Chapter II: Early Public Life (2)

MY DEAR THELWALL,--You have given me the affection of a brother, and I repay you in kind. Your letters demand my friendship and deserve my esteem; the zeal with which you have attacked my supposed _delusions_ proves that you are deeply interested for _me_, and interested even to agitation for what you believe to be _truth_. You deem that I have treated “systems and opinions with the furious prejudices of the conventicle, and the illiberal dogmatism of the cynic;” that I have “layed about me on this side and on that with the sledge hammer of abuse.” I have, you think, imitated the “old sect in politics and morals” in their “outrageous violence,” and have sunk into the “clownish fierceness of intolerant prejudice.” I have “branded” the presumptuous children of scepticism “with vile epithets and hunted them down with abuse.” “_These be hard words, Citizen! and I will be bold to say they are not to be justified_” by the unfortunate page which has occasioned them. The only passage in it which appears _offensive_ (I am not now inquiring concerning the truth or falsehood of this or the remaining passages) is the following: “You have studied Mr. G.’s Essay on Politi[cal] Jus[tice]--but to think filial affection folly, gratitude a crime, marriage injustice, and the promiscuous intercourse of the sexes right and wise, may class you among the despisers of vulgar prejudices, but cannot increase the probability that you are a _patriot_. But you act up to your principles--so much the worse. Your principles are villainous ones. I would not entrust my wife or sister to you; think you I would entrust my country?” My dear Thelwall! how are these opinions connected with the conventicle more than with the Stoa, the Lyceum, or the grove of Academus? I do not perceive that to attack _adultery_ is more characteristic of _Christian_ prejudices than of the prejudices of the disciples of Aristotle, Zeno, or Socrates. In truth, the offensive sentence, “Your principles are villainous,” was suggested by the Peripatetic Sage who divides bad men into two classes. The first he calls “wet or intemperate sinners”--men who are hurried into vice by their appetites, but _acknowledge_ their actions to be vicious; these are reclaimable. The second class he names _dry_ villains--men who are not only vicious but who (the steams from the polluted heart rising up and gathering round the head) have brought themselves and others to believe that _vice_ is _virtue_. We mean these men when we say men of bad _principles_--_guilt_ is out of the question. I am a necessarian, and of course deny the possibility of it. However, a letter is not the place for reasoning. In some form or other, or by some channel or other, I shall publish my critique on the New Philosophy, and, I trust, shall demean myself not _ungently_, and disappoint your auguries.... “But, you cannot be a patriot unless you are a Christian.” Yes, Thelwall, the disciples of Lord Shaftesbury and Rousseau as well as of Jesus--but the man who suffers not his hopes to wander beyond the objects of sense will in general be _sensual_, and I again assert that a sensualist is not likely to be a patriot. Have I tried these opinions by the double test of argument and example? I _think_ so. The first would be too large a field, the second some following sentences of your letter forced me to.... _Gerrald_[113] you insinuate is an _atheist_. Was he so, when he offered those solemn prayers to God Almighty at the Scotch conventicle, and was this sincerity? But Dr. Darwin and (I suppose from his actions) Gerrald think sincerity a folly and therefore vicious. Your atheistic brethren square their moral systems exactly according to their inclinations. Gerrald and Dr. Darwin are polite and good-natured men, and willing to attain at good by attainable roads. They deem insincerity a necessary virtue in the present imperfect state of our nature. Godwin, whose very heart is cankered by the love of singularity, and who feels no disinclination to wound by abrupt harshness, pleads for absolute sincerity, because such a system gives him a frequent opportunity of indulging his misanthropy. Poor Williams,[114] the Welsh bard (a very meek man), brought the tear into my eye by a simple narration of the manner in which Godwin insulted him under the pretence of reproof, and Thomas Walker of Manchester told me that his indignation and contempt were never more powerfully excited than by an unfeeling and insolent speech of the said Godwin to the poor Welsh bard. Scott told me some shocking stories of Godwin. His base and anonymous attack on you is enough for me. At that time I had prepared a letter to him, which I was about to have sent to the “Morning Chronicle,” and I convinced Dr. Beddoes by passages from the “Tribune” of the calumnious nature of the attack. I was once and only once in company with Godwin. He appeared to me to possess neither the strength of intellect that discovers truth, nor the powers of imagination that decorate falsehood; he talked sophisms in jejune language. I like Holcroft a thousand times better, and think him a man of much greater ability. Fierce, hot, petulant, the very high priest of atheism, he hates God “with all his heart, with all his mind, with all his soul, and with all his strength.” Every man not an atheist is only not a fool. “Dr. Priestley? there is a _petitesse_ in his mind. Hartley? pshaw! _Godwin_, sir, is a thousand times a better metaphysician!” But this intolerance is founded on benevolence. (I had almost forgotten that horrible story about his son.)

* * * * *

On the subject of using sugar, etc., I will write you a long and serious letter. This grieves me more than you [imagine]. I hope I shall be able by severe and unadorned reasoning to convince you you are wrong.

Your remarks on my poems are, I think, just in general; there is a rage and affectation of double epithets. “Unshuddered, unaghasted” is, indeed, _truly_ ridiculous. But why so violent against _metaphysics_ in poetry? Is not Akenside’s a metaphysical poem? Perhaps you do not like Akenside? Well, but _I do_, and so do a great many others. Why pass an act of _uniformity_ against poets? I received a letter from a very sensible friend abusing love verses; another blaming the introduction of politics, “as wider from true poetry than the equator from the poles.” “Some for each” is my motto. That poetry pleases which interests. My religious poetry interests the _religious_, who read it with rapture. Why? Because it awakes in them all the associations connected with a love of future existence, etc. A very dear friend of mine,[115] who is, in my opinion, the best poet of the age (I will send you his poem when published), thinks that the lines from 364 to 375 and from 403 to 428 the best in the volume,--indeed, worth all the rest. And this man is a republican, and, at least, a _semi_-atheist. Why do you object to “shadowy of truth”? It is, I acknowledge, a Grecism, but, I think, an elegant one. Your remarks on the della-crusca place of emphasis are just in part. Where we wish to point out the _thing_, and the _quality_ is mentioned merely as a decoration, this mode of emphasis is indeed absurd; therefore, I very patiently give up to critical vengeance “_high_ tree,” “_sore_ wounds,” and “_rough_ rock;” but when you wish to dwell chiefly on the _quality_ rather than the _thing_, then this mode is proper, and, indeed, is used in common conversation. Who says good _man_? Therefore, “_big_ soul,” “_cold_ earth,” “_dark_ womb,” and “_flamy_ child” are all right, and introduce a variety into the versification, [which is] an advantage where you can attain it without any sacrifice of sense. As to harmony, it is all _association_. Milton is _harmonious_ to me, and I absolutely nauseate Darwin’s poems.

Yours affectionately,
S. T. COLERIDGE.

JOHN THELWALL,
Beaufort Buildings, Strand, London.

LVIII. TO THOMAS POOLE.

May 29, 1796.

MY DEAR POOLE,--This said caravan does not leave Bridgewater till nine. In the market place stands the hustings. I mounted it, and, pacing the boards, mused on bribery, false swearing, and other foibles of election times. I have wandered, too, by the river Parret, which looks as filthy as if all the parrots of the House of Commons had been washing their consciences therein. Dear gutter of Stowey![116] Were I transported to Italian plains, and lay by the side of the streamlet that murmured through an orange grove, I would think of thee, dear gutter of Stowey, and wish that I were poring on thee!

So much by way of rant. I have eaten three eggs, swallowed sundries of tea and bread and butter, purely for the purpose of amusing myself! I have seen the horse fed. When at Cross, where I shall dine, I shall think of your happy dinner, celebrated under the auspices of humble independence, supported by brotherly love! I am writing, you understand, for no worldly purpose but that of avoiding anxious thoughts. Apropos of honey-pie, Caligula or Elagabalus (I forget which) had a dish of nightingales’ tongues served up. What think you of the stings of bees? God bless you! My filial love to your mother, and fraternity to your sister. Tell Ellen Cruikshank that in my next parcel to you I will send my Haleswood poem to her. Heaven protect her and you and Sara and your mother and, like a bad shilling passed off between a handful of guineas,

Your affectionate friend and brother,
S. T. COLERIDGE.

P. S.--Don’t forget to send by Milton [carrier] my old clothes, and linen _that once was clean, etcetera_. A pretty _periphrasis_ that!

LIX. TO JOHN THELWALL.

Wednesday, June 22, 1796.

DEAR THELWALL,--That I have not written you has been an act of self-denial, not indolence. I heard that you were electioneering, and would not be the occasion that any of your thoughts should diverge from that focus.

I wish very much to see you. Have you given up the idea of spending a few weeks or month at Bristol? You might be _making way_ in your review of Burke’s life and writings, and give us once or twice a week a lecture, which I doubt not would be crowded. We have a large and every way excellent library, to which I could make you a temporary subscriber, that is, I would get a subscription ticket transferred to you.

You are certainly well calculated for the review you meditate. Your answer to Burke is, I will not say, the best, for that would be no praise; it is certainly the only good one, and it is a very good one. In style and in _reflectiveness_ it is, I think, your _chef d’œuvre_. Yet the “Peripatetic”[117]--for which accept my thanks--pleased me more because it let me into your heart; the poetry is frequently _sweet_ and possesses the _fire_ of feeling, but not enough (I think) of the _light_ of fancy. I am sorry that you should entertain so degrading an opinion of me as to imagine that I _industriously_ collected anecdotes unfavourable to the characters of great men. No, Thelwall, but I cannot shut my ears, and I have never given a moment’s belief to any one of those stories unless when they were related to me at different times by professed democrats. My vice is of the opposite class, a precipitance in praise; witness my panegyric on Gerrald and that _black_ gentleman Margarot in the “Conciones,” and my foolish verses to Godwin in the “Morning Chronicle.”[118] At the same time, Thelwall, do not suppose that I admit your palliations. Doubtless I could fill a book with slanderous stories of _professed Christians_, but those very men would allow they were acting contrary to Christianity; but, I am afraid, an atheistic bad man manufactures his system of principles with an eye to his peculiar propensities, and makes his actions the criterion of what is virtuous, not virtue the criterion of his actions. Where the _disposition_ is not amiable, an acute understanding I deem no blessing. To the last sentence in your letter I subscribe fully and with all my inmost affections. “He who thinks and _feels_ will be virtuous; and he who is absorbed in self will be vicious, whatever maybe his speculative opinions.” Believe me, Thelwall, it is not his atheism that has prejudiced me against Godwin, but Godwin who has, perhaps, _prejudiced_ me against atheism. Let me see you--I already know a deist, and Calvinists, and Moravians whom I love and reverence--and I shall leap forwards to realise my _principles_ by _feeling_ love and honour for an atheist. By the bye, are you an atheist? For I was told that Hutton was an atheist, and procured his three massy quartos on the principle of knowledge in the hopes of finding some arguments in favor of atheism, but lo! I discovered him to be a profoundly pious deist,--“independent of fortune, satisfied with himself, pleased with his species, confident in his Creator.”

God bless you, my dear Thelwall! Believe me with high esteem and _anticipated_ tenderness,

Yours sincerely,
S. T. COLERIDGE.

P. S. We have a hundred lovely scenes about Bristol, which would make you exclaim, O admirable _Nature_! and me, O Gracious _God_!

LX. TO THOMAS POOLE.

Saturday, September 24, 1796.

MY DEAR, VERY DEAR POOLE,--The heart thoroughly penetrated with the flame of virtuous friendship is in a state of glory; but lest it should be exalted above measure there is given it a thorn in the flesh. I mean that when the friendship of any person forms an essential part of a man’s happiness, he will at times be pestered by the little jealousies and solicitudes of imbecile humanity. Since we last parted I have been gloomily dreaming that you did not leave me so affectionately as you were wont to do. Pardon this littleness of heart, and do not think the worse of me for it. Indeed, my soul seems so mantled and wrapped around by your love and esteem, that even a dream of losing but the smallest fragment of it makes me shiver, as though some tender part of my nature were left uncovered in nakedness.

Last week I received a letter from Lloyd, informing me that his parents had given their joyful concurrence to his residence with me; but that, if it were possible that I could be absent for three or four days, his father wished particularly to see me. I consulted Mrs. Coleridge, who advised me to go.... Accordingly on Saturday night I went by the mail to Birmingham and was introduced to the father, who is a mild man, very liberal in his ideas, and in religion _an allegorizing Quaker_. I mean that all the apparently irrational path of his sect he allegorizes into significations, which for the most part you or I might assent to. We became well acquainted, and he expressed himself “thankful to heaven that his son was about to be with me.” He said he would write to me concerning money matters after his son had been some time under my roof.

On Tuesday morning I was surprised by a letter from Mr. Maurice, our medical attendant, informing me that Mrs. Coleridge was delivered on Monday, September 19, 1796, half past two in the morning, of a SON, and that both she and the child were uncommonly well. I was quite annihilated with the suddenness of the information, and retired to my own room to address myself to my Maker, but I could only offer up to Him the silence of stupefied feelings. I hastened home, and Charles Lloyd returned with me. When I first saw the child,[119] I did not feel that thrill and overflowing of affection which I expected. I looked on it with a melancholy gaze; my mind was intensely contemplative and my heart only sad. But when two hours after I saw it at the bosom of its mother, on her arm, and her eye tearful and watching its little features, then I was thrilled and melted, and gave it the KISS of a _father_.... The baby seems strong, and the old nurse has over-persuaded my wife to discover a likeness of me in its face--no great compliment to me, for, in truth, I have seen handsomer babies in my lifetime. Its name is David Hartley Coleridge. I hope that ere he be a man, if God destines him for continuance in this life, his head will be convinced of, and his heart saturated with, the truths so ably supported by that great master of _Christian_ Philosophy.

Charles Lloyd wins upon me hourly; his heart is uncommonly pure, his affection delicate, and his benevolence enlivened but not sicklied by sensibility. He is assuredly a man of great genius; but it must be in _tête-à-tête_ with one whom he loves and esteems that his colloquial powers open; and this arises not from reserve or want of simplicity, but from having been placed in situations where for years together he met with no congenial minds, and where the contrariety of his thoughts and notions to the thoughts and notions of those around him induced the necessity of habitually suppressing his feelings. His joy and gratitude to Heaven for the circumstance of his domestication with me I can scarcely describe to you; and I believe that his fixed plans are of being always with me. His father told me that if he saw that his son had formed habits of severe economy he should not insist upon his adopting any profession; as then his fair share of his (the father’s) wealth would be sufficient for him.

My dearest Poole, can you conveniently receive us in the course of a week? We can both sleep in one bed, which we do now. And I have much, very much to say to you and consult with you about, for my heart is heavy respecting Derby,[120] and my feelings are so dim and huddled that though I can, I am sure, communicate them to you by my looks and broken sentences, I scarce know how to convey them in a letter. And Charles Lloyd wishes much to know you personally. I shall write on the other side of the paper two of Charles Lloyd’s sonnets, which he wrote in one evening at Birmingham. The latter of them alludes to the conviction of the truth of Christianity, which he had received from me, for he had been, if not a deist, yet quite a sceptic.

Let me hear from you by post immediately; and give my kind love to that young man with the soul-beaming face,[121] which I recollect much better than I do his name.

God bless you, my dear friend.

Believe me, with deep affection, your
S. T. COLERIDGE.

LXI. TO CHARLES LAMB.[122]

[September 28, 1796.]

Your letter, my friend, struck me with a mighty horror. It rushed upon me and stupefied my feelings. You bid me write you a religious letter. I am not a man who would attempt to insult the greatness of your anguish by any other consolation. Heaven knows that in the easiest fortunes there is much dissatisfaction and weariness of spirit; much that calls for the exercise of patience and resignation; but in storms like these, that shake the dwelling and make the heart tremble, there is no middle way between despair and the yielding up of the whole spirit unto the guidance of faith. And surely it is a matter of joy that your faith in Jesus has been preserved; the Comforter that should relieve you is not far from you. But as you are a Christian, in the name of that Saviour, who was filled with bitterness and made drunken with wormwood, I conjure you to have recourse in frequent prayer to “his God and your God;” the God of mercies, and father of all comfort. Your poor father is, I hope, almost senseless of the calamity; the unconscious instrument of Divine Providence knows it not, and your mother is in heaven. It is sweet to be roused from a frightful dream by the song of birds and the gladsome rays of the morning. Ah, how infinitely more sweet to be awakened from the blackness and amazement of a sudden horror by the glories of God manifest and the hallelujahs of angels.

As to what regards yourself, I approve altogether of your abandoning what you justly call vanities. I look upon you as a man called by sorrow and anguish and a strange desolation of hopes into quietness, and a soul set apart and made peculiar to God! We cannot arrive at any portion of heavenly bliss without in some measure imitating Christ; and they arrive at the largest inheritance who imitate the most difficult parts of his character, and, bowed down and crushed underfoot, cry in fulness of faith, “Father, thy will be done.”

I wish above measure to have you for a little while here; no visitants shall blow on the nakedness of your feelings; you shall be quiet, and your spirit may be healed. I see no possible objection, unless your father’s helplessness prevent you, and unless you are necessary to him. If this be not the case, I charge you write me that you will come.

I charge you, my dearest friend, not to dare to encourage gloom or despair. You are a temporary sharer in human miseries that you may be an eternal partaker of the Divine nature. I charge you, if by any means it be possible, come to me.

I remain your affectionate
S. T. COLERIDGE.

LXII. TO THOMAS POOLE.

Saturday night, November 5, 1796.

Thanks, my heart’s warm thanks to you, my beloved friend, for your tender letter! Indeed, I did not deserve so kind a one; but by this time you have received my last.

To live in a beautiful country, and to enure myself as much as possible to the labour of the field, have been for this year past my dream of the day, my sigh at midnight. But to enjoy these blessings _near_ you, to see you daily, to tell you all my thoughts in their first birth, and to hear yours, to be mingling identities with you as it were,--the vision-wearing fancy has indeed often pictured such things, but _hope_ never dared whisper a promise. Disappointment! Disappointment! dash not from my trembling hand the bowl which almost touches my lips. Envy me not this immortal draught, and I will forgive thee all thy persecutions. Forgive thee! Impious! _I will bless thee_, black-vested minister of optimism, stern pioneer of happiness! Thou hast been “_the cloud_” before me from the day that I left the flesh-pots of Egypt, and was led through the way of a wilderness--the cloud that hast been guiding me to a land flowing with milk and honey--the milk of innocence, the honey of friendship!

I wanted such a letter as yours, for I am very unwell. On Wednesday night I was seized with an intolerable pain from my right temple to the tip of my right shoulder, including my right eye, cheek, jaw, and that side of the throat. I was nearly frantic, and ran about the house naked, endeavouring by every means to excite sensations in different parts of my body, and so to weaken the enemy by creating division. It continued from one in the morning till half past five, and left me pale and fainting. It came on fitfully, but not so violently, several times on Thursday, and began severer threats towards night; but I took between sixty and seventy drops of laudanum,[123] and _sopped_ the Cerberus, just as his mouth began to open. On Friday it only _niggled_, as if the chief had departed from a conquered place, and merely left a small garrison behind, or as if he had evacuated the Corsica,[124] and a few straggling pains only remained. But _this morning_ he returned in full force, and his name is Legion. Giant-fiend of a hundred hands, with a shower of arrowy death-pangs he transpierced me, and then he became a wolf, and lay a-gnawing at my bones! I am not mad, most noble Festus, but in sober sadness I have suffered this day more bodily pain than I had before a conception of. My right cheek has certainly been placed with admirable exactness under the focus of some invisible burning-glass, which concentrated all the rays of a Tartarean sun. My medical attendant decides it to be altogether nervous, and that it originates either in severe application, or excessive anxiety. My beloved Poole! in excessive anxiety, I believe it might originate. I have a blister under my right ear, and I take twenty-five drops of laudanum every five hours, the ease and _spirits_ gained by which have enabled me to write you this flighty but not exaggerated account. With a gloomy wantonness of imagination I had been coquetting with the hideous _possibles_ of disappointment. I drank fears like wormwood, yea, made myself drunken with bitterness; for my ever-shaping and distrustful mind still mingled gall-drops, till out of the cup of hope I almost _poisoned_ myself with despair.

Your letter is dated November 2d; I wrote to you November 1st. Your sister was married on that day; and on that day several times I felt my heart overflowed with such tenderness for her as made me repeatedly ejaculate prayers in her behalf. Such things are strange. It may be superstitious to think about such correspondences; but it is a superstition which softens the heart and leads to no evil. We will call on your dear sister as soon as I am quite well, and in the mean time I will write a few lines to her.

I am anxious beyond measure to be in the country as soon as possible. I would it were possible to get a temporary residence till Adscombe is ready for us. I would that it could be that we could have three rooms in Bill Poole’s large house for the winter. Will you try to look out for a fit servant for us--simple of heart, physiognomically handsome, and scientific in vaccimulgence? That last word is a new one, but soft in sound and full of expression. Vaccimulgence! I am pleased with the word. Write to me all things about yourself. Where I cannot advise I can condole and communicate, which doubles joy, halves sorrow.

Tell me whether you think it at all possible to make any terms with William Poole. You know I would not wish to touch with the edge of the nail of my great toe the line which should be but half a barley-corn out of the niche of the most trembling delicacy. I will write Cruikshank to-morrow, if God permit me.

God bless and protect you, friend, brother, beloved!

S. T. COLERIDGE.

Sara’s best love, and Lloyd’s. David Hartley is well, saving that he is sometimes inspired by the god Æolus, and like Isaiah, “his bowels sound like an harp.” My filial love to your dear mother. Love to Ward. Little Tommy, I often think of thee.

LXIII. TO THE SAME.

Monday night, November 7, 1796.

MY DEAREST POOLE,--I wrote you on Saturday night under the immediate inspiration of laudanum, and wrote you a flighty letter, but yet one most accurately descriptive both of facts and feelings. Since then my pains have been lessening, and the greater part of this day I have enjoyed perfect ease, only I am totally inappetent of food, and languid, even to an inward perishing.

I wrote John Cruikshank this morning, and this moment I have received a letter from him. My letter written before the receipt of his contains everything I would write in answer to it, and I do not like to write to him superfluously, lest I should break in on his domestic terrors and solitary broodings with regard to Anna Cruikshank.[125] May the Father and lover of the meek preserve that meek woman, and give her a safe and joyful deliverance!

I wrote this morning a short note of congratulatory kindliness to your sister, and shall be eager to call on her, when _Legion_ has been thoroughly exorcised from my temple and cheeks. Tell Cruikshank that I have received his letter, and thank him for it.

A few lines in your last letter betokened, I thought, a wounded spirit. Let me know the particulars, my beloved friend. I shall forget and lose my own anxieties while I am healing yours with cheerings of sympathy.

I met with the following sonnet in some very dull poems, among which it shone like a solitary star when the night is dark, and _one_ little space of blue uninvaded by the floating blackness, or, if a _terrestrial_ simile be required, like a red carbuncle on a negro’s nose. From the languor and exhaustion to which pain and my frequent doses of laudanum have reduced me, it suited the feeble temper of [my] mind, and I have transcribed it on the other page. I amused myself the other day (having some _paper_ at the printer’s which I could employ no other way) in selecting twenty-eight sonnets,[126] to bind up with Bowles’s. I charge sixpence for them, and have sent you five to dispose of. I have only printed two hundred, as my paper held out to no more; and dispose of them privately, just enough to pay the printing. The essay which I have written at the beginning I like.... I have likewise sent you Burke’s pamphlet which was given to me; it has all his excellences without any of his faults. This parcel I send to-morrow morning, enclosed in a parcel to Bill Poole of Thurston.

God love you, my affectionate brother, and your affectionate

S. T. COLERIDGE.

SONNET.

With passive joy the moment I survey
When welcome Death shall set my spirit free.
My soul! the prospect brings no fear to thee,
But soothing Fancy rises to pourtray
The dear and parting words my Friends will say:
With secret Pride their heaving Breast I see,
And count the sorrows that will flow for me.
And now I hear my lingering knell decay
And mark the Hearse! Methinks, with moisten’d eye,
CLARA beholds the sad Procession move
That bears me to the Resting-place of Care,
And sighs, “Poor youth! thy Bosom well could love,
And well thy Numbers picture Love’s despair.”
Vain Dreams! yet such as make it sweet to die.

LXIV. TO JOHN THELWALL.

Saturday, November 19, [1796].
Oxford Street, Bristol.

MY DEAR THELWALL,--Ah me! literary adventure is but bread and cheese by chance. I keenly sympathise with you. Sympathy, the only poor consolation I can offer you. Can no plan be suggested?... Of course you have read the “Joan of Arc.”[127] Homer is the poet for the warrior, Milton for the religionist, Tasso for women, Robert Southey for the patriot. The first and fourth books of the “Joan of Arc” are to me more interesting than the same number of lines in any poem whatever. But you and I, my dear Thelwall, hold different creeds in poetry as well as religion. _N’importe!_ By the bye, of your works I have now all, except your “Essay on Animal Vitality” which I never had, and your _Poems_, which I bought on their first publication, and lost them. From these poems I should have supposed our poetical tastes more nearly alike than, I find, they are. The poem on the Sols [?] flashes genius through Strophe I, Antistrophe I, and Epode I. The rest I do not perhaps understand, only I love these two lines:--

“Yet sure the verse that shews the friendly mind
To Friendship’s ear not harshly flows.”

Your larger _narrative_ affected me greatly. It is admirably written, and displays strong sense animated by feeling, and illumined by imagination, and neither in the thoughts nor rhythm does it encroach on poetry.

There have been two poems of mine in the new “Monthly Magazine,”[128] with my name; indeed, I make it a scruple of conscience never to publish anything, however trifling, without it. Did you like them? The first was written at the desire of a beautiful little aristocrat; consider it therefore as a lady’s poem. Bowles (the bard of my idolatry) has written a poem lately without plan or meaning, but the component parts are divine. It is entitled “Hope, an Allegorical Sketch.” I will copy two of the stanzas, which must be peculiarly interesting to you, virtuous high-treasonist, and your friends the democrats.

“But see, as one awaked from deadly trance,
With hollow and dim eyes, and stony stare,
Captivity with faltering step advance!
Dripping and knotted was her coal-black hair:
For she had long been hid, as in the grave;
No sounds the silence of her prison broke,
Nor one companion had she in her cave
Save Terror’s dismal shape, that no word spoke,
But to a stony coffin on the floor
With lean and hideous finger pointed evermore.

“The lark’s shrill song, the early village chime,
The upland echo of the winding horn,
The far-heard clock that spoke the passing time,
Had never pierced her solitude forlorn:
At length released from the deep dungeon’s gloom
She feels the fragrance of the vernal gale,
She sees more sweet the living landscape bloom,
And while she listens to Hope’s tender tale,
She thinks her long-lost friends shall bless her sight,
And almost faints for joy amidst the broad daylight.”

The last line is exquisite.

Your portrait of yourself interested me. As to me, my face, unless when animated by immediate eloquence, expresses great sloth, and great, indeed, almost idiotic good-nature. ’Tis a mere carcass of a face;[129] fat, flabby, and expressive chiefly of inexpression. Yet I am told that my eyes, eyebrows, and forehead are physiognomically good; but of this the deponent knoweth not. As to my shape, ’tis a good shape enough if measured, but my gait is awkward, and the walk of the whole man indicates _indolence capable of energies_. I am, and ever have been, a great reader, and have read almost everything--a library cormorant. I am _deep_ in all out of the way books, whether of the monkish times, or of the puritanical era. I have read and digested most of the historical writers; but I do not _like_ history. Metaphysics and poetry and “facts of mind,” that is, accounts of all the strange phantasms that ever possessed “your philosophy;” dreamers, from Thoth the Egyptian to Taylor the English pagan, are my darling studies. In short, I seldom read except to amuse myself, and I am almost always reading. Of useful knowledge, I am a so-so chemist, and I love chemistry. All else is _blank_; but I _will_ be (please God) an horticulturalist and a farmer. I compose very little, and I absolutely hate composition, and such is my dislike that even a sense of duty is sometimes too weak to overpower it.

I cannot breathe through my nose, so my mouth, with sensual thick lips, is almost always open. In conversation I am impassioned, and oppose what I deem error with an eagerness which is often mistaken for personal asperity; but I am ever so swallowed up in the _thing_ that I perfectly forget my _opponent_. Such am I. I am just going to read Dupuis’ twelve octavos,[130] which I have got from London. I shall read only one octavo a week, for I cannot _speak_ French at all and I read it slowly.

My wife is well and desires to be remembered to you and your _Stella_ and little ones. N. B. Stella (among the Romans) was a man’s name. All the _classics_ are against you; but our Swift, I suppose, is authority for this unsexing.

Write on the receipt of this, and believe me as ever, with affectionate esteem,

Your sincere friend,
S. T. COLERIDGE.

P. S. I have enclosed a five-guinea note. The five shillings over please to lay out for me thus. In White’s (of Fleet Street or the Strand, I forget which--O! the Strand I believe, but I don’t know which), well, in White’s catalogue are the following books:--

4674. Iamblichus,[131] Proclus, Porphyrius, etc., one shilling and sixpence, one little volume.

4686. Juliani Opera, three shillings: which two books you will be so kind as to purchase for me, and send down with the twenty-five pamphlets. But if they should unfortunately be sold, in the same catalogue are:--

2109. Juliani Opera, 12s. 6d.

676. Iamblichus de Mysteriis, 10s. 6d.

2681. Sidonius Apollinaris, 6s.

And in the catalogue of Robson, the bookseller in New Bond Street, Plotini Opera, a Ficino, £1.1.0, making altogether £2.10.0.

If you can get the two former little books, costing only four and sixpence, I will rest content with them; if they are gone, be so kind as to purchase for me the others I mentioned to you, amounting to two pounds, ten shillings; and, as in the course of next week I shall send a small parcel of books and manuscripts to my very dear Charles Lamb of the India House, I shall be enabled to convey the money to you in a letter, which he will leave at your house. I make no apology for this commission, because I feel (to use a vulgar phrase) that I would do as much for you. P. P. S. Can you buy them time enough to send down with your pamphlets? If not, make a parcel _per se_. I hope your hurts from the fall are not serious; you have given a _proof_ now that you are no _Ippokrite_, but I forgot that you are not a Greekist, and perchance you hate puns; but, in Greek, _Krites_ signifies a judge and _hippos_ a horse. Hippocrite, therefore, may mean a _judge of horses_. My dear fellow, I laugh more and talk more nonsense in a week than [most] other people do in a year. Farewell.

JOHN THELWALL,
Beaufort Buildings, Strand, London.

LXV. TO THOMAS POOLE.[132]

Sunday morning, December 11, 1796.

MY BELOVED POOLE,--The sight of your villainous hand-scrawl was a great comfort to me. How have you been diverted in London? What of the theatres? And how found you your old friends? I dined with Mr. King yesterday week. He is _quantum suff_: a pleasant man, and (my wife says) very handsome. Hymen lies in the arms of Hygeia, if one may judge by your sister; she looks remarkably well! But has she not caught some complaint in _the head_? Some _scurfy_ disorder? For her _hair_ was filled with an odious white Dandruff. (“N. B. Nothing but powder,” Mrs. King.) About myself, I have so much to say that I really can say nothing. I mean to work _very hard_--as Cook, Butler, Scullion, Shoe-cleaner, occasional Nurse, Gardener, Hind, Pig-protector, Chaplain, Secretary, Poet, Reviewer, and _omnium-botherum_ shilling-Scavenger. In other words, I shall keep no servant, and will cultivate my land-acre and my wise-acres, as well as I can. The motives which led to this determination are numerous and weighty; I have thought much and calmly, and calculated time and money with unexceptionable accuracy; and at length determined not to take the charge of Charles Lloyd’s mind on me. Poor fellow! he still hopes to live with me--is now at Birmingham. I wish that little cottage by the roadside were gettable? That with about two or three rooms--it would quite do for us, as we shall occupy only _two rooms_. I will write more fully on the receipt of yours. God love you and

S. T. COLERIDGE.

LXVI. TO THE SAME.

December 12, 1796.

You tell me, my dear Poole, that my residence near you would give you great pleasure, and I am sure that if you had any objections on your own account to my settling near Stowey you would have mentioned them to me. Relying on this, I assure you that a disappointment would try my philosophy. Your letter did indeed give me unexpected and most acute pain. I will make the cottage do. We want but three rooms. If Cruikshank have promised more than his circumstances enable him to perform, I am sure that I can get the other purchased by my friends in Bristol. I mean, the place at Adscombe. I wrote him pressingly on this head some ten days ago; but he has returned me no answer. Lloyd has obtained his father’s permission and will return to me. He is willing to be his own servant. As to Acton, ’tis out of the question. In Bristol I have Cottle and Estlin (for Mr. Wade is going away) willing and eager to serve me; but how they can serve me more effectually at Acton than at Stowey, I cannot divine. If I live at Stowey, you indeed _can_ serve me effectually, by assisting me in the acquirement of agricultural practice. If you can instruct me to manage an acre and a half of land, and to raise in it, with my own hands, all kinds of vegetables and grain, enough for myself and my wife and sufficient to feed a pig or two with the refuse, I hope that you will have served me _most_ effectually by placing me out of the necessity of being served. I receive about forty guineas yearly from the “Critical Review” and the new “Monthly Magazine.” It is hard if by my greater works I do not get twenty more. I know how little the human mind requires when it is tranquil, and in proportion as I should find it difficult to simplify my wants it becomes my duty to simplify them. For there must be a vice in my nature, which woe be to me if I do not cure. The less meat I eat the more healthy I am; and strong liquors of any kind always and perceptibly injure me. Sixteen shillings would cover all the weekly expenses of my wife, infant, and myself. This I say from my wife’s own calculation.

But whence this sudden revolution in your opinions, my dear Poole? You saw the cottage that was to be our temporary residence, and thought we might be _happy_ in it, and now you hurry to tell me that we shall not even be _comfortable_ in it. You tell me I shall be “too far from my _friends_,” that is, Cottle and Estlin, for I have no other in Bristol. In the name of Heaven, _what can_ Cottle or Estlin [do] for me? They do nothing who do not teach me how to be independent of any except the Almighty Dispenser of sickness and health. And “too far from the press.” With the printing of the review and the magazine I have no concern; and, if I publish any work on my own account, I will send a fair and faultless copy, and Cottle promises to correct the press for me. Mr. King’s family may be very worthy sort of people, for aught I know; but assuredly I can employ my time wiselier than to gabble with my tongue to beings with whom neither my head nor heart can commune. My habits and feelings have suffered a total alteration. I _hate_ company except of my dearest friends, and systematically avoid it; and when in it keep silence as far as social humanity will permit me. Lloyd’s father, in a letter to me yesterday, enquired how I should live without any companions. I answered him not an hour before I received your letter:--

“I shall have six companions: My Sara, my babe, my own shaping and disquisitive mind, my books, my beloved friend Thomas Poole, and lastly, Nature looking at me with a thousand looks of beauty, and speaking to me in a thousand melodies of love. If I were capable of being tired with all these, I should then detect a vice in my nature, and would fly to habitual solitude to eradicate it.”

Yes, my friend, while I opened your letter my heart was glowing with enthusiasm towards you. How little did I expect that I should find you earnestly and vehemently persuading me to prefer Acton to Stowey, and in return for the loss of your society recommending _Mr. King’s_ family as “very pleasant neighbours.” Neighbours! Can mere juxtaposition form a neighbourhood? As well should the louse in my head call himself my friend, and the flea in my bosom style herself my love!

On Wednesday week we must leave our house, so that if you continue to dissuade me from settling near Stowey I scarcely know what I shall do. Surely, my beloved friend, there must be some reason which you have not yet told me, which urged you to send this hasty and heart-chilling letter. I suspect that something has passed between your sister and dear mother (in whose illness I sincerely sympathise with you).

I have never considered my settlement at Stowey in any other relation than its advantages to myself, and they would be great indeed. My objects (assuredly wise ones) were to learn agriculture (and where should I get instructed except at Stowey?) and to be where I can communicate in a literary way. I must conclude. I pray you let me hear from you immediately. God bless you and

S. T. COLERIDGE.

LXVII. TO THE SAME.

Monday night.

I wrote the former letter immediately on receipt of yours, in the first flutter of agitation. The tumult of my spirits has now subsided, but the Damp struck into my very heart; and there I feel it. O my God! my God! where am I to find rest? Disappointment follows disappointment, and Hope seems given me merely to prevent my becoming callous to Misery. Now I know not where to turn myself. I was on my way to the City Library, and wrote an answer to it there. Since I have returned I have been poring into a book, as a shew for not looking at my wife and the baby. By God, I dare not look at them. Acton! The very name makes me grind my teeth! What am I to do there?

“You will have a good garden; you may, I doubt not, have ground.” But am I not ignorant as a child of everything that concerns the garden and the ground? and shall I have one human being there who will instruct me? The House too--what should I do with it? We want but two rooms, or three at the furthest. And the country around is intolerably flat. I would as soon live on the banks of a Dutch canal! And no one human being near me for whom I should, or could, care a rush! No one walk where the beauties of nature might endear solitude to me! There is one Ghost that I _am_ afraid of; with that I should be perpetually haunted in this same cursed Acton--the hideous Ghost of departed Hope. O Poole! how could _you_ make such a proposal to me? I have compelled myself to reperuse your letter, if by any means I may be able to penetrate into your motives. I find three reasons assigned for my not settling at Stowey. The first, the distance from my friends and the Press. This I answered in the former letter. As to my friends, what can they do for me? And as to the Press, even if Cottle had not promised to correct it for me, yet I might as well be fifty miles from it as twelve, for any purpose of correcting. Secondly, the expense of moving. Well, but I must move to Acton, and what will the difference be? Perhaps three guineas.... I would give three guineas that you had not assigned this reason. Thirdly, the wretchedness of that cottage, which alone we can get. But surely, in the house which I saw, _two_ rooms may be found, which, by a little green list and a carpet, and a slight alteration in the fireplace, may be made to exclude the cold: and this is all we want. Besides, it will be but for a while. If Cruikshank cannot buy and repair Adscombe, I have no doubt that my friends here and at Birmingham would, some of them, purchase it. So much for the reasons: but these cannot be the real reasons. I was with you for a week, and then we talked over the whole scheme, and you approved of it, and I gave up Derby. More than nine weeks have elapsed since then, and you saw and examined the cottage, and you knew every other of these reasons, if reasons they can be called. Surely, surely, my friend, something has occurred which you have not mentioned to me. Your mother has manifested a strong dislike to our living near you--or something or other; for the reasons you have assigned tell me nothing except that there are reasons which you have not assigned.

Pardon, if I write vehemently. I meant to have written calmly; but bitterness of soul came upon me. Mrs. Coleridge has observed the workings of my face while I have been writing, and is entreating to know what is the matter. I dread to show her your letter. I dread it. My God! my God! What if she should dare to think that my most beloved friend has grown cold towards me!

Tuesday morning, 11 o’clock.--After an unquiet and almost sleepless night, I resume my pen. As the sentiments over leaf came into my heart, I will not suppress them. I would keep a letter by me which I wrote to a mere acquaintance, lest anything unwise should be found in it; but my friend ought to know not only what my sentiments are, but what my feelings were.

I am, indeed, perplexed and cast down. My first plan, you know, was this--My family was to have consisted of Charles Lloyd, my wife and wife’s mother, my infant, the servant, and myself.

My means of maintaining them--Eighty pounds a year from Charles Lloyd, and forty from the Review and Magazine. My time was to have been divided into four parts: 1. Three hours after breakfast to studies with C. L. 2. The remaining hours till dinner to our garden. 3. From after dinner till tea, to letter-writing and domestic quietness. 4. From tea till prayer-time to the reviews, magazines, and other literary labours.

In this plan I calculated nothing on my garden but amusement. In the mean time I heard from Birmingham that Lloyd’s father had declared that he should insist on his son’s returning to him at the close of a twelvemonth. What am I to do then? I shall be again afloat on the wide sea, unpiloted and unprovisioned. I determined to devote _my whole day_ to the acquirement of practical horticulture, to part with Lloyd immediately, and live without a servant. Lloyd intreated me to give up the Review and Magazine, and devote the evenings to him, but this would be to give up a permanent for a temporary situation, and after subtracting £40 from C. Ll.’s £80 in return for the Review business, and then calculating the expense of a servant, a less severe mode of general living, and Lloyd’s own board and lodging, the remaining £40 would make but a poor figure. And what was I to do at the end of a twelvemonth? In the mean time Mrs. Fricker’s son could not be got out as an apprentice--he was too young, and premiumless, and no one would take him; and the old lady herself manifested a great aversion to leaving Bristol. I recurred therefore to my first promise of allowing her £20 a year; but all her furniture must of course be returned, and enough only remains to furnish one bedroom and a kitchen-parlour.

If Charles Lloyd and the servant went with me I must have bought new furniture to the amount of £40 or £50, which, if not Impossibility in person, was Impossibility’s first cousin. We determined to live by ourselves. We arranged our time, money, and employments. We found it not only practicable _but easy_; and Mrs. Coleridge entered with enthusiasm into the scheme.