Chapter IV: A Visit to Germany (1)

1798-1799

The letters which Coleridge wrote from Germany were, with few exceptions, addressed either to his wife or to Poole. They have never been published in full, but during his life and since his death various extracts have appeared in print. The earlier letters descriptive of his voyage, his two visits to Hamburg, his interviews with Klopstock, and his settlement at Ratzeburg were published as “Satyrane’s Letters,” first in November-December, 1809, in Nos. 14, 16, and 18 of “The Friend,” and again, in 1817, in the “Biographia Literaria” (ii. 183-253). Two extracts from letters to his wife, dated respectively January 14 and April 8, 1799, appeared in No. 19 of “The Friend,” December 28, 1809, as “Christmas Indoors in North Germany,” and “Christmas Out of Doors.” In 1828, Coleridge placed a selection of unpublished letters from Germany in the hands of the late S. C. Hall, who printed portions of two (dated “Clausthal, May 17, 1799”) in the “Amulet” of 1829, under the title of “Fragments of a Journal of a Tour over the Brocken, by S. T. Coleridge.” The same extract is included in Gillman’s “Life of Coleridge,” pp. 125, 138.

After Coleridge’s death, Mr. Hall published in the “New Monthly Magazine” (1835, No. 45, pp. 211-226) the three last letters from Germany, dated May 17, 18, and 19, which include the “Tour over the Brocken.” Selections from Coleridge’s letters to Poole of April 8 and May 6, 1799, were published by Mrs. Sandford in “Thomas Poole and his Friends” (i. 295-299), and four letters from Poole to Coleridge are included in the same volume (pp. 277-294). A hitherto unpublished letter from Coleridge to his wife, dated January 14, 1799, appeared in “The Illustrated London News,” April 29, 1893. For further particulars relative to Coleridge’s life in Germany, see Carlyon’s “Early Years,” etc., 1856, i. 26-198, _passim_, and Brandl’s “Life of Coleridge,” 1887, pp. 230-252.

LXXXVI. TO THOMAS POOLE.

September 15, 1798.

MY VERY DEAR POOLE,--We have arrived at Yarmouth just in time to be hurried into the packet--and four or five letters of recommendation have been taken away from me, owing to their being wafered. Wedgwood’s luckily were not.

I am at the point of leaving my native country for the first time--a country which God Almighty knows is dear to me above all things for the love I bear to you. Of many friends whom I love and esteem, my head and heart have ever chosen you as the friend--as the one being in whom is involved the full and whole meaning of that sacred title. God love you, my dear Poole! and your faithful and most affectionate

S. T. COLERIDGE.

P. S. We may be only two days, we may be a fortnight going. The same of the packet that returns. So do not let my poor Sara be alarmed if she do not hear from me. I will write alternately to you and her, twice every week during my absence. May God preserve us, and make us continue to be joy, and comfort, and wisdom, and virtue to each other, my dear, dear Poole!

LXXXVII. TO HIS WIFE.

HAMBURG, September 19, 1798.

Over what place does the moon hang to your eye, my dearest Sara? To me it hangs over the left bank of the Elbe, and a long trembling road of moonlight reaches from thence up to the stern of our vessel, and there it ends. We have dropped anchor in the middle of the stream, thirty miles from Cuxhaven, where we arrived this morning at eleven o’clock, after an unusually fine passage of only forty-eight hours. The Captain agreed to take all the passengers up to Hamburg for ten guineas; my share amounted only to half a guinea. We shall be there, if no fogs intervene, to-morrow morning. Chester was ill the whole voyage; Wordsworth shockingly ill; his sister worst of all, and I neither sick nor giddy, but gay as a lark. The sea rolled rather high, but the motion was pleasant to me. The stink of a sea cabin in a packet (what with the bilge-water, and what from the crowd of sick passengers) is horrible. I remained chiefly on deck. We left Yarmouth Sunday morning, September 16, at eleven o’clock. Chester and Wordsworth ill immediately. Our passengers were: ‡Wordsworth, ✴Chester, S. T. Coleridge, a Dane, second Dane, third Dane, a Prussian, a Hanoverian and ✴his servant, a German tailor and his ✴wife, a French ‡emigrant and ✴French servant, ✴two English gentlemen, and ‡a Jew. All these with the prefix ✴ were sick, those marked ‡ horribly sick. The view of Yarmouth from the sea is interesting; besides, it was English ground that was flying away from me. When we lost sight of land, the moment that we quite lost sight of it and the heavens all round me rested upon the waters, my dear babes came upon me like a flash of lightning; I saw their faces[188] so distinctly! This day enriched me with characters, and I passed it merrily. Each of those characters I will delineate to you in my journal, which you and Poole alternately will receive regularly as soon as I arrive at any settled place, which will be in a week. Till then I can do little more than give you notice of my safety and my faithful affection to you (but the journal will commence from the day of my arrival at London, and give every day’s occurrence, etc.). I have it written, but I have neither paper or time to transcribe it. I trust nothing to memory. The Ocean is a noble thing by night; a beautiful white cloud of foam at momentary intervals roars and rushes by the side of the vessel, and stars of flame dance and sparkle and go out in it, and every now and then light detachments of foam dart away from the vessel’s side with their galaxies of stars and scour out of sight like a Tartar troop over a wilderness. What these stars are I cannot say; the sailors say they are fish spawn, which is phosphorescent. The noisy passengers swear in all their languages, with drunken hiccups, that I shall write no more, and I must join them. Indeed, they present a rich feast for a dramatist. My kind love to Mrs. Poole (with what wings of swiftness would I fly home if I could find something in Germany to do her good!). Remember me affectionately to Ward, and my love to the Chesters (Bessy, Susan, and Julia) and to Cruickshank, etc., etc., Ellen and Mary when you see them, and to Lavinia Poole and Harriet and Sophy, and be sure to give my kind love to Nanny. I associate so much of Hartley’s infancy with her, so many of his figures, looks, words, and antics with her form, that I shall never cease to think of her, poor girl! without interest. Tell my best good friend, my dear Poole! that all his manuscripts, with Wordsworth’s Tragedy, are safe in Josiah Wedgwood’s hands; and they will be returned to him together. Good-night, my dear, dear Sara!--“every night when I go to bed, and every morning when I rise,” I will think with yearning love of you and of my blessed babies! Once more, my dear Sara! good-night.

Wednesday afternoon, four o’clock.--We are safe in Hamburg--an ugly city that stinks in every corner, house, and room worse than cabins, sea-sickness, or bilge-water! The hotels are all crowded. With great difficulty we have procured a very filthy room at a large expense; but we shall move to-morrow. We get very excellent claret for a trifle--a guinea sells at present for more than twenty-three shillings here. But for all particulars I must refer your patience to my journal, and I must get some proper paper--I shall have to pay a shilling or eighteenpence with every letter. N. B. Johnson the bookseller, without any poems sold to him, but purely out of affection conceived for me, and as part of anything I might do for him, gave me an order on Remnant at Hamburg for thirty pounds. The “Epea Pteroenta,” an Essay on Population, and a “History of Paraguay,” will come down for me directed to Poole, and for Poole’s reading. Likewise I have desired Johnson to print in quarto[189] a little poem of mine, one of which quartos must be sent to my brother, Rev. G. C., Ottery St. Mary, carriage paid. Did you receive my letter directed in a different hand, with the 30_l._ banknote? The “Morning Post” and Magazine will come to you as before. If not regularly, Stuart desires that you will write to him. I pray you, my dear love! read Edgeworth’s “Essay on Education”--read it heart and soul, and if you approve of the mode, teach Hartley his letters. I am very desirous that you should teach him to read; and they point out some easy modes. J. Wedgwood informed me that the Edgeworths were most miserable when children; and yet the father in his book is ever vapouring about their happiness. However, there are very good things in the work--and some nonsense.

Kiss my Hartley and Bercoo baby brodder (kiss them for their dear father, whose heart will never be absent from them many hours together). My dear Sara! I think of you with affection and a desire to be home, and in the full and noblest sense of the word, and after the antique principles of _Religion_, unsophisticated by Philosophy, will be, I trust, your husband faithful unto death,

S. T. COLERIDGE.

Wednesday night, eleven o’clock.--The sky and colours of the clouds are quite English, just as if I were coming out of T. Poole’s homeward with you in my arm.

LXXXVIII. TO THE SAME.

[RATZEBURG], October 20, 1798.

... But I must check these feelings and write more collectedly. I am well, my dear Love! very well, and my situation is in all respects comfortable. My room is large and healthy; the house commands an enchanting prospect. The pastor is worthy and a learned man--a widower with eight children, five of whom are at home. The German language is spoken here in the utmost purity. The children often stand round my sofa and chatter away; and the little one of all corrects my pronunciation with a pretty pert lisp and self-sufficient tone, while the others laugh with no little joyance. The Gentry and Nobility here pay me almost an adulatory attention. There is a very beautiful little woman--less, I think, than you--a Countess Kilmansig;[190] her father is our Lord Howe’s cousin. She is the wife of a very handsome man, and has two fine little children. I have quite won her heart by a German poem which I wrote. It is that sonnet, “Charles! my slow heart was only sad when first,” and considerably dilated with new images, and much superior in the German to its former dress. It has excited no small wonder here for its purity and harmony. I mention this as a proof of my progress in the language--indeed, it has surprised myself; but I want to be home, and I work hard, very hard, to shorten the time of absence. The little Countess said to me, “Oh! Englishmen be always sehr gut fathers and husbands. I hope dat you will come and lofe my little babies, and I will sing to you and play on the guitar and the pianoforte; and my dear huspan he sprachs sehr gut English, and he lofes England better than all the world.” (Sehr gut is very good; sprach, speaks or talks.) She is a sweet little woman, and, what is very rare in Germany, she has perfectly white, regular, French teeth. I could give you many instances of the ridiculous partiality, or rather madness, for the English. One of the first things which strikes an Englishman is the German cards. They are very different from ours; the court cards have two heads, a very convenient thing, as it prevents the necessity of turning the cards and betraying your hand, and are smaller and cost only a penny; yet the envelope in which they are sold has “Wahrlich Englische Karten,” that is, genuine _English_ cards. I bought some sticking-plaister yesterday; it cost twopence a very large piece, but it was three-halfpence farthing too dear--for indeed it looked like a nasty rag of black silk which cat or mouse dung had stained and spotted--but this was “Königl. Pat. Engl. Im. Pflaster,” that is, Royal Patent _English Ornament_ Plaister. They affect to write English over their doors. One house has “English Lodgement and Caffee Hous!” But the most amusing of all is an advertisement of a quack medicine of the same class with Dr. Solomon’s and Brody’s, for the spirits and all weakness of mind and body. What, think you? “A wonderful and secret Essence extracted with patience and God’s blessing from the English Oaks, and from that part thereof which the heroic sailors of that Great Nation call the Heart of Oak. This invaluable and infallible Medicine has been godlily extracted therefrom by the slow processes of the Sun and magnetical Influences of the Planets and fixed Stars.” This is a literal translation. At the concert, when I entered, the band played “Britannia rule the waves,” and at the dinner which was given in honour of Nelson’s victory, twenty-one guns were fired by order of the military Governor, and between each firing the military band played an English tune. I never saw such enthusiasm, or heard such tumultuous shouting, as when the Governor gave as a toast, “The Great Nation.” By this name they always designate England, in opposition to the same title self-assumed by France. The military Governor is a pleasant man, and both he and the Amtmann (_i. e._ the civil regent) are particularly attentive to me. I am quite domesticated in the house of the latter; his first wife was an English woman, and his partiality for England is without bounds. God bless you, my Love! Write me a very, very long letter; write me all that can cheer me; all that will make my eyes swim and my heart melt with tenderness! Your faithful and affectionate husband,

S. T. COLERIDGE.

P. S. A dinner lasts not uncommonly three hours!

LXXXIX. TO THE SAME.

RATZEBURG, November 26, 1798.

Another and another and yet another post day; and still Chester greets me with, “No letters from England!” A knell, that strikes out regularly four times a week. How is this, my Love? Why do you not write to me? Do you think to shorten my absence by making it insupportable to me? Or perhaps you anticipate that if I received a letter I should idly turn away from my German to _dream_ of you--of you and my beloved babies! Oh, yes! I should indeed dream of you for hours and hours; of you, and of beloved Poole, and of the infant that sucks at your breast, and of my dear, dear Hartley. You would be _present_, you would be with me in the air that I breathe; and I should cease to see you only when the tears rolled out of my eyes, and this naked, undomestic room became again visible. But oh, with what leaping and exhilarated faculties should I return to the objects and realities of my mission. But now--nay, I cannot describe to you the gloominess of thought, the burthen and sickness of heart, which I experience every post day. Through the whole remaining day I am incapable of everything but anxious imaginations, of sore and fretful feelings. The Hamburg newspapers arrive here four times a week; and almost every newspaper commences with, “_Schreiben aus London_--They write from London.” This day’s, with schreiben aus London, vom November 13. But I am certain that you have written more than once; and I stumble about in dark and idle conjectures, how and by what means it can have happened that I have not received your letters. I recommence my journal, but with feelings that approach to disgust--for in very truth I have nothing interesting to relate.

XC. TO THE SAME.

December 2, 1798.

Sunday Evening.--God, the Infinite, be praised that my babes are alive. His mercy will forgive me that late and all too slowly I raised up my heart in thanksgiving. At first and for a time I wept as passionately as if they had been dead; and for the whole day the weight was heavy upon me, relieved only by fits of weeping. I had long expected, I had passionately expected, a letter; I received it, and my frame trembled. I saw your hand, and all feelings of mind and body crowded together. Had the news been cheerful and only “We are as you left us,” I must have wept to have delivered myself of the stress and tumult of my animal sensibility. But when I read the danger and the agony--My dear Sara! my love! my wife!--God bless you and preserve us. I am well; but a stye, or something of that kind, has come upon and enormously swelled my eyelids, so that it is painful and improper for me to read or write. In a few days it will now disappear, and I will write at length (now it forces me to cease). To-morrow I will write a line or two on the other side of the page to Mr. Roskilly.

I received your letter Friday, November 31. I cannot well account for the slowness. Oh, my babies! Absence makes it painful to be a father.

My life, believe and know that I pant to be home and with you.

S. T. COLERIDGE.

December 3.--My eyes are painful, but there is no doubt but they will be well in two or three days. I have taken physic, eat very little flesh, and drink only water, but it grieves me that I cannot read. I need not have troubled my poor eyes with a superfluous love to my dear Poole.

XCI. TO THE REV. MR. ROSKILLY.[191]

RATZEBURG, Germany, December 3, 1798.

MY DEAR SIR,--There is an honest heart out of Great Britain that enters into your good fortune with a sincere and lively joy. May you enjoy life and health--all else you have,--a good wife, a good conscience, a good temper, sweet children, and competence! The first glass of wine I drink shall be a bumper--not to you, no! but to the Bishop of Gloucester! God bless him!

Sincerely your friend,
S. T. COLERIDGE.

XCII. TO THOMAS POOLE.

January 4, 1799--Morning, 11 o’clock.

My friend, my dear friend! Two hours have past since I received your letter. It was so frightfully long since I received one!! My body is weak and faint with the beating of my heart. But everything affects me more than it ought to do in a foreign country. I cried myself blind about Berkeley, when I ought to have been on my knees in the joy of thanksgiving. The waywardness of the pacquets is wonderful. On December the seventh Chester received a letter from his sister dated November 27. Yours is dated November 22, and I received it only this morning. I am quite well, calm and industrious. I now read German as English,--that is, without any _mental_ translation as I read. I likewise understand all that is said to me, and a good deal of what they say to each other. On very trivial and on metaphysical subjects I can talk _tolerably_--so, so!--but in that conversation, which is between both, I bungle most ridiculously. I owe it to my industry that I can read old German, and even the old low German, better than most of even the educated natives. It has greatly enlarged my knowledge of the English language. It is a great bar to the amelioration of Germany, that through at least half of it, and that half composed almost wholly of Protestant States, from whence alone amelioration can proceed, the agriculturists and a great part of the artizans talk a language as different from the language of the higher classes (in which all books are written) as the Latin is from the Greek. The differences are greater than the affinities, and the affinities are darkened by the differences of pronunciation and spelling. I have written twice to Mr. Josiah Wedgwood,[192] and in a few days will follow a most voluminous letter, or rather series of letters, which will comprise a history of the bauers or peasants collected, not so much from books as from oral communications from the Amtmann here--(an Amtmann is a sort of perpetual Lord Mayor, uniting in himself Judge and Justice of Peace over the bauers of a certain district). I have enjoyed great advantages in this place, but I have paid dear for them. Including _all_ expenses, I have not lived at less than two pounds a week. Wordsworth (from whom I receive long and affectionate letters) has enjoyed scarcely one advantage, but his expenses have been considerably less than they were in England. Here I shall stay till the last week in January, when I shall proceed to Göttingen, where, all expenses included, I can live for 15 shillings a week. For these last two months I have drunk nothing but water, and I eat but little animal food. At Göttingen I shall hire lodging for two months, buy my own cold beef at an eating-house, and dine in my chamber, which I can have at a dollar a week. And here at Göttingen I must endeavour to unite the advantages of advancing in German and doing something to repay myself. My dear Poole! I am afraid that, supposing I return in the first week of May, my whole expenses[193] from Stowey to Stowey, including books and clothes, will not have been less than 90 _pounds_! and if I buy ten pounds’ worth more of books it will have been a hundred. I despair not but with intense application and regular use of time, to which I have now almost accustomed myself, that by three months’ residence at Göttingen I shall have _on paper_ at least _all_ the materials if not the whole structure of a work that will repay me. The work I have planned, and I have imperiously excluded all waverings about other works. That is the disease of my mind--it is comprehensive in its conceptions, and wastes itself in the contemplations of the many things which it might do. I am aware of the disease, and for the next three months (if I cannot cure it) I will at least suspend its operation. This book is a life of Lessing, and interweaved with it a true state of German literature in its rise and present state. I have already written a little life from three different biographies, divided it into years, and at Göttingen I will read his works regularly according to the years in which they were written, and the controversies, religious and literary, which they occasioned. But of this say nothing to any one. The journey to Germany has certainly _done me good_. My habits are less irregular and my _mind_ more in my own power. But I have much still to do! I did, indeed, receive great joy from Roskilly’s good fortune, and in a little note to my dear Sara I joined a note of congratulation to Roskilly. O Poole! you are a noble heart as ever God made! Poor ----! he is passing through a fiery discipline, and I would fain believe that it will end in his peace and utility. Wordsworth is divided in his mind,--unquietly divided between the neighbourhood of Stowey and the North of England. He cannot think of settling at a distance from me, and I have told him that I cannot leave the vicinity of Stowey. His chief objection to Stowey is the want of books. The Bristol Library is a hum, and will do us little service; and he thinks that he can procure a house near Sir Gilford Lawson’s by the Lakes, and have free access to his immense library. I think it better once in a year to walk to Cambridge, in the summer vacation--perhaps I may be able to get rooms for nothing, and there for a couple of months read like a Turk on a given plan, and return home with a mass of materials which, with dear, _independent_ Poetry, will fully employ the remaining year. But this is idle prating about a future. But indeed, it is time to be looking out for a house for me--it is not possible I can be either comfortable or useful in so small a house as that in Lime Street. If Woodlands can be gotten at a reasonable price, I would have it. I will now finish my long-neglected journal.

Sara, I suppose, is at Bristol--on Monday I shall write to her. The frost here has been uncommonly severe. For two days it was 20 degrees under the freezing point. Wordsworth has left Goslar, and is on his road into higher Saxony to cruise for a pleasanter place; he has made but little progress in the language. I am interrupted, and if I do not conclude shall lose the post. Give my kind love to your dear mother. Oh, that I could but find her comfortable on my return. To Ward remember me affectionately--likewise remember to James Cole; and my grateful remembrances to Mrs. Cole for her kindness during my wife’s domestic troubles. To Harriet, Sophia, and Lavinia Poole--to the Chesters--to Mary and Ellen Cruickshank--in short, to all to whom it will give pleasure remember me affectionately.

My dear, dear Poole, God bless us!

S. T. COLERIDGE.

P. S. The Amtmann, who is almost an Englishman and an idolizer of our nation, desires to be kindly remembered to you. He told me yesterday that he had dreamt of you the night before.

XCIII. TO HIS WIFE.

RATZEBURG, Monday, January 14, 1799.

MY DEAREST LOVE,--Since the wind changed, and it became possible for me to have letters, I lost all my tranquillity. Last evening I was absent in company, and when I returned to solitude, restless in every fibre, a novel which I attempted to read seemed to interest me so extravagantly that I threw it down, and when it was out of my hands I knew nothing of what I had been reading. This morning I awoke long before light, feverish and unquiet. I was certain in my mind that I should have a letter from you, but before it arrived my restlessness and the irregular pulsation of my heart had quite wearied me down, and I held the letter in my hand like as if I was stupid, without attempting to open it. “Why don’t you read the letter?” said Chester, and I read it. Ah, little Berkeley--I have misgivings, but my duty is rather to comfort you, my dear, dear Sara! I am so exhausted that I could sleep. I am well, but my spirits have left me. I am completely homesick, I must walk half an hour, for my mind is too scattered to continue writing. I entreat and entreat you, Sara! take care of yourself. If you are well, I think I could frame my thoughts so that I should not sink under other losses. You do right in writing me the truth. Poole is kind, but you do right, my dear! In a sense of _reality_ there is always comfort. The workings of one’s imagination ever go beyond the worst that nature afflicts us with; they have the terror of a superstitious circumstance. I express myself unintelligibly. Enough that you write me always the whole truth. Direct your next letter thus: An den Herrn Coleridge, à la Poste Restante, Göttingen, Germany. If God permit I shall be there before this day three weeks, and I hope on May-day to be once more at Stowey. My motives for going to Göttingen I have written to Poole. I hear as often from Wordsworth as letters can go backward and forward in a country where fifty miles in a day and night is expeditious travelling! He seems to have employed more time in writing English than in studying German. No wonder! for he might as well have been in England as at Goslar, in the situation which he chose and with his unseeking manners. He has now left it, and is on his journey to Nordhausen. His taking his sister with him was a wrong step; it is next but impossible for any but married women, or in the suit of married women, to be introduced to any company in Germany. Sister here is considered as only a name for mistress. Still, however, male acquaintance he might have had, and had I been at Goslar I would have had them; but W., God love him! seems to have lost his spirits and almost his inclination for it. In the mean time his expenses have been almost less than they [would have been] in England; mine have been very great, but I do not despair of returning to England with somewhat to pay the whole. O God! I do languish to be at home.

I will endeavour to give you some idea of Ratzeburg, but I am a wretched describer. First you must imagine a lake, running from south to north about nine miles in length, and of very various breadths--the broadest part may be, perhaps, two or three miles, the narrowest scarce more than half a mile. About a mile from the southernmost point of the lake, that is, from the beginning of the lake, is the island-town of Ratzeburg.

● is Ratzeburg; [Symbol] is our house on the hill; from the bottom of the hill there lies on the lake a slip of land, scarcely two stone-throws wide, at the end of which is a little bridge with a superb military gate, and this bridge joins Ratzeburg to the slip of land--you pass through Ratzeburg up a little hill, and down the hill, and this brings you to another bridge, narrow, but of an immense length, which communicates with the other shore.

The water to the south of Ratzeburg is called the little lake and the other the large lake, though they are but one piece of water. This little lake is very beautiful, the shores just often enough green and bare to give the proper effect to the magnificent _groves_ which mostly fringe them. The views vary almost every ten steps, such and so beautiful are the turnings and windings of the shore--they unite beauty and magnitude, and can be but expressed by feminine grandeur! At the north of the great lake, and peering over, you see the seven church-towers of Lubec, which is twelve or fourteen miles from Ratzeburg. Yet you see them as distinctly as if they were not three miles from you. The worse thing is that Ratzeburg is built entirely of bricks and tiles, and is therefore all red--a clump of brick-dust red--it gives you a strong idea of perfect neatness, but it is not beautiful.[194] In the beginning or middle of October, I forget which, we went to Lubec in a boat. For about two miles the shores of the lake are exquisitely beautiful, the woods now running into the water, now retiring in all angles. After this the left shore retreats,--the lake acquires its utmost breadth, and ceases to be beautiful. At the end of the lake is the river, about as large as the river at Bristol, but winding in infinite serpentines through a dead flat, with willows and reeds, till you reach Lubec, an old fantastic town. We visited the churches at Lubec--they were crowded with gaudy gilded figures, and a profusion of pictures, among which were always the portraits of the popular pastors who had served the church. The pastors here wear white ruffs exactly like the pictures of Queen Elizabeth. There were in the Lubec churches a very large attendance, but almost _all women_. The genteeler people dressed precisely as the English; but behind every lady sat her maid,--the caps with gold and silver combs. Altogether, a Lubec church is an amusing sight. In the evening I wished myself a painter, just to draw a German Party at cards. One man’s long pipe rested on the table, by the fish-dish; another who was shuffling, and of course had both hands employed, held his pipe in his teeth, and it hung down between his thighs even to his ankles, and the distortion which the attitude and effort occasioned made him a most ludicrous phiz.... [If it] had been possible I would have loitered a week in those churches, and found incessant amusement. Every picture, every legend cut out in gilded wood-work, was a history of the manners and feelings of the ages in which such works were admired and executed.

As the sun both rises and sets over the little lake by us, both rising and setting present most lovely spectacles.[195] In October Ratzeburg used at sunset to appear completely beautiful. A deep red light spread over all, in complete harmony with the red town, the brown-red woods, and the yellow-red reeds on the skirts of the lake and on the slip of land. A few boats, paddled by single persons, used generally to be floating up and down in the rich light. But when first the ice fell on the lake, and the whole lake was frozen one large piece of thick transparent glass--O my God! what sublime scenery I have beheld. Of a morning I have seen the little lake covered with mist; when the sun peeped over the hills the mist broke in the middle, and at last stood as the waters of the Red Sea are said to have done when the Israelites passed; and between these two walls of mist the sunlight burst upon the ice in a straight road of golden fire, all across the lake, intolerably bright, and the walls of mist partaking of the light in a _multitude_ of colours. About a month ago the vehemence of the wind had shattered the ice; part of it, quite shattered, was driven to shore and had frozen anew; this was of a deep blue, and represented an agitated sea--the water that ran up between the great islands of ice shone of a yellow-green (it was at sunset), and all the scattered islands of _smooth_ ice were _blood_, intensely bright _blood_; on some of the largest islands the fishermen were pulling out their immense nets through the holes made in the ice for this purpose, and the fishermen, the net-poles, and the huge nets made a part of the glory! O my God! how I wished you to be with me! In skating there are three pleasing circumstances--firstly, the infinitely subtle particles of ice which the skate cuts up, and which creep and run before the skater like a low mist, and in sunrise or sunset become coloured; second, the shadow of the skater in the water seen through the transparent ice; and thirdly, the melancholy undulating sound from the skate, not without variety; and, when very many are skating together, the sounds give an impulse to the icy trees, and the woods all round the lake _tinkle_. It is a pleasant amusement to sit in an ice stool (as they are called) and be driven along by two skaters, faster than most horses can gallop. As to the customs here, they are nearly the same as in England, except that [the men] never sit after dinner [and only] drink at dinner, which often lasts three or four hours, and in noble families is divided into three gangs, that is, walks. When you have sat about an hour, you rise up, each lady takes a gentleman’s arm, and you walk about for a quarter of an hour--in the mean time another course is put upon the table; and, this in great dinners, is repeated three times. A man here seldom sees his wife till dinner,--they take their coffee in separate rooms, and never eat at breakfast; only as soon as they are up they take their coffee, and about eleven o’clock eat a bit of bread and butter with the coffee. The men at least take a pipe. Indeed, a pipe at breakfast is a great addition to the comfort of life. I shall [smoke at] no other time in England. Here I smoke four times a day--1 at breakfast, 1 half an hour before dinner, 1 in the afternoon at tea, and 1 just before bed-time--but I shall give it all up, unless, as before observed, you should happen to like the smoke of a pipe at breakfast. Once when I first came here I smoked a pipe immediately after dinner; the pastor expressed his surprise: I expressed mine that he could smoke before breakfast. “O Herr Gott!” (that is, Lord God) quoth he, “it is delightful; it invigorates the frame and _it clears out the mouth so_.” A common amusement at the German Universities is for a number of young men to smoke out a candle! that is, to fill a room with tobacco smoke till the candle goes out. Pipes are quite the rage--a pipe of a particular kind, that has been smoked for a year or so, will sell here for twenty guineas--the same pipe when new costs four or five. They are called Meerschaum.

God bless you, my dear Love! I will soon write again.

S. T. COLERIDGE.

Postscript. Perhaps you are in Bristol. However, I had better direct it to Stowey. My love to Martha and your mother and your other sisters. Once more, my dearest Love, God love and preserve us through this long absence! O my dear Babies! my Babies!

XCIV. TO THE SAME.

Bei dem Radermacher Gohring, in der Bergstrasse, Göttingen,
March 12, 1799. Sunday Night.

MY DEAREST LOVE,--It has been a frightfully long time since we have heard from each other. I have not written, simply because my letters could have gone no further than Cuxhaven, and would have stayed there to the [no] small hazard of their being lost. Even now the mouth of the Elbe is so much choked with ice that the English Pacquets cannot set off. Why need I say how anxious this long interval of silence has made me! I have thought and thought of you, and pictured you and the little ones so often and so often that my imagination is tired down, flat and powerless, and I languish after home for hours together in vacancy, my feelings almost wholly unqualified by _thoughts_. I have at times experienced such an extinction of _light_ in my mind--I have been so forsaken by all the _forms_ and _colourings_ of existence, as if the _organs_ of life had been dried up; as if only simply Being remained, blind and stagnant. After I have recovered from this strange state and reflected upon it, I have thought of a man who should lose his companion in a desart of sand, where his weary Halloos drop down in the air without an echo. I am deeply convinced that if I were to remain a few years among objects for whom I had no affection I should wholly lose the powers of intellect. Love is the vital air of my genius, and I have not seen one human being in Germany whom I can conceive it _possible_ for me to _love_, no, not _one_; in my mind they are an unlovely race, these Germans.

We left Ratzeburg, Feb. 6, in the Stage Coach. This was not the coldest night of the century, because the night following was two degrees colder--the oldest man living remembers not such a night as Thursday, Feb. 7. This whole winter I have heard incessant complaints of the unusual cold, but I have felt very little of it. But _that night_! My God! Now I know what the pain of cold is, and what the danger. The pious care of the German Governments that none of their loving subjects should be suffocated is admirable! On Friday morning when the light dawned, the Coach looked like a shapeless idol of suspicion with an hundred eyes, for there were at least so many holes in it. And as to rapidity! We left Ratzeburg at 7 o’clock Wednesday evening, and arrived at Lüneburg--_i. e._, 35 English miles--at 3 o’clock on Thursday afternoon. This is a fair specimen! In England I used to laugh at the “flying waggons;” but, compared with a German Post Coach, the metaphor is perfectly justifiable, and for the future I shall never meet a flying waggon without thinking respectfully of its speed. The whole country from Ratzeburg almost to Einbeck--_i. e._, 155 English miles--is a flat, objectless, hungry heath, bearing no marks of cultivation, except close by the towns, and the only remarks which suggested themselves to me were that it was cold--very cold--shocking cold--never felt it so cold in my life! Hanover is 115 miles from Ratzeburg. We arrived there Saturday evening.

The Herr von Döring, a nobleman who resides at Ratzeburg, gave me letters to his brother-in-law at Hanover, and by the manner in which he received me I found that they were not _ordinary_ letters of recommendation. He pressed me exceedingly to stay a week in Hanover, but I refused, and left it on Monday noon. In the mean time, however, he had introduced me to all the great people and presented me “as an English gentleman of first-rate character and talents” to Baron Steinburg, the Minister of State, and to Von Brandes, the Secretary of State and Governor of Göttingen University. The first was amazingly _perpendicular_, but civil and polite, and gave me letters to Heyne, the head Librarian, and, in truth, the real _Governor_ of Göttingen. Brandes likewise gave me letters to Heyne and Blumenbach, who are his brothers-in-law. Baron Steinburg offered to present me to the Prince (Adolphus), who is now in Hanover; but I deferred the honour till my return. I shall make Poole laugh when I return with the visiting-card which the Baron left at my inn.

The two things worth seeing in Hanover are (1) the conduit representing Mount Parnassus, with statues of Apollo, the Muses, and a great many others; flying horses, rhinoceroses, and elephants, etc.; and (2) a bust of Leibnitz--the first for its excessive absurdity, ugliness, and indecency--(absolutely I could write the most humorous octavo volume containing the description of it with a commentary)--the second--_i. e._ the bust of Leibnitz--impressed on my soul a sensation which has ennobled it. It is the face of a god! and Leibnitz was almost more than a man in the wonderful capaciousness of his judgment and imagination! Well, we left Hanover on Monday noon, after having paid a most extravagant bill. We lived with Spartan frugality, and paid with Persian pomp! But I was an Englishman, and visited by half a dozen noblemen and the Minister of State. The landlord could not dream of affronting me by anything like a reasonable charge! On the road we stopped with the postillion always, and our expenses were nothing. Chester and I made a very hearty dinner of cold beef, etc., and both together paid only fourpence, and for coffee and biscuits only threepence each. In short, a man may travel cheap in Germany, but he must avoid great towns and not be visited by Ministers of State.

In a village some four miles from Einbeck we stopped about 4 o’clock in the morning. It was pitch dark, and the postillion led us into a room where there was not a ray of light--we could not see our hand--but it felt extremely warm. At length and suddenly the lamp came, and we saw ourselves in a room thirteen strides in length, strew’d with straw, and lying by the side of each other on the straw twelve Jews. I assure you it was curious. Their dogs lay at their feet. There was one very beautiful boy among them, fast asleep, with the softest conceivable opening of the mouth, with the white beard of his grandfather upon his cheek--a fair, rosy cheek.

This day I called with my letters on the Professor Heyne, a little, hopping, over-civil sort of a thing, who talks very fast and with fragments of coughing between every ten words. However, he behaved very courteously to me. The next day I took out my matricula, and commenced student of the University of Göttingen. Heyne has honoured me so far that he has given me the right, which properly only professors have, of sending to the Library for an indefinite number of books in my own name.

On Saturday evening I went to the concert. Here the other Englishmen introduced themselves. After the concert Hamilton, a Cambridge man, took me as his guest to the Saturday Club, _where what is called_ the first class of students meet and sup once a week. Here were all the nobility and three Englishmen. Such an evening I never passed before--roaring, kissing, embracing, fighting, smashing bottles and glasses against the wall, singing--in short, such a scene of uproar I never witnessed before, no, not even at Cambridge. I drank nothing, but all except two of the Englishmen were drunk, and the party broke up a little after one o’clock in the morning. I thought of what I had been at Cambridge and of what I was, of the wild bacchanalian sympathy with which I had formerly joined similar parties, and of my total inability now to do aught but meditate, and the feeling of the deep alteration in my moral being gave the scene a melancholy interest to me.

We are quite well. Chester will write soon to his family; in the mean time he sends duty, love, and remembrance to all to whom they are due. I have drunk no wine or fermented liquor for more than three months, in consequence of which I am apt to be wakeful; but then I never feel any oppression after dinner, and my spirits are much more equable, blessings which I esteem inestimable! My dear Hartley--my Berkeley--how intensely do I long for you! My Sara, O my dear Sara! To Poole, God bless him! to dear Mrs. Poole and Ward, kindest love, and to all love and remembrance.

S. T. COLERIDGE.

XCV. TO THOMAS POOLE.

April 6, 1799.

MY DEAREST POOLE,--Your two letters, dated January 24 and March 15,[196] followed close on each other. I was still enjoying “the livelier impulse and the dance of thought” which the first had given me when I received the second. At the time, in which I read Sara’s lively account of the miseries which herself and the infant had undergone, all was over and well--there was nothing to _think_ of--only a mass of pain was brought suddenly and closely within the sphere of my perception, and I was made to suffer it over again. For this bodily frame is an imitative thing, and touched by the imagination gives the hour which is past as faithfully as a repeating watch. But Death--the death of an infant--of one’s own infant! I read your letter in calmness, and walked out into the open fields, oppressed, not by my feelings, but by the riddles which the thought so easily proposes, and solves--never! A parent--in the strict and exclusive sense a parent!--to me it is a _fable_ wholly without meaning except in the _moral_ which it suggests--a fable of which the moral is God. Be it so--my dear, dear friend! Oh let it be so! La Nature (says Pascal) “La Nature confond les Pyrrhoniens, et la Raison confond les Dogmatistes. Nous avons une impuissance à prouver invincible à tout le Dogmatisme. Nous avons une idée de la verité invincible à tout le Pyrrhonisme.” I find it wise and human to believe, even on slight evidence, opinions, the contrary of which cannot be proved, and which promote our happiness without hampering our intellect. My baby has not lived in vain--this life has been to him what it is to all of us--education and development! Fling yourself forward into your immortality only a few thousand years, and how small will not the difference between one year old and sixty years appear! Consciousness!--it is no otherwise necessary to our conceptions of future continuance than as connecting the present link of our being with the one immediately preceding it; and _that_ degree of consciousness, _that_ small portion of _memory_, it would not only be arrogant, but in the highest degree absurd, to deny even to a much younger infant. ’Tis a strange assertion that the essence of identity lies in _recollective_ consciousness. ’Twere scarcely less ridiculous to affirm that the eight miles from Stowey to Bridgwater consist in the eight milestones. Death in a doting old age falls upon my feelings ever as a more hopeless phenomenon than death in infancy; but _nothing_ is hopeless. What if the vital force which I sent from my arm into the stone as I flung it in the air and skimmed it upon the water--what if even that did not perish! It was _life_!--it was a particle of _being_!--it was power! and how could it perish? _Life, Power, Being!_ Organization may and probably is their _effect_--their _cause_ it _cannot_ be! I have indulged very curious fancies concerning that force, that swarm of motive powers which I sent out of my body into that stone, and which, one by one, left the untractable or already possessed mass, and--but the German Ocean lies between us. It is all too far to send you such fancies as these! Grief, indeed,--

Doth love to dally with fantastic thoughts,
And smiling like a sickly Moralist,
Finds some resemblance to her own concern
In the straws of chance, and things inanimate.[197]

But I cannot truly say that I grieve--I am perplexed--I am sad--and a little thing--a very trifle--would make me weep--but for the death of the baby I have _not_ wept! Oh this strange, strange, strange scene-shifter Death!--that giddies one with insecurity and so unsubstantiates the living things that one has grasped and handled! Some months ago Wordsworth transmitted me a most sublime epitaph. Whether it had any reality I cannot say. Most probably, in some gloomier moment he had fancied the moment in which his sister might die.

EPITAPH.

A slumber did my spirit seal,
I had no human fears;
She seemed a thing that could not feel
The touch of earthly years.
No motion has she now, no force,
She neither hears nor sees:
Mov’d round in Earth’s diurnal course
With rocks, and stones, and trees!

XCVI. TO HIS WIFE.

GÖTTINGEN, in der Wondestrasse, April 8, 1799.