Chapter III (1)

LEAVES THE LAKES ON ACCOUNT OF HIS HEALTH FOR MALTA--HIS EMPLOYMENT IN MALTA IN 1805--GOES TO SYRACUSE AND ROME--WINTERS AT NAPLES 15TH OF DECEMBER, 1806.

Mr. Coleridge once met Mrs. Barbauld at an evening party. He had not long been present, and the recognition of mere acquaintanceship over, than, walking across the room, she addressed him in these words:

"So, Mr. Coleridge, I understand you do not consider Unitarians
Christians."

"I hope, Madam," said he, "that all persons born in a Christian
country are Christians, and trust they are under the condition of
being saved; but I 'do' contend that Unitarianism' is not
'Christianity';"

to which she replied,

"I do not understand the distinction."

This want of knowledge of the difference, is common to many very clever and very amiable persons of this creed. It is hoped that we are not always to be tried by our speculative opinions, for man is frequently constituted higher and better than the principles he sometimes adopts.

Coleridge frequently observed,

"I do not so much care for men's religious opinions,--they vary, and
are dependant on that which usually surrounds them-but I regard with
more attention what men _are_."

He extended his kindness to all he believed to be good, whatever their creed, and when in his power, his aid. When injured, he immediately forgave, as he hoped to be forgiven, [1] and when reviled and persecuted, he never became 'persecutor'. Of him it may be said, what he himself observed of the pious Baxter, that "he came a century before his time." The Western world however seems to have better appreciated the works of Coleridge, than most of his countrymen: in some parts of America, his writings are understood and highly valued.

In 1801, he settled at Keswick, in a house, which if not built, was at least finished for him, by a then neighbour (a Mr. Jackson,) and for a time he occupied a part of it. But here his health greatly failed, and he suffered severe rheumatism from the humidity of a lake country, which was the main cause of his leaving Keswick for Malta.

It has been already observed, that when a youth at school, he had, from imprudent bathing, become a rheumatic subject, and during the rest of his life, remained liable to most painful affections of that disorder.

In 1803, the fear of sudden death induced him to insure his life, that his family might not be left, dependant on his friends. In 1804, his rheumatic sufferings increasing, he determined on a change of climate, and accepted an invitation from his friend, Sir John, then Mr. Stoddart, residing at Malta, where he arrived in May. He soon became acquainted with the governor of the island, Sir Alexander Ball, who was greatly attached to Coleridge, and whose character has been so well described by him in The Friend. During a change of secretaries, [2] Coleridge, at the request of Sir Alexander, officiated, pro tempore, as public secretary of that island; and there was found in him--what at that time was so much required--an able diplomatic writer in this department of correspondence. The dignities of the office he never attempted to support: he was greatly annoyed at what he thought its unnecessary parade, and he petitioned Sir Alexander to be released from the annoyance. There can be no doubt that, to an individual accustomed to public business, his occupation might appear light, and even agreeable; but his health, which was the object of this change, not being much benefited, and the duties of the employment greater than he was equal to, made it for him an arduous one. [3] He seemed at this time, in addition to his rheumatism, to have been oppressed in his breathing, which oppression crept on him imperceptibly to himself without suspicion of its cause yet so obvious was it, that it was noticed by others "as laborious;" [4] and continuing to increase, though with little apparent advancement, at length terminated in death.

"Friday afternoon, four o'clock, April 18,1804. The Speedwell dropped
anchor in the harbour of Malta: one of the finest in the world, the
buildings surrounding it on all sides, of a neat ever-new-looking
sand-free-stone. Some unfinished, and in all, the windows placed
backward, looked like Carthage when Æneas visited it-or a 'burnt out'
place."

Saturday, April 19.--In the after-dinner hour walked out with Mr. and
Mrs. Stoddart, towards the Quarantine harbour. One's first feeling is,
that it is all strange, very strange; and when you begin to understand
a little of the meaning and uses of the massy endless walls and
defiles, then you feel and perceive that it is very wonderful. A city
all of freestone, all the houses looking new like Bath; all with flat
roofs, the streets all strait, and at right angles to each other; but
many of them exceedingly steep, none quite level; of the steep
streets, some, 'all' stepped with a smooth artificial stone, some
having the footpath on each side in stone steps, the middle left for
carriages; lines of fortification, fosses, bastions, curtains, &c. &c.
endless:--with gardens or bowling-grounds below; for it is all height
and depth--you can walk nowhere without having whispers of suicide,
toys of desperation. Expletive cries of Maltese venders shot up,
sudden and violent. The inhabitants very dark, almost black; but
straight, cleanlimbed, lively, active,--cannot speak in praise of
their cleanliness--children very fair--women from the use of the
faldetto, or cloak-hooding their heads, as women in England in a
shower throw over their aprons, and from the use of always holding it
down to one side of the face, all have a continued languishing manner
of holding their heads one way--picturesque enough as expressive of a
transient emotion, but shocking and inelegant in 'all' and always. The
language Arabic, corrupted with Italian, and perhaps with others.

Sunday, April 20, 1804.--Went to church, plain chapel with a picture
behind the pulpit, which I was not close enough to see, and at the
other end in a nitch, a 'cross painted'! Was it there before? or was
it in complaisance to Maltese superstitions?--Called on Sir A.
Ball--there I met General Valette, and delivered my letter to him,--a
striking room, very high; 3/4ths of its height from the ground hung
with rich crimson silk or velvet; and the 1/4th above, a mass of
colours, pictures in compartments rudely done and without perspective
or art, but yet very impressively and
imagination-stirringly--representing all the events and exploits of
the Order.--Some fine pictures, one by Correggio, one of a Cain
killing Abel, I do not know by whom.

Monday, April 21, 1804, Hardkain.--Sir A. Ball called on me, and
introduced me to Mr. Lane, who was formerly his tutor, but now his
chaplain. He invited me to dine with him on Thursday, and made a plan
for me to ride to St. Antonio on Tuesday morning with Mr. Lane,
offering me a horse. Soon after came on thunder and storm, and my
breathing was affected a good deal, but still I was in no discomfort.

April 22, Tuesday morning, six o'clock, was on horseback, and rode to
St. Antonio.--Fields with walls, to keep the fort from the rain--mere
desolation seemingly, and yet it is fertile. St. Antonio, a pleasant
country-house, with a fine but unheeded garden, save among the low
orange and lemon trees, still thick with fruit on many of the trees,
fruit ripe, blossoms, and the next year's fruit. Pepper-trees very
beautiful, and the locust-tree not amiss. Visited St. John's--O
magnificence!

Wednesday, April 23.--General Valette I called on at his
country-house, just out of the gates, near the end of the Botanic
Garden, and it is the pleasantest place I have seen here. The
multitude of small gardens and orangeries, among the huge masses of
fortifications, many of them seeming almost as thick as the gardens
inclosed by them are broad. Pomegranate in (beautiful secicle) flower.
Under a bridge over a dry ditch saw the largest prickly pear. Elkhorns
for trunk, and then its leaves--but go and look and look.--(Hard
rain.) We sheltered in the Botanic Garden; yet reached home not
unwetted."

The simplicity of Coleridge's manners, and entire absence of all show of business-like habits, amongst men chiefly mercantile, made him an object of curiosity, and gave rise to the relation of many whimsical stories about him. But his kindness and benevolence lent a charm to his behaviour and manners, in whatever he was engaged. From the state of his own lungs, invalid-like, he was in the habit of attending much to those about him, and particularly those who had been sent to Malta for pulmonary disease. He frequently observed how much the invalid, at first landing, was relieved by the climate and the 'stimulus' of change; but when the novelty, arising from 'that' change, had ceased, the monotonous sameness of the blue sky, accompanied by the summer heat of the climate, acted powerfully as a sedative, ending in speedy dissolution,--even more speedy than in a colder climate. The effects on Coleridge seemed to run parallel to this. At first he remarked that he was relieved, but afterwards speaks of his limbs "as lifeless tools," and of the violent pains in his bowels, which neither opium, ether, nor peppermint, separately or combined, could relieve. These several states he minuted down, from time to time, for after-consideration or comparison. He most frequently sought relief from bodily suffering in religious meditations, or in some augmented exercise of his mind:

"Sickness, 'tis true,
Whole years of weary days, besieged him close,
Even to the gates and inlets of his life!
But it is true, no less, that strenuous, firm,
And with a natural gladness, he maintained
The citadel unconquered, and in joy
Was strong to follow the delightful muse."

'Tombless Epitaph'. [5]

The citadel did, indeed, remain unconquered even to his 'last' hour--he found in religious meditation and prayer that solace and support which, during a life of misery and pain, gave him his extraordinary patience and resignation. If an ejaculation escaped him, it was usually followed by some moral or religious reflection, as thus runs one of his notes:

"O me miserum! Assuredly the doctrine of grace, atonement, and the
spirit of God interceding by groans to the spirit of God, (Rev. viii.
26.), is founded on constant experience, and even if it can be ever
'explained away', it must still remain as the rising and setting of
the sun itself, as the darkness and as the light--it must needs have
the most efficient character of reality,--quod semper, quod ubique,
quod ab omnibus! Deeply do I both know and feel my weakness--God in
his wisdom grant, that my day of visitation may not have been past."

Lest some 'will-worshiping' individuals, inflated by vanity, and self-righteousness, should misunderstand or misconstrue him, the following lines are copied from his poems:--

"HUMILITY, THE MOTHER OF CHARITY."

"Frail creatures are we all! To be the best,
Is but the fewest faults to have:--
Look thou then to thyself, and leave the rest
To God, thy conscience and the grave."

'Poetical Works.'

There is not, perhaps, to be found on record a more perfect example of humility and charity, than that which he exhibited and sustained for so long a period of suffering and trial. Surely he could not be compared to the generality of his fellows--to men who, though possessing great worldly reputation, never gave him their support; but, on the contrary, were sometimes even ready to whisper down his fair name!

"For whispering tongues can poison truth;
And constancy lives in realms above."

CHRISTOBEL.

Some of these might be well meaning enough to believe, that in giving publicity to what they _erroneously_ considered moral infirmities, (not possessing the knowledge to discriminate between moral and physical infirmities), they were performing a religious duty--were displaying a beacon to deter others from the same course. But in the case of Coleridge, this was a sad misconception. Neither morally nor physically was he understood. He did all that in his state duty could exact; and had he been more favoured in his bodily constitution, he would not have been censured for frailties which did not attach to him.

Alas! how little do the many know of the hearts of truly great men! Least of all could such men as Coleridge be known by modern pharisees.

"It is no uncommon thing," says an affectionate and kind-hearted
friend, whose genius is rarely equalled, "to see well intentioned men
please themselves with the feeling that they are not as others; that
they are the favorites of Heaven, and washed clean by special
dispensation from the spots of frail mortality; who more-over assume
that they possess the most delicate feelings; but then those feelings
are under such admirable discipline, that they can, with the most
exquisite suffering, cry over their own sentences, shed tears of pity
and blood for their duty, make a merit of the hardness which is
contrary to their nature, and live in perpetual apprehension of being
too tender-hearted. It is wonderful with what ingenuity these people
can reconcile their flexible consciences to acts at which their
inferiors might blush or shudder, and no less fearful to reflect how
many poor wretches, not wholly past hope or reformation, may have been
sent to their last account, with all their imperfections on their
heads, to satisfy the religious or political fears of these pharisees.
The patrons and employers of spies, we may expect to make the greatest
sacrifice to _expediency_,--a word which every man will explain after
his own way."

To have written during his life any thing like an eulogy on Coleridge would have been most painful to him, yet he must have felt, that he deserved well of his fellow beings; for fame, and fame only, he observes, is the aim and object of every good and great man, though it is too often confounded with mere reputation. When a youth, he had learnt how to value that bubble reputation, its fleeting character, but the love of which, in some men, is so injurious both to head and heart. Reputation, "the morrow's meal," the "breakfast only," the furnisher of the tinsel ornaments, or at most of some of the worldly agreeables, sown perhaps for future worldly enjoyment. 'He' laboured for riches of another kind, and _stored_ them, in the hope of receiving a more permanent reward:

"By fame of course," says Coleridge, "I mean any thing rather than
reputation, [6] the desire of working in the good and great
permanently, through indefinite ages, the struggle to be promoted into
the rank of God's fellow-labourers. For bold as this expression is, it
is a quotation from Scripture, and therefore justified by God himself,
for which we ought to be grateful, that he has deigned to hold out
such a glory to us! This is however only one consistent part of the
incomprehensible goodness of Deity in taking upon himself man."

His note-books abound with "his hints and first thoughts; "as he says, his "Cogitabilia rather than actual cogitata à me,"--not always to be understood as his fixed opinions, but often merely suggestions of the disquisition, and acts of obedience to the apostolic command of "Try all things, hold fast that which is good." Among them is the following characteristic of the man and his feelings, noted down for some future disquisition.

"Würde, Worthiness, VIRTUE, consist in the mastery over the sensuous
and sensual impulses; but Love requires INNOCENCE. Let the lover ask
his heart whether he could endure that his mistress should have
'struggled' with a sensual impulse for another, though she overcame it
from a sense of duty to him? Women are LESS offended with men, from
the vicious habits of men in part, and in part from the difference of
bodily constitution; yet still to a pure and truly loving woman it
must be a painful thought. That he should struggle with and overcome
ambition, desire of fortune, superior beauty, &c. or with desire
objectless, is pleasing; but 'not' that he has struggled with positive
appropriated desire, i.e. desire 'with' an object. Love in short
requires an absolute 'peace' and 'harmony' between all parts of human
nature, such as it is, and it is offended by any war, though the
battle should be decided in favour of the worthier.

This is perhaps the final cause of the 'rarity' of true love, and the
efficient and immediate cause of its difficulty. Ours is a life of
probation, we are to contemplate and obey 'duty' for its own sake, and
in order to this we, in our present imperfect state of being, must see
it not merely abstracted from, but in direct opposition to the 'wish',
the 'inclination'. Having perfected this, the highest possibility of
human nature, he may then with safety harmonize 'all' his being with
it; 'he may' LOVE!--To perform duties absolutely from the sense of
duty, is the 'ideal', which perhaps no human being ever can arrive at,
but which every human being ought to try to draw near unto. This is in
the only wise, and verily, in a most sublime sense to see God face to
face; which, alas! it seems too true, that no man can do and 'live',
i.e. a 'human' life. It would become incompatible with his
organization, or rather it would 'transmute' it, and the process of
that transmutation to the senses of other men would be called
'death'.--Even as to caterpillars; in all probability the caterpillar
dies, and he either does not see, which is most probable, or at all
events he does not see the connection between the caterpillar and the
butterfly, the beautiful Psyche of the Greeks.

Those who in this life 'love' in perfection--if such there be--in
proportion as their love has no struggles, see God darkly and through
a veil:--for when duty and pleasure are absolutely coincident, the
very nature of our organization necessitates that duty, will be
contemplated as the symbol of pleasure, instead of pleasure being (as
in a future life we have faith it will be) the symbol of duty. This
then is the distinction between human and angelic 'happiness'. Human
happiness--humanly happy I call him, who in enjoyment finds his duty;
angelically happy he, who seeks and finds his 'duty' in enjoyment.
Happiness in general may be defined--not the aggregate of pleasurable
sensations, for this is either a dangerous error and the creed of
sensualists, or else a mere translation or wordy paraphrase--but the
state of that person who, in order to enjoy his nature in its highest
manifestations of conscious 'feeling', has no need of doing wrong, and
who in order to do right is under no necessity of abstaining from
enjoyment."

On the arrival of the new secretary at Malta, Mr. Coleridge left it, September 27, 1805, and after a day's voyage, arrived at Syracuse. He remained in Sicily a short time only, for he was eager to visit the "eternal city" (Rome,) in which he staid some months. The next date marking his progress, is the 15th December, 1806, Naples,--the usual place of the residence of travellers during summer. [7] This gap in his minutes is partly filled up by his own verbal account, repeated at various times to the writer of this memoir. While in Rome, he was actively employed in visiting the great works of art, statues, pictures, buildings, palaces, &c. &c. observations on which he minuted down for publication. Here he became acquainted with the eminent literary men at that time collected there, and here he first saw the great American painter Alston, for whom he always cherished an unfeigned regard. The German poet Tieck, he then for the first time also saw, and many others of celebrity. To one of them he was mainly indebted for his safety, otherwise he might have terminated his career in the Temple at Paris: for to Buonaparte, through one of his industrious emissaries, Coleridge had become obnoxious, in consequence of an article written by him in the Morning Post. This salutary warning he obtained from the brother of the celebrated traveller, Humboldt, of whom he had enquired, whether he could pass through Switzerland and Germany, and return by that route to England. Humboldt then informed Coleridge, that having passed through Paris on his journey to Rome, he had learnt that he, Coleridge, was a marked man, and unsafe: when within the reach of Buonaparte he advised him to be more than usually circumspect, and do, all in his power to remain unknown. [8] Rather unexpectedly, he had a visit early one morning from a noble Benedictine, with a passport signed by the Pope, in order to facilitate his departure. He left him a carriage, and an admonition for instant flight, which was promptly obeyed by Coleridge. Hastening to Leghorn, he discovered an American vessel ready to sail for England, on board of which he embarked. On the voyage she was chased by a French vessel, which so alarmed the American, that he compelled Coleridge to throw his papers overboard, and thus to his great regret, were lost the fruits of his literary labours in Rome. [9]

In 1806 he returned to England, and took up his residence for a time at Keswick, but was more generally with his friend Wordsworth, then living at Grassmere.

At Grassmere he planned 'The Friend', for which Mr. Wordsworth wrote a few contributions; and receiving occasionally some little assistance from other writers, he was enabled to furnish the quantity of valuable matter which appeared in that publication. Some of his earnest admirers, and those too persons best acquainted with his works, are disposed to give this the preference.

His friend, Lamb, who is justly considered a man of exquisite taste, used to say, in his odd and familiar way, "Only now listen to his talk, it is as fine as an angel's!" and then, by way of a superlative, would add, "but after all, his best talk is in 'The Friend'."

To the Lake Edition of this work, as it has been termed, is appended the following prospectus, addressed to a correspondent

"It is not unknown to you, that I have employed almost the whole of my
life in acquiring, or endeavouring to acquire, useful knowledge by
study, reflection, observation, and by cultivating the society of my
superiors in intellect, both at home and in foreign countries. You
know too, that at different periods of my life, I have not only
planned, but collected the materials for many works on various and
important subjects: so many indeed, that the number of my unrealized
schemes, and the mass of my miscellaneous fragments, have often
furnished my friends with a subject of raillery, and sometimes of
regret and reproof. Waiving the mention of all private and accidental
hinderances, I am inclined to believe, that this want of perseverance
has been produced in the main by an over-activity of thought, modified
by a constitutional indolence, which made it more pleasant to me to
continue acquiring, than to reduce what I had acquired to a regular
form. Add too, that almost daily throwing off my notices or
reflections in desultory fragments, I was still tempted onward by an
increasing sense of the imperfection of my knowledge, and by the
conviction, that in order fully to comprehend and develope any one
subject, it was necessary that I should make myself master of some
other, which again as regularly involved a third, and so on, with an
ever-widening horizon. Yet one habit, formed during long absences from
those with whom I could converse with full sympathy, has been of
advantage to me--that of daily noting down, in my memorandum or common
place books, both incidents and observations, whatever had occurred to
me from without, and all the flux and reflux of my mind within itself.
The number of these notices and their tendency, miscellaneous as they
were, to one common end ('quid sumus et quid futuri gignimur,' what we
are and what we are born to become; and thus from the end of our being
to deduce its proper objects), first encouraged me to undertake the
weekly essay, of which you will consider this letter as the
prospectus.

Not only did the plan seem to accord better than any other with the
nature of my own mind, both in its strength and in its weakness; but
conscious that, in upholding some principles both of taste and
philosophy, adopted by the great men of Europe, from the middle of the
fifteenth till toward the close of the seventeenth century. I must run
counter to many prejudices of many of my readers (for old faith is
often modern heresy). I perceived too in a periodical essay, the most
likely means of winning instead of forcing my way. Supposing truth on
my side, the shock of the first day might be so far lessened by
reflections of the succeeding days, as to procure for my next week's
essay a less hostile reception, than it would have met with, had it
been only the next chapter of a present volume. I hoped to disarm the
mind of those feelings, which preclude conviction by contempt, and as
it were, fling the door in the face of reasoning, by a 'presumption'
of its absurdity. A motion too for honourable ambition was supplied by
the fact, that every periodical paper of the kind now attempted, which
had been conducted with zeal and ability, was not only well received
at the time, but has become permanently, and in the best sense of the
word, popular. By honourable ambition, I mean the strong desire to be
useful, aided by the wish to be generally acknowledged to have been
so. As I feel myself actuated in no ordinary degree by this desire, so
the hope of realizing it appears less and less presumptuous to me,
since I have received from men of highest rank and established
character in the republic of letters, not only strong encouragements
as to my own fitness for the undertaking, but likewise promises of
support from their own stores.

The 'object' of 'The Friend' briefly and generally expressed is--to
uphold those truths and those merits against the caprices of fashion,
and such pleasures, as either depend on transitory and accidental
causes, or are pursued from less worthy impulses. The chief 'subjects'
of my own essays will be:--

The true and sole ground of morality, or virtue, as distinguished from
prudence.

The origin and growth of moral impulses, as distinguished from
external and immediate motives.

The necessary dependence of taste on moral impulses and habits; and
the nature of taste (relatively to judgment in general and to genius)
defined, illustrated and applied. Under this head I comprise the
substance of the Lectures given, and intended to have been given, at
the Royal Institution, on the distinguished English Poets, in
illustration of the general principles of Poetry, together with
suggestions concerning the affinity of the Fine Arts to each other,
and the principles common to them all: Architecture; Gardening; Dress;
Music; Painting; Poetry.

The opening out of new objects of just admiration in our own language,
and information of the present state and past history of Swedish,
Danish, German and Italian literature, (to which, but as supplied by a
friend, I may add the Spanish, Portuguese and French,) as far as the
same has not been already given to English readers, or is not to be
found in common French authors.

Characters met with in real life; anecdotes and results of my life and
travels, &c. &c. as far as they are illustrative of general moral
laws, and have no immediate leaning on personal or immediate politics.

Education in its widest sense, private and national sources of
consolation to the afflicted in misfortune or disease, or dejection of
mind from the exertion and right application of the reason, the
imagination, and the moral sense; and new sources of enjoyment opened
out, or an attempt (as an illustrious friend once expressed the
thought to me) to add sunshine to daylight, by making the happy more
happy. In the words 'dejection of mind,' I refer particularly to doubt
or disbelief of the moral government of the world, and the grounds and
arguments for the religious hopes of human nature."

The first number, printed on stamped paper, was dated June 8th, 1809. He commences this work with the following motto:

"Whenever we improve, it is right to leave room for a further
improvement. It is right to consider, to look about us, to examine the
effect of what we have done. Then we can proceed with confidence,
because we can proceed with intelligence. Whereas, in hot
reformations, is what men more zealous than considerate, call 'making
clear work', the whole is generally so crude, so harsh, so indigested;
mixed with so much imprudence and so much injustice; so contrary to
the whole course of human nature and human institutions, that the very
people who are most eager for it, are among the first to grow
disgusted at what they have done. Then some part of the abdicated
grievance is recalled from its exile in order to become a corrective
of the correction.

Then the abuse assumes all the credit and popularity of a reform. The
very idea of purity and disinterestedness in politics falls into
disrepute, and is considered as a vision of hot and inexperienced men;
and thus disorders become incurable, not by the virulence of their own
quality, but by the unapt and violent nature of the remedies."

('Burke's speech on the 11th of February, 1780'.)

TO MY READERS.

"Conscious that I am about to deliver my sentiments on a subject of
the utmost delicacy, I have selected the general motto to all my
political lucubrations, from an authority equally respected by both
parties. I have taken it from an orator, whose eloquence enables
Englishmen to repeat the name of Demosthenes and Cicero, without
humiliation; from a statesman, who has left to our language a bequest
of glory unrivalled and all our own, in the keen-eyed, yet far-sighted
genius, with which he has made the profoundest general principles of
political wisdom, and even the recondite laws of human passions, bear
upon particular measures and passing events. While of the harangues of
Pitt, Fox, and their compeers on the most important occurrences, we
retain a few unsatisfactory fragments alone, the very flies and weeds
of Burke shine to us through the purest amber, imperishably enshrined,
and valuable from the precious material of their embalment. I have
extracted the passage not from that Burke, whose latter exertions have
rendered his works venerable as oracular voices from the sepulchre of
a patriarch, to the upholders of the government and society in their
existing state and order; but from a speech delivered by him while he
was the most beloved, the proudest name with the more anxious friends
of liberty; while he was the darling of those who, believing mankind
to have been improved, are desirous to give to forms of government a
similar progression. From the same anxiety, I have been led to
introduce my opinions on this most hazardous subject, by a preface of
a somewhat personal character. And though the title of my address is
general, yet, I own, I direct myself more particularly to those among
my readers, who, from various printed and unprinted calumnies, have
judged most unfavourably of my political tenets; aid to those whose
favour I have chanced to win in consequence of a similar, though not
equal mistake. To both, I affirm, that the opinions and arguments, I
am about to detail, have been the settled convictions of my mind for
the last ten or twelve years, with some brief intervals of
fluctuation, and those only in lesser points, and known only to the
companions of my fire-side. From both and from all my readers, I
solicit a gracious attention to the following explanations: first, on
the congruity of the following numbers, with the general plan and
object of 'The Friend;' and secondly, on the charge of arrogance or
presumption, which may be adduced against the author for the freedom,
with which in these numbers, and in others that will follow on other
subjects, he presumes to dissent from men of established reputation,
or even to doubt of the justice, with which the public laurel-crown,
as symbolical of the 'first' class of genius and intellect, has been
awarded to sundry writers since the revolution, and permitted to
wither around the brows of our elder benefactors, from Hooker to Sir
P. Sidney, and from Sir P. Sidney, to Jeremy Taylor and Stillingfleet."

The work ceased at the 27th number, March 15th, 1810. As is usually the case when authors become their own publishers, there was a pecuniary loss; but as long as printing lasts, it must remain a record of his powers.

Yet the critics, if critics they were worthy to be called, discovered only feebleness of mind, when in the attempt to make themselves acquainted with his principles, they professed, either through ignorance, or indolence, not to understand him. When his mental powers had so far advanced, he felt a conviction of the truth of the Triune power, [10] and at once saw that there was no important truth, in which this Triad was not contained. As ours was a constitutional government, composed of three great powers (of the three great estates of the realm, as Queen Elizabeth would say, the church, the nobles, and the commonalty,) when these, Coleridge observed, were exactly balanced, the government was in a healthy state, but excess in any one of these powers, disturbed the balance and produced disorder, which was attended by dissatisfaction and discord. A political writer, he laboured to maintain this balance; and when either power was threatened by any disturbance, threw in a counterweight, sometimes on one side and sometimes on another, as he, according to his philosophical opinions, thought they deserved either censure or praise. [11] For this 'apparent' fluctuation he was termed, by those men who never understood his principles, vacillating and inconsistent: but he cast his "bread upon the waters," and in due time it returned to him.

There must come a time when the works of Coleridge will be fairly weighed against the agreeable time-killing publications of our day; works for which their frivolous authors have reaped an abundant harvest while this giant in literature gained scarcely a dwarf's portion. But Truth, though perhaps slowly, must finally prevail. Mr. Coleridge remarks, that for his own guidance he was greatly benefited by a resolve, which, in the antithetic and allowed quaintness of an adage or maxim he had been accustomed to word thus:

"until you 'understand a writer's ignorance', presume yourself
'ignorant of his understanding'."

This was for him a golden rule, and which, when he read the philosophical works of others, he applied most carefully to himself. If an unlearned individual takes up a book, and, on opening it, finds by certain characters that it is a book on Algebra, he modestly puts, it down with perhaps an equally modest observation. "I never learned the Mathematics, and am ignorant of them: they are not suited to my taste, and I do not require them." But if perchance, he should take up a philosophical work, this modesty is not exercised: though he does not comprehend it, he will not acknowledge the fact; he is piqued however, and not satisfied with a mere slighting observation, but often ends, as disappointed vanity usually does, in shallow abuse. The political, the critical, the philosophical views of Coleridge, were all grand, and from his philosophical views he never deviated; all fluctuating opinions rolled by him, not indeed unheeded, but observed with sympathy and with regret, when not founded on those permanent principles which were to benefit and give good government to man.

Coleridge, it is well known, was no adept in matters of business, and so little skilled in ephemeral literature as not to be able to profit by any weekly publication. The first edition of The Friend was published weekly, on paper with the government stamp, and that reached, as before related, its twenty-seventh number.

Such a work was not suited to his genius: in fact, no periodical which required rapid writing on slight amusing subjects, with punctuality in publication, which demanded steadiness of health, and the absence of those sedative causes arising, in part, from his benevolent heart and sensitive nature, ever would have suited him. To write like a novelist--to charm ennui--is that which is required of a modern author who expects pecuniary recompense. Although he needed such recompense, the character of his genius unfitted him for the attainment of it; and had he continued the work, the expenditure would have ended in still greater pecuniary loss. One of his last political essays is that taken from the Morning Post, of March 19, 1800, on the character of Pitt. [12] These Essays were soon forgotten, though this, at the time, was much read and admired as part of the history of the man and his political feelings. It was the effect which Buonaparte believed to have been produced by these on the public mind that tempted him to try to incarcerate Coleridge. Some time after, Otto, the French ambassador at our Court, was ready with a bribe, in the hope to obtain from Coleridge a complimentary essay to his sovereign. The offer of the bribe would have deterred him from writing any more on the subject. Had he been willing to sell himself--to write a flattering character of the great hero--to raise that hero in the estimation of Europe, he would have been amply recompensed.

In his 'Biographia Literaria,' he says,

"But I do derive a gratification from the knowledge, that my essays
have contributed to introduce the practice of placing the questions
and events of the day in a moral point of view, in giving dignity to
particular measures by tracing their policy or impolicy to permanent
principles, and an interest to principles by the application of them
to individual measures. In Mr. Burke's writings, indeed, the germs of
almost all political truths may be found. But I dare assume to myself
the merit of having first explicitly defined and analysed the nature
of Jacobinism; and that in distinguishing the jacobin from the
republican, the democrat and the mere demagogue, I both rescued the
word from remaining a mere term of abuse, and put on their guard many
honest minds, who even in their heat of zeal against jacobinism,
admitted or supported principles from which the worst part of that
system may be legitimately deduced."

With this view the following Essays and Observations have been republished here,--as illustrative of his early opinions to be compared with those of his more advanced life,--to shew the injustice of his political opponents, who never seemed to have troubled themselves about principle,--and the necessary growth of intellectual power giving deeper insight, with the additional value of experience and its consequences.

PITT.

From the Morning Post, March 19, 1800.

"Plutarch, in his comparative biography of Rome and Greece, has
generally chosen for each pair of lives the two contemporaries who
most nearly resembled each other. His work would perhaps have been
more interesting, if he had adopted the contrary arrangement, and
selected those rather who had attained to the possession of similar
influence, or similar fame, by means, actions, and talents the most
dissimilar. For power is the sole object of philosophical attention in
man, as in inanimate nature; and in the one equally as in the other,
we understand it more intimately, the more diverse the circumstances
are with which we have observed it co-exist. In our days, the two
persons who appear to have influenced the interests and actions of men
the most deeply, and the most diffusively, are beyond doubt the Chief
Consul of France and the Prime Minister of Great Britain, and in these
two are prerented to us similar situations, with the greatest
dissimilitude of characters.

William Pitt was the younger son of Lord Chatham; a fact of no
ordinary importance in the solution of his character, of no mean
significance in the heraldry of morals and intellect. His father's
rank, fame, political connections, and parental ambition, were his
mould; he was cast, rather than grew.

A palpable election, a conscious predestination controlled the free
agency, and transfigured the individuality of his mind; and that,
which he 'might have been', was compered into that, which he 'was to
be'. From his early childhood it was his father's custom to make him
stand up on a chair, and declaim before a large company; by which
exercise, practised so frequently, and continued for so many years, he
acquired a premature and unnatural dexterity in the combination of
words, which must of necessity have diverted his attention from
present objects, obscured his impressions, and deadened his genuine
feelings. Not the 'thing' on which he was speaking, but the praises to
be gained, were present to his intuition; hence he associated all the
operations of his faculties with words, and his pleasures with the
surprise excited by them.

But an inconceivably large portion of human knowledge and human power
is involved in the science and management of 'words'; and an education
of words, though it destroys genius, will often create, and always
foster, talent. The young Pitt was conspicuous far beyond his fellows,
both at school and at college. He was always full grown: he had
neither the promise nor the awkwardness of a growing intellect.
Vanity, early satiated, formed and elevated itself into a love of
power; and in losing this colloquial vanity, he lost one of the prime
links that connect the individual with the species, too early for the
affections, though not too early for the understanding. At college he
was a severe student; his mind was founded and elemented in words and
generalities, and these two formed all the superstructure. That
revelry and that debauchery, which are so often fatal to the powers of
intellect, would probably have been serviceable to him; they would
have given him a closer communion with realities, they would have
induced a greater presentness to present objects. But Mr. Pitt's
conduct was correct, unimpressibly correct. His after-discipline in
the special pleader's office, and at the bar, carried on the scheme of
his education with unbroken uniformity. His first political
connections were with the reformers; but those who accuse him of
sympathising or coalescing with their intemperate or visionary plans,
misunderstand his character, and are ignorant of the historical facts.

Imaginary situations in an imaginary state of things rise up in minds
that possess a power and facility in combining images. Mr. Pitt's
ambition was conversant with old situations in the old state of
things, which furnish nothing to the imagination, though much to the
wishes. In his endeavours to realise his father's plan of reform, he
was probably as sincere as a being, who had derived so little
knowledge from actual impressions, could be. But his sincerity had no
living root of affection; while it was propped up by his love of
praise and immediate power, so long it stood erect and no longer. He
became a member of the Parliament, supported the popular opinions, and
in a few years, by the influence of the popular party, was placed in
the high and awful rank in which he now is. The fortunes of his
country, we had almost said the fates of the world, were placed in his
wardship--we sink in prostration before the inscrutable dispensations
of Providence, when we reflect in whose wardship the fates of the
world were placed!

The influencer of his country and of his species was a young man, the
creature of another's predetermination, sheltered and weather-fended
from all the elements of experience; a young man, whose feet had never
wandered; whose very eye had never turned to the right or to the left;
whose whole track had been as curveless as the motion of a fascinated
reptile! It was a young man, whose heart was solitary, because he had
existed always amid objects of futurity, and whose imagination too was
unpopulous, because those objects of hope to which his habitual wishes
had transferred, and as it were 'projected', his existence, were all
familiar and long-established objects! A plant sown and reared in a
hot-house, for whom the very air, that surrounded him, had been
regulated by the thermometer of previous purpose; to whom the light of
nature had penetrated only through glasses and covers; who had had the
sun without the breeze; whom no storm had shaken; on whom no rain had
pattered; on whom the dews of Heaven had not fallen! A being who had
had no feelings connected with man or nature, no spontaneous impulses,
no unbiassed and desultory studies, no genuine science, nothing that
constitutes individuality in intellect, nothing that teaches
brotherhood in affection! Such was the man--such, and so denaturalized
the spirit, on whose wisdom and philanthropy the lives and living
enjoyments of so many millions of human beings were made unavoidably
dependent.

From this time a real enlargement of mind became almost impossible.
Pre-occupations, intrigue, the undue passion and anxiety, with which
all facts must be surveyed; the crowd and confusion of those facts,
none of them seen, but all communicated, and by that very
circumstance, and by the necessity of perpetually classifying them,
transmuted into words and generalities; pride; flattery; irritation;
artificial power; these, and circumstances resembling these,
necessarily render the heights of office barren heights; which command
indeed a vast and extensive prospect, but attract so many clouds and
vapours, that most often all prospect is precluded. Still, however,
Mr. Pitt's situation, however inauspicious for his real being, was
favourable to his fame. He heaped period on period; persuaded himself
and the nation, that extemporaneous arrangement of sentences was
eloquence; and that eloquence implied wisdom.

His father's struggles for freedom, and his own attempts, gave him an
almost unexampled popularity; and his office necessarily associated
with his name all the great events that happened during his
administration. There were not however wanting men who saw through
this delusion: and refusing to attribute the industry, integrity, and
enterprising spirit of our merchants, the agricultural improvements of
our landholders, the great inventions of our manufacturers, or the
valour and skilfulness of our sailors, to the merits of a minister,
they have continued to decide on his character from those acts and
those merits, which belong to him, and to him alone. Judging him by
this standard, they have been able to discover in him no one proof or
symptom of a commanding genius. They have discovered him never
controlling, never creating, events, but always yielding to them with
rapid change, and sheltering himself from inconsistency by perpetual
indefiniteness. In the Russian war, they saw him abandoning meanly
what he had planned weakly, and threatened insolently. In the debates
on the Regency, they detected the laxity of his constitutional
principles, and received proofs that his eloquence consisted not in
the ready application of a general system to particular questions, but
in the facility of arguing for or against any question by specious
generalities, without reference to any system. In these debates he
combined what is most dangerous in democracy with all that is most
degrading in the old superstitions of monarchy; and taught an
inherency of the office in the person, in order to make the office
itself a nullity, and the premiership, with its accompanying majority,
the sole and permanent power of the state. And now came the French
Revolution. This was a new event: the old routine of reasoning, the
common trade of politics, were to become obsolete. He appeared wholly
unprepared for it: half favouring, half condemning, ignorant of what
he favoured, and why he condemned, he neither displayed the honest
enthusiasm and fixed principle of Mr. Fox, nor the intimate
acquaintance with the general nature of man, and the consequent
'prescience' of Mr. Burke.

After the declaration of war, long did he continue in the common cant
of office, in declamation about the Scheld and Holland, and all the
vulgar causes of common contests! and when at least the immense genius
of his new supporter had beat him out of these 'words' (words
signifying 'places' and 'dead objects', and signifying nothing more),
he adopted other words in their places, other generalities--Atheism
and Jacobinism--phrases, which he learnt from Mr. Burke, but without
learning the philosophical definitions and involved consequences, with
which that great man accompanied those words: Since the death of Mr.
Burke the forms, and the sentiments, and the tone of the French have
undergone many and important changes: how, indeed, is it possible that
it should be otherwise, while man is the creature of experience! But
still Mr. Pitt proceeds in an endless repetition of the same 'general
phrases'. This is his element: deprive him of general and abstract
phrases, and you reduce him to silence; but you cannot deprive him of
them. Press him to specify an 'individual' fact of advantage to be
derived from a war, and he answers, Security! Call upon him to
particularize a crime, and he exclaims--Jacobinism! Abstractions
defined by abstractions; generalities defined by generalities! As a
minister of finance he is still, as ever, the words of abstractions.
Figures, custom-house reports, imports and exports, commerce and
revenue--all flourishing, all splendid! Never was such a prosperous
country as England under his administration! Let it be objected, that
the agriculture of the country is, by the overbalance of commerce, and
by various and complex causes, in such a state, that the country hangs
as a pensioner for bread on its neighbours, and a bad season uniformly
threatens us with famine. This (it is replied) is owing to our
PROSPERITY,--all 'prosperous' nations are in great distress for
food!--Still PROSPERITY, still GENERAL PHRASES, unenforced by one
single image, one 'single fact' of real national amelioration; of any
one comfort enjoyed, where it was not before enjoyed; of any one class
of society becoming healthier, or wiser, or happier. These are
'things', these are realities, and these Mr. Pitt has neither the
imagination to body forth, or the sensibility to feel for. Once,
indeed, in an evil hour, intriguing for popularity, he suffered
himself to be persuaded to evince a talent for the real, the
individual; and he brought in his POOR BILL!! When we hear the
minister's talents for finance so loudly trumpeted, we turn
involuntarily to his POOR BILL--to that acknowledged abortion--that
unanswerable evidence of his ignorance respecting all the fundamental
relations and actions of property, and of the social union!

As his reasonings, even so is his eloquence. One character pervades
his whole being: words on words, finely arranged, and so dexterously
consequent, that the whole bears the semblance of argument, and still
keeps awake a sense of surprise; but when all is done, nothing
rememberable has been said, no one philosophical remark, no one image,
not even a pointed aphorism. Not a sentence of Mr. Pitt's has ever
been quoted, or formed the favourite phrase of the day, a thing
unexampled in any man of equal reputation; but while he speaks, the
effect varies according to the character of his auditor. The man of no
talent is swallowed up in surprise; and when the speech is ended, he
remembers his feelings, but nothing distinct of that which produced
them: (how opposite an effect to that of nature and genius, from whose
works the idea still remains, when the feeling is passed away, remains
to connect itself with the other feelings, and combine with new
impressions!) The mere man of talent hears him with admiration; the
mere man of genius with contempt; the philosopher neither admires nor
contemns, but listens to him with a deep and solemn interest, tracing
in the effects of his eloquence the power of words and phrases, and
that peculiar constitution of human affairs in their present state,
which so eminently favours this power.

Such appears to us to be the prime minister of Great Britain, whether
we consider him as a statesman or an orator. The same character
betrays itself in his private life; the same coldness to realities, to
images of realities, and to all whose excellence relates to reality:
he has patronized no science, he has raised no man of genius from
obscurity, he counts no one prime work of God among his friends. From
the same source, he has no attachment to female society, no fondness
for children, no perceptions of beauty in natural scenery; but he is
fond of convivial indulgences, of that stimulation, which, keeping up
the glow of self-importance, and the sense of internal power, gives
feelings without the mediation of ideas.

These are the elements of his mind; the accidents of his fortune, the
circumstances that enabled such a mind to acquire and retain such a
power, would form the subject of a philosophical history, and that too
of no scanty size. We can scarcely furnish the chapter of contents to
a work, which would comprise subjects so important and delicate as the
causes of the diffusion and intensity of secret influence; the
machinery and state intrigue of marriages; the overbalance of the
commercial interest; the panic of property struck by the late
revolution; the short-sightedness of the careful; the carelessness of
the far-sighted; and all those many and various events which have
given to a decorous profession of religion, and a seemliness of
private morals, such an unwonted weight in the attainment and
preservation of public power. We are unable to determine whether it be
more consolatory or humiliating to human nature, that so many
complexities of event, situation, character, age, and country, should
be necessary in order to the production of a Mr. Pitt."