Chapter XX: Book I: have suffered to remain suspended chiefly because the thoughts (1)

which had employed my sleepless nights during my illness were imperious over me; and though poverty was staring me in the face, yet I dared behold my image miniatured in the pupil of her hollow eye, so steadily did I look her in the face; for it seemed to me a suicide of my very soul to divert my attention from truths so important, which came to me almost as a revelation. Likewise, I cannot express to you, dear Friend of my heart! the loathing which I once or twice felt when I attempted to write, merely for the bookseller, without any sense of the moral utility of what I was writing. I shall therefore, as I said, immediately publish my “Christabel,” with two essays annexed to it, on the “Preternatural” and on “Metre.”--This done, I shall propose to Longman, instead of my Travels (which, though nearly done, I am exceedingly anxious not to publish, because it brings me forward in a _personal_ way, as a man who relates little adventures of himself to _amuse_ people, and thereby exposes me to sarcasm and the malignity of anonymous critics, and is, besides, _beneath me_, ...) I shall propose to Longman to accept instead of these Travels a work on the originality and merits of Locke, Hobbes, and Hume, which work I mean as a _pioneer_ to my greater work, and as exhibiting a proof that I have not formed opinions without an attentive perusal of the works of my predecessors, from Aristotle to Kant.

I am confident that I can prove that the reputation of these three men has been wholly unmerited, and I have in what I have already written traced the whole history of the causes that effected this reputation entirely to Wordsworth’s satisfaction.

You have seen, I hope, the “Lyrical Ballads.” In the divine poem called “Michael,” by an infamous blunder[242] of the printer, near twenty lines are omitted in page 210, which makes it nearly unintelligible. Wordsworth means to write to you and to send them together with a list of the numerous errata. The character of the “Lyrical Ballads” is very great, and will increase daily. They have extolled them in the “British Critic.” Ask Chester (to whom I shall write in a week or so concerning his German books) for Greenough’s address, and be so kind as to send it immediately. Indeed, I hope for a _long_ letter from you, your opinion of the L. B., the preface, etc. You know, I presume, that Davy is appointed Director of the Laboratory, and Professor at the Royal Institution? I received a very affectionate letter from him on the occasion. Love to all. We are all well, except, perhaps, myself. Write! God love you and

S. T. COLERIDGE.

CXVII. TO THE SAME.

Monday, March 23, 1801.

MY DEAR FRIEND,--I received your kind letter of the 14th. I was agreeably disappointed in finding that you had been interested in the letter respecting Locke. Those which follow are abundantly more entertaining and important; but I have no one to transcribe them. Nay, three letters are written which have not been sent to Mr. Wedgwood,[243] because I have no one to transcribe them for me, and I do not wish to be without copies. Of that letter which you have I have no copy. It is somewhat unpleasant to me that Mr. Wedgwood has never answered my letter requesting his opinion of the utility of such a work, nor acknowledged the receipt of the long letter containing the evidences that the whole of Locke’s system, as far as it was a system, and with the exclusion of those parts only which have been given up _as absurdities_ by his warmest admirers, preëxisted in the writings of Descartes, in a far more pure, elegant, and delightful form. Be not afraid that I shall join the party of the _Little-ists_. I believe that I shall delight you by the detection of their artifices. _Now Mr. Locke was the founder of this sect, himself a perfect Little-ist._

My opinion is thus: that deep thinking is attainable only by a man of deep feeling, and that all truth is a species of revelation. The more I understand of Sir Isaac Newton’s works, the more boldly I dare utter to my own mind, and therefore to _you_, that I believe the souls of five hundred Sir Isaac Newtons would go to the making up of a Shakespeare or a Milton. But if it please the Almighty to grant me health, hope, and a steady mind (always the three clauses of my hourly prayers), before my thirtieth year I will thoroughly understand the whole of Newton’s works. At present I must content myself with endeavouring to make myself entire master of his easier work, that on Optics. I am exceedingly delighted with the beauty and neatness of his experiments, and with the accuracy of his _immediate_ deductions from them; but the opinions founded on these deductions, and indeed his whole theory is, I am persuaded, so exceedingly superficial as without impropriety to be deemed false. Newton was a mere materialist. _Mind_, in his system, is always _passive_,--a lazy _Looker-on_ on an external world. If the mind be not _passive_, if it be indeed made in God’s Image, and that, too, in the sublimest sense, the _Image of the Creator_, there is ground for suspicion that any system built on the passiveness of the mind must be false, as a system. I need not observe, my dear friend, how unutterably silly and contemptible these opinions would be if written to any but to another self. I assure you, solemnly assure you, that you and Wordsworth are the only men on earth to whom I would have uttered a word on this subject.

It is a rule, by which I hope to direct all my literary efforts, to let my opinions and my proofs go together. It is _insolent_ to _differ_ from the public _opinion_ in _opinion_, if it be only _opinion_. It is sticking up little _i by itself_, _i_ against the whole alphabet. But one _word_ with _meaning_ in it is worth the whole alphabet together. Such is a sound argument, an incontrovertible fact.

_Oh, for a Lodge_ in a land where human life was an end to which labour was only a means, instead of being, as it is here, a mere means of carrying on labour. I am oppressed at times with a true heart-gnawing melancholy when I contemplate the state of my poor oppressed country. God knows, it is as much as I can do to put meat and bread on my own table, and hourly some poor starving wretch comes to my door to put in his claim for part of it. It fills me with indignation to hear the _croaking_ account which the English emigrants send home of America. “The society so bad, the manners so vulgar, the servants so insolent!” Why, then, do they not seek out one another and make a society? It is arrant ingratitude to talk so of a land in which there is no poverty but as a consequence of absolute idleness; and to talk of it, too, with abuse comparatively with England, with a place where the laborious poor are dying with grass in their bellies. It is idle to talk of the seasons, as if that country must not needs be miserably governed in which an unfavourable season introduces a famine. No! no! dear Poole, it is our pestilent commerce, our unnatural crowding together of men in cities, and our government by rich men, that are bringing about the manifestations of offended Deity. I am assured that such is the depravity of the public mind, that no literary man can find bread in England except by mis-employing and debasing his talents; that nothing of real excellence would be either felt or understood. The annuity which I hold, _perhaps by a very precarious tenure_, will shortly from the decreasing value of money become less than one half what it was when first allowed to me. If I were allowed to retain it, I would go and settle near Priestley, in America. I shall, no doubt, get a certain price for the two or three works which I shall next publish, but I foresee they will not sell. The booksellers, finding this, will treat me as an unsuccessful author, that is, they will employ me only as an anonymous translator at a guinea a sheet. I have no doubt that I could make £500 a year if I liked. But then I must forego all desire of truth and excellence. I say I would go to America if Wordsworth would go with me, and we could persuade two or three farmers of this country, who are exceedingly attached to us, to accompany us. I would go, if the difficulty of procuring sustenance in this country remain in the state and degree in which it is at present; not on any romantic scheme, but merely because society has become a matter of great indifference to me. I grow daily more and more attached to solitude; but it is a matter of the utmost importance to be removed from seeing and suffering want.

God love you, my dear friend.

S. T. COLERIDGE.

CXVIII. TO ROBERT SOUTHEY.

GRETA HALL, KESWICK, [May 6, 1801].

MY DEAR SOUTHEY,--I wrote you a very, very gloomy letter; and I have taken blame to myself for inflicting so much pain on you without any adequate motive. Not that I exaggerated anything, as far as the immediate present is concerned; but had I been in better health and a more genial state of sensation, I should assuredly have looked out upon a more cheerful future. Since I wrote you, I have had another and more severe fit of illness, which has left me weak, very weak, but with so calm a mind that I am determined to believe that this fit was _bonâ fide_ the last. Whether I shall be able to pass the next winter in this country is doubtful; nor is it possible I should know till the fall of the leaf. At all events, you will (I hope and trust, and if need were, _entreat_) spend as much of the summer and autumn with us as will be in your power, and if our _healths_ should permit it, I am confident there will be no other solid objection to our living together in the same house, divided. We have ample room,--room enough, and more than enough, and I am willing to believe that the blessed dreams we dreamt some six years ago may be auguries of something really noble which we may yet perform together.

We wait impatiently, anxiously, for a letter announcing your arrival. Indeed, the article _Falmouth_ has taken precedence of the _Leading Paragraph_ with me for the last three weeks. Our best love to Edith. Derwent is the boast of the county; the little river god is as beautiful as if he had been the child of Venus Anaduomene previous to her emersion. Dear Hartley! we are at times alarmed by the state of his health, but at present he is well. If I were to lose him, I am afraid it would exceedingly deaden my affection for any other children I may have.

A little child, a limber elf
Singing, dancing to itself;
A faery thing with red round cheeks
That always _finds_, and never _seeks_,
Doth make a vision to the sight, 5
Which fills a father’s eyes with light!
And pleasures flow in so thick and fast
Upon his heart that he at last
Must needs express his love’s excess
In words of wrong and bitterness. 10
Perhaps it is pretty to force together
Thoughts so all unlike each other;
To mutter and mock a broken charm;
To dally with wrong that does no harm.
Perhaps ’tis tender, too, and pretty, 15
At each wild word to feel within
A sweet recoil of love and pity;
And what if in a world of sin
(Oh sorrow and shame! should this be true)
Such giddiness of heart and brain 20
Comes seldom, save from rage and pain,
So talks as it’s most used to do.[244]

A very metaphysical account of fathers calling their children rogues, rascals, and little varlets, etc.

God bless you, my dear Southey! I need not say, Write.

S. T. COLERIDGE.

P. S. We shall have peas, beans, turnips (with boiled leg of mutton), cauliflowers, French beans, etc., etc., endless! We have a noble garden.

CXIX. TO THE SAME.

Wednesday, July 22, 1801.

MY DEAR SOUTHEY,--Yesterday evening I met a boy on an ass, winding down _as picturisk a glen_ as eye ever looked at, he and his beast no mean part of the picture. I had taken a liking to the little blackguard at a distance, and I could have downright hugged him when he gave me a letter in your handwriting. Well, God be praised! I shall surely see you once more, somewhere or other. If it be really impracticable for you to come to me, I will doubtless do anything rather than not see you, though, in simple truth, travelling in chaises, or coaches even, for one day is sure to lay me up for a week. But do, do, for heaven’s sake, come and go the shortest way, however dreary it be; for there is enough to be seen when you get to our house. If you did but know what a flutter the old moveable at my left breast has been in since I read your letter. I have not had such a fillip for many months. My dear Edith; how glad you were to see old Bristol again!

I am again climbing up that rock of convalescence from which I have been so often washed off and hurried back; but I have been so unusually well these last two days that I should begin to look the damsel Hope full in the face, instead of sheep’s-eyeing her, were it not that the weather has been so unusually hot, and that is my joy. Yes, sir! we will go to Constantinople; but as it rains there, which my gout loves as the devil does holy water, the Grand Turk shall shew the exceeding attachment he will no doubt form towards us by appointing us his viceroys in Egypt. I will be Supreme Bey of that showerless district, and you shall be my supervisor. But for God’s sake make haste and come to me, and let us talk of the sands of Arabia while we are floating in our lazy boat on Keswick Lake, with our eyes on massy Skiddaw, so green and high. Perhaps Davy might accompany you. Davy will remain unvitiated; his deepest and most recollectable delights have been in solitude, and the next to those with one or two whom he loved. He is placed, no doubt, in a perilous desert of good things; but he is connected with the present race of men by a very awful tie, that of being able to confer immediate benefit on them; and the cold-blooded, venom-toothed snake that winds around him shall be only his coat of arms, as God of Healing.

I exceedingly long to see “Thalaba,” and perhaps still more to read “Madoc” over again. I never heard of any third edition of my poems. I think you must have confused it with the L. B. Longman could not surely be so uncouthly ill-mannered as not to write to me to know if I wished to make any corrections or additions. If I am well enough, I mean to alter, with a devilish sweep of revolution, my Tragedy, and publish it in a little volume by itself, with a new name, as a poem. But I have no heart for poetry. Alas! alas! how should I? who have passed nine months with giddy head, sick stomach, and swoln knees. My dear Southey! it is said that long sickness makes us all grow selfish, by the necessity which it imposes of continuously thinking about ourselves. But long and sleepless nights are a fine antidote.

Oh, how I have dreamt about you! Times that _have been_, and never can return, have been with me on my bed of pain, and how I yearned towards you in those moments. I myself can know only by feeling it over again. But come “strengthen the weak hands, and confirm the feeble knees. Then shall the lame man leap as a hart, and sorrow and sighing shall flee away.”

I am here, in the vicinity of Durham, for the purpose of reading from the Dean and Chapter’s Library an ancient of whom you may have heard, _Duns Scotus_! I mean to set the poor old Gemman on his feet again; and in order to wake him out of his present lethargy, I am burning Locke, Hume, and Hobbes under his nose. They stink worse than feather or assafœtida. Poor Joseph! [Cottle] he has scribbled away both head and heart. What an affecting essay I could write on that man’s character! Had he gone in his quiet way on a little pony, looking about him with a sheep’s-eye cast now and then at a short poem, I do verily think from many parts of the “Malvern Hill,” that he would at last have become a poet better than many who have had much fame, but he would be an Epic, and so

“Victorious o’er the Danes, I Alfred, preach,
Of my own forces, Chaplain-General!”

... Write immediately, directing Mr. Coleridge, Mr. George Hutchinson’s,[245] Bishop’s Middleham, Rushiford, Durham, and tell me when you set off, and I will contrive and meet you at Liverpool, where, if you are jaded with the journey, we can stay a day or two at Dr. Crompton’s, and chat a bit with Roscoe and Curry,[246] whom you will like as men far, far better than as writers. O Edith; how happy Sara will be, and little Hartley, who uses the air of the breezes as skipping-ropes, and fat Derwent, so beautiful, and so proud of his three teeth, that there’s no bearing of him!

God bless you, dear Southey, and

S. T. COLERIDGE.

P. S. Remember me kindly to Danvers and Mrs. Danvers.

[Care of] MRS. DANVERS,
Kingsdown Parade, Bristol.

CXX. TO THE SAME.

DURHAM, Saturday, July 25, 1801.

MY DEAR SOUTHEY,--I do loathe cities, that’s certain. I am in Durham, at an inn,--and that, too, I do not like, and have dined with a large parcel of priests all belonging to the cathedral, thoroughly ignorant and hard-hearted. I have had no small trouble in gaining permission to have a few books sent to me eight miles from the place, which nobody has ever read in the memory of man. Now you will think what follows a lie, and it is not. I asked a stupid haughty fool, who is the Librarian of the Dean and Chapter’s Library in this city, if it had Leibnitz. He answered, “We have no Museum in this Library for natural curiosities; but there is a Mathematical Instrument setter in the town, who shews such animalcula through a glass of great magnifying powers.” Heaven and earth! he understood the word “_live nits_.” Well, I return early to-morrow to Middleham; to a quiet good family that love me dearly--a young farmer and his sister, and he makes very droll verses in the northern dialects and in the metre of Burns, and is a great humourist, and the woman is so very good a woman that I have seldom indeed seen the like of her. Death! that everywhere there should be one or two good and excellent people like these, and that they should not have the power given ’em ... to whirl away the rest to Hell!

I do not approve the Palermo and Constantinople scheme, to be secretary to a fellow that would poison you for being a poet, while he is only a lame verse-maker. But verily, dear Southey! it will not suit you to be under any man’s control, or biddances. What if you were a consul? ’Twould fix you to one place, as bad as if you were a parson. It won’t do. Now mark my scheme! St. Nevis is the most lovely as well as the most healthy island in the W. Indies. Pinney’s[247] estate is there, and he has a country-house situated in a most heavenly way, a very large mansion. Now between you and me I have reason to believe that not only this house is at my service, but many advantages in a family way that would go one half to lessen the expenses of living there, and perhaps Pinney would appoint us sinecure negro-drivers, at a hundred a year each, or some other snug and reputable office, and, perhaps, too, we might get some office in which there is quite nothing to do under the Governor. Now I and my family, and you and Edith, and Wordsworth and his sister might all go there, and make the Island more illustrious than Cos or Lesbos! A heavenly climate, a heavenly country, and a good house. The seashore so near us, dells and rocks and streams. Do now think of this. But say nothing about it on account of old Pinney. Wordsworth would certainly go if I went. By the living God, it is my opinion that we should not leave three such men behind us. N. B. I have every reason to believe Keswick (and Cumberland and Westmoreland in general) full as dry a climate as Bristol. Our rains fall more certainly in certain months, but we have fewer rainy days, taking the year through. As to cold, I do not believe the difference perceptible by the human body. But I feel that there is no relief for me in _any part_ of England. Very hot weather brings me about in an instant, and I relapse as soon as it coldens.

You say nothing of your voyage homeward, or the circumstances that preceded it. This, however, I far rather hear from your mouth than your letters. Come! and come quickly. My love to Edith, and remember me kindly to Mary and Martha and Eliza and Mrs. Fricker. My kind respects to Charles and Mrs. Danvers. Is Davy with you? If he is, I am sure he speaks affectionately of me. God bless you! Write.

S. T. COLERIDGE.

CXXI. TO THE SAME.

SCARBOROUGH, August 1, 1801.

MY DEAR SOUTHEY,--On my return from Durham (I foolishly walked back), I was taken ill, and my left knee swelled “pregnant with agony,” as Mr. Dodsley says in one of his poems. Dr. Fenwick[248] has earnestly persuaded me to try horse-exercise and warm sea-bathing, and I took the opportunity of riding with Sara Hutchinson to her brother Tom, who lives near the place, where I can ride to and fro, and bathe with no other expense there than that of the bath. The fit comes on me either at nine at night, or two in the morning. In the former case it continues nine hours, in the latter five. I am often literally _sick_ with pain. In the daytime, however, I am well, surprisingly so indeed, considering how very little sleep I am able to snatch. Your letter was sent after me, and arrived here this morning, and but that my letter _can_ reach you on the 5th of this month, I would immediately set off again, though I arrived here only last night. But I am unwilling not to try the baths for one week. If, therefore, you have not made the immediate preparation you may stay one week longer at Bristol. But if you have, you must look at the lake, and play with my babies three or four days, though this grieves me. I do not like it. I want to be with you, and to meet you even to the very verge of the Lake Country. I would far rather that you would stay a week at Grasmere (which is on the road, fourteen miles from Keswick), with Wordsworth, than go on to Keswick, and I not there. Oh, how you will love Grasmere!

All I ever wish of you with regard to wintering at Keswick is to stay with me till you find the climate injurious. When I read that cheerful sentence, “We will climb Skiddaw this year and scale Etna the next,” with a right piteous and humorous smile did I ogle my poor knee, which at this present moment is larger than the thickest part of my thigh.

A little Quaker girl (the daughter of the great Quaker mathematician Slee, a friend of anti-negro-trade Clarkson, who has a house at the foot of Ulleswater, which Slee Wordsworth dined with, a pretty parenthesis!), this little girl, four years old, happened after a very hearty meal to _eructate_, while Wordsworth was there. Her mother _looked_ at her, and the little creature immediately and _formally_ observed: “Yan belks when yan’s fu, and when yan’s empty.” That is, “One belches when one’s full and when one’s empty.” Since that time this is a favourite piece of slang at Grasmere and Greta Hall, whenever we talk of poor Joey, George Dyer, and other perseverants in the noble trade of scribbleism.

Wrangham,[249] who lives near here, one of your anthology friends, has married again, a lady of a neat £700 a year. His living by the Inclosure [Act] will be something better than £600, besides what little fortune he had with his last wife, who died in the first year. His present wife’s cousin observed, “Mr. W. is a _lucky_ man: his present lady is very weakly and delicate.” I like the idea of a man’s _speculating in sickly wives_. It would be no bad character for a farce.

That letter £ was a kind-hearted, honest, well-spoken citizen. The three strokes which _did_ for him were, as I take it, (1), the Ictus Cardiacus, which devitalized his moral heart; (2ondly) the stroke of the apoplexy in his _head_; and (thirdly) a stroke of the palsy in his right hand, which produces a terrible shaking and impotence in the very attempt to reach his breeches pocket. O dear Southey! what incalculable blessings, worthy of thanksgiving in Heaven, do we not owe to our being and _having_ been _poor_! No man’s heart can wholly stand up against property. My love to Edith.

S. T. COLERIDGE.

CXXII. TO THOMAS POOLE.

KESWICK, September 19, 1801.

By a letter from Davy I have learnt, Poole, that your mother is with the Blessed. I have given her the tears and the pang which belong to her departure, and now she will remain to me forever, what she had long been--a dear and venerable image, often gazed at by me in imagination, and always with affection and filial piety. She was the only being whom I ever _felt_ in the relation of Mother; and she is with God! We are all with God!

What shall I say to _you_! I can only offer a prayer of thanksgiving for you, that you are one who has habitually connected the act of thought with that of feeling; and that your natural sorrow is so mingled up with a sense of the omnipresence of the Good Agent, that I cannot wish it to be other than what I know it is. The frail and the too painful will gradually pass away from you, and there will abide in your spirit a great and sacred accession to those solemn Remembrances and faithful Hopes in which, and by which, the Almighty lays deep the foundations of our continuous Life, and distinguishes us from the Brutes that perish. As all things pass away, and those habits are broken up which constituted our own and particular Self, our nature by a moral instinct cherishes the desire of an unchangeable Something, and thereby awakens or stirs up anew the passion to promote _permanent_ good, and facilitates that grand business of our existence--still further, and further still, to generalise our affections, till Existence itself is swallowed up in _Being_, and we are in Christ even as He is in the Father.

It is among the advantages of these events that they learn us to associate a keen and deep feeling with all the old good phrases, all the reverend sayings of comfort and sympathy, that belong, as it were, to the whole human race. I felt this, dear Poole! as I was about to write my old

God bless you, and love you for ever and ever!

Your affectionate friend,
S. T. COLERIDGE.

Would it not be well if you were to change the scene awhile! Come to me, Poole! No--no--no. You have none that love you so well as I. I write with tears that prevent my seeing what I am writing.

CXXIII. TO ROBERT SOUTHEY.

NETHER STOWEY, BRIDGEWATER, December 31, 1801.

DEAR SOUTHEY,--On Xmas Day I breakfasted with Davy, with the intention of dining with you; but I returned very unwell, and in very truth in so utter a dejection of spirits as both made it improper for me to go anywhither, and a most unfit man to be with you. I left London on Saturday morning, 4 o’clock, and for three hours was in such a storm as I was never before out in, for I was atop of the coach--rain, and hail, and violent wind, with vivid flashes of lightning, that seemed almost to alternate with the flash-like re-emersions of the waning moon, from the ever-shattered, ever-closing clouds. However, I was armed cap-a-pie in a complete panoply, namely, in a huge, most huge, roquelaure, which had cost the government seven guineas, and was provided for the emigrants in the Quiberon expedition, one of whom, falling sick, stayed behind and parted with his cloak to Mr. Howel,[250] who lent it me. I dipped my head down, shoved it up--and it proved a complete tent to me. I was as dry as if I had been sitting by the fire. I arrived at Bath at eleven o’clock at night, and spent the next day with Warren, who has gotten a very sweet woman to wife and a most beautiful house and situation at Whitcomb on the Hill over the bridge. On Monday afternoon I arrived at Stowey. I am a good deal better; but my bowels are by no means de-revolutionized. So much for me. I do not know what I am to say to you of your dear mother. Life passes away from us in all modes and ways, in our friends, in ourselves. We all “die daily.” Heaven knows that many and many a time I have regarded my talents and requirements as a porter’s burthen, imposing on me the capital duty of going on to the end of the journey, when I would gladly lie down by the side of the road, and become the country for a mighty nation of maggots. For what is life, gangrened, as it is with me, in its very vitals, domestic tranquillity? These things being so, I confess that I feel for you, but not for the _event_, as for the event only by an act of thought, and not by any immediate _shock_ from the like feeling within myself. When I return to town I can scarcely tell. I have not yet made up my mind whether or no I shall move Devonward. My relations wish to see me, and I wish to avoid the uneasy feeling I shall have, if I remain so near them without gratifying the wish. No very brotherly mood of mind, I must confess--but it is, nine tenths of it at least, a work of their own doing. Poole desires to be remembered to you. Remember me to your wife and Mrs. Lovell.

God bless you and

S. T. COLERIDGE.

CXXIV. TO HIS WIFE.

KING STREET, COVENT GARDEN, [February 24, 1802.]

MY DEAR LOVE,--I am sure it will make you happy to hear that both my health and spirits have greatly improved, and I have small doubts that a residence of two years in a mild and even climate will, with God’s blessing, give me a new lease in a better constitution. You may be well assured that I shall do nothing rashly, but our journey thither I shall defray by letters to Poole and the Wedgwoods, or more probably addressed to Mawman, the bookseller, who will honour my drafts in return. Of course I shall not go till I have earned all the money necessary for the journey that I can. The plan will be this, unless you can think of any better. Wordsworth will marry soon after my return, and he, Mary, and Dorothy will be our companions and neighbours. Southey means, if it is in his power, to pass into Spain that way. About July we shall all set sail from Liverpool to Bordeaux. Wordsworth has not yet settled whether he shall be married from Gallow Hill or at Grasmere. But they will of course make a point that either Sarah shall be with Mary or Mary with Sarah previous to so long a parting. If it be decided that Sarah is to come to Grasmere, I shall return by York, which will be but a few miles out of the way, and bring her. At all events, I shall stay a few days at Derby,--for whom, think you, should I meet in Davy’s lecture-room but Joseph Strutt? He behaved most affectionately to me, and pressed me with great earnestness to pass through Darley (which is on the road to Derby) and stay a few days at his house among my old friends. I assure you I was much affected by his kind and affectionate invitation (though I felt a little awkward, not knowing _whom_ I might venture to ask after). I could not bring out the word “Mrs. Evans,” and so said, “Your sister, sir? I _hope she_ is well!”

On Sunday I dined at Sir William Rush’s, and on Monday likewise, and went with them to Mrs. Billington’s Benefit. ’Twas the “Beggar’s Opera;” it was _perfection_! I seem to have acquired a new sense by hearing her. I wished you to have been there. I assure you I am quite a man of _fashion_; so many titled acquaintances and handsome carriages stopping at my door, and fine cards. And then I am such an exquisite judge of music and painting, and pass criticisms on furniture and chandeliers, and pay such very handsome compliments to all women of fashion, that I do verily believe that if I were to stay three months in town and have tolerable health and spirits, I should be a Thing in vogue,--the very _tonish_ poet and Jemmy-Jessamy-fine-talker in town. If you were only to see the tender smiles that I occasionally receive from the Honourable Mrs. Damer! you would scratch her eyes out for jealousy! And then there’s the _sweet_ (N. B. musky) Lady Charlotte ----! Nay, but I won’t tell you her name,--you might perhaps take it into your head to write an anonymous letter to her, and distrust our little innocent amour.

Oh that I were at Keswick with my darlings! My Hartley and my fat Derwent! God bless you, my dear Sarah! I shall return in love and cheerfulness, and therefore in pleasurable convalescence, if not in health. We shall try to get poor dear little Robert into Christ’s Hospital; that wretch of a Quaker will do nothing. The skulking rogue! just to lay hold of the time when Mrs. Lovell was on a visit to Southey; there was such low cunning in the thought.

Remember me most kindly to Mr. and Mrs. Wilkinson, and tell Mr. Jackson that I have not shaken a hand since I quitted him with more esteem and glad feeling than I shall soon, I trust, shake his with. God bless you, and your affectionate and faithful husband (notwithstanding the Honourable Mrs. D. and Lady Charlotte!),

S. T. COLERIDGE.

CXXV. TO W. SOTHEBY.

GRETA HALL, KESWICK, Tuesday, July 13, 1802.

MY DEAR SIR,--I had written you a letter and was about to have walked to the post with it when I received yours from Luff.[251] It gave me such lively pleasure that I threw my letter into the fire, for it related chiefly to the “Erste Schiffer” of Gesner, and I could not endure that my first letter to you should _begin_ with a subject so little interesting to my heart or understanding. I trust that you are before this at the end of your journey, and that Mrs. and Miss Sotheby have so completely recovered themselves as to have almost forgotten all the fatigue except such instances of it as it may be pleasant to them to remember. Why need I say how often I have thought of you since your departure, and with what hope and pleasurable emotion? I will acknowledge to you that your very, very kind letter was not only a pleasure to me, but a relief to my mind; for, after I had left you on the road between Ambleside and Grasmere, I was dejected by the apprehension that I had been unpardonably loquacious, and had oppressed you, and still more Mrs. Sotheby, with my many words so impetuously uttered! But in simple truth, you were yourselves, in part, the innocent causes of it. For the meeting with you, the manner of the meeting, your kind attentions to me, the deep and healthful delight which every impressive and beautiful object seemed to pour out upon you; kindred opinions, kindred pursuits, kindred feelings in persons whose habits, and, as it were, walk of life, have been so different from my own,--these and more than these, which I would but cannot say, all flowed in upon me with unusually strong impulses of pleasure,--and pleasure in a body and soul such as I happen to possess “intoxicates more than strong wine.” However, _I promise to be a much more subdued creature when you next meet me_, for I had but just recovered from a state of extreme dejection, brought on in part by ill health, partly by other circumstances; and solitude and solitary musings do of themselves impregnate our thoughts, perhaps, with more life and sensation than will leave the balance quite even. But you, my dear sir! looked at a brother poet with a brother’s eyes. Oh that you were now in my study and saw, what is now before the window at which I am writing,--that rich mulberry-purple which a floating cloud has thrown on the lake, and that quiet boat making its way through it to the shore!

We have had little else but rain and squally weather since you left us till within the last three days. But showery weather is no evil to us; and even that most oppressive of all weathers, hot, small _drizzle_, exhibits the mountains the best of any. It produced such new combinations of ridges in the Lodore and Borrowdale mountains on Saturday morning that I declare, had I been blindfolded and so brought to the prospect, I should scarcely have known them again. It was a dream such as lovers have,--a wild and transfiguring, yet enchantingly lovely dream, of an object lying by the side of the sleeper. Wordsworth, who has walked through Switzerland, declared that he never saw anything superior, perhaps nothing equal, in the Alps.

The latter part of your letter made me truly happy. Uriel himself should not be half as welcome; and indeed he, I must admit, was never any great favourite of mine. I always thought him a bantling of zoneless Italian muses, which Milton heard cry at the door of his imagination and took in out of charity. However, come as you may, _carus mihi expectatusque venies_.[252] _De cœteris rebus si quid agendum est, et quicquid sit agendum, ut quam rectissime agantur omni meâ curâ, operâ, diligentiâ, gratiâ providebo._[253]

On my return to Keswick, I reperused the “Erste Schiffer” with great attention, and the result was an increasing disinclination to the business of translating it; though my fancy was not a little flattered by the idea of seeing my rhymes in such a gay livery.--As poor Giordano Bruno[254] says in his strange, yet noble poem, “De Immenso et Innumerabili,”--

“Quam Garymedeo cultu, graphiceque venustus!
Narcissis referam, peramarunt me quoque Nymphæ.”

But the poem was too silly. The first conception is noble, so very good that I am spiteful enough to hope that I shall discover it not to have been original in Gesner,--he has so abominably maltreated it. First, the story is very inartificially constructed. We should have been let into the existence of the girl by her mother, through the young man, and after _his_ appearance. This, however, is comparatively a trifle. But the machinery is so superlatively contemptible and commonplace; as if a young man could not dream of a tale which had deeply impressed him without Cupid, or have a fair wind all the way to an island without Æolus. Æolus himself is a god devoted and dedicated, I should have thought, to the Muse of Travestie. His speech in Gesner is not deficient in fancy, but it is a girlish fancy, and the god of the wind, exceedingly disquieted with animal love, makes a very ridiculous figure in my imagination. Besides, it was ill taste to introduce Cupid and Æolus at a time which we positively know to have been anterior to the invention and establishment of the Grecian Mythology; and the speech of Æolus reminds me perpetually of little engravings from the cut stones of the ancients,--seals, and whatever else they call them. Again, the girl’s yearnings and conversations with him are something between the nursery and the _Veneris volgivagæ templa, et libidinem spirat et subsusurrat, dum innocentiæ loquillam, et virginiæ cogitationis dulciter offensantis luctamina simulat_.

It is not the thought that a lonely girl could have; but exactly such as a boarding-school _miss_, whose imagination, to say no worse, had been somewhat stirred and heated by the perusal of French or German pastorals, would suppose her to say. But this is, indeed, general in the German and French poets. It is easy to clothe imaginary beings with our own thoughts and feelings; but to send ourselves out of ourselves, to _think_ ourselves into the thoughts and feelings of beings in circumstances wholly and strangely different from our own, _hic labor hoc opus_; and who has achieved it? Perhaps only Shakespeare. Metaphysics is a word that you, my dear sir, are no great friend to, but yet you will agree with me that a great poet must be _implicité_, if not _explicité_, a profound metaphysician. He may not have it in logical coherence in his brain and tongue, but he must have the ear of a wild Arab listening in the silent desert, the eye of a North American Indian tracing the footsteps of an enemy upon the leaves that strew the forest, the touch of a blind man feeling the face of a darling child. And do not think me a bigot if I say that I have read no French or German writer who appears to me to have a _heart_ sufficiently pure and simple to be capable of this or anything like it. I could say a great deal more in abuse of poor Gesner’s poems, but I have said more than I fear will be creditable in your opinion to my good nature. I must, though, tell you the malicious motto which I have written in the first part of Klopstock’s “Messias:”--

“Tale tuum carmen nobis, divine poeta!
Quale sopor!”

Only I would have the words _divine poeta_ translated “verse-making divine.” I have read a great deal of German; but I do dearly, dearly, dearly love my own countrymen of old times, and those of my contemporaries who write in their spirit.

William Wordsworth and his sister left me yesterday on their way to Yorkshire. They walked yesterday to the foot of Ulleswater, from thence they go to Penrith, and take the coach. I accompanied them as far as the seventh milestone. Among the last things which he said to me was, “Do not forget to remember me to Mr. Sotheby with whatever affectionate terms so slight an intercourse may permit; and how glad we shall all be to see him again!”

I was much pleased with your description of Wordsworth’s character as it appeared to you. It is in a few words, in half a dozen strokes, like one of Mortimer’s[255] figures, a fine portrait. The word “homogeneous” gave me great pleasure, as most accurately and happily expressing him. I must set you right with regard to my perfect coincidence with his poetic creed. It is most certain that the heads of our mutual conversations, etc., and the passages, were indeed partly taken from note of mine; for it was at first intended that the preface should be written by me. And it is likewise true that I warmly accord with Wordsworth in his abhorrence of these poetic licenses, as they are called, which are indeed mere tricks of convenience and laziness. _Ex. gr._ Drayton has these lines:--

“Ouse having Ouleney past, as she were waxed mad
From her first stayder course immediately doth gad,
And in meandered gyres doth whirl herself about,
_That, this_ way, here and there, backward in and out.
And like a wanton girl oft doubling in her gait
In labyrinthian turns and twinings intricate,” etc.[256]

The first poets, observing such a stream as this, would say with truth and beauty, “it _strays_;” and now every stream shall _stray_, wherever it prattles on its _pebbled way_, instead of its bed or channel. And I have taken the instance from a poet from whom as few instances of this vile, commonplace, trashy style could be taken as from any writer [namely], from Bowles’ execrable translation[257] of that lovely poem of Dean Ogle’s (vol. ii. p. 27). I am confident that Bowles good-naturedly translated it in a hurry, merely to give him an excuse for printing the admirable original. In my opinion, every phrase, every metaphor, every personification, should have its justifying clause in some _passion_, either of the poet’s mind or of the characters described by the poet. But metre itself implies a passion, that is, a state of excitement both in the poet’s mind, and is expected, in part, of the reader; and, though I stated this to Wordsworth, and he has in some sort stated it in his preface, yet he has not done justice to it, nor has he, in my opinion, sufficiently answered it. In my opinion, poetry justifies as poetry, independent of any other passion, some new combinations of language and _commands_ the omission of many others allowable in other compositions. Now Wordsworth, _me saltem judice_, has in his system not sufficiently admitted the former, and in his practice has too frequently sinned against the latter. Indeed, we have had lately some little controversy on the subject, and we begin to suspect that there is somewhere or other a radical difference in our opinions. _Dulce est inter amicos rarissimâ dissensione condere plurimas consentiones_, saith St. Augustine, who said more good things than any saint or sinner that I ever read in Latin.

Bless me! what a letter! And I have yet to make a request to you. I have read your Georgics at a friend’s house in the neighbourhood, and in sending for the book, I find that it belonged to a book-club, and has been returned. If you have a copy interleaved, or could procure one for me and will send it to me per coach, with a copy of your original poems, I will return them to you with many thanks in the autumn, and will endeavour to improve my own taste by writing on the blank leaves my feelings both of the original and your translation. Your poems I want for another purpose, of which hereafter.

Mrs. Coleridge and my children are well. She desires to be respectfully remembered to Mrs. and Miss Sotheby. Tell Miss Sotheby that I will endeavour to send her soon the completion of the “Dark Ladie,” as she was good-natured enough to be pleased with the first part.

Let me hear from you soon, my dear sir! and believe me with heartfelt wishes for you and yours, in every-day phrase, but, indeed, indeed, not with every-day feeling.

Yours most sincerely,
S. T. COLERIDGE.

I long to lead Mrs. Sotheby to a scene that has the grandeur without the toil or danger of Scale Force. It is called the White Water Dash.[258]

CXXVI. TO THE SAME.

KESWICK, July 19, 1802.

MY DEAR SIR,--I trouble you with another letter to inform you that I have finished the First Book[259] of the “Erste Schiffer.” It consists of 530 lines; the Second Book will be a hundred lines less. I can transcribe both legibly in three single-sheet letters; you will only be so good as to inform me whither and whether I am to send them. If they are likely to be of any use to Tomkins he is welcome to them; if not, I shall send them to the “Morning Post.” I have given a faithful translation in blank verse. To have decorated Gesner would have been, indeed, “to spice the spices;” to have lopped and pruned _somewhat_ would have only produced incongruity; to have done it sufficiently would have been to have published a poem of my own, not Gesner’s. I have aimed at nothing more than purity and elegance of English, a keeping and harmony in the colour of the style, a smoothness without monotony in the versification. If I have succeeded, as I trust I have, in these respects, my translation will be just so much better than the original as metre is better than prose, in their judgment, at least, who prefer blank verse to prose. I was probably too severe on the _morals_ of the poem, uncharitable perhaps. But I am a downright Englishman, and tolerate downright grossness more patiently than this coy and distant dallying with the appetites. “Die pflanzen entstehen aus dem saamen, gewisse thiere gehen aus dem hervor andre so, andre anders, ich hab es alles bemerkt, was hab ich zu thun.” Now I apprehend it will occur to nineteen readers out of twenty, that a maiden so _very curious_, so exceedingly _inflamed_ and harassed by a difficulty, and so _subtle_ in the discovery of even comparatively _distant_ analogies, would necessarily have seen the difference of sex in her flocks and herds, and the marital as well as maternal character could not have escaped her. Now I avow that the grossness and vulgar plain sense of Theocritus’ shepherd lads, bad as it is, is in my opinion less objectionable than Gesner’s refinement, which necessarily leads the imagination to ideas without _expressing them_. Shaped and clothed, the mind of a pure being would turn away from them from natural delicacy of taste, but in that shadowy half-being, that state of nascent existence in the twilight of imagination and just on the vestibule of consciousness, they are far more incendiary, stir up a more lasting commotion, and leave a deeper stain. The suppression and obscurity arrays a simple truth in a veil of something like guilt, that is altogether meretricious, as opposed to the matronly majesty of our Scripture, for instance; and the conceptions as they _recede_ from distinctness of _idea_ approximate to the nature of _feeling_, and gain thereby a closer and more immediate affinity with the appetites. But, independently of this, the whole passage, consisting of precisely one fourth of the whole poem, has not the least influence on the action of the poem, and it is scarcely too much to say that it has nothing to do with the main subject, except indeed it be pleaded that _Love_ is induced by compassion for this maiden to make a young man _dream_ of her, which young man had been, without any influence of the said Cupid, deeply interested in the story, and, therefore, did not need the interference of Cupid at all; any more than he did the assistance of Æolus for a fair wind all the way to an island that was within sight of shore.

I translated the poem, partly because I could not endure to appear _irresolute_ and _capricious_ to you in the first undertaking which I had connected in any way with your person; in an undertaking which I connect with our journey from Keswick to Grasmere, the carriage in which were your son, your daughter, and your wife (all of whom may God Almighty bless! a prayer not the less fervent, my dear sir! for being a little out of place here); and, partly, too, because I wished to force myself out of metaphysical trains of thought, which, when I wished to write a poem, beat up game of far other kind. Instead of a covey of poetic partridges with whirring wings of music, or wild ducks _shaping_ their rapid flight in forms always regular (a still better image of verse), up came a metaphysical bustard, urging its slow, heavy, laborious, earth-skimming flight over dreary and level wastes. To have done with poetical prose (which is a very vile Olio), sickness and some other and worse afflictions first forced me into downright metaphysics. For I believe that by nature I have more of the poet in me. In a poem written during that dejection, to Wordsworth, and the greater part of a private nature, I thus expressed the thought in language more forcible than harmonious:[260]--