Chapter XIV: The Philosopher and Divine (1)

1822-1832

CCXXX. TO JOHN MURRAY.

HIGHGATE, January 18, 1822.

DEAR SIR,--If not with the works, you are doubtless familiar with the name of that “wonderful man” (for such, says Doddridge, I must deliberately call him), Archbishop Leighton. It would not be easy to point out another name, which the eminent of all parties, Catholic and Protestant, Episcopal and Presbyterian, Whigs and Tories, have been so unanimous in extolling. “There is a spirit in Archbishop Leighton I never met with in any human writings; nor can I read many lines in them without impressions which I could wish always to retain,” observes a dignitary of our Establishment and F. R. S. eminent in his day both as a philosopher and a divine. In fact, it would make no small addition to the size of the volume, if, as was the fashion in editing the classics, we should collect the eulogies on his writings passed by bishops only and church divines, from Burnet to Porteus. That this confluence of favourable opinions is not without good cause, my own experience convinces me. For at a time when I had read but a small portion of the Archbishop’s principal work, when I was altogether ignorant of its celebrity, much more of the peculiar character attributed to his writings (that of making and leaving a deep impression on readers of all classes), I remember saying to Mr. Southey[186] “that in the Apostolic Epistles I heard the last hour of Inspiration striking, and in Arch. Leighton’s commentary the lingering _vibration_ of the sound.” Perspicuous, I had almost said transparent, his style is _elegant_ by the mere compulsion of the thoughts and feelings, and in despite, as it were, of the writer’s wish to the contrary. Profound as his conceptions often are, and numerous as the passages are, where the most _athletic_ thinker will find himself tracing a rich vein from the surface downward, and leave off with an unknown depth for to-morrow’s delving--yet there is this quality peculiar to Leighton, unless we add Shakespeare--that there is always a scum on the very surface which the simplest may understand, if they have head and heart to understand anything. The same or nearly the same excellence characterizes his eloquence. Leighton had by nature a quick and pregnant fancy, and the august objects of his habitual contemplation, and their remoteness from the outward senses, his constant endeavour to see or to bring all things under some point of unity, but, above all, the rare and vital union of head and heart, of light and love, in his own character,--all these working conjointly could not fail to form and nourish in him the higher power, and more akin to reason, the power, I mean, of imagination. And yet in his freest and most figurative passages there is a _subdued_ness, a self-checking timidity in his colouring, a sobering silver-grey tone over all; and an experienced eye may easily see where and in how many instances Leighton has substituted neutral tints for a strong light or a bold relief--by this sacrifice, however, of particular effects, giving an increased permanence to the impression of the whole, and wonderfully facilitating its soft and quiet _illapse_ into the very recesses of our convictions. Leighton’s happiest ornaments of style are made to appear as efforts on the part of the author to express himself _less_ ornamentally, more plainly.

Since the late alarm respecting Church Calvinism and Calvinistic Methodism (a cry of Fire! Fire! in consequence of a red glare on one or two of the windows, from a bonfire of straw and stubble in the church-yard, while the dry rot of virtual Socinianism is snugly at work in the beams and joists of the venerable edifice) I have heard of certain gentle doubts and questions as to the Archbishop’s _perfect_ orthodoxy--some small speck in the diamond which had escaped the quick eye of all former theological jewellers from Bishop Burnet to the outrageously anti-Methodistic Warburton. But on what grounds I cannot even conjecture, unless it be, that the Christianity which Leighton teaches contains the doctrines peculiar to the Gospel as well as the truths common to it with the (so-called) light of nature or natural religion, that he dissuades students and the generality of Christians from all attempts at explaining the mysteries of faith by _notional_ and metaphysical speculations, and rather by a heavenly life and temper to obtain a closer view of these truths, the _full_ light and knowledge of which it is in Heaven only that we shall possess. He further advises them in speaking of these truths to proper scripture language; but since something more than this had been made necessary by the restless spirit of dispute, to take this “something more” in the sound precise terms of the Liturgy and Articles of the Established Church. Enthusiasm? Fanaticism? Had I to recommend an antidote, I declare on my conscience that above all others it should be Leighton. And as to Calvinism, L.’s exposition of the scriptural sense of election ought to have prevented the very [suspicion of its presence]. You will long ago, I fear, have [been asking yourself], To what does all this tend? Briefly then, I feel strongly persuaded, perhaps because I strongly wish it, that the Beauties of Archbishop Leighton, selected and methodized, with a (better) Life of the Author, that is, a biographical and critical introduction as Preface, and Notes, would make not only a useful but an interesting POCKET VOLUME. “Beauties” in general are objectionable works--injurious to the original author, as disorganizing his productions, pulling to pieces the well-wrought _crown_ of his glory to pick out the shining stones, and injurious to the reader, by indulging the taste for unconnected, and for that reason unretained single thoughts, till it fares with him as with the old gentleman at Edinburgh, who eat six kittywakes by way of _whetting_ his appetite--“whereas” (said he) “it proved quite the contrary: I never sat down to a dinner with so little.” But Leighton’s principal work, that which fills two volumes and a half of the four, being a commentary on St. Peter’s Epistles, verse by verse, and varying, of course, in subject, etc., with almost every paragraph, the volume, I propose, would not only bring together his finest passages, but these being afterwards arranged on a principle wholly independent of the accidental place of each in the original volumes, and guided by their relative bearings, it would give a connection or at least a propriety of _sequency_, that was before of necessity wanting. It may be worth noticing, that the editions, both the one in three, and the other in four volumes, are most grievously misprinted and otherwise disfigured. Should you be disposed to think this worthy your attention, I would even send you the proof _transcribed_, sheet by sheet, as it should be printed, though doubtless by sacrificing one copy of Leighton’s works, it might be effected by references to volume, page, and line, I having first carefully corrected the copy. Or, should you think another more likely to execute the plan better, or that another name would better promote its sale, I should by no means resent the preference, nor feel any mortification for which, the having occasioned the existence of such a work, tastefully selected and judiciously arranged, would not be sufficient compensation for,

Dear sir, your obliged
S. T. COLERIDGE.

CCXXXI. TO JAMES GILLMAN.

October 28, 1822.

DEAR FRIEND,--Words, I know, are not wanted between you and me. But there are occasions so awful, there may be instances and manifestations so affecting, and drawing up with them so long a train from behind, so many folds of recollection, as they come onward on one’s mind, that it seems but a mere act of justice to one’s self, a debt we owe to the dignity of our moral nature, to give them some record--a relief, which the spirit of man asks and demands to contemplate in some outward symbol of what it is inwardly solemnizing. I am still too much under the cloud of past misgivings;[187] too much of the stun and stupor from the recent peals and thunder-crash still remains to permit me to anticipate other than by wishes and prayers what the effect of your unweariable kindness may be on poor Hartley’s mind and conduct. I pray fervently, and I feel a cheerful trust that I do not pray in vain, that on my own mind and spring of action it will be proved not to have been wasted. I do inwardly believe that I shall yet do something to thank you, my dear Gillman, in the way in which you would wish to be thanked, by doing myself honour.

Mrs. Gillman has been determined by your letter, and the heavenly weather, and moral certainty of the continuance of _bathing_-weather at least, to accept her sister’s offer of coming into Ramsgate and to take a house, for a fortnight certain, at a guinea a week, in the buildings next to Wellington Crescent, and having a certain modicum and segment of sea-peep. You remember the house (the end one) with a balcony at the window, almost in a line with the Duke of W. ... in wood, _lignum vitæ_, like as life. I had thought of keeping my present bedroom at 10s. 6d. a week, but on consulting Mrs. Rogers, she did not think that this would satisfy the etiquette of the world, though the two houses are on different cliffs; and I felt so confident of the effect of the bathing and Ramsgate transparent water, the sands, the pier, etc., that as there was no alternative but of giving up the bathing (for Mrs. G. would not stay by herself, partly, if not chiefly, because she feared I might add more to your anxiety than your comfort in your bachelor state and with only Bessy of Beccles) or having Jane, I voted for the latter, and will do my very best to keep her in good humour and good spirits.

Dear Friend, and Brother of my Soul, God only knows how truly and in the depth you are loved and prized by your affectionate friend,

S. T. COLERIDGE.

CCXXXII. TO MISS BRENT.[188]

July 7, 1823.

MY DEAR CHARLOTTE,--I have been many times in town within the last three or four weeks; but with one exception, when I was driven in and back by Mr. Gillman to hear the present idol of the world of fashion, the Revd. Mr. Irving, the super-Ciceronian, ultra-Demosthenic pulpiteer of the Scotch Chapel in Cross Street, Hatton Garden, I have been always at the West End of the town, and mostly dancing attendance on a proud bookseller, and I fear to little purpose--weary enough of my existence, God knows! and yet not a tittle the more disposed to better it at the price of apostacy or suppression of the truth. If I could but once get off the two works, on which I rely for the proof that I have not lived in vain, and had those off my mind, I could then maintain myself well enough by writing for the purpose of what I got by it; but it is an anguish I cannot look in the face, to abandon just as it is completed the work of such intense and long-continued labour; and if I cannot make an agreement with Murray, I must try Colbourn, and if with neither, owing to the loud calumny of the “Edinburgh,” and the silent but more injurious detraction of the “Quarterly Review,” I must try to get them published by subscription. But of this when we meet. I write at present and to you as the less busy sister, to beg you will be so good as to send me the volume of Southey’s “Brazil,” which I am now in particular want of, by the Highgate Stage that sets off just before Middle Row. “Mr. Coleridge, or J. Gillman, Esq. (either will do), Highgate.”

My kind love to Mary. I have little doubt that I shall see you in the course of next week.

Do you think of taking rooms out of the smoke during this summer for any time?

God bless you, my dear Charlotte, and your affectionate

S. T. COLERIDGE.

CCXXXIII. TO THE REV. EDWARD COLERIDGE.[189]

HIGHGATE, July 23, 1823.

MY DEAR EDWARD,--From Carlisle to Keswick there are several routes possible, and neither of these without some attraction. The choice, however, lies between two; which to prefer, I find it hard to decide, and if, as on the whole I am disposed to do, I advise the former, it is not from thinking the other of inferior interest. On the contrary, if your _laking_ were comprised between Carlisle and Keswick, I should not hesitate to recommend the latter in preference, but because the first will bring you soonest to Keswick, where Mr. Southey still is, having, as your cousin Sara writes me, deferred his journey to town, on account of his book on “The Church,” which has outgrown its intended dimensions; and because the _sort_ of “scenery” (to use that slang word best confined to the creeking Daubenies of the Theatre) on the latter route, is what you will have abundant opportunities of seeing with the one leg of your compass fixed at Keswick.

First then, you may go from Carlisle to Rose Castle, and spend an hour in seeing that and its circumferency; and from thence to _Caldbeck_, its waterfalls and faery caldrons, with the Pulpit and Clerk’s Desk Rocks, over which the Cata-, or rather Kitten-ract, flings itself, and the cavern to the right of the fall, as you front it; and from Caldbeck to the foot of Bassenthwaite, when you are in the vale of Keswick and not many miles from Greta Hall. The second route is from Carlisle to Penrith (a road of little or no interest), but from Carlisle you would go to Lowther (Earl of Lonsdale’s seat and magnificent grounds), the village of Lowther, Hawes Water, and from Hawes Water you might pass over the mountains into Ulleswater, and when there, you might go round the head of the lake (that is, Patterdale), and, if on foot and strong enough and the weather is fine, pass over Helvellyn, and so get into the high road between Grasmere and Keswick, or, passing lower down on the lake, cross over by Graystock, or with a guide or manual instructions, over the fells so as to come out at or not far from Threlkeld, which is but three or four miles from Keswick. At least in good weather there is, I believe, a tolerably _equitible_ (that is, horse or pony-tolerating) track. But at Patterdale you would receive the best direction. There is an inn at Patterdale where you might sleep, so as to make one day of it from Penrith to the Lake Head, _viâ_ Lowther and Hawes Water; and thence to Keswick would take good part of a second. There is one consideration in favour of this plan, that from Carlisle to Penrith, or even to Lowther, you might go by the coach, and I question whether you could reach Greta Hall by the Caldbeck Route in one day when at Keswick. When at Keswick, I would advise you to go to Wastdale through Borrowdale, and if you could return by Crummock and through the vale of Newlands, the inverted arch of which (on the ͜A͜B (A B) of which I once saw the two legs of a rich rainbow so as to form with the arch a perfect circle) _faces_ Greta Hall, you will have seen the very pith and marrow of the Lakes, especially as your route to Chester or Liverpool will take you that heavenly road through Thirlmere, Grasmere, Rydal (where you will, of course, pay your respects to Mr. Wordsworth), Ambleside, and the _striking_ half of Windermere.

God bless you! Pray take care of yourself, were it only that you know how fearful and anxious your father and Fanny[190] are respecting your chest and lungs, in case of cold or over-exertion.

I have heard from Sara and from Mr. Watson (a friend of mine who has just come from the North) a very comfortable account of Hartley.

Believe me, dear Edward, with every kind wish, your affectionate uncle and sincere friend,

[S. T. COLERIDGE.]

P. S. Your query respecting the poem I can only answer by a _Nescio_. Irving (the Scotch preacher, so blackguarded in the “John Bull” of last Sunday), certainly the greatest _orator_ I ever heard (N. B. I make and mean the same distinction between oratory and eloquence as between the mouth + the windpipe and the brain + heart), is, however, a man of great simplicity, of overflowing affections, and enthusiastically in earnest; and I have reason to believe, deeply regrets his conjunction of Southey with Byron, as far as the _men_ (and not the poems) are in question.

CCXXXIV. TO J. H. GREEN.

GROVE, HIGHGATE, February 15, 1824.

I mentioned to you, I believe, Basil Montagu’s kind endeavour to have an associateship of the Royal Society of Literature (a yearly £100 versus a yearly essay) conferred on me. I knew nothing of the particulars till this morning, or rather till within this hour, when I received a list of names (electors) from Mr. Montagu, with advice to write to such and such and such--while he, and he, and he had promised “_for us_”--in short, a regular _canvass_, or rather sackcloth with the ashes on it pulled out of the dust holes, moistened with cabbage-water, and other culinary excretions of the same kidney. Of course, I _jibbed_ and with proper (if not equa; yet) mulanimity returned for answer--that what a man’s friends did _sub rosâ_, and what one friend might say to another in favour of an individual, was one thing--what a man did in his own name and person was another--and that I would not, _could_ not, _solicit_ a single vote. I should think it an affrontive interference with a decision, in which there ought to be neither ground or motive, but the elector’s own judgement, and conscience, and all for what? It is hard if, in the same time as I could produce an essay of the sort required, I could not get the same sum by compiling a school-book.

However, I fear, that having allowed my name, at Montagu’s instance, to be proposed, which it was by a Mr. Jerdan (N. B. Neither the one _sub cubili_, nor that in Palestine; but the Jerdan of Michael’s Grove, Brompton, No. 1), I cannot now withdraw my name without appearing to _trifle_ with my friends, and without hurting Montagu--so I must submit to the probability of being black-balled as the penalty of having given my assent before I had ascertained the conditions. So I have decided to let the thing take its own course. But as Montagu wishes to have Mr. Chantrey’s vote _for us_, if you see and _feel_ no objection (an objectiuncula will be quite sufficient), you will perhaps write him a line to state the circumstances. It comes on on Thursday next.

I look forward with a _feel_ of regeneration to the Sundays.

My best and most affectionate respects to Mrs. J. Green, and to your dear and excellent mother if she be with you.

And till we meet, may God bless you and your obliged and sincere friend,

S. T. COLERIDGE.

CCXXXV. TO THE SAME.

ÆDES NEMOROSÆ, APUD PORT{M} ALTAM,
May 19, 1824.

Mr. S. T. Coleridge, F. R. S. L., R. A., H. M., P. S. B., etc., etc., has the honour of avowing the high gratification he will receive should any answer from him be thought “to oblige Lincoln’s Inn Fields.” When he reflects indeed on their many and cogent claims on his admiration and gratitude, what a _Fund_ of _Literature_ they contain, what a Royal Society, what Royal Associates--not to speak of those as yet in the egg of futurity, the unhatched Decemvirate and Spes Altera Phœbi! What a royal College, where philosophy and eloquence unite to display their fresh and vernal green! what a conjunction of the Fine Arts with the Sciences, Law and Physique, Glossurgery and Chirurgery! when he remembers that if the Titanic Roc should take up the Great Pyramid in his beak, and drop the same with due skill, the L. I. F. would fit as cup to ball, bone to bone; though if S. T. C. might dare advise so great and rare a bird, the precious transport should be let fall point downwards, and thus prevent the adulteration of their intellectual splendours with “the light of common day,” while a duplicate of the Elysium below might be reared on its ample base in mid air--(ah! if a duplicate of No. 22 could be found)!--when S. T. C. ponders on these proud merits, what is there he would not do to “oblige Lincoln’s Inn Fields”? In vain does Gillman talk of a _stop_ being put thereto! Between _oblige_ and Lincoln’s Inn Fields continuity alone can intervene for the heart’s eye of their obliged and counter-obliging

S. T. COLERIDGE,

who, with his friends Mr. and Mrs. G., will, etc., on June 3rd.

J. H. GREEN, Esq., 22, Lincoln’s Inn Fields.

CCXXXVI. TO JAMES GILLMAN.

RAMSGATE, November 2, 1824.

MY DEAR FRIEND,--That so much longer an interval has passed between this and my last letter you will not, I am sure, attribute to any correspondent interval of oblivion. I do not, indeed, think that any two hours of any one day, taken at sixteen, have elapsed in which you, past or future, or myself in connection with you, were not for a longer or shorter space my uppermost thought. But the two days following James’s safe arrival by the coach I was so depressively unwell, so unremittingly restless, etc., and so exhausted by a teasing cough, and by two of these bad nights that make me moan out, “O for a sleep for sleep itself to rest in!” that I was quite disqualified for writing. And since then, I have been waiting for the Murrays to take a parcel with them, who were to have gone on Monday morning. But again not hearing from them, and remembering your injunction not to mind postage, I have resolved that no more time shall pass on and should have written to-day, even though Mrs. Gillman had not been dreaming about you last night, and about some letter, etc. Upon my seriousness, I do declare that I cannot make out certain dream-devils or damned souls that play pranks with me, whenever by the operation of a cathartic pill or from the want of one, a ci-devant dinner in its metempsychosis is struggling in the lower intestines. I cannot comprehend how any thoughts, the offspring or product of my own reflection, conscience, or fancy, could be translated into such images, and agents and actions, and am half-tempted (N. B. between sleeping and waking) to regard with some favour Swedenborg’s assertion that certain foul spirits of the lowest order are attracted by the precious ex-viands, whose conversation the soul half appropriates to itself, and which they contrive to whisper into the sensorium. The Honourable Emanuel has repeatedly caught them in the fact, in that part of the spiritual world corresponding to the guts in the world of bodies, and driven them away. I do not pass this Gospel; but upon my honour it is no bad apocrypha. I am at present in my best sort and state of health, bathed yesterday, and again this morning in spite of the rain, and in so deep a bath, that having thrown myself forward from the first step of the machine ladder, and only taken two strokes after my re-immersion, I had at least ten strokes to take before I got into my depth again, so that it is no false alarm when those who cannot swim are warned that a person may be drowned a very few yards from the machine. I returned to _fetch out_ our ladies to see the huge lengthy Columbus, with the two steam vessels,[191] before and behind, the former to tow, and the latter to, God knows what. By aid of a good glass, we saw it “_quite stink_,” as the poor woman said, the people on board, etc. It is 310 feet long, and 50 wide, and looks exactly like a _Brobdingnag punt_, and on our return we had (from Mrs. Jones) the “Morning Herald,” with Fauntleroy’s trial, which (if he be not a treble-damned liar) completely bears out my assertion that nothing short of a miracle could acquit the partners of _virtual_ accompliceship; this on my old principle, that the absence of what ought to have been present is all but equivalent to the presence of what ought to have been absent. Qui non prohibet quod prohibere potest et debet, _facit_.

Sir Alexander Johnston[192] has payed me great attention. There is a Lady Johnston not unlike Miss Sara Hutchinson in face and mouth, only that she is taller. Sir A. himself is a fine gentlemanly man, young-looking for his age, and with exception of one not easily describable motion of his head that makes him look as if he had been accustomed to have a _pen_ behind his ear, a sort of “Torney’s” clerk look, he might remind you of J. Hookham Frere. He is a sensible well-informed man, _specious_ in no bad sense of the word, but (I guess) not much depth. In all probability, you will see him. We have talked a good deal together about you and me, and me and you, in consequence of _occasion_ given. Sir A. is one of the leading men in _our_ Royal Society of Literature, and beyond doubt, a man of _influence_ in town. I am apt to forget superfluities, but a voice from above asks, “if I have said that we begin to be anxious to hear from you.” But probably before you can sit down to answer this, you will have received another, and, I flatter myself, more amusing, at least pleasure-giving Scripture from me. (N. B. “Coleridge’s Scriptures”--a new title.)

[No signature.]

CCXXXVII. TO THE REV. H. F. CARY.

HIGHGATE, Monday, December 14, 1824.

MY DEAR FRIEND,--The gentleman, Mr. Gabriel Rossetti,[193] whose letter to you I enclose, is a friend of my friend, Mr. J. H. Frere, with whom he lived in habits of intimacy at Malta and Naples. He seems to me what from Mr. Frere’s high opinion of him I should have confidently anticipated, a gentleman, a scholar, and a man of talents. The nature of his request you will learn from the letter, namely, a perusal of his Manuscript on the spirit of Dante and the mechanism and interpretation of the “Divina Commedia,” of which he believes himself to have the filum Ariadneum in his hand, and a frank opinion of the merits of his labours. My dear friend! I know by experience _what_ is asked in this twofold request, and that the weight increases in proportion to the kindness and sensibility and the shrinking from the infliction of pain of the person on whom it is enjoined. The name of Mr. John Hookham Frere would alone have sufficed to make _me_ undertake this office, had the request been directed to myself. It would have been my duty. But I would not, knowing your temper and habits and avocations, have sought to engage you, or even have put you to the discomfort of excusing yourself had I not been strongly impressed by Mr. Rossetti’s manners and conversation with the belief that the interests of literature are concerned, and that Mr. Rossetti has a claim on all the services which the sons of the Muses, and more particularly the cultivators of ancient Italian Literature, and most particularly Dante’s “English Duplicate and Re-incarnation” can render him. If your health and other duties allow your accession to this request (for the recommendation of the work to the booksellers is quite a secondary consideration, of minor importance in Mr. Rossetti’s estimation, and I have, besides, explained to him how very limited _our_ influence is), you will be so good as to let me hear from you, and where and when Mr. Rossetti might wait on you. He will be happy to attend you at Chiswick. He _understands_ English, and, he speaking Italian and I our own language, we had no difficulty in keeping up an animated conversation.

Make mine and all our cordial remembrances to Mrs. Cary, and believe me, dear friend, with perfect esteem and most affectionate regard, yours,

S. T. COLERIDGE.

P. S. Both Mrs. G. and myself have returned much benefited by our sea-sojourn. Mr. Rossetti has, I find, an additional merit in good men’s thoughts. He is a poet who has been driven into exile for the high morale of his writings. For even general sentiments breathing the spirit of nobler times are treasons in the present Neapolitan and Holy Alliance Codes! Wretches!! I dare even _pray_ against them, even with Davidian bitterness. Do not forget to let me have an answer to this, if possible, by next day’s post.

CCXXXVIII. TO WILLIAM WORDSWORTH.

Monday Night, ? 1824 ? 1829.

DEAR WORDSWORTH,--Three whole days the going through the first book cost me, though only to find fault. But I cannot find fault, in pen and ink, without thinking over and over again, and without some sort of an attempt to suggest the alteration; and, in so doing, how soon an hour is gone! so many half seconds up to half minutes are lost in leaning back in one’s chair, and looking up, in the bodily act of contracting the muscles of the brow and forehead, and unconsciously attending to the sensation. Had I the MS. with me for five or six months, so as to amuse myself off and on, without any solicitude as to a given day, and, could I be persuaded that if as well done as the nature of the thing (viz., _a translation of Virgil_,[194] in English) renders possible, it would not raise but simply sustain your well-merited fame for pure diction, where what is not idiom is never other than logically correct, I doubt not that the irregularities could be removed. But I am haunted by the apprehension that I am not feeling or thinking in the same spirit with you, at one time, and at another _too much_ in the spirit of your writings. Since Milton, I know of no poet with so many _felicities_ and unforgettable lines and stanzas as you. And to read, therefore, page after page without a single _brilliant_ note, depresses me, and I grow peevish with you for having wasted your time on a work _so_ much below you, that you cannot _stoop_ and _take_. Finally, my conviction is, that you undertake an _impossibility_, and that there is no medium between a prose version and one on the avowed principle of _compensation_ in the widest sense, that is, manner, genius, total effect. I confine myself to _Virgil_ when I say this.

I must now set to work with _all_ my powers and thoughts to my Leighton,[195] and then to my logic, and then to my _opus maximum_! if indeed it shall please God to spare me so long, which I have had too many warnings of late (more than my nearest friends know of) not to doubt. My kind love to Dorothy.

S. T. COLERIDGE.

CCXXXIX. TO JOHN TAYLOR COLERIDGE.

GROVE, HIGHGATE, Friday, April 8, 1825.

MY DEAR NEPHEW,--I need not tell you that no attention in my power to offer shall be wanting to Dr. Reich. As a foreigner and a man of letters he might claim this in his own right; and that he came from you would have ensured it, even though he had been a Frenchman. But that he is a German, and that you think him a worthy and deserving man, and that his lot, like my own, has been cast on the bleak north side of the mountain, make me reflect with pain on the little influence I possess, and the all but _zero_ of my direct means, to serve or to assist him. The prejudices excited against me by Jeffrey, combining with the mistaken notion of my German Metaphysics to which (I am told) some passages in some biographical gossip book about Lord Byron[196] have given fresh currency, have rendered my authority with the _Trade_ worse than nothing. Of the three schemes of philosophy, Kant’s, Fichte’s, and Schelling’s (as diverse each from the other as those of Aristotle, Zeno, and Plotinus, though all crushed together under the name Kantean Philosophy in the English talk) I should find it difficult to select the one from which I _differed_ the most, though perfectly easy to determine which of the three _men_ I hold in highest honour. And Immanuel Kant I assuredly do value most highly; not, however, as a metaphysician, but as a logician who has completed and systematised what Lord Bacon had boldly designed and loosely sketched out in the Miscellany of Aphorisms, his Novum Organum. In Kant’s “Critique of the Pure Reason” there is more than one fundamental error; but the main fault lies in the title-page, which to the manifold advantage of the work might be exchanged for “An Inquisition respecting the Constitution and Limits of the Human Understanding.” I can not only honestly assert, but I can satisfactorily prove by reference to writings (Letters, Marginal Notes, and those in books that have never been in my possession since I first left England for Hamburgh, etc.) that all the elements, the _differentials_, as the algebraists say, of my present opinions existed for me before I had even seen a book of German Metaphysics, later than Wolf and Leibnitz, or could have read it, if I had. But what will this avail? A High German Transcendentalist I must be content to remain, and a young American painter, Leslie (pupil and friend of a very dear friend of mine, Allston), to whom I have been in the habit for ten years and more of shewing as cordial regards as I could to a near relation, has, I find, introduced a portrait of me in a picture from Sir W. Scott’s “Antiquary,” as Dr. Duster Swivil, or whatever his name is.[197] Still, however, I will make any attempt to serve Dr. Reich, which he may point out and which, I am not sure, would dis-serve him! I do not, of course, know what command he has over the English language. If he wrote it fluently, I should think that it would answer to any one of our great publishers to engage him in the translation of the best and cheapest Natural History in existence, viz., Okens, in three thick octavo volumes, containing the inorganic world, and the animals from the Πρωτόζωα and animalcula of Infusions, to man. The Botany was not published two years ago. Whether it is now I do not know. There is one thin quarto of plates. It is by far the most entertaining as well as instructive book of the kind I ever saw; and with a few notes and the omission (or castigation) of one or two of Oken’s adventurous whimsies, would be a valuable addition to our English literature. So much for this.

I will not disguise from you, my dearest nephew, that the first certain information of your having taken the “Quarterly”[198] gave me a pain, which it required all my confidence in the soundness of your judgement to counteract. I had long before by conversation with experienced barristers got rid of all apprehension of its being likely to injure you professionally. My fears were directed to the _invidiousness_ of the situation, it being the notion of publishers that without satire and sarcasm no review can obtain or keep up a sale. Perhaps pride had some concern in it. _For_ myself I have none, probably because I had time out of mind given it up as a lost cause, given myself over, I mean, a predestined author, though without a drop of true _author_ blood in my veins. But a pride in and for the name of my father’s house I have, and those with whom I live know that it is never more than a dog-sleep, and apt to _start up_ on the slight alarms. Now, though very sillily, I felt pain at the notion of any _comparisons_ being drawn between _you_ (to whom with your sister my heart pulls the strongest) and Mr. Gifford, even though they should be [to] your advantage; and still more, the thought that ... Murray should be or hold himself entitled to have and express an opinion on the subject. The insolence of one of his proposals to me, viz., that he would publish an edition of my Poems, on the condition that a gentleman in his confidence (Mr. Milman![199] I understand) was to select, and make such omissions and corrections as should be thought advisable--this, which offered to myself excited only a smile in which there was nothing sardonic, might very possibly have rendered me sorer and more sensitive when I boded even an infinitesimal _ejusdem farinæ_ in connection with you.

But henceforward I shall look at the thing in a sunnier mood. Mr. Frere is strongly impressed with the importance and even dignity of the trust, and on the power you have of gradually giving a steadier and manlier tone to the feelings and principles of the higher classes. But I hope very soon to converse with you on this subject, as soon as I have finished my Essay for the Literary Society, (in which I flatter myself I have thrown some light on the passages in Herodotus respecting the derivation of the Greek Mythology from Egypt, and in what respect that paragraph respecting Homer and Hesiod is to be understood), and have, likewise, got my “Aids to Reflection” out of the Press. But I have more to do for the necessities of the day, and which are _Nos non nobis_, than I can well manage so as to go on with my own works, though I work from morning to night, as far as my health admits and the loss of my friendly amanuensis. For the slowness with which I get on with the pen in my own hand contrasts most strangely with the rapidity with which I dictate. Your kind letter of invitation did not reach me, but there was one which I ought to have answered long ago, which came while I was at Ramsgate. We have had a continued succession of illness in our family here, at one time six persons confined to their beds. I have been sadly afraid that we should lose Mrs. Gillman, who would be a loss indeed to the whole neighbourhood, young and old. But she seems, thank God! to recover strength, though slowly. As I hope to write again in a few days with my book, I shall now desire my cordial regards to Mrs. J. Coleridge, and with my affectionate love to the little ones.

With the warmest interest of affection and esteem, I am, my dear John, your sincere friend,

S. T. COLERIDGE.

J. T. COLERIDGE, Esq., 65, Torrington Square.

CCXL. TO THE REV. EDWARD COLERIDGE.

May 19, 1825.

MY VERY DEAR NEPHEW,--You have left me under a painful and yet genial feeling of regret, that my lot in life has hitherto so much estranged me from the children of the sons of my father, that venerable countenance and name which form my earliest recollections and _make them religious_. It is not in my power to express adequately so as to convey it to others what a revolution has taken place in my mind since I have seen your sister, and John, and Henry, and lastly yourself. Yet revolution is not the word I want. It is rather the sudden evolution of a seed that had sunk too deep for the warmth and exciting air to reach, but which a casual spade had turned up and brought close to the surface, and I now _know_ the meaning as well as feel the _truth_ of the Scottish proverb, Blood is thicker than water.

My book will be _out_ on Monday next, and Mr. Hessey hopes that he shall be able to have a copy ready for me by to-morrow afternoon, so that I may present it to the Bishop of London, whom (at his own request Lady B. tells me) with his angel-faced wife and Miss Howley[200] I am to meet at Sir George’s to-morrow at six o’clock. There are many on whose sincerity and goodness of heart I can rely. There are several in whose judgement and knowledge of the world I have greater trust than in my own. And among these few John Coleridge ranks foremost. It was, therefore, an indescribable comfort to me to hear from him, that the first draft of my “Aids to Reflection,” that is, all he had yet seen, had delighted him _beyond measure_. I can with severest truth declare that half a score flaming panegyrical reviews in as many works of periodical criticism would not have given me half the pleasure, nor one quarter the satisfaction.

I dine D. V. on Saturday next in Torrington Square, when doubtless we shall drink your health with appropriate adjuncts. Yesterday I had to inflict an hour and twenty-five minutes’ essay full of Greek and superannuated Metaphysics on the ears of the Royal Society of Literature, the subject being the Prometheus of Æschylus deciphered in proof and as instance of the connection of the Greek Drama with the Mysteries.[201] “Douce take it” (as Charles Lamb says in his Superannuated Man) if I did not feel remorseful pity for my audience all the time. For, at the very best, it was a thing to be read, not to read. God bless you or I shall be too late for the post.

Your affectionate uncle,
S. T. COLERIDGE.

P. S. I went yesterday to the Exhibition, and hastily “thrid” the labyrinth of the dense huddle, for the sole purpose of seeing our Bishop’s portrait.[202] My own by the same artist is very much better, though even in this the smile is exaggerated. But Fanny and your mother were in raptures with it while they too seemed very cold in their praise of William’s.

CCXLI. TO DANIEL STUART.

Postmark, July 9, 1825.

MY DEAR SIR,--The bad weather had so far damped my expectations, that, though I regretted, I did not feel any disappointment at your not coming. And yet I hope you will remember our Highgate Thursday conversation evenings on your return to town; because, if you come once, I flatter myself, you will afterwards be no unfrequent visitor.

At least, I have never been at any of the town conversazioni, literary, or artistical, in which the conversation has been more miscellaneous without degenerating into _pinches_, a pinch of this, and a pinch of that, without the least connection between the subjects, and with as little interest. You will like Irving as a companion and a converser even more than you admire him as a preacher. He has a vigorous and (what is always pleasant) a GROWING mind, and his character is MANLY throughout. There is one thing, too, that I cannot help considering as a recommendation to our evenings, that, in addition to a few ladies and pretty lasses, we have seldom more than five or six in company, and these generally of as many professions or pursuits. A few weeks ago we had present, two painters, two poets, one divine, an eminent chemist and naturalist, a major, a naval captain and voyager, a physician, a colonial chief justice, a barrister, and a baronet; and this was the most numerous meeting we ever had.

It would more than gratify me to know from you, what the impressions are which my “Aids to Reflection” make on your judgment. The conviction respecting the character of the times expressed in the _comment_ on Aph. vi., page 147, contains the aim and object of the whole book. I venture to direct your notice particularly to the note, page 204 to 207, to the note to page 218, and to the sentences respecting common sense in the last twelve lines of page 252, and the _conclusion_, page 377.

Lady Beaumont writes me that the Bishop of London has expressed a _most_ favourable opinion of the book; and Blanco White was sufficiently struck with it, as immediately to purchase all my works that are in print, and has procured from Sir George Beaumont an introduction to me. It is well I should have some one to speak for it, for I am unluckily ill off ... and you will easily see what a chance a poor book of mine has in these days.

Such has been the influence of the “Edinburgh Review” that in all Edinburgh not a single copy of Wordsworth’s works or of any part of them could be procured a few months ago. The only copy Irving saw in Scotland belonged to a poor weaver at Paisley, who prized them next to his Bible, and had all the Lyrical Ballads by heart--a fact which would cut Jeffrey’s conscience to the bone, if he had any. I give you my honour that Jeffrey himself told me that _he_ was himself an enthusiastic admirer of Wordsworth’s poetry, but it was necessary that a Review should have a character.

Forgive this egotism, and be pleased to remember me kindly and with my best respects to Mrs. Stuart, and with every cordial wish and prayer for you and yours, be assured that I am your obliged and affectionate friend,

S. T. COLERIDGE.

Friday, July 8, 1825.

CCXLII. TO JAMES GILLMAN.

[8 Plains of Waterloo, Ramsgate,]
October 10, 1825.

MY DEAR FRIEND,--It is a flat’ning thought that the more we have seen, the less we have to say. In youth and early manhood the mind and nature are, as it were, two rival artists both potent magicians, and engaged, like the King’s daughter and the rebel genii in the Arabian Nights’ Entertainments, in sharp conflict of conjuration, each having for its object to turn the other into canvas to paint on, clay to mould, or cabinet to contain. For a while the mind seems to have the better in the contest, and makes of Nature what it likes, takes her lichens and weather-stains for types and printers’ ink, and prints maps and facsimiles of Arabic and Sanscrit MSS. on her rocks; composes country dances on her moonshiny ripples, fandangos on her waves, and waltzes on her eddy-pools, transforms her summer gales into harps and harpers, lovers’ sighs and sighing lovers, and her winter blasts into Pindaric Odes, Christabels, and Ancient Mariners set to music by Beethoven, and in the insolence of triumph conjures her clouds into whales and walruses with palanquins on their backs, and chases the dodging stars in a sky-hunt! But alas! alas! that Nature is a wary wily long-breathed old witch, tough-lived as a turtle and divisible as the polyp, repullulative in a thousand snips and cuttings, _integra et in toto_. She is sure to get the better of Lady _Mind_ in the long run and to take her revenge too; transforms our to-day into a canvas dead-coloured to receive the dull, featureless portrait of yesterday: not alone turns the mimic mind, the ci-devant sculptress with all her kaleidoscopic freaks and symmetries! into clay, but _leaves_ it such a _clay_ to cast dumps or bullets in; and lastly (to end with that which suggested the beginning) she mocks the mind with its own metaphor, metamorphosing the memory into a _lignum vitæ_ escritoire to keep unpaid bills and dun’s letters in, with outlines that had never been filled up, MSS. that never went further than the title-pages, and proof sheets, and foul copies of Watchmen, Friends, Aids to Reflection, and other _stationary_ wares that have kissed the publishers’ shelf with all the tender intimacy of inosculation! Finis! and what is all this about? Why, verily, my dear friend! the thought forced itself on me, as I was beginning to put down the first sentence of this letter, how impossible it would have been fifteen or even ten years ago for me to have travelled and voyaged by land, river, and sea a hundred and twenty miles with fire and water blending their souls for my propulsion, as if I had been riding on a centaur with a sopha for a saddle, and yet to have nothing more to tell of it than that we had a very fine day and ran aside the steps in Ramsgate Pier at half-past four exactly, all having been well except poor Harriet, who during the middle third of the voyage fell into a reflecting melancholy.... She looked pathetic, but I cannot affirm that I observed anything sympathetic in the countenances of her fellow-passengers, which drew forth a sigh from me and a sage remark how many of our virtues originate in the fear of death, and that while we flatter ourselves that we are melting in Christian sensibility over the sorrows of our human brethren and sisteren, we are in fact, though perhaps unconsciously, moved at the prospect of our own end. For who ever sincerely pities seasickness, toothache, or a fit of the gout in a lusty good liver of fifty?

What have I to say? We have received the snuff, for which I thank your providential memory.... To Margate, and saw the caverns, as likewise smelt the same, called on Mr. Bailey, and got the Novum Organum. In my hurry, I scrambled up the Blackwood instead of a volume of Giovanni Battista Vico, which I left on the table in my room, and forgot my sponge and sponge-bag of oiled silk. But perhaps when I sit down to work, I may have to request something to be sent, which may come with them. I therefore defer it till then....

God bless you, my dear friend! You will soon hear again from

S. T. COLERIDGE.

CCXLIII. TO THE REV. EDWARD COLERIDGE.

December 9, 1825.

MY DEAR EDWARD,--I write merely to tell you, that I have secured Charles Lamb and Mr. Irving to meet you, and wait only to learn the day for the endeavour to induce Mr. Blanco White to join us. Will you present Mr. and Mrs. Gillman’s regards to your brothers Henry and John, and that they would be most happy if both or either would be induced to accompany you?

I have had a very interesting conversation with Irving this evening on the present condition of the Scottish Church, the spiritual life of which, yea, the very core he describes as in a state of ossification. The greater part of the Scottish clergy, he complains, have lost the _unction_ of their own church without acquiring the erudition and accomplishments of ours. Their sermons are all dry theological arguing and disputing, lifeless, pulseless,--a rushlight in a fleshless skull.

My kindest love to your sister, and kisses, prayers, and blessings for the little one.

[S. T. COLERIDGE.]

Thursday midnight.

I almost despair of John’s coming; but do persuade Henry if you can. I quite long to see him again.

CCXLIV. TO MRS. GILLMAN.

May 3, 1827.

MY DEAR FRIEND,--I received and acknowledge your this morning’s present both as plant and symbol, and with appropriate thanks and correspondent feeling. The rose is the pride of summer, the delight and the beauty of our gardens; the eglantine, the honeysuckle, and the jasmine, if not so bright or so ambrosial, are less transient, creep nearer to us, clothe our walls, twine over our porch, and haply peep in at our chamber window, with the crested wren or linnet within the tufts wishing good morning to us. Lastly the geranium passes the door, and in its hundred varieties imitating now this now that leaf, odour, blossom of the garden, still steadily retains its own _staid_ character, its own sober and refreshing hue and fragrance. It deserves to be the inmate of the house, and with due attention and tenderness will live through the winter grave yet cheerful, as an old family friend, that makes up for the departure of gayer visitors, in the leafless season. But none of these are the _myrtle_![203] In none of these, nor in all collectively, will the _myrtle_ find a substitute. All together and joining with them all the aroma, the spices, and the balsams of the hot-house, yet would they be a sad exchange for the _myrtle_! Oh, precious in its sweetness is the _rich_ innocence of its snow-white blossoms! And dear are they in the remembrance; but these may pass with the season, and while the myrtle plant, our own myrtle plant remains unchanged, its blossoms are remembered the more to endear the faithful bearer; yea, they survive invisibly in every _more than_ fragrant leaf. As the flashing strains of the nightingale to the yearning murmurs of the dove, so the myrtle to the rose! He who has once possessed and prized a genuine _myrtle_ will rather _remember_ it under the cypress tree than seek to _forget_ it among the rose bushes of a paradise.

God bless you, my dearest friend, and be assured that if death do not suspend memory and consciousness, death itself will not deprive you of a faithful participator in all your hopes and fears, affections and solicitudes, in your unalterable

S. T. COLERIDGE.

CCXLV. TO THE REV. GEORGE MAY COLERIDGE.

Monday, January 14, 1828.