Chapter II (2)

"I retired," said he, "to a cottage at Stowey, and provided for my
scanty maintenance by writing verses for a London Morning Paper. I saw
plainly, that literature was not a profession by which I could expect
to live; for 'I could not disguise from myself', that whatever my
talents might or might not be in other respects, yet they were not of
that 'sort' that 'could enable me to become a popular writer'; and
that whatever my opinions might be in themselves, they were almost
equi-distant from all the three opposite parties, the Pittites, the
Foxites, and the democrats. Of the unsaleable nature of my writings I
had an amusing memento one morning from our servant girl. For
happening to rise at an earlier hour than usual, I observed her
putting an extravagant quantity of paper into the grate in order to
light the fire, and mildly checked her for her wastefulness; La, Sir!
(replied poor Nanny) why, it is only WATCHMEN."

There was at last a pause, as each party seemed worn out; for, "the
hand of Providence had disciplined 'all' Europe into sobriety, as men
tame wild elephants by alternate blows and caresses: now, that
Englishmen of all classes are restored to their old English notions
and feelings, it will with difficulty be credited, how great an
influence was at that time possessed and exerted by the spirit of
secret defamation (the too constant attendant on party zeal!) during
the restless interim, from 1793 to the commencement of the Addington
administration, or the year before the truce of Amiens."

In short, the exhaustion which had followed the great stimulus, disposed individuals to reconciliation. Both parties found themselves in the wrong, the one had mistaken the moral character of the revolution, and the other had miscalculated its physical resources. The experiment was made at the price of great, we may say, of almost humiliating sacrifices; and wise men foresaw that it would fail, at least, in its direct and ostensible object. Yet it was purchased cheaply, and realized an object of equal value, and, if possible, of more vital importance; for it brought about a national unanimity, unexampled in our history since the reign of Elizabeth; and Providence, never failing to do his part when men have done theirs, soon provided a common focus in the cause of Spain, which made us all once more Englishmen, by gratifying and correcting the predilections of each party. The sincere reverers of the throne felt the cause of loyalty ennobled by its alliance with that of freedom while the 'honest' zealots of the people could not but admit that freedom itself assumed a more winning form, humanized by loyalty, and 'consecrated' by 'religious principle'.

During this calm and rest, and while the political fever was subsiding, Coleridge retired, as he informs us, "to a cottage in Somersetshire, at the foot of Quantock," to devote himself to poetry, and to the study of ethics and psychology, to direct his thoughts and studies to the foundations of religion and morals.

"During my residence here," he says, "I found myself all afloat;
doubts rushed in; broke upon me 'from the fountains of the great
deep',' and ''fell from the windows of Heaven'.' The fontal truths of
natural religion and the books of Revelation alike contributed to the
flood; and it was long ere my ark touched on an Ararat, and rested.
The idea (viz. the law evolved in the mind) of the Supreme Being
appeared to me to be as necessarily implied in all particular modes of
being, as the idea, of infinite space in all the geometrical figures
by which space is limited." He goes on to state at this period, about
the latter end of the year 1796, "For a very long time I could not
reconcile personality with infinity; and my head was with Spinosa,
though my whole heart remained with Paul and John. Yet there had
dawned upon me, even before I had met with the Critique of Pure
Reason, a certain guiding light. If 'the mere intellect' could make no
certain discovery of a holy and intelligent first cause, it might yet
supply a demonstration that no legitimate argument could be drawn from
the mere intellect 'against' its truth. 'And what is this' more than
St. Paul's assertion, that by wisdom (more properly translated by the
powers of reasoning) no man ever arrived at the knowledge of God? Man
asks what is wisdom? and whence comes it? In Job, chap. 28th, it is
stated, 'But to man he said, the fear of the Lord is wisdom for THEE!
And to avoid evil, that is 'thy' understanding.'"

Such were his philosophical opinions before his final conversion to the whole truth in Christ. He was contending for principles, and diligently in search of truth for its own sake;--the one thing only permanent, and which carries with it its "own exceeding great reward." Such was the state of his religious feelings and political opinions before his visit to Germany.

There is a general observation or experience he has recorded, not only so applicable to him at that time, but equally to each stage of his career in life, as not to be lost sight of by his friends and admirers, when assailed, as he was, by opposing party-spirits, which, like opposite currents, were contending for the mastery.

To avoid one party lest he should run on Scylla, he excited and provoked the jealousy and neglect of the other, who might have wrecked him on Charybdis. These were well-known dangers; but, as all navigable seas have their shoals often invisible; in order to avoid the effects of these jealousies, he selected from each party, men of experience to give him the soundings, and thus prevent him from wrecking his barque on rocks and quicksands; for, without such information, there could be little chance of escape.

In so doing, be lost his popularity with the many, though these were evils he might perhaps have conquered (but still speaking figuratively); his crew (his great inward aid) had differed too seriously among themselves, and were under the influence of conflicting feelings.

His whole mind was bent on the search after those truths that alone can determine fixed principles, and which not long after became to him an unerring guide. They were for him what the needle is to the mariner.

The observation alluded to is as follows:

"All my experience, from my first entrance into life to the present
hour, is in favour of the warning maxim, that the man who opposes in
toto 'the political or religious zealots of his age, is safer from
their obloquy than he who differs from them but in one or two points
only' IN DEGREE."

This is a truth too important to pass lightly over, as in this consisted much of that feeling which prevented his being popular, (for unless an individual goes the whole length of the party who may choose to adopt him, he is discarded, and it is well for him if he is not persecuted and held up to public ridicule). [17]

Zealots are usually superficial, but in herds they are found to support each other, and by their numbers assume an imposing air.--One weak man cannot stand, but three may.--By this mode of congregating, they are more easily managed by their leaders, whose impulses they obey, and to whom they become willing slaves. Men who sacrifice the many to the few, have been held out by almost every writer, where moral and political subjects have been introduced, as warnings to those liable to fall into their snares, but which have seemingly been put forth to little purpose. The necessity, therefore, for a continuation of instruction on such important moral truths, is still required; for, in the contending currents, so much mischief is often produced, that to divert these conflicting opinions, and to try to bring them into unity, Coleridge thought it a duty to employ his strength of intellect; he hoped to preserve a principle which he deemed so useful to mankind.

The foot of Quantock was to Coleridge a memorable spot; here his studies were serious and deep; protected by one of the kindest of friends, and stimulated by the society also of a brother poet, whose lays seemed to have inspired his song, and also to have chimed in with it; for although it has been shewn that his poetic genius first dawned in his 16th year, yet after he left College, and during his residence at this place, [18] it seemed suddenly to have arrived at poetic manhood, and to have reached this developement as early as his 25th year. In his more serious studies he had greatly advanced, and had already planned and stored up much for his future life. It will often be repeated, but not too often for a society so full of sciolists and disbelievers,--men who are so self-satisfied as not to require teaching,--that Coleridge never was an idle man; and that, if nothing else remained, the progress he made in intellectual acquirements during his residence at Stowey and his short stay in Germany, might be instanced. Before he quitted this country to embark in fresh studies we have his own statement:

"I became convinced, that religion, as both the corner-stone and the
key-stone of morality, must have a 'moral' origin; so far, at least,
that the evidence of its doctrines could not, like the truths of
abstract science, be 'wholly' independent of the will.

It was therefore to be expected, that its 'fundamental' truth would be
such as MIGHT be denied, though only by the fool, and even by the fool
from madness of 'heart' alone!

The question then concerning our faith in the existence of a God, not
only as the ground of the universe by his essence, but by his wisdom
and holy will as its maker and judge, appeared to stand thus: the
sciential reason, the objects of wit are purely theoretical, remains
neutral, as long as its name and semblance are not usurped by the
opponents of the doctrine; but it 'then' becomes an effective ally by
exposing the false show of demonstration, or by evincing the equal
demonstrability of the contrary from premises equally logical. The
'understanding', meantime suggests, the analogy of 'experience'
facilitates, the belief. Nature excites and recalls it, as by a
perpetual revelation. Our feelings almost necessitate it; and the law
of conscience peremptorily commands it. The arguments that all apply
to, are in its favor; and there is nothing against it, but its own
sublimity.

It could not be intellectually more evident without becoming morally
less effective; without counteracting its own end by sacrificing the
'life' of faith to the cold mechanism of a worthless, because
compulsory assent. The belief of a God and a future state (if a
passive acquiescence may be flattered with the name of 'belief') does
not, indeed, always beget a good heart; but a good heart so naturally
begets the belief, that the very few exceptions must be regarded as
strange anomalies from strange and unfortunate circumstances.

From these premises I proceeded to draw the following
conclusions,--first, that having once fully admitted the existence of
an infinite yet self-conscious Creator, we are not allowed to ground
the irrationality of any other article of faith on arguments which
would equally prove 'that' to be irrational, which we had allowed to
be 'real'. Secondly, that whatever is deducible from the admission of
a 'self-comprehending' and 'creative' spirit, may be legitimately used
in proof of the 'possibility' of any further mystery concerning the
Divine Nature.

"Possibilitatem mysteriorum (Trinitatis, &c.) contra insultus
infidelium et hereticorum a contradictionibus vindico; haud quidem
veritatem, quæ revelatione sola stabiliri possit;" says Leibnitz, in a
letter to his duke. He then adds the following just and important
remark. "In vain will tradition or texts of Scripture be adduced in
support of a doctrine, 'donec clava impossibilitatis et
contradictionis e manibus horum Herculum extorta fuerit.' For the
heretic will still reply, that texts, the literal sense of which is
not so much above as directly against all reason, must be understood
figuratively, as Herod is a Fox, &c.

These principles," says he, "I held philosophically, while in respect
of revealed religion, I remained a zealous Unitarian. I considered the
idea of a Trinity a fair scholastic inference from the being of God,
as a creative intelligence; and that it was therefore entitled to the
rank of an esoteric doctrine of natural religion: but seeing in the
same no practical or moral bearing, I confined it to the schools of
philosophy. The admission of the Logos, as hypostasized (i.e. neither
a mere attribute nor a personification), in no respect removed my
doubts concerning the incarnation and the redemption by the cross;
which I could neither reconcile in 'reason' with the impassiveness of
the Divine Being, nor in my moral feelings with the sacred distinction
between things and persons, the vicarious payment of a debt and the
vicarious expiation of guilt.

A more thorough revolution in my philosophic principles, and a deeper
insight into my own heart were yet wanting. Nevertheless, I cannot
doubt, that the difference of my metaphysical notions from those of
Unitarians in general 'contributed' to my final re-conversion to the
'whole truth' in 'Christ;' even as according to his own confession the
books of certain Platonic philosophers (Libri quorundam Platonicorum)
commenced the rescue of St. Augustine's faith from the same error,
aggravated by the far darker accompaniment of the Manichean heresy."

Perhaps it is right also to state, that no small share of his final reconversion was attributable to that zeal and powerful genius, and to his great desire that others should become sharers in his own acquirements, which he was so desirous to communicate. During his residence at the foot of Quantock, his thoughts and studies were not only directed to an enquiry into the great truths of religion, but, while he stayed at Stowey, he was in the habit of preaching often at the Unitarian Chapel at Taunton, and was greatly respected by all the better and educated classes in the neighbourhood.

He spoke of Stowey with warmth and affection to the latest hours of his life. Here, as before mentioned, dwelt his friend Mr. Thomas Poole--the friend (justly so termed) to whom he alludes in his beautiful dedicatory poem to his brother the Rev. George Coleridge, and in which, when referring to himself, he says,

"To me the Eternal Wisdom hath dispensed
A different fortune and more different mind--
Me from the spot where first I sprang to light
Too soon transplanted, ere my soul had fix'd
Its first domestic loves; and hence through life
Chasing chance-started friendships. A brief while
Some have preserved me from life's pelting ills;
But, like a tree with leaves of feeble stem,
If the clouds lasted, and a sudden breeze
Ruffled the boughs, they on my head at once
Dropp'd the collected shower; and some most false,
False and fair foliaged as the Manchineel,
Have tempted me to slumber in their shade
E'en mid the storm; then breathing subtlest damps,
Mix'd their own venom with the rain from Heaven,
That I woke poison'd! But, all praise to Him
Who gives us all things, more have yielded me
_Permanent shelter_; and beside one friend, [19]
Beneath the impervious covert of one oak,
I've raised a lowly shed, and know the names
Of husband and of father; not unhearing
Of that divine and nightly-whispering voice,
Which from my _childhood to maturer years_
Spake to me of predestinated wreaths,
Bright with no fading colours!"

These beautiful and affecting lines to his brother are dated May 26th, 1797, Nether Stowey, Somerset. In his will, dated Highgate, July 2nd, 1830, he again refers to this friend, and directs his executor to present a plain gold mourning ring to Thomas Poole, Esq., of Nether Stowey.

"The Dedicatory Poem to my 'Juvenile Poems,' and my 'Fears in
Solitude,'[20] render it unnecessary to say more than what I then, in
my early manhood, thought and felt, I now, a gray-headed man, still
think and feel."

In this volume, dedicated to his brother, are to be found several poems in early youth and upwards, none of later date than 1796.

The "Ode," he says, "on the Departing Year, was written on the 24th,
25th, and 26th of December, 1796, and published separately on the last
day of that year. 'The Religious Musings' were written as early as
Christmas 1794."

He then was about to enter his 23rd year. The preface to this volume is a key to his opinions and feelings at that time, and which the foregoing part of this memoir is also intended to illustrate.

"Compositions resembling those of the present volume are not
unfrequently condemned for their querulous egotism. But egotism is to
be condemned only when it offends against time and place, as in a
history or epic poem. To censure it in a monody or sonnet is almost as
absurd as to dislike a circle for being round. Why then write sonnets
or monodies? Because they give me pleasure when, perhaps, nothing else
could. After the more violent emotions of sorrow, the mind demands
amusement, and can find it in employment alone; but full of its late
sufferings, it can endure no employment not in some measure connected
with them. Forcibly to turn away our attention to general subjects is
a painful and most often an unavailing effort.

'But O! how grateful to a wounded heart
The tale of misery to impart
From others' eyes bid artless sorrows flow,
And raise esteem upon the base of woe.'

(Shaw.)

The communicativeness of our nature leads us to describe our own
sorrows; in the endeavour to describe them, intellectual activity is
exerted; and from intellectual activity there results a pleasure,
which is gradually associated, and mingles as a corrective, with the
painful subject of the description. 'True,' (it may be answered) 'but
how are the PUBLIC interested in your sorrows or your description'?'
We are for ever attributing personal unities to imaginary
aggregates.--What is the PUBLIC, but a term for a number of scattered
individuals? Of whom as many will be interested in these sorrows, as
have experienced the same or similar.

'Holy be the lay
Which mourning soothes the mourner on his way.'

If I could judge of others by myself, I should not hesitate to affirm,
that the most interesting passages in our most interesting poems are
those in which the author developes his own feelings. The sweet voice
of Cona [21] never sounds so sweetly, as when it speaks of itself; and
I should almost suspect that man of an unkindly heart, who could read
the opening of the third book of 'Paradise Lost' without peculiar
emotion. By a law of nature, he, who labours under a strong feeling,
is impelled to seek for sympathy; but a poet's feelings are all
strong.--Quicquid amat valde amat.--Akenside therefore speaks with
philosophical accuracy when he classes love and poetry as producing
the same effects:

'Love and the wish of poets when their tongue
Would teach to others' bosoms, what so charms
Their own.'

'Pleasures of Imagination'.

There is one species of egotism which is truly disgusting; not that
which leads to communicate our feelings to others, but that which
would reduce the feelings of others; to an identity with our own.

The atheist who exclaims 'pshaw,' when he glances his eye on the
praises of Deity, is an egotist; an old man, when he speaks
contemptuously of love verses is an egotist; and the sleek favourites
of fortune are egotists when they condemn all 'melancholy
discontented' verses. Surely it would be candid not merely to ask
whether the poem pleases ourselves, but to consider whether or no
there may not be others, to whom it is well calculated to give an
innocent pleasure.

I shall only add, that each of my readers will, I hope, remember, that
these poems on various subjects, which, he reads at one time and under
the influence of one set of feelings, were written at different times
and prompted by very different feelings; and, therefore, that, the
supposed inferiority of one poem to another may sometimes be owing to
the temper of mind in which he happens to peruse it."

In the second edition (the second edition was published in conjunction with his friends Charles Lloyd and Charles Lamb) is added the following:

"My poems have been rightly charged with a profusion of
double-epithets, and a general turgidness. I have pruned the
double-epithets with no sparing hand; and used my best efforts to tame
the swell and glitter both of thought and diction. This latter fault,
however, had insinuated itself into my Religious Musings with such
intricacy of union, that sometimes I have omitted to disentangle the
weed from the fear of snapping the flower. A third and heavier
accusation has been brought against me, that of obscurity; but not, I
think, with equal justice. An author is obscure, when his conceptions
are dim and imperfect, and his language incorrect, or inappropriate,
or involved. A poem that abounds in allusions, like the 'Bard' of
Gray, or one that impersonates high and abstract truths, like
Collins's 'Ode on the Poetical Character,' claims not to be popular,
but should be acquitted of obscurity. The deficiency is in the reader;
but this is a charge which every poet, whose imagination is warm and
rapid, must expect from his 'contemporaries'. Milton did not escape
it; and it was adduced with virulence against Gray and Collins. We now
hear no more of it, not that their poems are better understood at
present, than they were at their first publication; but their fame is
established; and a critic would accuse him self of frigidity or,
inattention, who should profess not to understand them: but a living
writer is yet sub judice; and if we cannot follow his conceptions or
enter into his feelings, it is more consoling to our pride to consider
him as lost beneath, than as soaring above, us. If any man expect from
my poems the same easiness of style which he admires in a
drinking-song for him, I have not written. Intelligibilia, non
intellectum adfero.

I expect neither profit nor general fame by my writings; and I
consider myself as having been amply repaid without either. Poetry has
been to me its own 'exceeding great reward;' it has soothed my
afflictions; it has multiplied and refined my enjoyments; it has
endeared solitude; and it has given me the habit of wishing to
discover the good and the beautiful in all that meets and surrounds
me."

We seem now to have arrived at that period of Coleridge's life which a profound student of his poetry, and himself a pleasing and elegant poet, has considered the period of the "Annus Mirabilis." "The Manhood," he observes, "of Coleridge's true poetical life was in the year 1797." This is perfectly true, and at that period he was only twenty-five, as before stated. He was, as is proved in his earlier poems, highly susceptible and sensitive, requiring kindness and sympathy, and the support of something like intellectual friendship. He tells us that he chose his residence at Stowey, on account of his friend Mr. Poole, who assisted and enabled him to brave the storm of "Life's pelting ills." Near him, at Allfoxden, resided Mr. Wordsworth, with whom, he says,

"Shortly after my settlement there, I became acquainted, and whose
society I found an invaluable blessing, and to whom I looked up with
equal reverence as a poet, a philosopher, or a man. His conversation
extended to almost all subjects except physics and politics; with the
latter he never troubled himself."

Although Coleridge lived a most retired life, it was not enough to exempt him from the watchfulness of the spies of government whose employment required some apparent activity before they could receive the reward they expected. Nor did he escape the suspicion of being a dangerous person to the government; which arose partly from his connexion with Wordsworth, and from the great seclusion of his life. Coleridge was ever with book, paper, and pencil in hand, making, in the language of, artists, "Sketches and studies from nature." This suspicion, accompanied with the usual quantity of obloquy, was not merely attached to Coleridge, but extended to his friend, "whose perfect innocence was even adduced as a suspicion of his guilt," by one of these sapients, who observed that

"as to Coleridge, there is not much harm in him; for he is a
whirl-brain, that talks whatever comes uppermost; but that Wordsworth!
he is a dark traitor. You never hear _him_ say a syllable on the
subject."

During this time the brother poets must have been composing or arranging the Lyrical Ballads, which were published the following year, i.e. 1798. Coleridge also in 1797 wrote the "Remorse," or rather the play he first called Osorio, the name of the principal character in it, but finding afterwards that there was a respectable family of that name residing in London, it was changed for the title of the Remorse, and the principal character, Osorio, to Ordonio. This play was sent to Sheridan.

The following remarks were given in Coleridge's "Biographia Literaria," which wholly clears him from the suspicion of being concerned in making maps of a coast, where a smuggler could not land, and they shew what really was his employment; and how poets may be mistaken at all times for other than what they wish to be considered:

"During the first year that Mr. Wordsworth and I were neighbours, our
conversations turned frequently on the two cardinal points of
poetry,--the power of exciting the sympathy of a reader by a faithful
adherence to the truth of nature, and the power of giving the interest
of novelty by the modifying colours of imagination. The sudden charm
which accidents of light and shade, which moonlight or sunset diffused
over a known and familiar landscape, appeared to represent the
practicability of combining both. These are the poetry of nature. The
thought suggested itself (to which of us I do not recollect) that a
series of poems might be composed of two sorts. In the one the
incidents and agents were to be, in part at least, supernatural; and
the excellence aimed at was to consist in the interesting of the
affections by the dramatic truth of such emotions as would naturally
accompany such situations, supposing them real; and real in 'this'
sense they have been to every human being who, from whatever source of
delusion, has at any time believed himself under supernatural agency.
For the second class, subjects were to be chosen from ordinary life:
the characters and incidents were to be such as will be found in every
village and its vicinity, where there is a meditative and feeling mind
to seek after them, or to notice them when they present themselves.

In this idea originated the plan of the 'Lyrical Ballads,' in which it
was agreed that my endeavours should be directed to persons and
characters supernatural, or at least romantic; yet so as to transfer
from our inward nature a human interest and a semblance of truth
sufficient to procure for these shadows of imagination that willing
suspension of disbelief for the moment which constitutes poetic faith.
Mr. Wordsworth, on the other hand, was to propose to himself, as his
object, to give the charm of novelty to things of every day, and to
excite a feeling analogous to the supernatural, by awakening the
mind's attention from the lethargy of custom, and directing it to the
loveliness and the wonders of the world before us,--an inexhaustible
treasure; but for which, in consequence of the feeling of familiarity
and selfish solicitude, we have eyes yet see not, ears that hear not,
and hearts that neither feel nor understand.

With this view I wrote the 'Ancient Mariner,' and was preparing,
among other poems, the 'Dark Ladie' and the 'Christabel,' in which I
should have more nearly realized my ideal than I had done in my first
attempt: but Mr. Wordsworth's industry had proved so much more
successful, and the number of his poems so much greater, that my
compositions, instead of forming a balance, appeared rather an
interpolation of heterogeneous matter.

Mr. Wordsworth added two or three poems written in his own character,
in the impassioned, lofty, and sustained diction, which is
characteristic of his genius. In this form the 'Lyrical Ballads' were
published, and were presented by him as an 'experiment', whether
subjects, which from their nature rejected the usual ornaments and
extra-colloquial style of poems in general, might not be so managed,
in the language of ordinary life, as to produce the pleasurable
interest which it is the peculiar business of poetry to impart.

To the second edition he added a preface of considerable length, in
which, notwithstanding some passages of apparently a contrary import,
he was understood to contend for the extension of the style to poetry
of all kinds, and to reject as vicious and indefensible all phrases
and forms of style that were not included in what he (unfortunately, I
think, adopting an equivocal expression) called the language of 'real'
life. From this preface, prefixed to poems in which it was impossible
to deny the presence of original genius, however mistaken its
direction might be deemed, arose the whole long-continued controversy.
For, from the conjunction of perceived power with supposed heresy, I
explain the inveteracy, and in some instances, I grieve to say, the
acrimonious passions, with which the controversy has been conducted by
the assailants." (Vol. ii. p. 1.)

There are few incidents in the life of the literary man to make any narrations of sufficient importance or sufficiently amusing for the readers, and the readers only of works of amusement. The biography of such men is supposed to contain the faithful history and growth of their minds, and the circumstances under which it is developed, and to this it must be confined.

What has been done by Coleridge himself, and where he has been his own biographer, will be carefully noticed and given here, when it falls in with the intention and purposes of this work; for this reason the Biographia Literaria has been so frequently quoted. Coleridge had passed nearly half his life in a retirement almost amounting to solitude, and this he preferred. First, he was anxious for leisure to pursue those studies which wholly engrossed his mind; and secondly, his health permitted him but little change, except when exercise was required; and during the latter part of his life he became nearly crippled by the rheumatism. His character will form a part in the Philosophical History of the Human Mind, which will be placed in the space left for it by his amiable and most faithful friend and disciple, whose talents, whose heart and acquirements makes him most fit to describe them, and whose time was for so many years devoted to this great man. But, to continue in the order of time, in June, 1797, he was visited by his friend Charles Lamb and his sister.

On the morning after their arrival, Coleridge met with an accident which disabled him from walking during the whole of their stay. One evening, when they had left him for a few hours, he composed the poem, "This Lime-tree Bower my Prison," in which he refers to his old friend, while watching him in fancy with his sister, winding and ascending the hills at a short distance, himself detained as if a prisoner:

"Yes! they wander on
In gladness all; but thou, methinks, most glad,
My gentle-hearted Charles! for thou hast pined
And hunger'd after nature, many a year;
In the great city pent, winning thy way
With sad yet patient soul, through evil, and pain,
And strange calamity! Ah! slowly sink
Behind the western ridge, thou glorious sun!
Shine in the slant beams of the sinking orb,
Ye purple heath flowers! richlier burn, ye clouds!
Live in the yellow light, ye distant groves!
And kindle, thou blue ocean! So my friend
Struck with deep joy may stand, as I have stood,
Silent with swimming sense; yea, gazing round
On the wide landscape, gaze till all doth seem
Less gross than bodily; and of such hues
As veil the Almighty Spirit, when yet he makes
Spirits perceive his presence."

During his residence here, Mr. William Hazlitt became acquainted with him, which is thus vividly recorded in the 'Liberal':

"My father was a dissenting minister at Wem, in Shropshire; and in the
year 1798, Mr. Coleridge came to Shrewsbury, to succeed Mr. Rowe in
the spiritual charge of a Unitarian congregation there. He did not
come till late on the Saturday afternoon before he was to preach, and
Mr. Rowe, who himself went down to the coach in a state of anxiety and
expectation, to look for the arrival of his successor, could find no
one at all answering the description, but a round-faced man, in a
short black coat (like a shooting jacket), which hardly seemed to have
been made for him, but who appeared to be talking at a great rate to
his fellow-passengers. Mr. Rowe had scarcely returned to give an
account of his disappointment, when the round-faced man in black
entered, and dissipated all doubts on the subject, by beginning to
talk. He did not cease while he stayed, nor has he since that I know
of. [22]

He held the good town of Shrewsbury in delightful suspense for three
weeks that he remained there, 'fluttering the proud Salopians like an
eagle in a dove-cot;' and the Welsh mountains, that skirt the horizon
with their tempestuous confusion, agree to have heard no such mystic
sounds since the days of

'High-born Hoel's harp or soft Llewellyn's lyre!'

My father lived ten miles from Shrewsbury, and was in the habit of
exchanging visits with Mr. Rowe, and Mr. Jenkins of Whitchurch (nine
miles further on), according to the custom of dissenting ministers in
each other's neighbourhood. A line of communication is thus
established, by which the flame of civil and religious liberty is kept
alive, and nourishes its mouldering fire unquenchable, like the fires
in the Agamemnon of Æschylus, placed at different stations, that
waited for ten long years to announce, with their blazing pyramids,
the destruction of Troy.

Coleridge had agreed to come once to see my father, according to the
courtesy of the country, as Mr. Rowe's probable successor; but in the
meantime I had gone to hear him preach the Sunday after his arrival. A
poet and a philosopher getting up into a Unitarian pulpit to preach
the gospel was a romance in these degenerate days,--which was not to
be resisted.

It was in January, 1798, that I rose one morning before daylight, to
walk ten miles in the mud, to hear this celebrated person preach.
Never, the longest day I have to live, shall I have such another walk
as this cold, raw, comfortless one, in the winter of the year 1798.
'Il y a des impressions que ni le tems, ni les circonstances peuvent
effacer. Dussé-je vivre des siècles entiers, le doux tems de ma
jeunesse ne peut renaître pour moi, ni s'effacer jamais dans ma
mémoire.' When I got there, the organ was playing the 100th psalm;
and, when it was done, Mr. Coleridge rose and gave out his text,--'He
departed again into a mountain 'himself alone'.' As he gave out this
text, his voice 'rose like a stream of rich distilled perfumes;' and
when he came to the two last words, which he pronounced loud, deep,
and distinct, it seemed to me, who was then young, as if the sounds
had echoed from the bottom of the human heart, and as if that prayer
might have floated in solemn silence through the universe. The idea of
St. John came into my mind, 'of one crying in the wilderness, who had
his loins girt about, and whose food was locusts and wild honey.' The
preacher then launched into his subject, like an eagle dallying with
the wind. The sermon was upon peace and war--upon church and
state--not their alliance, but their separation--on the spirit of the
world, and the spirit of Christianity, not as the same, but as opposed
to one another. He talked of those who had 'inscribed the cross of
Christ on banners dripping with human gore.' He made a poetical and
pastoral excursion,--and to show the fatal effects of war, drew a
striking contrast between the simple shepherd-boy, driving his team
afield, or sitting under the hawthorn, piping to his flock, as though
he should never be old,' and the same poor country lad, crimped,
kidnapped, brought into town, made drunk at an alehouse, turned into a
wretched drummer-boy, with his hair sticking on end with powder and
pomatum, a long cue at his back, and tricked out in the finery of the
profession of blood:

'Such were the notes our once loved poet sung;'

and, for myself, I could not have been more delighted if I had heard
the music of the spheres. Poetry and Philosophy had met together.
Truth and Genius had embraced under the eye and with the sanction of
Religion. This was even beyond my hopes. I returned home well
satisfied. The sun that was still labouring pale and wan through the
sky, obscured by thick mists, seemed an emblem of the 'good
cause'; and the cold dank drops of dew, that hung half melted on
the beard of the thistle, had something genial and refreshing in
them--

...

"On the Tuesday following, the half-inspired speaker came. I was
called down into the room where he was, and went half-hoping,
half-afraid. He received me very graciously, and I listened for a long
time without uttering a word, and did not suffer in his opinion by my
silence. 'For those two hours (he was afterwards pleased to say) he
was conversing with W. H.'s forehead.' His appearance was different
from what I had anticipated from seeing him before. At a distance, and
in the dim light of the chapel, there was to me a strange wildness in
his aspect, a dusky obscurity, and I thought him pitted with the
small-pox. His complexion was at that time clear, and even bright,

'As are the children of yon azure sheen.'

His forehead was broad and high, as if built of ivory, with large
projecting eyebrows, and his eyes rolling beneath them like a sea with
darkened lustre.

'A certain tender bloom his face o'erspread;'

a purple tinge, as we see it in the pale, thoughtful complexions of
the Spanish portrait painters, Murillo and Velasquez. His mouth was
rather open, his chin good-humoured and round, and his nose small.

Coleridge in his person was rather above the common size, inclining to
the corpulent. His hair (now, alas! grey, and during the latter years
of his life perfectly white) was then black, and glossy as the raven's
wing, and fell in smooth masses over his forehead. This long liberal
hair is peculiar to enthusiasts." [23]

(The Liberal, vol. ii. pp. 23-27.)

He used, in his hours of relaxation, to relate the state of his feelings, and his adventures during the short time he was a preacher. His congregations were large, and if he had the power of attracting one man of such talents from a distance, it may well be understood how the many near the chapel flocked to listen to him; in short, if one is to give credence to current report, he emptied churches and chapels to hear him. If he had needed any stimulus, this would have been sufficient, but such a mind so intensely occupied in the search after truth needed no external excitement.

He has often said, that one of the effects of preaching was, that it compelled him to examine the Scriptures with greater care and industry.

These additional exertions and studies assisted mainly to his final conversion to the whole truth; for it was still evident that his mind was perplexed, and that his philosophical opinions would soon yield to the revealed truth of Scripture.

He has already pointed out what he felt on this important question, how much he differed from the generally received opinions of the Unitarians, confessing that he needed a thorough revolution in his philosophical doctrines, and that an insight into his own heart was wanting.

"While my mind was thus perplexed, by a gracious providence," says he,
"for which I can never be sufficiently grateful, the generous and
munificent patronage of Mr. Josiah and Mr. Thomas Wedgewood enabled me
to finish my education in Germany. Instead of troubling others with my
own crude notions, and juvenile compositions, I was thenceforward
better employed in attempting to store my own head with the wisdom of
others. I made the best use of my time and means; and there is
therefore no period of my life on which I can look back with such
unmingled satisfaction."

He quitted Clevedon and his cottage in the following farewell lines:--

"Ah! quiet dell! dear cot, and mount sublime!
I was constrain'd to quit you. Was it right,
While my unnumber'd brethren toil'd and bled,
That I should dream away the entrusted hours
On rose-leaf beds, pampering the coward heart
With feelings all too delicate for use?
Sweet is the tear that from some Howard's eye
Drops on the cheeks of one he lifts from earth:
And he that works me good with unmoved face,
Does it but half: he chills me while he aids,--
My benefactor, not my brother man!
Yet even this, this cold beneficence
Praise, praise it, O my Soul! oft as thou scann'st
The Sluggard Pity's vision-weaving tribe!
Who sigh for wretchedness, yet shun the wretched,
Nursing in some delicious solitude
Their slothful loves and dainty sympathies!
I therefore go, and join head, heart, and hand,
Active and firm, to fight the bloodless fight
Of Science, freedom, and the truth in Christ.
Yet oft when after honourable toil
Rests the tired mind, and waking loves to dream,
My spirit shall revisit thee, dear cot!
Thy jasmin and thy window-peeping rose,
And myrtles fearless of the mild sea-air.
And I shall sigh fond wishes--sweet abode!
Ah! had none greater! And that all had such!
It might be so, but, oh! it is not yet.
Speed it, O Father! Let thy Kingdom come."

He drew his own character when he described that of Satyrane, the idolocast or breaker of idols, the name he went by among his friends and familiars.

"From his earliest youth," says he, "Satyrane had derived his highest
pleasures from the admiration of moral grandeur and intellectual
energy; and during the whole of his life he had a greater and more
heartfelt delight in the superiority of other men to himself than men
in general derive from their belief of their own. His readiness to
imagine a superiority where it did not exist, was for many years his
predominant foible; his pain from the perception of inferiority in
others whom he had heard spoken of with any respect, was unfeigned and
involuntary, and perplexed him as a something which he did not
comprehend. In the child-like simplicity of his nature he talked to
all men as if they were his equals in knowledge and talents, and many
whimsical anecdotes could be related connected with this habit; he was
constantly scattering good seed on unreceiving soils. When he was at
length compelled to see and acknowledge the true state of the morals
and intellect of his contemporaries, his disappointment was severe,
and his mind, always thoughtful, became pensive and sad:--_for to love
and sympathize with mankind was a necessity of his nature_."

He sought refuge from his own sensitive nature in abstruse meditations, and delighted most in those subjects requiring the full exercise of his intellectual powers, which never seemed fatigued--and in his early life never did sun shine on a more joyous being!

"There was a time when, though my path was rough,
This joy within me dallied with distress,
And all misfortunes were but as the stuff
Whence fancy made me dreams of happiness:
For hope grew round me, like the twining vine,
And fruits, and foliage, not my own, seem'd mine.
But now afflictions bow me down to earth
Nor care I that they rob me of my mirth,
But oh! each visitation
Suspends what nature gave me at my birth,
My shaping spirit of imagination.
For not to think of what I needs must feel,
But to be still and patient, all I can;
And haply by abstruse research to steal
From my own nature all the natural man--
This was my sole resource, my only plan:
Till that which suits a part infects the whole,
And now is almost grown the habit of my soul." [24]

It was indeed an inauspicious hour "when he changed his abode from the happy groves of Jesus' College to Bristol." But it was so ordained! He sought literature as a trade,--and became an author:

"whatever," he would say, "I write, that alone which contains the
truth _will live, for truth only is permanent_. The rest will
deservedly perish."

He wrote to supply the fountain which was to feed the fertilizing rills,--to develope the truth was that at which he aimed, and in which he hoped to find his reward.

On the 16th of September, 1798, he sailed from Great Yarmouth to Hamburg, in company with Mr. Wordsworth and his sister in his way to Germany, and now for the first time beheld "his native land" retiring from him.

In a series of letters, published first in the "Friend," afterwards in his "Biographia Literaria," is to be found a description of his passage to Germany, and short tour through that country. His fellow passengers as described by him were a motley group, suffering from the usual effects of a rolling sea. One of them, who had caught the customary antidote to sympathy for suffering, to witness which is usually painful, began his mirth by not inaptly observing,

"That Momus might have discovered an easier way to see a man's inside
than by placing a window in his breast. He needed only to have taken a
salt-water trip in a pacquet-boat."

Coleridge thinks that a

"pacquet is far superior to a stage-coach, as a means of making men
open out to each other. In the latter the uniformity of posture
disposes to dozing, and the definiteness of the period at which the
company will separate, makes each individual think of those 'to' whom
he is going, rather than of those 'with' whom he is going. But at sea
more curiosity is excited, if only on this account, that the pleasant
or unpleasant qualities of your companions are of greater importance
to you, from the uncertainty how long you may be obliged to house with
them."

On board was a party of Danes, who, from his appearance in a suit of black, insisted he was a "Docteur Teology." To relieve himself of any further questioning on this head, he bowed assent "rather than be nothing."

"Certes," he says, "We were not of the Stoic school; for we drank, and
talked, and sung altogether; and then we rose and danced on the deck a
set of dances, which, in _one_ sense of the word at least, were very
intelligibly and appropriately entitled reels. The passengers who lay
in the cabin below in all the agonies of sea-sickness, must have found
our bacchanalian merriment

a tune
Harsh and of dissonant mood for their complaint.

I thought so at the time; and how closely the greater number of our
virtues are connected with the fear of death, and how little sympathy
we bestow on pain, when there is no danger."

The Dane soon convinced him of the justice of an old remark, that many a faithful portrait in our novels and farces, has been rashly censured for an outrageous caricature, or perhaps nonentity.

"I had retired to my station in the boat when he came and seated
himself by my side, and appeared not a little tipsy. He commenced the
conversation in the most magnific style, and a sort of pioneering to
his own vanity, he flattered me with _such_ grossness! The parasites
of the old comedy were modest in comparison."

After a ludicrous conversation which took place, he passes on to the description of another passenger, an Englishman, who spoke German fluently and interpreted many of the jokes of a Prussian who formed one of the party.

"The Prussian was a travelling merchant, turned of threescore, a hale,
tall, strong man, and full of stories, gesticulations, and buffoonery,
with the soul as well as the look of a mountebank, who, while he is
making you laugh, picks your pocket. Amid all his droll looks and
droll gestures, there remained one look untouched by laughter; and
that one look was the true face, the others were but its mask. The
Hanoverian (another of the party) was a pale, bloated, young man,
whose father had made a large fortune in London as an army contractor.
He seemed to emulate the manners of young Englishmen of fortune. He
was a good-natured fellow, not without information or literature, but
a most egregious coxcomb. He had been in the habit of attending the
House of Commons; and had once spoken, as he informed me, with great
applause in a debating society. For this he appeared to have qualified
himself with laudable industry; for he was perfect in Walker's
Pronouncing Dictionary, and with an accent that forcibly reminded me
of the Scotchman in Roderick Random, who professed to teach the
English pronunciation; he was constantly _deferring_ to my superior
judgment, whether or no I had pronounced this or that word with
propriety or 'the true delicacy.' When he spoke, though it were only
half a dozen sentences, he always rose; for which I could detect no
other motive, than his partiality to that elegant phrase, so liberally
introduced in the orations of our British legislators, 'While I am on
my legs.'"

Coleridge continues his description of the party, and relates a quarrel that ensued between a little German tailor and his wife, by which he was the gainer of a bed, it being too cold to continue much longer on deck:

"In the evening the sea rolling higher, the Dane became worse, and in
consequence increased his remedy, viz. brandy, sugar, and nutmeg, in
proportion to the room left in his stomach. The conversation or
oration 'rather than dialogue, became extravagant beyond all that I
ever heard.' After giving an account of his fortune acquired in the
island of Santa Cruz, 'he expatiated on the style in which he intended
to live in Denmark, and the great undertakings he proposed to himself
to commence, till the brandy aiding his vanity, and his vanity and
garrulity aiding the brandy, he talked like a madman.

After this drunken apostrophe he changed the conversation, and
commenced an harangue on religion, (mistaking Coleridge for "un
Philosophe" in the continental sense of the word) he talked of the
Deity in a declamatory style very much resembling the devotional rants
of that rude blunderer Mr. Thomas Paine, in his 'Age of Reason'. I
dare aver, that few men have less reason to charge themselves with
indulging in persiflage than myself; I should hate it, if it were only
that it is a Frenchman's vice, and feel a pride in avoiding it,
because our own language is too honest to have a word to express it
by.

At four o'clock I observed a wild duck swimming on the waves, a single
solitary wild duck. It is not easy to conceive, how interesting a
thing it looked in that round objectless desert of waters."

The cry of 'land' was heard soon afterwards, and in a short time they dropped anchor at Cuxhaven, and proceeded from thence in a boat to Hamburg. After this he travelled on to [25] Ratzeburg, and then took up his residence with a pastor for the purpose of acquiring the German language, but with what success will be presently shown. He soon after proceeded through Hanover to Göttingen.--Here he informs us he regularly

"attended lectures in the morning in physiology, in the evening an
natural history under BLUMENBACH, a name as dear to every Englishman
who has studied at the university, as it is venerable to men of
science throughout Europe! Eichorn's Lectures on the New Testament
were repeated to me from notes by a student from Ratzeburg, a young
man of sound learning and indefatigable industry, who is now I believe
a professor of the oriental languages at Heidelberg."

Few persons visit Gottingen without ascending the Brocken.