Chapter XXVII: Part II: , 405 n.; (4)

[153] William and Joseph Strutt were the sons of Jedediah Strutt, of Derby. The eldest, William, was the father of Edward Strutt, created Lord Belper in 1856. Their sister, Elizabeth, who had married William Evans of Darley Hall, was at this time a widow. She had been struck by Coleridge’s writings, or perhaps had heard him preach when he visited Derby on his _Watchman_ tour, and was anxious to engage him as tutor to her children. The offer was actually made, but the relations on both sides intervened, and she was reluctantly compelled to withdraw her proposal. By way of consolation, she entertained Coleridge and his wife at Darley Hall, and before he left presented him with a handsome sum of money and a store of baby-linen, worth, if one may accept Coleridge’s valuation, a matter of forty pounds. _Thomas Poole and his Friends_, i. 152-154; _Estlin Letters_, p. 13.

[154] Probably Jacob Bryant, 1715-1804, author of _An Address to Dr. Priestley upon his Doctrine of Philosophical Necessity_, 1780; _Treatise on the Authenticity of the Scriptures_, 1792; _The Sentiments of Philo-Judæus concerning the Logos or Word of God_, 1797, etc. Allibone’s _Dictionary_, i. 270.

[155] “Ode to the Departing-Year,” published in the _Cambridge Intelligencer_, December 24, 1796. The lines on the “Empress,” to which Thelwall objected, are in the first epode:--

No more on Murder’s lurid face
The insatiate Hag shall gloat with drunken eye.

_Poetical Works_, p. 79.

[156] Compare the well-known description of Dorothy Wordsworth, in a letter to Cottle of July, 1797: “W. and his exquisite sister are with me. She is a woman, indeed,--in mind I mean, and heart. Her information various. Her eye watchful in minutest observation of nature; and her taste a perfect electrometer. It bends, protrudes, and draws in, at subtlest beauties and most recondite faults.”

Bennett’s, or the gold leaf electroscope, is an instrument for “detecting the presence, and determining the kind of electricity in any body.” Two narrow strips of gold leaf are attached to a metal rod, terminating in a small brass plate above, contained in a glass shade, and these under certain conditions of the application of positive and negative electricity diverge or collapse.

The gold leaf electroscope was invented by Abraham Bennett in 1786. Cottle’s _Early Recollections_, i. 252; Ganot’s _Physics_, 1870, p. 631.

[157] His tract _On the Strength of the Existing Government (the Directory) of France, and the Necessity of supporting it_, was published in 1796.

The translator, James Losh, described by Southey as “a provincial counsel,” was at one time resident in Cumberland, and visited Coleridge at Greta Hall. At a later period he settled at Jesmond, Newcastle. His name occurs among the subscribers to _The Friend_. _Letters from the Lake Poets_, p. 453.

[158] Compare stanzas eight and nine of “The Mad Ox:”--

Old Lewis (’twas his evil day)
Stood trembling in his shoes;
The ox was his--what could he say?
His legs were stiffened with dismay,
The ox ran o’er him mid the fray,
And gave him his death’s bruise.

The baited ox drove on (but here,
The Gospel scarce more true is,
My muse stops short in mid career--
Nay, gentle reader, do not sneer!
I could chuse but drop a tear,
A tear for good old Lewis!)

_Poetical Works_, p. 134.

[159] The probable date of this letter is Thursday, June 8, 1797. On Monday, June 5, Coleridge breakfasted with Dr. Toulmin, the Unitarian minister at Taunton, and on the evening of that or the next day he arrived on foot at Racedown, some forty miles distant. Mrs. Wordsworth, in a letter to Sara Coleridge, dated November 7, 1845, conveys her husband’s recollections of this first visit in the following words: “Your father,” she says, “came afterwards to visit us at Racedown, where I was living with my sister. We have both a distinct remembrance of his arrival. He did not keep to the high road, but leaped over a high gate and bounded down the pathless field, by which he cut off an angle. We both retain the liveliest possible image of his appearance at that moment. My poor sister has just been speaking of it to me with much feeling and tenderness.” A portion of this letter, of which I possess the original MS., was printed by Professor Knight in his _Life of Wordsworth_, i. 111.

[160] This passage, which for some reason Cottle chose to omit, seems to imply that the second edition of the poems had not appeared by the beginning of June.

[161]

... Such, O my earliest friend!
Thy lot, and such thy brothers too enjoy.
At distance did ye climb life’s upland road,
Yet cheered and cheering: now fraternal love
Hath drawn you to one centre.

_Poetical Works_, p. 81, l. 9-14.

[162]

... and some most false,
False, and fair-foliaged as the Manchineel,
Have tempted me to slumber in their shade
E’en mid the storm; then breathing subtlest damp
Mixed their own venom with the rain from Heaven,
That I woke poisoned.

_Poetical Works_, p. 82, l. 25-30.

Compare Lamb’s humorous reproach in a letter to Coleridge, September, 1797: “For myself I must spoil a little passage of Beaumont and Fletcher’s to adapt it to my feelings:--

... I am prouder
That I was once your friend, tho’ now forgot,
Than to have had another true to me.

“If you don’t write to me now, as I told Lloyd, I shall get angry, and call you hard names--Manchineel, and I don’t know what else.”

_Letters of Charles Lamb_, i. 83.

[163] Charles Lamb’s visit to the cottage of Nether Stowey lasted from Friday, July 7, to Friday, July 14, 1797.

[164] According to local tradition, the lime-tree bower was at the back of the cottage, but according to this letter it was in Poole’s garden. From either spot the green ramparts of Stowey Castle and the “airy ridge” of Dowseborough are full in view.

[165] “He [Le Grice] and Favell ... wrote to the Duke of York, when they were at college, for commissions in the army. The Duke good-naturedly sent them.” _Autobiography of Leigh Hunt_, p. 72.

[166] Possibly he alludes to his appointment as deputy-surgeon to the Second Royals, then stationed in Portugal.

His farewell letter to Coleridge (undated) has been preserved and will be read with interest.

PORTSMOUTH.

My Beloved Friend,--Farewell! I shall never think of you but with
tears of the tenderest affection. Our routes in life have been so
opposite, that for a long time past there has not been that
intercourse between us which our mutual affection would have otherwise
occasioned. But at this serious moment, all your kindness and love for
me press upon my memory with a weight of sensation I can scarcely
endure.

* * * * *

You have heard of my destination, I suppose. I am going to Portugal to
join the Second Royals, to which I have been appointed Deputy-Surgeon.
What fate is in reserve for me I know not. I should be more
indifferent to my future lot, if it were not for the hope of passing
many pleasant hours, in times to come, in your society.

Adieu! my dearest fellow. My love to Mrs. C. Health and fraternity to
young David.

Yours most affectionate,
R. ALLEN.

[167] A friend and fellow-collegian of Christopher Wordsworth at Trinity College, Cambridge. He was a member of the “Literary Society” to which Coleridge, C. Wordsworth, Le Grice, and others belonged. He afterwards became a sergeant-at-law. He was an intimate friend of H. Crabb Robinson. See H. C. Robinson’s _Diary_, _passim_. See, too, _Social Life at the English Universities_, by Christopher Wordsworth, M. A., Fellow of Peterhouse, Cambridge, 1874, Appendix.

[168] Not, as has been supposed, Charles and Mary Lamb, but Wordsworth and his sister Dorothy. Mary Lamb was not and could not have been at that time one of the party. The version sent to Southey differs both from that printed in the _Annual Anthology_ of 1800, and from a copy in a contemporary letter sent to C. Lloyd. It is interesting to note that the words, “My sister, and my friends,” ll. 47 and 53, which gave place in the _Anthology_ to the thrice-repeated, “My gentle-hearted Charles,” appear, in a copy sent to Lloyd, as “My Sara and my friend.” It was early days for him to address Dorothy Wordsworth as “My sister,” but in forming friendships Coleridge did not “keep to the high road, but leaped over a gate and bounded” from acquaintance to intimacy. _Poetical Works_, p. 92. For version of “This Lime-Tree Bower my Prison,” sent to C. Lloyd, see _Ibid._, Editor’s Note, p. 591.

[169] “Elastic, I mean.”--S. T. C.

[170] “The ferns that grow in moist places grow five or six together, and form a complete ‘Prince of Wales’s Feathers,’--that is, plumy.”--S. T. C.

[171] “You remember I am a _Berkleian_.”--S. T. C.

[172] “This Lime-Tree Bower,” l. 38. _Poetical Works_, p. 93.

[173] “Osorio,” Act V., Sc. 1, l. 39. _Poetical Works_, p. 507.

[174] Thelwall’s visit brought Coleridge and Wordsworth into trouble. At the instance of a “titled Dogberry,” Sir Philip Hale of Cannington, a government spy was sent to watch the movements of the supposed conspirators, and, a more serious matter, Mrs. St. Albyn, the owner of Alfoxden, severely censured her tenant for having sublet the house to Wordsworth. See letter of explanation and remonstrance from Poole to Mrs. St. Albyn, September 16, 1797. _Thomas Poole and his Friends_, i. 240. See, too, Cottle’s _Early Recollections_, i. 319, and for apocryphal anecdotes about the spy, etc., _Biographia Literaria_, cap. x.

[175] Their proposal was to settle on Coleridge “an annuity for life of £150, to be regularly paid by us, no condition whatever being annexed to it.” See letter of Josiah Wedgwood to Coleridge, dated January 10, 1798. _Thomas Poole and his Friends_, i. 258. An unpublished letter from Thelwall to Dr. Crompton dated Llyswen, March 3, 1798, contains one of several announcements of “his good fortune,” made by Coleridge at the time to his numerous friends.

To DR. CROMPTON, Eton House, Nr. Liverpool.

LLYSWEN, 3d March, 1798.

I am surprised you have not heard the particulars of Coleridge’s good
fortune. It is not a legacy, but a gift. The circumstances are thus
expressed by himself in a letter of the 30th January: “I received an
invitation from Shrewsbury to be the Unitarian minister, and at the
same time an order for £100 from Thomas and Josiah Wedgwood. I
accepted the former and returned the latter in a long letter
explanatory of my motive, and went off to Shrewsbury, where they were
on the point of electing me unanimously and with unusual marks of
affection, where I received an offer from T. and J. Wedgwood of an
annuity of £150 to be legally settled on me. Astonished, agitated, and
feeling as I could not help feeling, I accepted the offer in the same
worthy spirit, I hope, in which it was made, and this morning I have
returned from Shrewsbury.” This letter was written in a great hurry in
Cottle’s shop in Bristol, in answer to one which a friend of mine had
left for him there, on his way from Llyswen to Gosport, and you will
perceive that it has a dash of the obscure not uncommon to the rapid
genius of C. Whether he did or did not accept the cure of Unitarian
Souls, it is difficult from the account to make out. I suppose he did
not, for I know his aversion to preachings God’s holy word for hire,
which is seconded not a little, I expect, by his repugnance to all
regular routine and application. I also hope he did not, for I know he
cannot preach very often without travelling from the pulpit to the
Tower. Mount him but upon his darling hobby-horse, “the republic of
God’s own making,” and away he goes like hey-go-mad, spattering and
splashing through thick and thin and scattering more _levelling_
sedition and constructive treason than poor Gilly or myself ever
dreamt of. He promised to write to me again in a few days; but, though
I answered his letter directly, I have not heard from him since.

[176] _Count Benyowsky, or the Conspiracy of Kamtschatka, a Tragi-comedy._ Translated from the German by the Rev. W. Render, teacher of the German Language in the University of Cambridge. Cambridge, 1798.

[177] Coleridge’s copy of Monk Lewis’ play is dated January 20, 1798.

[178] The following memoranda, presumably in Wordsworth’s handwriting, have been scribbled on the outside sheet of the letter: “Tea--Thread fine--needles Silks--Strainer for starch--Mustard--Basil’s shoes--Shoe horn.

“The sun’s course is short, but clear and blue the sky.”

[179] “Duplex nobis vinculum, et amicitiæ et similium junctarumque Camœnarum; quod utinam neque mors solvat, neque temporis longinquitas.”

[180] _The Task_, Book V., “A Winter’s Morning Walk.”

[181] A later version of these lines is to be found at the close of the fourth book of “The Excursion.” _Works of Wordsworth_, 1889, p. 467.

[182] In the series of letters to Dr. Estlin, contributed to the privately printed volumes of the Philobiblon Society, the editor, Mr. Henry A. Bright, dates this letter _May_ (? 1797). A comparison with a second letter to Estlin, dated May 14, 1798 (Letter LXXXII.), with a letter to Poole, dated May 28, 1798 (Letter LXXXIV.), with a letter to Charles Lamb belonging to the spring of 1798 (Letter LXXXV.), and with an entry in Dorothy Wordsworth’s journal for May 16, 1798, affords convincing proof that the date of the letter should be May, 1798.

The MS. note of November 10, 1810, to which a previous reference has been made, connects a serious quarrel with Lloyd, and consequent distress of mind, with the retirement to “the lonely farm-house,” and a first recourse to opium. If, as the letters intimate, these events must be assigned to May, 1798, it follows that “Kubla Khan” was written at the same time, and not, as Coleridge maintained in the Preface of 1816, “in the summer of 1797.”

It would, indeed, have been altogether miraculous if, before he had written a line of “Christabel,” or “The Ancient Mariner,” either in an actual dream, or a dreamlike reverie, it had been “given to him” to divine the enchanting images of “Kubla Khan,” or attune his mysterious vision to consummate melody.

[183] Berkeley Coleridge, born May 14, 1798, died February 10, 1799.

[184] The original MS. of this letter, which was preserved by Coleridge, is, doubtless, a copy of that sent by post. Besides this, only three of Coleridge’s letters to Lamb have been preserved,--the “religious letter” of 1796, a letter concerning the quarrel with Wordsworth, of May, 1812 [Letter CLXXXIV.], and one written in later life (undated, on the particulars of Hood’s _Odes to Great People_).

[185] Charles Lloyd.

[186] The three sonnets of “Nehemiah Higginbottom” were published in the _Monthly Magazine_ for November, 1797. Compare his letter to Cottle (_E. R._ i. 289) which Mr. Dykes Campbell takes to have been written at the same time.

“I sent to the _Monthly Magazine_, three mock sonnets in ridicule of my own Poems, and Charles Lloyd’s and Charles Lamb’s, etc., etc., exposing that affectation of unaffectedness, of jumping and misplaced accent, in commonplace epithets, flat lines forced into poetry by italics (signifying how well and mouthishly the author would read them), puny pathos, etc., etc. The instances were all taken from myself and Lloyd and Lamb. I signed them ‘Nehemiah Higginbottom.’ I hope they may do good to our young bards.”

The publication of these sonnets in November, 1797, cannot, as Mr. Dykes Campbell points out (_Poetical Works_, p. 599), have been the immediate cause of the breach between Coleridge and Lamb which took place in the spring or early summer of 1798, but it seems that during the rise and progress of this quarrel the Sonnet on Simplicity was the occasion of bitter and angry words. As Lamb and Lloyd and Southey drew together, they drew away from Coleridge, and Southey, who had only been formally reconciled with his brother-in-law, seems to have regarded this sonnet as an ill-natured parody of his earlier poems. In a letter to Wynn, dated November 20, 1797, he says, “I am aware of the danger of studying simplicity of language,” and he proceeds to quote some lines of blank verse to prove that he could employ the “grand style” when he chose.

A note from Coleridge to Southey, posted December 8, 1797, deals with the question, and would, if it had not been for Lloyd’s “tittle-tattle,” have convinced both Southey and Lamb that in the matter they were entirely mistaken.

* * * * *

I am sorry, Southey! very sorry that I wrote or published those sonnets--but ‘sorry’ would be a tame word to express my feelings, if I had written them with the motives which you have attributed to me. I have not been in the habit of treating our separation with levity--nor ever since the first moment thought of it without deep emotion--and how could you apply to yourself a sonnet written to ridicule infantine simplicity, vulgar colloquialisms, and lady-like friendships? I have no conception, neither I believe could a passage in your writings have suggested to me or any man the notion of _your_ ‘plainting plaintively.’ I am sorry that I wrote thus, because I am sorry to perceive a disposition in you to believe evil of me, of which your remark to Charles Lloyd was a painful instance. I say this to you, because I shall say it to no other being. I feel myself wounded and hurt and write as such. I believe in my letter to Lloyd I forgot to mention that the Editor of the _Morning Post_ is called Stuart, and that he is the brother-in-law of Mackintosh. Yours sincerely,

S. T. COLERIDGE.

Thursday morning.

Post-mark, Dec. 8, 1797.

MR. SOUTHEY, No. 23 East Street, Red Lion Square, London.

[187] Charles Lloyd’s novel, _Edmund Oliver_, was published at Bristol in 1798. It is dedicated to “His friend Charles Lamb of the India House.” He says in the Preface: “The incidents relative to the army were given me by an intimate friend who was himself eye-witness of one of them.” The general resemblance between the events of Coleridge’s earlier history and the story of Edmund Oliver is not very striking, but apart from the description of “his person” in the first letter of the second volume, which is close enough, a single sentence from Edmund Oliver’s journal, i. 245, betrays the malignant nature of the attack. “I have at all times a strange dreaminess about me which makes me indifferent to the future, if I can by any means fill the present with sensations,--with that dreaminess I have gone on here from day to day; if at any time thought-troubled, I have swallowed some spirits, or had recourse to my laudanum.” In the same letter, the account which Edmund Oliver gives of his sensations as a recruit in a regiment of light horse, and the vivid but repulsive picture which he draws of his squalid surroundings in “a pot-house in the Borough,” leaves a like impression that Coleridge confided too much, and that Lloyd remembered “not wisely but too well.” How Coleridge regarded Lloyd’s malfeasance may be guessed from one of his so-called epigrams.

TO ONE WHO PUBLISHED IN PRINT WHAT HAD BEEN INTRUSTED TO HIM BY MY FIRESIDE.

Two things hast thou made known to half the nation,
My secrets and my want of penetration:
For oh! far more than all which thou hast penned,
It shames me to have called a wretch, like thee, my friend!

_Poetical Works_, p. 448.

[188] In a letter dated November 1, 1798, Mrs. Coleridge acquaints her husband with the danger and the disfigurement from smallpox which had befallen her little Berkeley. “The dear child,” she writes, “is getting strength every hour; but ‘when you lost sight of land, and the faces of your children crossed you like a flash of lightning,’ you saw _that_ face for the last time.”

[189] “Fears in Solitude, written in 1798, during the alarm of an invasion. To which are added, France, an Ode; and Frost at Midnight. By S. T. Coleridge. London: Printed for J. Johnson, in St. Paul’s Churchyard. 1798.”

[190] According to Burke’s _Peerage_, Emanuel Scoope, second Viscount Howe, and father of the Admiral, “Our Lord Howe,” married, in 1719, Mary Sophia, daughter of Baron Kielmansegge, Master of the Horse to George I. Coleridge’s countess must have been a great-granddaughter of the baron. In her reply to this letter, dated December 13, 1798, Mrs. Coleridge writes: “I am very proud to hear that you are so forward in the language, and that you are so gay with the ladies. You may give my respects to them, and say that I am not at all jealous, for I know my dear Samuel in her affliction will not forget entirely his most affectionate wife, Sara Coleridge.”

[191] The “Rev. Mr. Roskilly” had been curate-in-charge of the parish of Nether Stowey, and the occasion of the letter was his promotion to the Rectory of Kempsford in Gloucestershire. Mrs. S. T. Coleridge, in a late letter (probably 1843) to her sister, Mrs. Lovell, writes: “In March [1800] I and the child [Hartley] left him [S. T. C.] in London, and proceeded to Kempsford in Gloucestershire, the Rectory of Mr. Roskilly; remained there a month. Papa was to have joined us there, but did not.” See _Thomas Poole and his Friends_, i. 25-27, and _Letters from the Lake Poets_, p. 6.

[192] In his letter of January 20, 1799, Josiah Wedgwood acknowledges the receipt of a letter dated November 29, 1798, but adds that an earlier letter from Hamburg had not come to hand. A third letter, dated Göttingen, May 21, 1799, was printed by Cottle in his _Reminiscences_, 1848, p. 425.

[193] Miss Meteyard, in her _Group of Englishmen_, 1871, p. 99, gives extracts from the account-current of Messrs. P. and O. Von Axen, the Hamburg agents of the Wedgwoods. According to her figures, Coleridge drew £125 from October 20 to March 29, 1799, and, “conjointly with Wordsworth,” £106 10_s._ on July 8, 1799. Mr. Dykes Campbell, in a footnote to his _Memoir_, p. xliv., combats Miss Meteyard’s assertion that these sums were advanced by the Wedgwoods to Coleridge and Wordsworth, and argues that Wordsworth merely drew on the Von Axens for sums already paid in from his own resources. Coleridge, he thinks, had only his annuity to look to, but probably anticipated his income. In a MS. note-book of 1798-99, Coleridge inserted some concise but not very business-like entries as to expenditures and present resources, but says nothing as to receipts.

“March 25th, being Easter Monday, Chester and S. T. C., in a damn’d dirty hole in the Burg Strasse at Göttingen, possessed at that moment eleven Louis d’ors and two dollars. When the money is spent in common expenses S. T. Coleridge will owe Chester 5 pounds 12 shillings.

“NOTE.--From September 8 to April 8 I shall have spent £90, of which £15 was in Books; and Cloathes, mending and making, £10.

“May 10. We have 17 Louis d’or, of which, as far as I can at present calculate, 10 belong to Chester.”

The most probable conclusion is that both Coleridge and Chester were fairly well supplied with money when they left England, and that the £178 10_s._ which Coleridge received from the Von Axens covered some portion of Chester’s expenses in addition to his own. I may add that a recent collation of the autograph letter of Coleridge to Josiah Wedgwood dated May 21, 1799, Göttingen, with the published version in Cottle’s _Reminiscences_, pp. 425-429, fully bears out Mr. Campbell’s contention, that though Coleridge anticipated his annuity, he was not the recipient of large sums over and above what was guaranteed to him.

[194] A portion of this description of Ratzeburg is included in No. III. of _Satyrane’s Letters_, originally published in No. 10 of _The Friend_, December 21, 1809.

[195] The following description of the frozen lake was thrown into a literary shape and published in No. 19 of _The Friend_, December 28, 1809, as “Christmas Indoors in North Germany.”

[196] A letter from Mrs. Coleridge to her husband, dated March 25, 1799, followed Poole’s letter of March 15. (_Thomas Poole and his Friends_, i. 290.) She writes:--

“MY DEAREST LOVE,--I hope you will not attribute my long silence to want of affection. If you have received Mr. Poole’s letter you will know the reason and acquit me. My darling infant left his wretched mother on the 10th of February, and though the leisure that followed was intolerable to me, yet I could not employ myself in reading or writing, or in any way that prevented my thoughts from resting on him. This parting was the severest trial that I have ever yet undergone, and I pray to God that I may never live to behold the death of another child. For, O my dear Samuel, it is a suffering beyond your conception! You will feel and lament the death of your child, but you will only recollect him a baby of fourteen weeks, but I am his mother and have carried him in my arms and have fed him at my bosom, and have watched over him by day and by night for nine months. I have seen him twice at the brink of the grave, but he has returned and recovered and smiled upon me like an angel,--and now I am lamenting that he is gone!”

In her old age, when her daughter was collecting materials for a life of her father, Mrs. Coleridge wrote on the back of the letter:--

“No secrets herein. I will not burn it for the sake of my sweet Berkeley.”

[197] From “Osorio,” Act V. Sc. 1. _Poetical Works_, p. 506.

[198] The following description of the Christmas-tree, and of Knecht Rupert, was originally published, almost verbatim, in No. 19 of the original issue of _The Friend_, December 28, 1809.

[199] First published in _Annual Anthology_ of 1800, under the signature _Cordomi_. See _Poetical Works_, p. 146, and Editor’s Note, p. 621.

[200] The men who rip the oak bark from the logs for tanning.

[201]

My dear babe,
Who capable of no articulate sound,
Mars all things with his imitative lisp,
How he would place his hand beside his ear,
His little hand, the small forefinger up,
And bid us listen.

--“The Nightingale, a Conversation Poem,” written in April, 1798. _Poetical Works_, p. 133.

[202] Hutton Hall, near Penrith.

[203] First published in the _Annual Anthology_ of 1800. See _Poetical Works_, p. 146, and Editor’s Note, p. 621. According to Carlyon the lines were dictated by Coleridge and inscribed by one of the party in the “Stammbuch” of the Wernigerode Inn. _Early Years_, i. 66.

[204] Olaus Tychsen, 1734-1815, was “Professor of Oriental Tongues” at Rostock, in Mecklenburg-Schwerin.

[205] F. C. Achard, born in 1754, was author of an “Instruction for making sugar, molasses, and vinous spirit from Beet-root.”

[206] The Coleridges were absent from Stowey for about a month. For the first fortnight they were guests of George Coleridge at Ottery. The latter part of the time was spent with the Southeys in their lodgings at Exeter. It was during this second visit that Coleridge accompanied Southey on a walking tour through part of Dartmoor and as far as Dartmouth.

[207] Coleridge took but few notes during this tour. In 1803 he retranscribed his fragmentary jottings and regrets that he possessed no more, “though we were at the interesting Bovey waterfall [Becky Fall], through that wild dell of ashes which leads to Ashburton, most like the approach to upper Matterdale.” “I have,” he adds, “at this moment very distinct visual impressions of the tour, namely of Torbay, the village of Paignton with the Castle.” Southey was disappointed in South Devon, which he contrasts unfavourably with the North of Somersetshire, but for “the dell of ashes” he has a word of praise. _Selections from Letters of Robert Southey_, i. 84.

[208] Suwarrow, at the head of the Austro-Russian troops, defeated the French under Joubert at Novi near Alessandria, in North Italy, August 15, 1799.

[209] A temporary residence of Josiah Wedgwood, who had taken it on lease in order to be near his newly purchased property at Combe Florey, in Somersetshire. Meteyard’s _Group of Englishmen_, 1871, p. 107.

[210] Southey’s brother, a midshipman on board the Sylph gun-brig. A report had reached England that the Sylph had been captured and brought to Ferrol. _Southey’s Life and Correspondence_, ii. 30.

[211] Marshal Massena defeated the Russians under Prince Korsikov at Zurich, September 25, 1799.

[212] William Jackson, organist of Exeter Cathedral, 1730-1803, a musical composer and artist. He published, among other works, _The Four Ages with Essays_, 1798. See letter of Southey to S. T. Coleridge, October 3, 1799, _Southey’s Life and Correspondence_, ii. 26.

[213] John Codrington Warwick Bampfylde, second son of Richard Bampfylde, of Poltimore, was the author of _Sixteen Sonnets_, published in 1779. In the letter of October 3 (see above) Southey gives an interesting account of his eccentric habits and melancholy history. In a prefatory note to four of Bampfylde’s sonnets, included by Southey in his _Specimens of the Later English Poets_, he explains how he came to possess the copies of some hitherto unpublished poems.

“Jackson of Exeter, a man whose various talents made all who knew him remember him with regret, designed to republish the little collection of Bampfylde’s Sonnets, with what few of his pieces were still unedited.

“Those poems which are here first printed were transcribed from the originals in his possession.”

“Bampfylde published his Sonnets at a very early age; they are some of the most original in our language. He died in a private mad-house, after twenty years’ confinement.” _Specimens of the Later English Poets_, 1808, iii. 434.

[214] “A sister of General McKinnon, who was killed at Ciudad Rodrigo.” In the same letter to Coleridge (see above) Southey says that he looked up to her with more respect because the light of Buonaparte’s countenance had shone upon her.

[215] Dr. Cookson, Canon of Windsor and Rector of Forncett, Norfolk. Dorothy Wordsworth passed much of her time under his roof before she finally threw in her lot with her brother William in 1795.

[216] The journal, or notes for a journal, of this first tour in the Lake Country, leaves a doubt whether Coleridge and Wordsworth slept at Keswick on Sunday, November 10, 1799, or whether they returned to Cockermouth. It is certain that they passed through Keswick again on Friday, November 15, as the following entry testifies:--

“1 mile and ½ from Keswick, a Druidical circle. On the right the road and Saddleback; on the left a fine but unwatered vale, walled by grassy hills and a fine black crag standing single at the terminus as sentry. Before me, that is, towards Keswick, the mountains stand, one behind the other, in orderly array, as if evoked by and attentive to the white-vested wizards.” It was from almost the same point of view that, thirty years afterwards, his wife, on her journey south after her daughter’s marriage, took a solemn farewell of the Vale of Keswick once so strange, but then so dear and so familiar.

[217] George Fricker, Mrs. Coleridge’s younger brother.

[218] A gossiping account of the early history and writings of “Mr. Robert Southey” appeared in _Public Characters for 1799-1800_, a humble forerunner of _Men of the Time_, published by Richard Phillips, the founder of the _Monthly Magazine_, and afterwards knighted as a sheriff of the city of London. Possibly Coleridge was displeased at the mention of his name in connection with Pantisocracy, and still more by the following sentence: “The three young poetical friends, Lovel, Southey, and Coleridge, married three sisters. Southey is attached to domestic life, and, fortunately, was very happy in his matrimonial connection.” It was Sir Richard Phillips, the “knight” of Coleridge’s anecdote, who told Mrs. Barbauld that he would have given “nine guineas a sheet for the last hour and a half of his conversation.” _Letters, Conversations_, etc., 1836, ii. 131, 132.

[219] “These various pieces were rearranged in three volumes under the title of _Minor Poems_, in 1815, with this motto, _Nos hæc novimus esse nihil_.” _Poetical Works of Robert Southey_, 1837, ii., xii.

[220] Mary Hayes, a friend of Mary Wollstonecraft, whose opinions she advocated with great zeal, and whose death she witnessed. Among other works, she wrote a novel, _Memoirs of Emma Courtney_, and _Female Biography, or Memoirs of Illustrious and Celebrated Women_. Six volumes. London: R. Phillips. 1803.

[221] He used the same words in a letter to Poole dated December 31, 1799. _Thomas Poole and his Friends_, i. 1.

[222] “Essay on the New French Constitution,” _Essays on His Own Times_, i. 183-189.

[223] The Ode appeared in the _Morning Post_, December 24, 1799. The stanzas in which the Duchess commemorated her passage over Mount St. Gothard appeared in the _Morning Post_, December 21. They were inscribed to her children, and it was the last stanza, in which she anticipates her return, which suggested to Coleridge the far-fetched conceit that maternal affection enabled the Duchess to overcome her aristocratic prejudices, and “hail Tell’s chapel and the platform wild.” It runs thus:--

Hope of my life! dear _children_ of my heart!
That anxious heart to each fond feeling true,
To you still pants each pleasure to impart,
And soon--oh transport--reach its home and you.

_From a transcript in my possession of which the opening lines are in the handwriting of Mrs. H. N. Coleridge._

[224] The libel of which Coleridge justly complained was contained in these words: “Since this time (that is, since leaving Cambridge) he has left his native country, commenced citizen of the world, left his poor children fatherless and his wife destitute. _Ex his disce_ his friends Lamb and Southey.” _Biographia Literaria_, 1817, vol. i. chapter i. p. 70, _n._

[225] Mrs. Robinson (“Perdita”) contributed two poems to the _Annual Anthology_ of 1800, “Jasper” and “The Haunted Beach.” The line which caught Coleridge’s fancy, the first of the twelfth stanza, runs thus:--

“Pale Moon! thou Spectre of the Sky.”

_Annual Anthology_, 1800, p. 168.

[226] _St. Leon_ was published in 1799. _William Godwin, his Friends and Contemporaries_, i. 330.

[227] See “Mr. Coleridge’s Report of Mr. Pitt’s Speech in Parliament of February 17, 1800, On the continuance of the War with France.” _Morning Post_, February 18, 1800; _Essays on His Own Times_, ii. 293. See, too, Mrs. H. N. Coleridge’s note, and the report of the speech in _The Times_. _Ibid._ iii. 1009-1019. The original notes, which Coleridge took in pencil, have been preserved in one of his note-books. They consist, for the most part, of skeleton sentences and fragmentary jottings. How far Coleridge may have reconstructed Pitt’s speech as he went along, it is impossible to say, but the speech as reported follows pretty closely the outlines in the note-book. The remarkable description of Buonaparte as the “child and champion of Jacobinism,” which is not to be found in _The Times_ report, appears in the notes as “the nursling and champion of Jacobinism,” and, if these were the words which Pitt used, in this instance, Coleridge altered for the worse.

[228] “The Beguines I had looked upon as a religious establishment, and the only good one of its kind. When my brother was a prisoner at Brest, the sick and wounded were attended by nurses, and these women had made themselves greatly beloved and respected.” Southey to Rickman, January 9, 1800. _Life and Correspondence_, ii. 46. It is well known that Southey advocated the establishment of Protestant orders of Sisters of Mercy.

[229] In a letter from Southey to Coleridge, dated February 15, 1800 (unpublished), he proposes the establishment of a Magazine with signed articles. But a “History of the Levelling Principle,” which Coleridge had suggested as a joint work, he would only publish anonymously.

[230] See Letter from Southey to Coleridge, December 27, 1799. _Life and Correspondence_, ii. 35.

[231] “Concerning the French, I wish Bonaparte had staid in Egypt and that Robespierre had guilloteened Sieyès. These cursed complex governments are good for nothing, and will ever be in the hands of intriguers: the Jacobins were the men, and one house of representatives, lodging the executive in committees, the plain and common system of government. The cause of republicanism is over, and it is now only a struggle for dominion. There wants a Lycurgus after Robespierre, a man loved for his virtue, and bold and inflexible, who should have levelled the property of France, and then would the Republic have been immortal--and the world must have been revolutionized by example.” From an unpublished letter from Southey to Coleridge, dated December 23, 1799.

[232] “Alas, poor human nature! Or rather, indeed, alas, poor Gallic nature! For Γραῖοι ἀεὶ μαῖδες the French are always children, and it is an infirmity of benevolence to wish, or dread, aught concerning them.” S. T. C., _Morning Post_, December 31, 1797; _Essays on His Own Times_, i. 184.

[233] See _Poetical Works_, Appendix K, pp. 544, 545. Editor’s Note, pp. 646-649.

[234]

“The _winter_ Moon upon the sand
A silvery Carpet made,
And mark’d the sailor reach the land--
And mark’d _his Murderer_ wash his hand
Where the green billows played!”

_Annual Anthology_, 1800: “The Haunted Beach,” sixth stanza, p. 256.

[235] These letters, under the title of “Monopolists” and “Farmers,” appeared in the _Morning Post_, October 3-9, 1800. Coleridge wrote the first of the series, and the introduction to No. III. of “Farmers,” “In what manner they are affected by the War” _Essays on His Own Times_, ii. 413-450; _Thomas Poole and his Friends_, ii. 15, 16.

[236] It is impossible to explain this statement, which was repeated in a letter to Josiah Wedgwood, dated November 1, 1800. The printed “Christabel,” even including the conclusion to Part II., makes only 677 lines, and the discarded portion, if it ever existed, has never come to light. See Mr. Dykes Campbell’s valuable and exhaustive note on “Christabel,” _Poetical Works_, pp. 601-607.

[237] A former title of “The Excursion.”

[238] “Sunday night, half past ten, September 14, 1800, a boy born (Bracy).

“September 27, 1800. The child being very ill was baptized by the name of Derwent. The child, hour after hour, made a noise exactly like the creaking of a door which is being shut very slowly to prevent its creaking.” (_MS._) S. T. C.

My father’s life was saved by his mother’s devotion. “On the occasion here recorded,” he writes, “I had eleven convulsion fits. At last my father took my mother gently out of the room, and told her that she must make up her mind to lose this child. By and by she heard the nurse lulling me, and said she would try once more to give me the breast.” She did so; and from that time all went well, and the child recovered.

[239] Afterwards Sir Anthony, the distinguished surgeon, 1768-1840.

[240] According to Dr. Davy, the editor of _Fragmentary Remains of Sir H. Davy_, London, 1858, the reference is to the late Mr. James Thompson of Clitheroe.

[241] William, the elder brother of Raisley Calvert, who left Wordsworth a legacy of nine hundred pounds. In that mysterious poem, “Stanzas written in my Pocket Copy of Thomson’s Castle of Indolence,” it would seem that Wordsworth begins with a blended portrait of himself and Coleridge, and ends with a blended portrait of Coleridge and William Calvert. Mrs. Joshua Stanger (Mary Calvert) maintained that “the large gray eyes” and “low-hung lip” were certainly descriptive of Coleridge and could not apply to her father; but she admitted that, in other parts of the poem, Wordsworth may have had her father in his mind. Of this we may be sure, that neither Coleridge nor Wordsworth had “inventions rare,” or displayed beetles under a microscope. It is evident that Hartley Coleridge, who said “that his father’s character and habits are here [that is, in these stanzas] preserved in a livelier way than in anything that has been written about him,” regarded the first and not the second half of the poem as a description of S. T. C. “The Last of the Calverts,” _Cornhill Magazine_, May, 1890, pp. 494-520.

[242] On page 210 of vol. ii. of the second edition of the _Lyrical Ballads_ (1800), there is a blank space. The omitted passage, fifteen lines in all, began with the words, “Though nought was left undone.” _Works of Wordsworth_, p. 134, II. 4-18.

[243] During the preceding month Coleridge had busied himself with instituting a comparison between the philosophical systems of Locke and Descartes. Three letters of prodigious length, dated February 18, 24 (a double letter), and addressed to Josiah Wedgwood, embodied the result of his studies. They would serve, he thought, as a preliminary excursus to a larger work, and would convince the Wedgwoods that his _wanderjahr_ had not been altogether misspent. Mr. Leslie Stephen, to whom this correspondence has been submitted, is good enough to allow me to print the following extract from a letter which he wrote at my request: “Coleridge writes as though he had as yet read no German philosophy. I knew that he began a serious study of Kant at Keswick; but I fancied that he had brought back some knowledge of Kant from Germany. This letter seems to prove the contrary. There is certainly none of the transcendentalism of the Schelling kind. One point is, that he still sticks to Hartley and to the Association doctrine, which he afterwards denounced so frequently. Thus he is dissatisfied with Locke, but has not broken with the philosophy generally supposed to be on the Locke line. In short, he seems to be at the point where a study of Kant would be ready to launch him in his later direction, but is not at all conscious of the change. When he wrote the _Friend_ [1809-10] he had become a Kantian. Therefore we must, I think, date his conversion later than I should have supposed, and assume that it was the study of Kant just after this letter was written which brought about the change.”

[244] Nothing is known of these lines beyond the fact that in 1816 Coleridge printed them as “Conclusion to Part II.” of “Christabel.” It is possible that they were intended to form part of a distinct poem in the metre of “Christabel,” or, it may be, they are the sole survival of an attempted third part of the ballad itself. It is plain, however, that the picture is from the life, that “the little child, the limber elf,” is the four-year-old Hartley, hardly as yet “fitting to unutterable thought, The breeze-like motion, and the self-born carol.”

[245] George Hutchinson, the fourth son of John Hutchinson of Penrith, was at this time in occupation of land at Bishop’s Middleham, the original home of the family. He migrated into Radnorshire in 1815, being then about the age of thirty-seven; but between that date and his leaving Bishop’s Middleham he had resided for some time in Lincolnshire, at Scrivelsby, where he was engaged probably as agent on the estate of the “Champion.” His first residence after migration was at New Radnor, where he married Margaret Roberts of Curnellan, but he subsequently removed into Herefordshire, where he resided in many places, latterly at Kingston. He died at his son’s house, The Vinery, Hereford, in 1866. It would seem from a letter dated July 25, 1801 (Letter CXX.), that at this time Sarah Hutchinson kept house for her brother George, and that Mary (Mrs. Wordsworth) and Joanna Hutchinson lived with their elder brother Tom at Gallow Hill, in the parish of Brompton, near Scarborough. The register of Brompton Church records the marriage of William Wordsworth and Mary Hutchinson, on October 4, 1802; but in the notices of marriages in the _Gentleman’s Magazine_, of October, 1802, the latter is described as “Miss Mary Hutchinson of Wykeham,” an adjoining parish.

[From information kindly supplied to me by Mr. John Hutchinson, the keeper of the Library of the Middle Temple.]

[246] The historian William Roscoe (afterwards M. P. for Liverpool), and the physician James Currie, the editor and biographer of Burns, were at this time settled at Liverpool and on terms of intimacy with Dr. Peter Crompton of Eaton Hall.

[247] The Bristol merchant who lent the manor-house of Racedown to Wordsworth in 1795.

[248] In the well-known lines “On revisiting the Sea-shore,” allusion is made to this “mild physician,” who vainly dissuaded him from bathing in the open sea. Sea-bathing was at all times an irresistible pleasure to Coleridge, and he continued the practice, greatly to his benefit, down to a late period of his life and long after he had become a confirmed invalid. _Poetical Works_, p. 159.

[249] Francis Wrangham, whom Coleridge once described as “admirer of me and a pitier of my political principles” (Letter to Cottle [April], 1796), was his senior by a few years. On failing to obtain, it is said on account of his advanced political views, a fellowship at Trinity Hall, he started taking pupils at Cobham in Surrey in partnership with Basil Montagu. The scheme was of short duration, for Montagu deserted tuition for the bar, and Wrangham, early in life, was preferred to the benefices of Hemmanby and Folkton, in the neighborhood of Scarborough. He was afterwards appointed to a Canonry of York, to the Archdeaconry of Cleveland, and finally to a prebendal stall at Chester. He published a volume of _Poems_ (London, 1795), in which are included Coleridge’s Translation of the “Hendecasyllabli ad Bruntonam e Grantâ exituram,” and some “Verses to Miss Brunton with the preceding Translation.” He died in 1842. _Poetical Works_, p. 30. See, too, Editor’s Note, p. 569; _Reminiscences of Cambridge_, by Henry Gunning, London, 1855, ii. 12 _seq._

[250] “I took a first floor for him in King Street, Covent Garden, at my tailor’s, Howell’s, whose wife is a cheerful housewife of middle age, who I knew would nurse Coleridge as kindly as if he were her son.” D. Stuart, _Gent. Mag._, May, 1838. See, too, _Letters from the Lake Poets_, p. 7.

[251] Captain Luff, for many years a resident at Patterdale, near Ulleswater, was held in esteem for the energy with which he procured the enrolment of large companies of volunteers. Wordsworth and Coleridge were frequent visitors at his house, For his account of the death of Charles Gough, on Helvellyn, and the fidelity of the famous spaniel, see _Coleorton Letters_, i. 97. _Letters from the Lake Poets_, p. 131.

[252] _Ciceronis Epist. ad Fam._ iv. 10.

[253] _Ib._ i. 2.

[254] The lines are taken, with some alterations, from a kind of _l’envoy_ or epilogue which Bruno affixed to his long philosophical poem, _Jordani Bruni Nolani de Innumerabilibus Immenso et Infigurabili; seu de Universo et Mundis libri octo_. Francofurti, 1591, p. 654.

[255] John Hamilton Mortimer, 1741-1779. He painted _King John granting Magna Charta_, the _Battle of Agincourt_, the _Conversion of the Britons_, and other historical subjects.

[256] Drayton’s _Poly-Olbion_, Song 22, 1-17.

[257] The Latin Iambics, in which Dean Ogle celebrated the little Blyth, which ran through his father’s park at Kirkley, near Ponteland, deserve the highest praise; but Bowles’s translation is far from being execrable. He may not have caught the peculiar tones of the Northumbrian burn which awoke the memories of the scholarly Dean, but his irregular lines are not without their own pathos and melody. Bowles was a Winchester boy, and Dr. Newton Ogle, then Dean of Winchester, was one of his earliest patrons. It was from the Dean’s son, his old schoolfellow, Lieutenant Ogle, that he claimed to have gathered the particulars of Coleridge’s discovery at Reading and discharge from the army. “Poems of William Lisle Bowles,” _Galignani_, 1829, p. 131; “The Late Mr. Coleridge a Common Soldier,” _Times_, August 13, 1834.

[258] One of a series of falls made by the Dash Beck, which divides the parishes of Caldbeck and Skiddaw Forest, and flows into Bassenthwaite Lake.

The following minute description is from an entry in a note-book dated October 10, 1800:--

“The Dash itself is by no means equal to the Churnmilk (_sic_) at Eastdale (_sic_) or the Wytheburn Fall. This I wrote standing under and seeing the whole Dash; but when I went over and descended to the bottom, then I only _saw_ the real _Fall_ and the curve of the steep slope, and retracted. It is, indeed, so seen, a fine thing. It falls parallel with a fine black rock thirty feet, and is more shattered, more completely atomized and white, than any I have ever seen.... The Fall of the Dash is in a horse-shoe basin of its own, wildly peopled with small ashes standing out of the rocks. Crossed the beck close by the white pool, and stood on the other side in a complete spray-_rain_. Here it assumes, I think, a still finer appearance. You see the vast rugged net and angular points and upright cones of the black rock; the Fall assumes a variety and complexity, parts rushing in wheels, other parts perpendicular, some in white horse-tails, while towards the right edge of the black [rock] two or three leisurely fillets have escaped out of the turmoil.”

[259] I have been unable to discover any trace of the MS. of this translation.

[260] The “Ode to Dejection,” of which this is the earliest version, was composed on Sunday evening, April 4, and published six months later, in the _Morning Post_ of October 4, 1802. It was reprinted in the _Sibylline Leaves_, 1817. A comparison of the Ode, as sent to Sotheby, with the first printed version (_Poetical Works_, Appendix G, pp. 522-524) shows that it underwent many changes before it was permitted to see the “light of common day” in the columns of the _Morning Post_. The Ode was begun some three weeks after Coleridge returned to Keswick, after an absence of four months. He had visited Southey in London, he had been a fellow guest with Tom Wedgwood for a month at Stowey, he had returned to London and attended Davy’s lectures at the Royal Institution, and on his way home he had stayed for a fortnight with his friend T. Hutchinson, Wordsworth’s brother-in-law, at Gallow Hill.

He left Gallow Hill “on March 13 in a violent storm of snow, wind, and rain,” and must have reached Keswick on Sunday the 14th or Monday the 15th of March. On the following Friday he walked over to Dove Cottage, and once more found himself in the presence of his friends, and, once again, their presence and companionship drove him into song. The Ode is at once a confession and a contrast, a confession that he had fled from the conflict with his soul into the fastnesses of metaphysics, and a contrast of his own hopelessness with the glad assurance of inward peace and outward happiness which attended the pure and manly spirit of his friend.

But verse was what he had been wedded to,
And his own mind did like a tempest strong
Come thus to him, and drove the weary wight along.

A MS. note-book of 1801-2, which has helped to date his movements at the time, contains, among other hints and jottings, the following almost illegible fragment: “The larches in spring push out their separate bundles of ... into green brushes or pencils which ... small tassels;”--and with the note may be compared the following lines included in the version contained in the letter, but afterwards omitted:--

In this heartless mood,
To other thoughts by yonder throstle woo’d,
_That pipes within the larch-tree, not unseen
The larch that pushes out in tassels green
Its bundled leafits--woo’d to mild delights,
By all the tender sounds and gentle sights
Of this sweet primrose-month, and vainly woo’d!_
O dearest Poet, in this heartless mood--

Another jotting in the same note-book: “A Poem on the endeavour to emancipate the mind from day-dreams, with the different attempts and the vain ones,” perhaps found expression in the lines which follow “My shaping spirit of Imagination,” which appeared for the first time in print in _Sibylline Leaves_, 1817, but which, as Mr. Dykes Campbell has rightly divined, belonged to the original draft of the Ode. _Poetical Works_, p. 159. Appendix G, pp. 522-524. Editor’s Note, pp. 626-628.

[261] “A lovely skye-canoe.” _Morning Post._ The reference is to the Prologue to “Peter Bell.” Compare stanza 22,

“My little vagrant Form of light,
My gay and beautiful Canoe.”

Wordsworth’s _Poetical Works_, p. 100.

[262] For Southey’s reply, dated Bristol, August 4, 1802, see _Life and Correspondence_, ii. 189-192.

[263] The Right Hon. Isaac Corry, Chancellor of the Exchequer for Ireland, to whom Southey acted as secretary for a short time.