Chapter XX: Cottle's Dark Chapter

[Coleridge had now become a recognized public lecturer on Poetry, and it was his last resource to keep out of political writing, which he saw was a rather barren business on which to waste his powers. Two courses of lectures were given between the spring of 1812 and that of 1813. His third course was delivered at Willis's Rooms from 12th May to 5th June. Henry Crabb Robinson attended the second, third and fourth of the course on 23rd, 26th, and 29th May, and has left some short accounts. His fourth course began on 3rd November 1812 and closed on 29th January 1813. H. C. R. attended the closing lecture. "He was received," says H. C. R., "with three rounds of applause on entering the lecture room, and very loudly applauded during the lecture and at its close." (H. C. R. _Diary_.)

The letter to Poole of 13th February 1813 quoted in the last chapter is only a fragment; the full text is given by Mr. E. H. Coleridge in _Letters_, 609-612. It ends as follows: "You perhaps may likewise have heard (in the Whispering Gallery of the World) of the year-long difference between me and Wordsworth (compared with the sufferings of which all the former afflictions of my life were less than flea-bites), occasioned (in great part) by the wicked folly of the arch-fool Montagu.

"A reconciliation has taken place, but the _feeling_, which I had previous to that moment, when the (three-fourth) calamity burst, like a thunderstorm from a blue sky, on my soul, after fifteen years of such religious, almost superstitious idolatry and self-sacrifice. Oh no! that, I fear, can never return. All outward actions, all inward wishes, all thoughts and admirations will be the same--_are_ the same, but--aye, there remains an immedicable _But_."

Not much is known regarding Coleridge's whereabouts in the summer of 1813. In September Southey came to London and took him to see Madame De Staël (_Letters of Southey_, ii, 332), who as we know was drowned by his monologue. In the end of October Coleridge left for Bristol, and reached the then second city of England to deliver a fifth course of lectures on poetry which had been arranged for by his friends there (Cottle's _Rem._, 353). The course lasted from 28th October to 16th November (Bohn Library, _Shakespeare Lectures_, p. 456). Cottle says the first lecture was on _Hamlet_; but the report from the Bristol papers (Ashe, Bohn Library, 458) contradicts this, the lecture on _Hamlet_ being the third. A sixth course of lectures was arranged for, which Cottle says were well attended (_Rem._, 354). Another course of four lectures on Milton, between 5th and 14th April (Ashe, Bohn Library, 457), was indifferently attended. His eighth course of lectures, this time on Homer, scarcely paid expenses (_Cottle_, 355). Although Coleridge must have repeated himself frequently in these lectures, they were new to Bristol. C. R. Leslie, a painter of some note in his day, speaks favourably of them (Leslie's _Autobiography, etc._, vol. 1, chap. 3). The following letters belong to the visit to Bristol.