before me, and with the cloud a storm of wind and hail, the like of which I had never before seen and felt. At the very summit is a cone of stones, built by the shepherds, and called the Carrock Man. Such cones are on the tops of almost all our mountains, and they are all called _men_. At the bottom of the Carrock Man I seated myself for shelter, but the wind became so fearful and tyrannous, that I was apprehensive some of the stones might topple down upon me, so I groped my way farther down and came to three rocks, placed on this wise [Symbol], each one supported by the other like a child’s house of cards, and in the hollow and screen which they made I sate for a long while sheltered, as if I had been in my own study in which I am now writing: there I sate with a total feeling worshipping the power and “eternal link” of energy. The darkness vanished as by enchantment; far off, far, far off to the south, the mountains of Glaramara and Great Gable and their family appeared distinct, in deepest, sablest _blue_. I rose, and behind me was a rainbow bright as the brightest. I descended by the side of a torrent, and passed, or rather crawled (for I was forced to descend on all fours), by many a naked waterfall, till, fatigued and hungry (and with a finger almost broken, and which remains swelled to the size of two fingers), I reached the narrow vale, and the single house nestled in ash and sycamores. I entered to claim the universal hospitality of this country; but instead of the life and comfort usual in these lonely houses, I saw dirt, and every appearance of misery--a pale woman sitting by a peat fire. I asked her for bread and milk, and she sent a small child to fetch it, but did not rise herself. I eat very heartily of the black, sour bread, and drank a bowl of milk, and asked her to permit me to pay her. “Nay,” says she, “we are not so scant as that--you are right welcome; but do you know any help for the rheumatics, for I have been so long ailing that I am almost fain to die?” So I advised her to eat a great deal of mustard, having seen in an advertisement something about essence of mustard curing the most obstinate cases of rheumatism. But do write me, and tell me some cure for the rheumatism; it is in her shoulders, and the small of her back chiefly. I wish much to go off with some bottles of stuff to the poor creature. I should walk the ten miles as ten yards. With love and honour, my dear Davy,

Yours,
S. T. COLERIDGE.

CXIII. TO THE SAME.

GRETA HALL, Tuesday night, December 2, 1800.

MY DEAR DAVY,--By an accident I did not receive your letter till this evening. I would that you had added to the account of your indisposition the probable causes of it. It has left me anxious whether or no you have not exposed yourself to unwholesome influences in your chemical pursuits. There are _few_ beings both of hope and performance, but few who combine the “are” and the “will be.” For God’s sake, therefore, my dear fellow, do not rip open the bird that lays the golden eggs. I have not received your book. I read yesterday a sort of medical review about it. I suppose Longman will send it to me when he sends down the “Lyrical Ballads” to Wordsworth. I am solicitous to read the latter part. Did there appear to you any remote analogy between the case I translated from the German Magazine and the effects produced by your gas? Did Carlisle[239] ever communicate to you, or has he in any way published his facts concerning _pain_ which he mentioned when we were with him? It is a subject which _exceedingly interests_ me. I want to read something by somebody expressly on _pain_, if only to give an _arrangement_ to my own thoughts, though if it were well treated I have little doubt it would revolutionize them. For the last month I have been trembling on through sands and swamps of evil and bodily grievance. My eyes have been inflamed to a degree that rendered reading and writing scarcely possible; and, strange as it seems, the act of metre composition, as I lay in bed, perceptibly affected them, and my voluntary ideas were every minute passing, more or less transformed into vivid spectra. I had leeches repeatedly applied to my temples, and a blister behind my ear--and my eyes are now my own, but in the place where the blister was, six small but excruciating boils have appeared, and harass me almost beyond endurance. In the mean time my darling Hartley has been taken with a stomach illness, which has ended in the yellow jaundice; and this greatly alarms me. So much for the doleful! Amid all these changes, and humiliations, and fears, the sense of the Eternal abides in me, and preserves unsubdued my cheerful faith, that all I endure is full of blessings!

At times, indeed, I would fain be somewhat of a more tangible utility than I am; but so I suppose it is with all of us--one while cheerful, stirring, feeling in resistance nothing but a joy and a stimulus; another while drowsy, self-distrusting, prone to rest, loathing our own self-promises, withering our own hopes--our hopes, the vitality and cohesion of our being!

I purpose to have “Christabel” published by itself--this I publish with confidence--but my travels in Germany come from me now with mortal pangs. Nothing but the most pressing necessity could have induced me--and even now I hesitate and tremble. Be so good as to have all that is printed of “Christabel” sent to me per post.

Wordsworth has nearly finished the concluding poem. It is of a mild, unimposing character, but full of beauties to those short-necked men who have their hearts sufficiently near their heads--the relative distance of which (according to citizen Tourdes, the French translator of Spallanzani) determines the sagacity or stupidity of all bipeds and quadrupeds.

There is a deep blue cloud over the heavens; the lake, and the vale, and the mountains are all in darkness; only the _summits_ of all the mountains in long ridges, covered with snow, are bright to a dazzling excess. A glorious scene! Hartley was in my arms the other evening, looking at the sky; he saw the moon glide into a large cloud. Shortly after, at another part of the cloud, several stars sailed in. Says he, “Pretty creatures! they are going in to see after their mother moon.”

Remember me kindly to King. Write as often as you can; but above all things, my loved and honoured dear fellow, do not give up the idea of letting me and Skiddaw see you. God love you!

S. T. COLERIDGE.

Tobin writes me that Thompson[240] has made some lucrative discovery. Do you know aught about it? Have you seen T. Wedgwood since his return?

CXIV. TO THOMAS POOLE.

GRETA HALL, KESWICK, Saturday night, December 5, 1800.

MY DEAREST FRIEND,--I have been prevented from answering your last letter entirely by the state of my eyes, and my wish to write more fully to you than their weakness would permit. For the last month and more I have indeed been a very crazy machine.... _That_ consequence of this long-continued ill-health which I most regret is, that it has thrown me so sadly behindhand in the performance of my engagements with the bookseller, that I almost fear I shall not be able to raise money enough by Christmas to make it prudent for me to journey southward. I shall, however, try hard for it. My plan was to go to London, and make a faint trial whether or no I could get a sort of dramatic romance, which I had more than half finished, upon the stage, and from London to visit Stowey and Gunville. Dear little Hartley has been ill in a stomach complaint which ended in the yellow jaundice, and frightened me sorely, as you may well believe. But, praise be to God, he is recovered and begins to look like himself. He is a very extraordinary creature, and if he live will, I doubt not, prove a great genius. Derwent is a fat, pretty child, healthy and hungry. I deliberated long whether I should not call him Thomas Poole Coleridge, and at last gave up the idea only because your nephew is called Thomas Poole, and because if ever it should be my destiny once again to live near you, I believed that such a name would give pain to some branches of your family. You will scarcely exact a very severe account of what a man has been doing who has been obliged for days and days together to keep his bed. Yet I have not been altogether idle, having in my own conceit gained great light into several parts of the human mind which have hitherto remained either wholly unexplained or most falsely explained. To one resolution I am wholly made up, to wit, that as soon as I am a freeman in the world of money I will never write a line for the express purpose of money (but only as believing it good and useful, in some way or other). Although I am certain that I have been greatly improving both in knowledge and power in these last twelve months, yet still at times it presses upon me with a painful weight that I have not evidenced a more tangible utility. I have too much trifled with my reputation. You have conversed much with Davy; he is delighted with you. What do you think of him? Is he not a great man, think you?... I and my wife were beyond measure delighted by your account of your mother’s health. Give our best, kindest loves to her. Charles Lloyd has settled at Ambleside, sixteen miles from Keswick. I shall not see him. If I cannot come, I will write you a very, very long letter, containing the most important of the many thoughts and feelings which I want to communicate to you, but hope to do it face to face.

Give my love to Ward, and to J. Chester. How is poor old Mr. Rich and his wife?

God have you ever in his keeping, making life tranquil to you. Believe me to be what I have been ever, and am, attached to you _one_ degree more at least than to any other living man.

S. T. COLERIDGE.

CXV. TO SIR H. DAVY.

February 3, 1801.

MY DEAR DAVY,--I can scarcely reconcile it to my conscience to make you pay postage for another letter. Oh, what a fine unveiling of modern politics it would be if there were published a minute detail of all the sums received by government from the post establishment, and of all the outlets in which the sums so received flowed out again! and, on the other hand, all the domestic affections which had been stifled, all the intellectual progress that would have been, but is not, on account of the heavy tax, etc., etc. The letters of a nation ought to be paid for as an article of national expense. Well! but I did not take up this paper to flourish away in splenetic politics. A gentleman resident here, his name Calvert,[241] an idle, good-hearted, and ingenious man, has a great desire to commence fellow-student with me and Wordsworth in chemistry. He is an intimate friend of Wordsworth’s, and he has proposed to W. to take a house which he (Calvert) has nearly built, called Windy Brow, in a delicious situation, scarce half a mile from Greta Hall, the residence of S. T. Coleridge, Esq., and so for him (Calvert) to live with them, that is, Wordsworth and his sister. In this case he means to build a little laboratory, etc. Wordsworth has not quite decided, but is strongly inclined to adopt the scheme, because he and his sister have before lived with Calvert on the same footing, and are much attached to him; because my health is so precarious and so much injured by wet, and his health, too, is like little potatoes, no great things, and therefore Grasmere (thirteen miles from Keswick) is too great a distance for us to enjoy each other’s society without inconvenience, as much as it would be profitable for us both; and, likewise, because he feels it more necessary for him to have some intellectual pursuit less closely connected with deep passion than poetry, and is of course desirous, too, not to be so wholly ignorant of knowledge so exceedingly important. However, whether Wordsworth come or no, Calvert and I have determined to begin and go on. Calvert is a man of sense and some originality, and is, besides, what is well called a handy man. He is a good practical mechanic, etc., and is desirous to lay out any sum of money that is necessary. You know how long, how ardently I have wished to initiate myself in chemical science, both for its own sake and in no small degree likewise, my beloved friend, that I may be able to sympathise with all that you do and think. Sympathise blindly with it all I do even _now_, God knows! from the very middle of my heart’s heart, but I would fain sympathise with you in the light of knowledge. This opportunity is exceedingly precious to me, as on my own account I could not afford the least additional expense, having been already, by long and successive illnesses, thrown behindhand so much that for the next four or five months I fear, let me work as hard as I can, I shall not be able to do what my heart within me _burns_ to do, that is, to _concentre_ my free mind to the affinities of the feelings with words and ideas under the title of “Concerning Poetry, and the nature of the Pleasures derived from it.” I have faith that I do understand the subject, and I am sure that if I write what I ought to do on it, the work would supersede all the books of metaphysics, and all the books of morals too. To whom shall a young man utter _his pride_, if not to a young man whom he loves?

I beg you, therefore, my dear Davy, to write me a long letter when you are at leisure, informing me: Firstly, What books it will be well for me and Calvert to purchase. Secondly, Directions for a convenient little laboratory. Thirdly, To what amount apparatus would run in expense, and whether or no you would be so good as to superintend its making at Bristol. Fourthly, Give me your advice how to _begin_. And, fifthly, and lastly, and mostly, do send a _drop_ of hope to my parched tongue, that you will, if you can, come and visit me in the spring. Indeed, indeed, you ought to see this country, this beautiful country, and then the joy you would send into me!

The shape of this paper will convince you with what eagerness I began this letter; I really did not see that it was not a sheet.

I have been _thinking_ vigorously during my illness, so that I cannot say that my long, long wakeful nights have been all lost to me. The subject of my meditations has been the relations of thoughts to things; in the language of Hume, of ideas to impressions. I may be truly described in the words of Descartes: I have been “res cogitans, id est, dubitans, affirmans, negans, pauca intelligens, multa ignorans, volens, nolens, imaginans etiam, et sentiens.” I please myself with believing that you will receive no small pleasure from the result of these broodings, although I expect in you (in some points) a determined opponent, but I say of my mind in this respect: “Manet imperterritus ille hostem magnanimum opperiens, et mole suâ stat.” Every poor fellow has his proud hour sometimes, and this I suppose is mine.

I am better in every respect than I was, but am still _very feeble_. The weather has been woefully against me for the last fortnight, having rained here almost incessantly. I take quantities of bark, but the effect is (to express myself with the dignity of science) _x_ = 0000000, and I shall not gather strength, or that little suffusion of bloom which belongs to my healthy state, till I can walk out.

God bless you, my dear Davy! and your ever affectionate friend,

S. T. COLERIDGE.

P. S. An electrical machine, and a number of little knickknacks connected with it, Mr. Calvert has.--_Write._

CXVI. TO THOMAS POOLE.

Monday, March 16, 1801.

MY DEAR FRIEND,--The interval since my last letter has been filled up by me in the most intense study. If I do not greatly delude myself, I have not only _completely extricated the notions of time and space_, but have overthrown the doctrine of association, as taught by Hartley, and with it all the irreligious metaphysics of modern infidels--especially the doctrine of necessity. This I have _done_; but I trust that I am about to do more--namely, that I shall be able to evolve all the five senses, that is, to deduce them from one sense, and to state their growth and the causes of their difference, and in this evolvement to solve the process of life and consciousness. _I write this to you only, and I pray you, mention what I have written to no one._ At Wordsworth’s advice, or rather fervent entreaty, I have intermitted the pursuit. The intensity of thought, and the number of minute experiments with light and figure, have made me so nervous and feverish that I cannot sleep as long as I ought and have been used to do; and the sleep which I have is made up of ideas so connected, and so little different from the operations of reason, that it does not afford me the due refreshment. I shall therefore take a week’s respite, and make “Christabel” ready for the press; which I shall publish by itself, in order to get rid of all my engagements with Longman. My German