Chapter XXIII: Part II: , 405 n.; (3)

“Tooke was a prodigious favourite with us (at Christ’s Hospital). I see before me, as vividly now as ever, his Mars and Apollo, his Venus and Aurora--the Mars coming on furiously in his car; Apollo, with his radiant head, in the midst of shades and fountains; Aurora with hers, a golden dawn; and Venus, very handsome, we thought, and not looking too modest in ‘a slight cymar.’” _Autobiography of Leigh Hunt_, p. 75.

[7] See note _infra_.

[8] George Rose, 1744-1818, statesman and political writer. He had recently brought in a bill which “authorised the sending to all the Parish Overseers in the country a paper of questions on the condition of the poor.” Poole, at the instance of John Rickman, secretary to Speaker Abbot, was at this time engaged at Westminster in drawing up an abstract of the various returns which had been made in accordance with Sir George Rose’s bill. See Letter from T. Poole to T. Wedgwood, dated September 14, 1803. Cottle’s _Reminiscences_, pp. 477, 478; _Thomas Poole and his Friends_, ii. 107-114.

[9] See Letter to Southey of February 20, 1804. Letter CXLIX.

[10] John Dalton, 1766-1844, chemist and meteorologist. He published his researches on the atomic theory, which he had begun in 1803, in his _New System of Chemical Philosophy_, in 1808. _Biographical Dictionary._

[11] His old fellow-student at Göttingen.

[12]

“O for a single hour of that Dundee,
Who on that day the word of onset gave.”

“In the Pass of Killicranky.” Wordsworth’s _Poetical Works_, 1889, p. 201.

[13] John Tobin the dramatist (or possibly his brother James), with whom Coleridge spent the last weeks of his stay in London, before he left for Portsmouth on the 27th of March, on his way to Malta.

[14] The misspelling, which was intentional, was an intimation to Lamb that the letter was not to be opened.

[15] A retired carrier, the owner of Greta Hall, who occupied “the smaller of the two houses inter-connected under one roof.” He was godfather to Hartley Coleridge, and left him a legacy of fifty pounds. Mrs. Wilson, the “Wilsy” of Hartley’s childhood, was Jackson’s housekeeper. _Memoir and Letters of Sara Coleridge_, 1873, i. 13.

[16] Coleridge had already attended Davy’s Lectures at the Royal Institution in 1802, and, possibly, in 1803. It is probable that allusions in his correspondence to Davy’s Lectures gave rise to the mistaken supposition that he delivered public lectures in London before 1808.

[17]

“He said, and, gliding like a snake,
Where Caradoc lay sleeping made his way.
Sweetly slept he, and pleasant were his dreams
Of Britain, and the blue-eyed maid he loved.
The Azteca stood over him; he knew
His victim, and the power of vengeance gave
Malignant joy. ‘Once hast thou ’scaped my arm:
But what shall save thee now?’ the Tyger thought,
Exulting; and he raised his spear to strike.
That instant, o’er the Briton’s unseen harp
The gale of morning past, and swept its strings
Into so sweet a harmony, that sure
It seem’d no earthly tone. The savage man
Suspends his stroke; he looks astonished round;
No human hand is near: ... and hark! again
The aërial music swells and dies away.
Then first the heart of Tlalala felt fear:
He thought that some protecting spirit watch’d
Beside the Stranger, and, abash’d, withdrew.”

“Madoc in Aztlan,” Book XI. Southey’s _Poetical Works_, 1838, v. 274, 275.

[18] Mrs. E. Fenwick, author of _Secrecy_, a novel (1799); a friend of Godwin’s first wife, Mary Wollstonecraft. _William Godwin_, by C. Kegan Paul, i. 282, 283. See, also, Lamb’s _Letters_ (ed. Ainger), i. 331; and Lamb’s essays, “Two Races of Men,” and “Newspapers Thirty-five Years ago.”

[19] Lamb’s “bad baby”--“a disgusting woman who wears green spectacles.” _Letters_, _passim_.

[20] Afterwards Sir John Stoddart, Chief Justice of Malta, 1826-39.

[21] A note dated “Treasury, July 20th, 1805,” gives vent to his feelings on this point. “Saturday morning ½ past nine o’clock, and soon I shall have to brace up my hearing _in toto_, (for I hear in my brain--I hear, that is, I have an immediate and _peculiar_ feeling instantly co-adunated with the sense of external sound = (exactly) to that which is experienced when one makes a wry face, and putting one’s right hand palm-wise to the right ear, and the left palm pressing hard on the forehead, one says to a bawler, ‘For mercy’s sake, man! don’t split the drum of one’s ear’--sensations analogous to this of various degrees of pain, even to a strange sort of uneasy pleasure. I am obnoxious to pure sound and therefore was saying--[N. B. Tho’ I ramble, I always come back to sense--the sense alive, tho’ sometimes a limb of syntax broken]--was saying that I hear in my brain, and still more hear in my stomach). For this ubiquity, almost (for I might safely add my toes--one or two, at least--and my knees) for this ubiquity of the _Tympanum auditorium_ I am now to wind up my courage, for in a few seconds that accursed Reveille, the horrible crash and persevering malignant torture of the _Pare-de-Drum_, will attack me, like a party of yelling, drunken North American Indians attacking a crazy fort with a tired garrison, out of an ambush. The noisiness of the Maltese everybody must notice; but I have observed uniformly among them such utter impassiveness to the action of sounds as that I am fearful that the _verum_ will be scarcely _verisimile_. I have heard screams of the most frightful kind, as of children run over by a cart, and running to the window I have seen two children in a parlour opposite to me (naked, except a kerchief tied round the waist) screaming in their horrid fiendiness--for _fun_! three adults in the room perfectly unannoyed, and this suffered to continue for twenty minutes, or as long as their lungs enabled them. But it goes thro’ everything, their street-cries, their priests, their advocates, their very pigs yell rather than squeak, or both together, rather, as if they were the true descendants of some half-dozen of the swine into which the Devils went, recovered by the Royal Humane Society. The dogs all night long would draw curses on them, but that the Maltese cats--it surpasses description, for he who has only heard caterwauling on English roofs can have no idea of a cat-serenade in Malta. In England it has often a close and painful resemblance to the distressful cries of young children, but in Malta it is identical with the wide range of screams uttered by imps while they are dragging each other into hotter and still hotter pools of brimstone and fire. It is the discord of Torment and of Rage and of Hate, of paroxysms of Revenge, and _every_ note grumbles away into Despair.”

[22] The first Sicilian tour extended from the middle of August to the 7th of November, 1804. Two or three days, August 19-21, were spent in the neighbourhood of Etna. He slept at Nicolosi and visited the Hospice of St. Nicola dell’ Arena. It is unlikely that he reached the actual summit, but two ascents were made, probably to the limit of the wooded region. A few days later, August 24, he reached Syracuse, where he was hospitably entertained by H. M. Consul G. F. Lecky. The notes which he took of his visit to Etna are fragmentary and imperfect, but the description of Syracuse and its surroundings occupies many pages of his note-book. Under the heading, “Timoleon’s, Oct. 18, 1804, Wednesday, noon,” he writes: “The Gaza and Tree at Tremiglia. Rocks with cactus, pendulous branches, seed-pods black at the same time with the orange-yellow flower, and little daisy-like tufts of silky hair.... Timoleon’s villa, supposed to be in the field _above_ the present house, from which you ascend _to_ fifty stairs. Grand view of the harbour and sea, over that tongue of land which forms the anti-Ortygian embracing arm of the harbour, the point of Plemmyrium where Alcibiades and Nicias landed. I left the aqueduct and walked ascendingly to some ruined cottages, beside a delve, with straight limestone walls of rock, on which there played the shadows of the fig-tree and the olive. I was on part of Epipolæ, and a glorious view indeed! Before me a neck of stony common and fields--Ortygia, the open sea and the ships, and the circular harbour which it embraces, and the sea over that again. To my right that large extent of plain, green, rich, finely wooded; the fields so divided and enclosed that you, as it were, _knew_ at the first view that they are all hedged and enclosed, and yet no hedges nor enclosings obtrude themselves--an effect of the vast number of trees of the same sort. On my left, stony fields, two harbours, Magnisi and its sand isle, and Augusta, and Etna, whose smoke mingles with the clouds even as they rise from the crater.... Still as I walk the _lizard gliding darts_ along the road, and immerges himself under a stone, and the grasshopper leaps and tumbles awkwardly before me.”

It must have been in anticipation of this visit to Sicily, or after some communication with Coleridge, that Wordsworth, after alluding to his friend’s abode,--

“Where Etna over hill and valley casts
His shadow stretching towards Syracuse,
The city of Timoleon,”

gives utterance to that unusual outburst of feeling:--

“Oh! wrap him in your shades, ye giant woods,
On Etna’s side; and thou, O flowery field
Of Enna! is there not some nook of thine,
From the first play-time of the infant world
Kept sacred to restorative delight,
When from afar invoked by anxious love?”

Wordsworth’s _Poetical Works_, 1889, “The Prelude,” Book XI. p. 319.

[23] A short treatise entitled _Observations on Egypt_, which is extant in MS., may have been among the papers sent to Stuart with a view to publication.

[24] Shakespeare, _Richard III._, Act I. Scene 4.

[25] He had, perhaps, something more than a suspicion that Southey disliked these protestations. In the letter of friendly remonstrance (February, 1804), which Southey wrote to him after the affair with Godwin, he admits that he may be “too intolerant of these phrases,” but, indeed, he adds, “when they are true, they may be excused, and when they are not, there is no excuse for them.” _Life and Correspondence_, ii. 266.

[26] Cynocephalus, Dog-visaged. Compare Milton’s “Hymn on the Nativity:”--

“The brutish gods of Nile as fast,
Isis and Orus and the dog Anubis haste.”

[27] A printed slip, cut off from some public document, has been preserved in one of Coleridge’s note-books. It runs thus: “Segreteria del Governo li 29 Gennajo 1805. Samuel T. Coleridge Seg. Pub. del. Commis. Regio. G. N. Zammit Pro segretario.” His actual period of office extended from January 18 to September 6, 1805.

[28] John Wordsworth, the poet’s younger brother, the original of Leonard in “The Brothers,” and of “The Happy Warrior,” was drowned off the Bill of Portland, February 5, 1805. In a letter to Sir G. Beaumont, dated February 11, 1805, Wordsworth writes: “I can say nothing higher of my ever-dear brother than that he was worthy of his sister, who is now weeping beside me, and of the friendship of Coleridge; meek, affectionate, silently enthusiastic, loving all quiet things, and a poet in everything but words.” “We have had no tidings of Coleridge. I tremble for the moment when he is to hear of my brother’s death; it will distress him to the heart, and his poor body cannot bear sorrow. He loved my brother, and he knows how we at Grasmere loved him.” The report of the wreck of the Earl of Abergavenny and of the loss of her captain did not reach Malta till the 31st of March. It was a Sunday, and Coleridge, who had been sent for to the Palace, first heard the news from Lady Ball. His emotion at the time, and, perhaps, a petition to be excused from his duties brought from her the next day “a kindly letter of apology.” “Your strong feelings,” she writes, “are too great for your health. I hope that you will soon recover your spirits.” But Coleridge took the trouble to heart. It was the first death in the inner circle of his friends; it meant a heavy sorrow to those whom he best loved, and it seemed to confirm the haunting presentiment that death would once more visit his family during his absence from home. Ten days later he writes (in a note-book): “O dear John Wordsworth! What joy at Grasmere that you were made Captain of the Abergavenny! now it was next to certain that you would in a few years settle in your native hills, and be verily one of the _concern_. Then came your share in the brilliant action at Linois. I was at Grasmere in spirit only! but in spirit I was one of the rejoicers ... and all these were but decoys of death! Well, but a nobler feeling than these vain regrets would become the friend of the man whose last words were, ‘I have done my duty! let her go!’ Let us do our duty; all else is a dream--life and death alike a dream! This short sentence would comprise, I believe, the sum of all profound philosophy, of ethics and metaphysics, and conjointly from Plato to Fichte. S. T. C.”

[29] An island midway between Malta and Tunis, ceded by Naples to Don Fernandez in 1802.

[30] A description of the cottage at Stowey and its inmates, contained in a letter written by Mr. Richard Reynell (in August, 1797) to his sister at Thorveston, was published in the _Illustrated London News_, April 22, 1893.

[31] Coleridge left Rome with his friend Mr. Russell on Sunday, May 18, 1806. He had received, so he tells us in the _Biographia Literaria_, a secret warning from the Pope that Napoleon, whose animosity had been roused by articles in the _Morning Post_, had ordered his arrest. A similar statement is made in a footnote to a title-page of a proposed reprint of newspaper articles (an anticipation of _Essays on His Own Times_), which was drawn up in 1817. “My essays,” he writes, “in the _Morning Post_, during the peace of Amiens, brought my life into jeopardy when I was at Rome. An order for my arrest came from Paris to Rome at twelve at night--by the Pope’s goodness I was off by one--and the arrest of all the English took place at six.” In a letter to his brother George, which he wrote about six months after he returned to England, he says that he was warned to leave Rome, but does not enter into particulars. It is a well-known fact that Napoleon read the leading articles in the _Morning Post_, and deeply resented their tone and spirit, but whether Coleridge was rightly informed that an order for his arrest had come from Paris, or whether he was warned that, if with other Englishmen he should be arrested, his connection with the _Morning Post_ would come to light, must remain doubtful. Coleridge’s _Works_, 1853, iii. 309.

[32] An entry in a note-book, dated June 7, 1806, expresses this at greater length: “O my children! whether, and which of you are dead, whether any and which among you are alive I know not, and were a letter to arrive this moment from Keswick I fear that I should be unable to open it, so deep and black is my despair. O my children! My children! I gave you life once, unconscious of the life I was giving, and you as unconsciously have given life to me.” A fortnight later, he ends a similar outburst of despair with a cry for deliverance:--

Come, come thou bleak December wind,
And blow the dry leaves from the tree!
Flash, like a love-thought thro’ me, Death!
And take a life that wearies me.

[33] It is difficult to trace his movements during his last week in Italy. He reached Leghorn on Saturday, June 7. Thence he made his way to Florence and returned to Pisa on a Thursday, probably Thursday, June 19, the date of this letter. On Sunday, June 22, he was still at Pisa, but, I take it, on the eve of setting sail for England. Fifty-five days later, August 17, he leaped on shore at Stangate Creek. His account of Pisa is highly characteristic. “Of the hanging Tower,” he writes, “the Duomo, the Cemetery, the Baptistery, I shall say nothing, except that being all together they form a wild mass, especially by moonlight, when the hanging Tower has something of a supernatural look; but what interested me with a deeper interest were the two hospitals, one for men, one for women,” etc., and these he proceeds to describe. Nevertheless he must have paid more attention to the treasures of Pisan art than his note implies, for many years after in a Lecture on the History of Philosophy, delivered January 19, 1819, he describes minutely and vividly the “Triumph of Death,” the great fresco in the Campo Santo at Pisa, which was formerly assigned to Oreagna, but is now, I believe, attributed to Ambrogio and Pietro Lorenzetti. _MS. Journal_; _MS. Report of Lecture_.

[34] Mr. Russell was an artist, an Exeter man, whom Coleridge met in Rome. They were fellow-travellers in Italy, and returned together to England.

[35] William Smith, M. P. for Norwich, who lived at Parndon House, near Harlow, in Essex. It was in a great measure through his advice and interest that Coleridge obtained his Lectureship at the Royal Institution. Ten years later (1817), on the occasion of the surreptitious publication of _Wat Tyler_, Mr. Smith, who was a staunch liberal, denounced the Laureate as a “renegade,” and Coleridge with something of his old vigour gave battle on behalf of his brother-in-law in the pages of _The Courier_. _Essays on His Own Times_, iii. 939-950.

[36] Charles James Fox died on September 13, 1806.

[37] An unpublished letter from Sir Alexander Ball to His Excellency H. Elliot, Esq. (Minister at the Court of Naples), strongly recommends Coleridge to his favourable notice and consideration. Nothing that Coleridge ever said in favour of “Ball” exceeds what Sir Alexander says of Coleridge, but the Minister, whose hands must have been pretty full at the time, failed to be impressed, and withheld his patronage.

[38] “The Foster-Mother’s Tale,” _Poetical Works_, 1893, p. 83.

[39] Hartley Coleridge, now in his eleventh year, was under his father’s sole care from the end of December, 1806, to May, 1807. The first three months were spent in the farmhouse near Coleorton, which Sir G. Beaumont had lent to the Wordsworths, and it must have been when that visit was drawing to a close that this letter was written for Hartley’s benefit. The remaining five or six weeks were passed in the company of the Wordsworths at Basil Montagu’s house in London. Then it was that Hartley saw his first play, and was taken by Wordsworth and Walter Scott to the Tower. “The bard’s economy,” says Hartley, “would not allow us to visit the Jewel Office, but Mr. Scott, then no _anactolater_, took an evident pride in showing me the claymores and bucklers taken from the Loyalists at Culloden.” Whilst he was at Coleorton, Hartley was painted by Sir David Wilkie. It is the portrait of a child “whose fancies from afar are brought,” but the Hartley of this letter is better represented by the grimacing boy in Wilkie’s “Blind Fiddler,” for which, I have been told, he sat as a model. _Poems of Hartley Coleridge_, 1851, i. ccxxii.

[40] Scott had proposed to Southey that he should use his influence with Jeffrey to get him placed on the staff of the _Edinburgh Review_. Southey declined the offer alike on the score of political divergence from the editor, and disapproval of “that sort of bitterness [in criticism] which tends directly to wound a man in his feelings, and injure him in his fame and fortune.” _Life and Correspondence_, iii. 124-128. See, too, Lockhart’s _Life of Sir Walter Scott_, 1837, ii. 130.

[41] Sir John Acland. The property is now in the possession of a descendant in the female line, Sir Alexander Hood, of Fairfield, Dodington.

[42] To receive him and his family at Ottery as had been originally proposed. George Coleridge disapproved of his brother’s intended separation from his wife, and declined to countenance it in any way whatever.

[43] _Faulkner: a Tragedy_, 1807-1808, 8vo.

[44] I presume that the reference is to the _Conciones ad Populum_, published at Bristol, November 16, 1795.

[45] Coleridge’s article on Clarkson’s _History of the Abolition of the Slave Trade_ was published in the _Edinburgh Review_, July, 1808. It has never been reprinted. _Samuel Taylor Coleridge_, by J. Dykes Campbell, London, 1894, p. 168; _Letters from the Lake Poets_, p. 180; Allsop’s _Letters_, 1836, ii. 112.

[46] Of this pamphlet or the translation of Palm’s _Deutschland in seiner tiefsten Erniedrigung_, I know nothing. The author, John Philip Palm, a Nuremberg bookseller, was shot August 26, 1806, in consequence of the publication of the work, which reflected unfavorably on the conduct and career of Napoleon.

[47] Compare his letter to Poole, dated December 4, 1808. “Begin to count my life, as a friend of yours, from 1st January, 1809;” and a letter to Davy, of December, 1808, in which he speaks of a change for the better in health and habits. _Thomas Poole and his Friends_, ii. 227; _Fragmentary Remains of Sir H. Davy_, p. 101.

[48] The Convention of Cintra was signed August 30, 1808. Wordsworth’s Essays were begun in the following November. “For the sake of immediate and general circulation I determined (when I had made a considerable progress in the manuscript) to print it in different portions in one of the daily newspapers. Accordingly two portions of it were printed, in the months of December and January, in the _Courier_. An accidental loss of several sheets of the manuscript delayed the continuance of the publication in that manner till the close of the Christmas holidays; and this plan of publication was given up.” _Advertisement to Wordsworth’s pamphlet on the Convention of Cintra_, May 20, 1809: _Letters from the Lake Poets_, p. 385.

[49] “In the place of some just eulogiums due to Mr. Pitt was substituted some abuse and detraction.” Allsop’s _Letters_, 1836, ii. 112.

[50] A preliminary prospectus of _The Friend_ was printed at Kendal and submitted to Jeffrey and a few others. A copy of this “first edition” is in my possession, and it is interesting to notice that Coleridge has directed his amanuensis, Miss Hutchinson, to amend certain offending phrases in accordance with Jeffrey’s suggestions. “Speculative gloom” and “year-long absences” he gives up, but, as the postscript intimates, “moral impulses” he has the hardihood to retain. See _The Friend’s Quarterly Examiner_ for July, 1893, art. “S. T. Coleridge on Quaker Principles;” and _Athenæum_ for September 16, 1893, art. “Coleridge on Quaker Principles.”

[51] Thomas Wilkinson, of Yanwath, near Penrith, was a member of the Society of Friends. He owned and tilled a small estate on the banks of the Emont, which he laid out and ornamented “after the manner of Shenstone at his Leasowes.” As a friend and neighbour of the Clarksons and of Lord Lonsdale he was well known to Wordsworth, who, greatly daring, wrote in his honour his lines “To the Spade of a Friend (an Agriculturist).”

Alas! for the poor Prospectus! “Speculative gloom” and “year-long absence” had been sacrificed to Jeffrey, and now “Architecture, Dress, Dancing, Gardening, Music, Poetry, and Painting” were erased in obedience to Wilkinson. Most of these articles, however, “Architecture, Dress,” etc., reappeared in a second edition of the Prospectus, attached to the second number of _The Friend_, but Dancing, “Greek statuesque dancing,” on which Coleridge might have discoursed at some length, was gone forever. Wordsworth’s _Works_, p. 211 (Fenwick Note); _The Friend’s Quarterly Examiner_, July, 1893; _Records of a Quaker Family_, by Anne Ogden Boyce, London, 1889, pp. 30, 31, 55.

[52] The original draft of the prospectus of _The Friend_, which was issued in the late autumn of 1808, was printed at Kendal by W. Pennington. Certain alterations were suggested by Jeffrey and others (Southey in a letter to Rickman dated January 18, 1809, complains that Coleridge had “carried a prospectus wet from the pen to the publisher, without consulting anybody”), and a fresh batch of prospectuses was printed in London. A third variant attached to the first number of the weekly issue, June 1, 1809, was printed by Brown, a bookseller and stationer at Penrith, who, on Mr. Pennington’s refusal, undertook to print and publish _The Friend_. Some curious letters which passed between Coleridge and his printer, together with the MS. of _The Friend_, in the handwriting of Miss Sarah Hutchinson, are preserved in the Forster Library at the South Kensington Museum. _Letters from the Lake Poets_, pp. 85-188; _Selections from the Letters of R. Southey_, ii. 120.

[53] Compare letters to Stuart (December), 1808. “You will long ere this have received Wordsworth’s second Essay, etc., rewritten by me, and in some parts recomposed.” _Letters from the Lake Poets_, p. 101.

[54] Colonel Wardle, who led the attack in the House of Commons against the Duke of York, with regard to the undue influence in military appointments of the notorious Mrs. Clarke.

[55] Coleridge’s friendship with Dr. Beddoes dated from 1795-96, and was associated with his happier days. It is possible that the recent amendment in health and spirits was due to advice and sympathy which he had met with in response to a confession made in writing to his old Bristol friend. His death, which took place on the 24th of December, 1808, would rob Coleridge of a newly-found support, and would “take out of his life” the hope of self-conquest. The letter implies that he had recently heard from or conversed with Beddoes.

[56] Compare letter from Southey to J. N. White dated April 21, 1809. “A ridiculous disorder called the Mumps has nearly gone through the house, and visited me on its way--a thing which puts one more out of humour than out of health; but my neck has now regained its elasticity, and I have left off the extra swathings which yesterday buried my chin, after the fashion of fops a few years ago.” _Selections from the Letters of R. Southey_, ii, 135, 136.

[57] The Parliamentary investigation of the charges and allegations with regard to the military patronage of the Duke of York.

[58] Bertha Southey, afterwards Mrs. Herbert Hill, was born March 27, 1809.

[59] “The Appendix (to the pamphlet _On the Convention of Cintra_), a portion of the work which Mr. Wordsworth regarded as executed in a masterly manner, was drawn up by Mr. De Quincey, who revised the proofs of the whole.” _Memoirs of Wordsworth_, i. 384.

[60] In Southey’s copy of the reprint of the stamped sheets of _The Friend_ the passage runs thus: “However this may be, the Understanding or regulative faculty is manifestly distinct from Life and Sensation, its _function_ being to take up the _passive affections_ of the sense into distinct Thoughts and Judgements, according to its own essential forms. These forms, however,” etc. _The Friend_, No. 5, Thursday, September 14, 1809, p. 79, _n._

[61] For extracts from Poole’s narrative of John Walford, see _Thomas Poole and his Friends_, ii. 235-237. Wordsworth endeavoured to put the narrative into verse, but was dissatisfied with the result. His lines have never been published.

[62] H. N. Coleridge included these lines, as they appear in a note-book, among the _Omniana_ of 1809-1816. They are headed incorrectly, “Inscription on a Clock in Cheapside.” The MS. is not very legible, but there can be no doubt that Coleridge wrote, “On a clock in a market place (proposed).” _Table Talk_, etc., 1884, p. 401; _Poetical Works_, p. 181.

[63] The story of Maria Eleanora Schöning appeared in No. 13 of _The Friend_, Thursday, November 16, 1809, pp. 194-208. It was reprinted as the “Second Landing Place” in the revised edition of _The Friend_, published in 1818. The somewhat laboured description of the heroine’s voice, which displeased Southey, and the beautiful illustration of the “withered leaf” were allowed to remain unaltered, and appear in every edition. Coleridge’s _Works_, 1853, ii. 312-326.

[64] Jonas Lewis von Hess, 1766-1823. He was a friend and pupil of Kant, and author of _A History of Hamburg_.

[65] John of Milan, who flourished 1100 A. D., was the author of _Medicina Salernitana_. He also composed “versibus Leoninis,” a poem entitled _Flos Medicinæ_. Hoffmann’s _Lexicon Universale_, art. “Salernum.”

[66] Three letters on the Catholic Question appeared in the _Courier_, September 3, 21, and 26, 1811. _Essays on His Own Times_, iii. 891-896, 920-932.

[67] The Battle of Albuera. Articles on the battle appeared in the _Courier_ on June 5 and 8, 1811. _Essays on His Own Times_, iii. 802-805.

[68] “That a Judge should have regarded as an aggravation of a libel on the British Army, the writer’s having written against Buonaparte, is an act so monstrous,” etc. “Buonaparte,” _Courier_, June 29, 1811; _Essays on His Own Times_, iii. 818.

[69] John Drakard, the printer of the _Stamford News_, was convicted at Lincoln, May 25, 1811, of the publication of an article against flogging in the army, and sentenced to a fine and imprisonment.

[70] Lord Milton, one of the members for Yorkshire, brought forward a motion on June 6, 1811, against the reappointment of the Duke of York as Commander-in-Chief.

[71] Clerk of the _Courier_. Letter to _Gentleman’s Magazine_, June, 1838, p. 586.

[72] Many years after the date of this letter, Dr. Spurzheim took a life-mask of Coleridge’s face, and used it as a model for a bust which originally belonged to H. N. Coleridge, and is now in the Library at Heath’s Court, Ottery St. Mary. Another bust of Coleridge, very similar to Spurzheim’s, belonged to my father, and is still in the possession of the family. I have been told that it was taken from a death-mask, but as Mr. Hamo Thornycroft, who designed the bust for Westminster Abbey, pointed out to me, it abounds in anatomical defects. In a letter which Henry Coleridge wrote to his father, Colonel Coleridge, on the day of his uncle’s death, he says that a death-mask had been taken of the poet’s features. Whether this served as a model for a posthumous bust, or not, I am unable to say. In the curious and valuable article on death-masks which Mr. Laurence Hutton contributed to the October number of _Harper’s Magazine_, for 1892, he gives a fac-simile of a death-mask which was said to be that of S, T. Coleridge. At the time that I wrote to him on the subject, I had not seen Henry Coleridge’s letter, but I came to the conclusion that this sad memorial of death was genuine. The “glorious forehead” is there, but the look has passed away, and the “rest is silence.” With regard to Allston’s bust of Coleridge, which was exhibited at the Royal Academy in 1812, I possess no information. See _Harper’s Magazine_, October, 1892, pp. 782, 783.

[73] A favourite quip. Apropos of the bed on which he slept at Trinity College, Cambridge, in June, 1833, he remarks, “Truly I lay down at night a man, and awoke in the morning a bruise.” _Table Talk_, etc., Bell & Co., 1884, p. 231, note.

[74] “Crimen ingrati animi nil aliud est quam perspicacia quædam in causam collati beneficii.” _De Augmentis Scientiarum_, cap. iii. 15. If this is the passage which Coleridge is quoting, he has inserted some words of his own. _The Works of Bacon_, 1711, i. 183.

[75] A crayon sketch of Coleridge, drawn by George Dawe, R. A., is now in existence at Heath Court. The figure, which is turned sideways, the face looking up, the legs crossed, is that of a man in early middle life, somewhat too portly for his years. An engraving of the sketch forms the frontispiece to Lloyd’s _History of Highgate_. It was, in the late Lord Coleridge’s opinion, a most characteristic likeness of his great-uncle. A time came when, for some reason, Coleridge held Dawe in but light esteem. I possess a card of invitation to his funeral, which took place at St. Paul’s Cathedral, on October 27, 1829. It is endorsed thus:--

“I really would have attended the Grub’s Canonization in St. Paul’s,
under the impression that it would gratify his sister, Mrs. Wright;
but Mr. G. interposed a conditional but sufficiently decorous
negative. ‘No! Unless you wish to follow his Grubship still further
_down_.’ So I pleaded ill health. But the very Thursday morning I went
to Town to see my daughter, for the first time, as _Mrs. Henry
Coleridge_, in Gower Street, and, odd enough, the stage was stopped by
the Pompous Funeral of the unchangeable and predestinated Grub, and I
extemporised:--

As Grub Dawe pass’d beneath the Hearse’s Lid,
On which a large RESURGAM met the eye,
_Col_, who well knew the Grub, cried, Lord forbid!
I trust, he’s only telling us a lie!

S. T. COLERIDGE.”

Dawe, it may be remembered, is immortalised by Lamb in his amusing _Recollections of a Late Royal Academician_.

[76] This portrait, begun at Rome, was not finished when Coleridge left. It is now in the possession of Allston’s niece, Miss Charlotte Dana, of Boston, Mass., U. S. A. The portrait by Allston, now in the National Portrait Gallery, was taken at Bristol in 1814. _Samuel Taylor Coleridge, a Narrative_, by J. Dykes Campbell, 1894, p. 150, footnote 5.

[77] The lectures were delivered at the rooms of “The London Philosophical Society, Scotch Corporation Hall, Crane Court, Fleet Street (entrance from Fetter Lane).” Of the lecture on “Love and the Female Character,” which was delivered on December 9, 1811, H. C. Robinson writes: “Accompanied Mrs. Rough to Coleridge’s seventh and incomparably best Lecture. He declaimed with great eloquence about love, without wandering from his subject, Romeo and Juliet.” Among the friends who took notes were John Payne Collier, and a Mr. Tomalin. Coleridge’s _Lectures on Shakespeare_, London, 1856, p. viii.; H. C. Robinson’s _Diary_, ii. 348, MS. notes by J. Tomalin.

[78] The visit to Greta Hall, the last he ever paid to the Lake Country, lasted about a month, from February 23 to March 26. On his journey southward he remained in Penrith for a little over a fortnight, rejoining the Morgans towards the middle of April.

[79] The Reverend John Dawes, who kept a day-school at Ambleside. Hartley and Derwent Coleridge, Robert Jameson, Owen Lloyd and his three brothers (sons of Charles Lloyd), and the late Edward Jefferies, afterwards Curate and Rector of Grasmere, were among his pupils. In the _Memoir of Hartley Coleridge_, his brother Derwent describes at some length the character of his “worthy master,” and adds: “We were among his earliest scholars, and deeming it, as he said, an honour to be entrusted with the education of Mr. Coleridge’s sons, he refused, first for the elder, and afterwards for the younger brother, any pecuniary remuneration.” _Poems_ of Hartley Coleridge, 1851, i. liii.

[80] In an unpublished letter from Mrs. Coleridge to Poole, dated October 30, 1812, she tells her old friend that when “the boys” perceived that their father did not intend to turn aside to visit the Wordsworths at the Rectory opposite Grasmere Church, they turned pale and were visibly affected. No doubt they knew all about the quarrel and were mightily concerned, but their agitation was a reflex of the grief and passion “writ large” in their father’s face. One can imagine with what ecstasy of self-torture he would pass through Grasmere and leave Wordsworth unvisited.

[81] Sir Thomas Bernard, 1750-1818, the well-known philanthropist and promoter of national education, was one of the founders of the Royal Institution.

[82] It is probable that during his stay at Penrith he recovered a number of unbound sheets of the reprint of _The Friend_. His proposal to Gale and Curtis must have been to conclude the unfinished narrative of the life of Sir Alexander Ball, and to publish the whole as a complete work. A printed slip cut out of a page of publishers’ advertisements and forwarded to “H. N. Coleridge, Esq., from W. Pickering,” contains the following announcement:--

“Mr. Coleridge’s _Friend_, of which twenty-eight Numbers are published, may now be had, in one Volume, royal 8vo. boards, of Mess. Gale and Curtis, Paternoster Row. And Mr. C. intends to complete the Work, in from eight to ten similar sheets to the foregoing, which will be published together in one part, sewed. The Subscribers to the former part can obtain them through their regular Booksellers. Only 300 copies remain of the 28 numbers, and their being printed on unstamped paper will account to the Subscribers for the difference of price. 23, Paternoster Row, London, 1st February, 1812.”

[83] The full title of this work was _The Origin, Nature and Object of the New System of Education_. Southey’s _Life of Dr. Bell_, ii. 409.

[84] The Honourable and Right Reverend John Shute Barrington, 1734-1826, sixth son of the first Lord Barrington, was successively Bishop of Llandaff, Salisbury, and Durham. He was a warm supporter of the Madras system of education. It was no doubt Dr. Bell who helped to interest the Bishop in Coleridge’s Lectures.

[85] Herbert Southey, known in the family as “Dog-Lunus,” and “Lunus,” and “The Moon.” _Letters of R. Southey_, ii. 399.

[86] Readers of _The Doctor_ will not be at a loss to understand the significance of the references to Dr. Daniel Dove and his horse Nobs. According to Cuthbert Southey, the actual composition of the book began in 1813, but the date of this letter (April, 1812) shows that the myth or legend of the “Doctor,” and his iron-grey, which had taken shape certainly as early as 1805, was fully developed in the spring of 1812, when Coleridge paid his last visit to Greta Hall. It was not till the winter of 1833-1834, that the first two volumes of _The Doctor_ appeared in print, and, as they were published anonymously, they were, probably, by persons familiar with his contribution to _Blackwood_ and the _London Magazine_, attributed to Hartley Coleridge. “No clue to the author has reached me,” wrote Southey to his friend Wynne. “As for Hartley Coleridge, I wish it were his, but am certain that it is not. He is quite clever enough to have written it--quite odd enough, but his opinions are desperately radical, and he is the last person in the world to disguise them. One report was that his father had assisted him; there is not a page in the book, wise or foolish, which the latter _could_ have written, neither his wisdom nor his folly are of that kind.” There had been a time when Southey would have expressed himself differently, but in 1834 dissociation from Coleridge had become a matter alike of habit and of principle. _Southey’s Life and Correspondence_, ii. 355, vi. 225-229; _Letters of R. Southey_, iv. 373.

[87] The first of the series of “Essays upon Epitaphs” was published in No. 25 of the original issue of _The Friend_ (Feb. 22, 1810), and republished by Wordsworth in the notes to _The Excursion_, 1814. “Two other portions of the ‘Series,’ of which the Bishop of Lincoln gives an outline and some extracts in the _Memoirs_ (i. 434-445), were published in full in _Prose Works of Wordsworth_, 1876, ii. 41-75.” _Life of W. Wordsworth_, ii. 152; _Poetical Works of Wordsworth_, Bibliography, p. 907.

[88] To Miss Sarah Hutchinson, then living in Wales.

[89] That Wordsworth ever used these words, or commissioned Montagu to repeat them to Coleridge, is in itself improbable and was solemnly denied by Wordsworth himself. But Wordsworth did not deny that with the best motives and in a kindly spirit he took Montagu into his confidence and put him on his guard, that he professed “to have no hope” of his old friend, and that with regard to Coleridge’s “habits” he might have described them as a “nuisance” in his family. It was all meant for the best, but much evil and misery might have been avoided if Wordsworth had warned Coleridge that if he should make his home under Montagu’s roof he could not keep silence, or, better still, if he had kept silence and left Montagu to fight his own battles. The cruel words which Montagu put into Wordsworth’s mouth or Coleridge in his agitation and resentment put into Montagu’s, were but the salt which the sufferer rubbed into his own wound. The time, the manner, and the person combined to aggravate his misery and dismay. Judgment had been delivered against him _in absentiâ_, and the judge was none other than his own “familiar friend.” Henry Crabb Robinson’s _Diary_, May 3-10, 1812, first published in _Life of W. Wordsworth_, ii. 168, 187.

[90] The tickets were numbered and signed by the lecturer. Printed cards which were issued by way of advertisement contained the following announcement:--

“LECTURES ON THE DRAMA.

“Mr. Coleridge proposes to give a series of Lectures on the Drama of the Greek, French, English and Spanish stage, chiefly with Reference to the Works of Shakespeare, at Willis’s Rooms, King Street, St. James’s, on the Tuesdays and Fridays in May and June at Three o’clock precisely. The Course will contain Six Lectures, at One Guinea. The Tickets Transferable. An Account is opened at Mess. Ransom Morland & Co., Bankers, Pall Mall, in the names of Sir G. Beaumont, Bart., Sir T. Bernard, Bart., W. Sotheby, Esq., where Subscriptions will be received, and Tickets issued. The First Lecture on Tuesday, the 12th of May.--S. T. C., 71, Berners St.”

For an account of the first four lectures, see H. C. Robinson’s _Diary_, i. 385-388.

[91] From Bombay.

[92] I have followed Professor Knight in omitting a passage in which “he gives a lengthened list of circumstances which seemed to justify misunderstanding.” The alleged facts throw no light on the relations between Coleridge and Wordsworth.

[93] The cryptogram which Coleridge invented for his own use was based on the arbitrary selection of letters of the Greek as equivalents to letters of the English alphabet. The vowels were represented by English letters, by the various points, and by algebraic symbols. An expert would probably decipher nine tenths of these memoranda at a glance, but here and there the words symbolised are themselves anagrams of Greek, Latin, and German words, and, in a few instances, the clue is hard to seek.

[94] The Right Honourable Spencer Perceval was shot by a man named Bellingham, in the lobby of the House of Commons, May 11, 1812.

[95] The occasion of this letter was the death of Wordsworth’s son, Thomas, which took place December 1, 1812. It would seem, as Professor Knight intimates, that the letter was not altogether acceptable to the Wordsworths, and that “no immediate reply was sent to Coleridge.” We have it, on the authority of Mr. Clarkson, that when Wordsworth and Dorothy did write, in the spring of the following year, inviting him to Grasmere, their letters remained unanswered, and that when the news came that Coleridge was about to leave London for the seaside, a fresh wound was inflicted, and fresh offence taken. As Mr. Dykes Campbell has pointed out, the consequences of this second rupture were fatal to Coleridge’s peace of mind and to his well-being generally. The brief spell of success and prosperity which attended the representation of “Remorse” inspired him for a few weeks with unnatural courage, but as the “pale unwarming light of Hope” died away, he was left to face the world and himself as best or as worst he could. Of the months which intervened between March and September, 1813, there is no record, and we can only guess that he remained with his kind and patient hosts, the Morgans, sick in body and broken-hearted. _Life of W. Wordsworth_, ii. 182; _Samuel Taylor Coleridge, a Narrative_, by J. Dykes Campbell, 1894, pp. 193-197.

[96] See Letter CXCV., p. 611, note 2.

[97] The notice of “Remorse” in _The Times_, though it condemned the play as a whole, was not altogether uncomplimentary, and would be accepted at the present day by the majority of critics as just and fair. It was, no doubt, the didactic and patronising tone adopted towards the author which excited Coleridge’s indignation. “We speak,” writes the reviewer, “with restraint and unwillingly of the defects of a work which must have cost its author so much labour. We are peculiarly reluctant to touch the anxieties of a man,” etc. The notice in the _Morning Post_ was friendly and flattering in the highest degree. The preface to _Osorio_, London, 1873, contains selections of press notices of “Remorse,” and other interesting matter. See, too, _Poetical Works_, Editor’s Note on “Remorse,” pp. 649-651.

[98] John Williams, described by Macaulay as “a filthy and malignant baboon,” who wrote under the pseudonym of “Anthony Pasquin,” emigrated to America early in this century. In 1804 he published a work in Boston, and there is, apparently, no reason to suppose that he subsequently returned to England. Either Coleridge was in error or he uses the term generally for a scurrilous critic.

[99] This note-book must have passed out of Coleridge’s possession in his lifetime, for it is not among those which were bequeathed to Joseph Henry Green, and subsequently passed into the hands of my father. The two folio volumes of the Greek Poets were in my father’s library, and are now in my possession.

[100] “Mr. Colridge (_sic_) will not, we fear, be as much entertained as we were with his ‘Playhouse Musings,’ which begin with characteristic pathos and simplicity, and put us much in mind of the affecting story of old Poulter’s mare.”

[101] The motto “Sermoni propriora,” translated by Lamb “properer for a sermon,” was prefixed to “Reflections on having left a Place of Retirement.” The lines “To a Young Ass” were originally published in the _Morning Chronicle_, December 30, 1794, under the heading, “Address to a Young Jack Ass, and its _tethered_ Mother. In Familiar Verse.” _Poetical Works_, pp. 35, 36, Appendix C, p. 477. See, too, Biographia Literaria, Coleridge’s _Works_, 1853, iii. 161.

[102] The words, “Obscurest Haunt of all our mountains,” are to be found in the first act of “Remorse,” lines 115, 116. Their counterpart in Wordsworth’s poems occurs in “The Brothers,” l. 140. (“It is the loneliest place of all these hills.”) “De minimis non curat lex,” especially when there is a plea to be advanced, or a charge to be defended. _Poetical Works_, p. 362; _Works of Wordsworth_, p. 127.

[103] Many theories have been hazarded with regard to the broken friendship commemorated in these lines. My own impression is that Coleridge, if he had anything personal in his mind, and we may be sure that he had, was looking back on his early friendship with Southey and the bitter quarrel which began over the collapse of pantisocracy, and was never healed till the summer of 1799. In the late autumn of 1800, when the second part of “Christabel” was written, Southey was absent in Portugal, and the thought of all that had come and gone between him and his “heart’s best brother” inspired this outburst of affection and regret.

[104] The annuity of £150 for life, which Josiah Wedgwood, on his own and his brother Thomas’ behalf, offered to Coleridge in January, 1798. The letter expressly states that it is “an annuity for life of £150 to be regularly paid by us, no condition whatsoever being annexed to it.” “We mean,” he adds, “the annuity to be independent of everything but the wreck of our fortune.” It is extraordinary that a man of probity should have taken advantage of the fact that the annuity, as had been proposed, was not secured by law, and should have struck this blow, not so much at Coleridge, as at his wife and children, for whom the annuity was reserved. It is hardly likely that a man of business forgot the terms of his own offer, or that he could have imagined that Coleridge was no longer in need of support. Either in some fit of penitence or of passion Coleridge offered to release him, or once again “whispering tongues had poisoned truth,” and some one had represented to Wedgwood that the money was doing more harm than good. But a bond is a bond, and it is hard to see, unless the act and deed were Coleridge’s, how Wedgwood can escape blame. _Thomas Poole and his Friends_, i. 257-259.

[105] Dr. Southey, the poet’s younger brother Henry, and Daniel Stuart were afterwards neighbours in Harley Street. A close intimacy and lifelong friendship arose between the two families.

[106] Treaty of Vienna, October 9, 1809.

[107] This could only have been carried out in part. A large portion of the books which Coleridge possessed at his death consisted of those which he had purchased during his travels in Germany in 1799, and in Italy in 1805-1806.

[108] The publication by Cottle, in 1837, of this and the following letter, and still more of that to Josiah Wade of June 26, 1814 (Letter CC.), was deeply resented by Coleridge’s three children and by all his friends. In the preface to his _Early Recollections_ Cottle defends himself on the plea that in the interests of truth these confessions should be revealed, and urges that Coleridge’s own demand that after his death “a full and unqualified narrative of my wretchedness and its guilty cause may be made public,” not only justified but called for his action in the matter. The law of copyright in the letters of parents and remoter ancestors was less clearly defined at that time than it is at present, and Coleridge’s literary executors contented themselves with recording their protest in the strongest possible terms. In 1848, when Cottle reprinted his _Early Recollections_, together with some additional matter, under the title of _Reminiscences of S. T. Coleridge_, etc., he was able to quote Southey as an advocate, though, possibly, a reluctant advocate, for publication. There can be no question that neither Coleridge’s request nor Southey’s sanction gave Cottle any right to wound the feelings of the living or to expose the frailties and remorse of the dead. The letters, which have been public property for nearly sixty years, are included in these volumes because they have a natural and proper place in any collection of Coleridge’s Letters which claims to be, in any sense, representative of his correspondence at large.

[109] At whatever time these lines may have been written, they were not printed till 1829, when they were prefixed to the “Monody on the Death of Chatterton.” _Poetical Works_, p. 61; Editor’s Note, pp. 562, 563.

[110] “The Picture; or The Lover’s Resolution,” lines 17-25. _Poetical Works_, p. 162.

[111] Solomon Grundy is a character, played by Fawcett, in George Colman the younger’s piece, _Who wants a Guinea?_ produced at Covent Garden, 1804-1805.

[112] A character in Macklin’s play, _Love à la Mode_.

[113] A character in Macklin’s play, _A Man of the World_.

[114] It is needless to say that Coleridge never even attempted a translation of _Faust_. Whether there were initial difficulties with regard to procuring the “whole of Goethe’s works,” and other books of reference, or whether his heart failed him when he began to study the work with a view to translation, the arrangement with Murray fell through. A statement in the _Table Talk_ for February 16, 1833, that the task was abandoned on moral grounds, that he could not bring himself to familiarise the English public with “language, much of which was,” he thought, “vulgar, licentious, and blasphemous,” is not borne out by the tone of his letters to Murray, of July 29, August 31, 1814. No doubt the spirit of _Faust_, alike with regard to theology and morality, would at all times have been distasteful to him, but with regard to what actually took place, he deceived himself in supposing that the feelings and scruples of old age would have prevailed in middle life. _Memoirs of John Murray_, i. 297 _et seq._

[115] “The thoughts of Coleridge, even during the whirl of passing events, discovered their hidden springs, and poured forth, in an obscure style, and to an unheeding age, the great moral truths which were then being proclaimed in characters of fire to mankind.” Alison’s _History of Europe_, ix. 3 (ninth edition).

[116] The eight “Letters on the Spaniards,” which Coleridge contributed to the _Courier_ in December, January, 1809-10, are reprinted in _Essays on His Own Times_, ii. 593-676.

[117] The character of Pitt appeared in the _Morning Post_, March 19, 1800; the letters to Fox, on November 4, 9, 1802; the Essays on the French Empire, etc., September 21, 25, and October 2, 1802; the Essay on the restoration of the Bourbons, October, 1802. They are reprinted in the second volume of _Essays on His Own Times_.

Six Letters to Judge Fletcher on Catholic Emancipation, which appeared at irregular intervals in the _Courier_, September-December, 1814, are reprinted in _Essays on His Own Times_, iii. 677-733.

The Essay on Taxation forms the seventh Essay of Section the First, on the Principles of Political Knowledge. _The Friend_; _Coleridge’s Works_, Harper & Brothers, 1853, ii. 208-222.

[118] Neither the original nor the transcript of this letter has, to my knowledge, been preserved.