Chapter VII: Part 7

That about the sea and the forest, the wooded hillside and the little lake may not be the exact words, but the thought is there just as White Pigeon expressed it to me that evening when we sat on the mossy bank of the lake at Grasmere and threw pebbles into the water.

I had come up from Liverpool to Bowness, walked over to Ambleside and along the lake to Grasmere. My luggage consisted of a comb, a toothbrush and a stout second-growth East Aurora hickory stick.

At Grasmere I applied at the Red Lion Inn for supper and lodging. The landlady looked at my dusty, rusty corduroys, paused, coughed and asked where my luggage was. Wishing to be honest, I displayed the luggage aforementioned. She did not smile. She was a large person, sober, sedate, sincere and also serious, with a big bunch of keys dangling from a waist that once was Grecian. And she told me right there that if I wanted accommodations I would have to pay in advance. I demurred, pleaded and finally explained that I had lost my money and had sent to New York for a remittance, I was a remittance-man. Had this been true, it were sad, yet I had a hundred pounds sterling in my belt; but it just came to me to see how it would feel to be penniless and friendless and plead for charity. It is not hard to plead for charity when one has a pocket full of money.

So I pleaded. But it was of no avail.

I requested a drink of water. This was denied. Then I asked if I could wash in the lake; and this favor was granted, and the advice volunteered that it would be a good thing to do. And further the kind lady made a motion toward a dangling red tassel that hung from a rope, and suggested that I get me to a gunnery and quickly, too, otherwise she would have to call the porter.

I felt to see that my money was all right--to assure myself it was no jest in earnest--and departed. Being singularly psychic to suggestion I followed the thought that I wash in the lake, and started in that direction, along a footpath that led across a meadow, over a stile. A thick growth of bushes lined the lake for aways, and then the footpath seemed to follow right through the undergrowth. I pushed the green branches aside, and continued along for about a hundred feet, when I stood on the green, grass-covered bank of the beautiful "Windermere." Daffodils lined the water's edge--the daffodils of Wordsworth--down the lake were the white wings of several sailboats; the sun had gone down, but his long rays of gold still pierced the sky, while across the water arose, silent and majestic, the dark purple hills.

It was a beautiful sight--so full of quiet and peace and rest. I stood with hat in hand, the evening breeze fanning my face, enjoying the scene. Just then there was a little splash in the water, and looking down I saw a woman with back toward me sitting on a boulder, tossing pebbles into the lake. By the side of the woman were her hat and book. I was on the point of softly backing out through the bushes, when it came to me that I had seen that head with its big coil of brown hair somewhere else--but where, ah, where!

Why, in Paris, two years before. It was White Pigeon.

She had not seen me. I retraced my steps, and then came crashing through the juniper, straight over to the bankside, where I sat down about twenty feet from the good lady. I was whistling violently and throwing pebbles into the water, not even glancing toward her. She let me whistle for a full minute and then said gently: "Do not be absurd! I know you." Then we both laughed, and I, of course, did the regulation thing, and asked, "When did you arrive, and where are you going, and how do you like it?"

"You see what I am doing here, and as for when I arrived and how long I'll stay, and how I like it--what difference is it? There, you are surprised to see me, aren't you? I thought you had gotten past being surprised at anything, long ago--only silly people are surprised--you once said it, yourself!"

Then White Pigeon ceased to speak and we simply gazed into each other's eyes. White Pigeon has gray eyes that sometimes are blue and sometimes amber--it all depends upon her mood and the thoughts reflected there. The long, sober gaze stole off into a half-smile and she said, "You got things awfully mixed up in that Rosa Bonheur booklet--why not stick to truth?"

"Truth," I replied, "is hideous, and facts are like some men, stubborn things. But what was the matter with the Bonheur Little Journey?"

"You will not be angry with me?"

"How could I be?"

"You promise?"

"Yes."

"Well, you said my cousin was a conductor on the Lake Shore--you knew perfectly well it was the Michigan Central!"

I apologized.

It had been two years since I had seen this woman, and not a letter had passed between us. I had sent her a book now and then, and she had sent me a sketch or two.

White Pigeon knows nothing about me, and never asked concerning my history, which is a blank, my lord! Does the lily inquire of the humming-bird, "Hast hummed and fluttered about other flowers?"

That is a charming friendship that asks nothing, makes no demands, needs no assurances, never falters, and is so frank that it disarms prudery and pretense.

I said as much.

White Pigeon made no answer, but flung a pebble into the lake.

And all I know of White Pigeon is that she was born in White Pigeon, Michigan, and had left there ten years before to study art for a short time in Paris. The short time extended to ten years.

White Pigeon does not call herself an artist--she only copies pictures in the Louvre and gives lessons. "Not being able to paint, I give lessons," she once said to me. The first pictures she copied were sold to kind gentlemen who make many wagons at South Bend, Indiana; other pictures went to men who have interests at Ivorydale; and some have gone to the mill-owner at Ypsilanti, for the mill-owner is interested in art, as all patrons of the "Hum Journal" know.

White Pigeon lived at Paris because one must needs live somewhere, and rich Americans sometimes send her their daughters to "finish." That was what took her over to the Lake District--she was traveling with two young women from Grand Rapids. And so these three women were doing Great Britain, and White Pigeon was acting as courier, chaperone and instructor.

"I need 'finish,'" I suggested in one of the long pauses.

"I was just going to suggest it," said the lady.

"You say you are going to Southey's old home tomorrow--may I go, too?" I ventured.

And the answer was, "Of course--if you will promise not to work me up into copy."

I promised.

I found lodgings that night at "Nab Cottage." Being well recommended, the landlady did not hesitate, but gave me the best accommodations her house afforded.

Hartley Coleridge does not live at "Nab Cottage" now--a moss-covered slab marks his resting-place up at the Grasmere Churchyard, and only a step away in a very straight row are similar old headstones that token the graves of William, Dorothy and Mary Wordsworth. Hartley Coleridge had most of the weaknesses of his father, and only a few of his better traits. Yet Southey brought up the children of Coleridge and gave them just as good advantages as he did his own.

"It is not 'advantages' that make great men--it is disadvantages!" said White Pigeon. We were eating breakfast at the table set out under the arbor, back of the Coleridge cottage--Grace, Myrtle, White Pigeon and I.

Grace and Myrtle were the Grand Rapids girls, and fine girls, too--pink and twenty, with diaries and autograph-fans. Girls of that age are charming, but they only interest me as do beautiful kittens or colts. Women do not become wise or discreet until they are past thirty. White Pigeon was past thirty.

We took the stage that morning at nine o'clock for Keswick. The stage started from the Red Lion Inn. It is a great event--the starting of a four-horse stage. The guests came out, and so did the boots, and chamber-maids and waiters, and the cook came also. They stood in line and bade the parting guests godspeed, and all the guests were supposed to express gratitude tangibly. The landlady was busy, flying about like a Plymouth Rock hen with a brood of ducks. She saw me handing up the pink-and-white Grace and Myrtle and the dignified, tailor-made White Pigeon, and she came out and apologized profusely for not having had room to accommodate me the night before.

At last all the hatboxes and bloomin' luggage were safely stowed, the trunks were lashed in place behind, and I climbed to the top of the stage and took my seat beside my charges. A merry blast was blown from the tallyho horn. A man with a red coat, high white hat, kid gloves and a brick-dust complexion mounted the box and gathered up a big handful of reins. The hostlers at the heads of the leaders let go, twenty feet of whiplash went singing through the air--and we were off!

We swung through the village with more majesty and clatter than the Empire State Express ever assumed, stopping just an instant at the post-office for a bag of mail that the brick-dusty driver caught with his feet, and then away we went.

I am sorry I did not live in stagecoach times--things are now so dead and dreary and prosaic. Yet I sometimes have imagined that today the stagecoach business in England is a little stagey--many things are done to heighten effects. For instance, the intense excitement of starting is not exactly necessary--why the mad rush? No one is really in a hurry to reach a certain place at a certain time! And all this is apparent when you notice that a mile out of town the pace subsides to a lazy dog-trot, and the boots has jumped down and unchecked each horse so as to make things easy. I was glad the boots got down, for whenever I see a horse's head checked up in the air my impulse is to uncheck him--and once on Wabash Avenue in Chicago I did.

I was arrested, and it cost me five.

The road to Keswick bristles with history. Coleridge, Wordsworth and Southey tramped it many a time, and since their day, thousands of literary pilgrims have come this way. That two poets-laureate should have come from this beautiful corner of the earth of course is interesting, but the honor of being poet-laureate to the King is a shifting honor, depending upon the poet. No title can ever really honor a man, although a man may honor a title, and no King by taking thought can add a cubit to a subject's stature. The man is what he is. Southey succeeded the poet Pye, who was laureate before him.

A weaker nature than mine might here succumb to temptation and play pleasant philological pranks concerning the poet Pye, but I am above all that. Pye was a good man, and if I could remember any of the lines he wrote, I would here introduce them; but this is doubtless unnecessary, for the gentle reader can recall to suit.

White Pigeon claimed that Pye was greater than Southey, and she further said that Tennyson's reputation suffered by consenting to act as successor to this line of men in whom felicity and insight were the exception. The tierce of Canary was no pay for acting as successor to Pye, but Southey jumped at the Canary and slipped his last vestige of radicalism quickly.

"Oh, what a funny little church," exclaimed Myrtle; "can't we stop and go in?"

It is a curious little building--that church at Wythburn.

It looks like a little girl's playhouse, that might have belonged to her great-great-grandmother.

Opposite this lovely little church is a tavern, where a lovely barmaid in white apron and lovely collar and cuffs stood in the doorway, ready to serve the thirsty. The red-coated driver pulled in on the tavern side, and men in neckerchiefs, hobnailed shoes, blue woolen stockings and knee-breeches made fussy haste to water the horses. Old Brick-Dusty climbed down to see a man in the tavern, and the Michigan contingent and Colonel Littlejourneys slid down the other side and went into Wythburn Church. There isn't another church in England so peculiar and so interesting. A pew is marked sacred to Wordsworth, and one also to Harriet Martineau, who I did not know before ever went to church. The silver service was the gift of Southey, and is inscribed with his name and crest. Southey was a vestryman of Wythburn Church for many years, and sometimes read the service there. I stood in the pulpit where Southey stood, and so did White Pigeon, and I reminded her that she would never be allowed there on Sunday, for Deity is most easily approached and influenced by men, as all theologians know and have ever stoutly held. One of the busy hostlers came in, pulling his forelock, and apologizing, in a voice full of cobwebs, said that the coach was ready to start. We did the proper thing, and also as much for the red-coated driver, who, in spite of great dignity, we saw was open to reward for well-doing. It was a great mistake, though, to "cross his palm," for he began a lecture on the Cumberland Kings, that lasted until we got to Thirlmere, where he stopped at the Pumping-Station, and told us how the city of Manchester got its water-supply from here. To him all things were equally interesting. He was still deep in the fight between Manchester aldermen and the 'Ouse of Commons when we reached Castle Rigg. The Vale of Keswick opened before us. We implored the well-informed driver to stop, and then we got down and begged him to go on without us.

Seated there on the bankside we viewed the beautiful scene of lake, valley and village stretching out so peacefully before us, all framed in the dark towering hills. Even Grace forgot to say, "How lovely!" but sat there, chin in hand, rapt and speechless.

Down in that valley, just a little to one side of the village, Southey lived for over forty years, and all the visitors he really liked he took to Castle Rigg, to show them as he said, "the kingdoms of the earth." It was a view of which he never tired. Coleridge came up this way first, and took lodgings with a Mr. Johnson, who owned Greta Hall. It is not on record that Coleridge paid any rent, but he was so charmed with the location that he induced Southey to come and visit him. Southey came and liked it so well that he remained. He performed here a life-task that staggers one to contemplate: fifty volumes or more of closely set type are shown you at the Keswick Museum, duly labeled, "The Works of Southey," Charles Lamb's "Works" were the East India ledgers, but he wrote one little book of Essays that are still sweet and fresh as wood-violets--essays written hot from the heart, often in tears; written because he could not help it, or to please Mary--he did not know which.

No man ever divided his time up more systematically than Southey. He produced political and theological essays, histories, poems, diatribes, apologies and criticisms, and worked as men work in the Carnegie Consolidated Steel Works.

Robert Southey was the precocious son of a Bristol linen-draper. Being rather delicate, his parents did not set him to work in a drygoods-store, but gave him the benefit of Oxford. The thing that brought him first into prominence was an article he wrote for "The Flaggellant," a college paper, wherein he ridiculed the idea of a devil. Now the powers did not like that--the creed called for a "personal devil," and they wanted one. They summoned young Southey before them to account for speaking disrespectfully of the devil. The youth was found guilty and expelled.

He was a reckless young man, but recklessness is its own check--in fact, all things in life are self-regulating, everything is limited. Southey's secret marriage with Edith Fricker tamed him. Nothing tames men like marriage; and when babies came, and Coleridge went to Germany, leaving Mrs. Coleridge and young Hartley in his charge, Southey realized he was dealing with a condition, not a theory. Then soon he had the widowed Mrs. Lovell with her brood on his hands, and his old dream of pantisocracy was realized, only not just as he expected.

Too much can not be said for the patience and unflinching fidelity shown by Southey in shouldering the burdens that Fate sent him.

"Any man can succeed with three good women to help him!" said White Pigeon.

"True," said I, "and next in importance to the person who originates a good thing is the one who quotes it." Men weighted with responsibilities fight for the established order. Southey's pension and his steady income came from the men in power, and he made it his business not to offend them. Southey was a scholar; he associated with educated people; and once he complained because he could not get acquainted with workingmen--they shut up like clams on his approach. Of course they did, for we are simple and sincere only with our own.

Learned, scholarly and cultured men are to be pitied, for they are ever the butt, byword and prey of the untaught, who are often the knowing. As success came to Southey he lost the sense of values, that is to say, the sense of humor. He attacked Byron with great severity, and Byron's reply was the dedication of Don Juan, "To the illustrious Poet-Laureate, Robert Southey, LL.D." It was as if the play of "Sappho" were dedicated to the Reverend Doctor Parkhurst.

Southey came out with a card declaring he had given Lord Byron no permission to dedicate any of his detestable works to him. Byron replied, acknowledging all this, but saying he had a right to honor the name of Southey, if he chose, just the same. No taint of excess or folly marks the name of Southey; his life was filled with good work and kind deeds. His name is honored by a monument in the village of Keswick, and in Crosthwaite Church is another monument to his memory, the inscription being written by Wordsworth.

* * * * *

Were Heaven a place, I still politely maintain, it would probably be located in the Lake District of England.

Every man of genius the world has ever produced has come from a little belt of land in the North Temperate Zone. Snow and cold, rock and mountain, danger and difficulty--these are the conditions required to make men. The heaven of which I can conceive is a place with plenty of oxygen, sunshine and water. In a mountainous country water runs (I hope no one will dispute this) and winds blow, and running water and air in motion are always pure.

When I have no thoughts worth recording I take a walk, and the elements, which seem to carry soul, fill me to the brim.

The Tropics may have much to offer in way of soft, luxurious creature comforts. But the Tropics supply sundry and divers discomforts as well, and really offer too much; for with the flowers, vines, fruits and never-ending foliage go mosquitoes, tarantulas, and snakes that wiggle and sometimes bite.

The climate of Cumberland does not overpower one--the air is of a quality that urges you on to think and do.

By no reach of imagination can one conjure forth anything more beautiful in Nature than is to be realized in vicinity of Keswick; and no home thereabouts surpasses Greta Hall in charm of location and quiet, simple beauty.

Greta Hall is a rambling pile, constructed partly of stone and partly of wood, evolved rather than built, for evidently the work was done by many hands, and stretched over a century or more of time. Vines and flowers, fruits and shrubbery, stone walls covered close by creeping bellflowers where birds chirrup and cheep and play hide-and-seek the livelong day--all these are there. The house is situated on a little wooded plateau that overlooks the lake, and back of it the solemn and everlasting hills stand guard. There are no such mountains here as one sees in Switzerland, overpowering, vast, awful in their majesty; but just green-topped, self-sufficient and friendly hills that invite you to lift up your eyes and be strong.

Visitors are welcome to the grounds at Greta Hall at all times, and the kind old gardener who showed us about gathered us bouquets of mignonette, rue and thyme, and gave us the history of a wonderful pear-tree that had turned into a vine and now covers one whole side of a stable thirty feet long. Even a tree will lose its individuality if it is not allowed to assert its nature and care for itself. That particular pear-tree, we were told, sprang from a slip planted by Shelley when he once came here on a visit to Southey; and we were further told that the year Shelley was drowned, the leaves of this tree turned pale and withered, and only by patient, loving nursing on the part of our old gardener's father was its life saved. The residence was closed the day we were there, in dread anticipation of Cook tourists with designs on the shrubbery, we had reason to believe, but we lingered around the grounds, listened to the soothing, rippling lullaby of the Greta, watched the strutting peacocks, and ate bread-and-milk, under the trees, out of big bowls supplied us by the old gardener for the most modest of considerations.

Southey never really mixed in the wealth of beauty that covers this beautiful corner of earth. He was learned and profound, and he took himself and the Church and the State seriously. He felt himself a part of an indestructible institution, whereas man and all his works are no more peculiar, no more wonderful than an ant-hill--and last only a day longer. He never realized that he was a part of the great whole that made up mountain, lake, globe, wooded glen and tireless river. He differentiated. He considered himself a man, an educated man, and therefore a little better, and a little above, and a little outside of it all--otherwise how could he have withered at the top at the early age of sixty-seven?

This question White Pigeon asked as we sat in the dim quiet of Crosthwaite Church, down in the village. I did not attempt to reply--people do not ask questions expecting, necessarily, to have them answered. We ask questions in order to clarify our own minds.

The warning blast of the coach-horn was heard, and we went out into the sunshine. I bade my three friends good-by (first placing my autograph on Grace's and Myrtle's fans), and they climbed to the top of the coach. I sat on the stone wall and watched them until they disappeared around the bend of the road, waving handkerchiefs. That night I made my way over to Penreith on the way to Carlisle. It had been a day brimming with thought and feeling, and beauty expressed and unexpressed, and the kindness of kind friends who understand. That night as I dozed off into deep, calm sleep I said to myself: "They were great men, those Lake Poets, and the world is better because they lived. But there will come other men and they will be greater than those gone--the best is yet to be."

SAMUEL T. COLERIDGE

Beneath the blaze of a tropical sun the mountain peaks are the
Thrones of Frost, this through the absence of objects to reflect
the rays.

What no one with us shares, seems scarce our own--we need another
to reflect our thoughts.
--_Samuel Taylor Coleridge_

Samuel T. Coleridge was a thinker, and thinkers are so rarely found that the world must take note of them. John Stuart Mill, writing in Eighteen Hundred Forty, assigned first place among English philosophers to Jeremy Bentham, incidentally mentioning that Samuel Taylor Coleridge was Bentham's only rival.

In philosophy there is an apostolic succession. We build on the past, and all the centuries of turmoil and travail which have gone before have made this moment possible. There has never been any such thing as "the fall of man"; for the march of the race has been a continual climb--a movement onward and upward. Were it not for Coleridge and Bentham, we could not have had Buckle, Wallace and Spencer, for the minds of men would not have been prepared to give them a hearing. "Half the battle is in catching the Speaker's eye," said Thomas Brackett Reed; and a John the Baptist to prepare the way is always necessary. Without Coleridge to quietly ignore the question of precedent, and refuse to accept a thing without proof, and ask eternally and yet again, "How do you know?" Charles Darwin with his "Origin of Species" would have been laughed out of court. Or probably had Darwin been persistent we would have consigned him to the stocks, burned his book in the public square, and with the aid of logical thumbscrews made him recant.

Even as it was, the gibes and guffaws of the press and pulpit came near drowning the modest, moderate voice of Darwin; and for a score of years, his reputation as a scientist seemed to be trembling in the balance. Yet today the man who would seriously attempt in an educated assembly to throw obloquy upon the doctrine of Evolution and the name of Charles Darwin would find himself speedily listed with Brudder Jasper of Richmond, Virginia. The Church now, everywhere, has its Drummonds, who build on Darwin and use his citations as proof; and Drummond merely expressed what the many believe--no more.

The man who has dared to think for himself and voiced his thought--the emancipated man--has been as one in a million. What usually passes for thought is only the repetition of things we have heard or been told. We memorize, repeat by rote and call it thought.

With the Church and State in control of food and clothes, and with spears, clubs, knives and guns ready to suppress whatsoever seemed dangerous to their stability, it is a miracle that men have ever improved on anything--for progress has been for centuries a perilous performance. To question a priest was blasphemy. To reason with a judge was heinous. To think and decide for yourself was to invite torture and death.

And all this was very natural, simply because the superior class who monopolized the good things of earth were obliged, in order to enslave and tax men, to make them believe that their power was derived from God. And thus was taught the "divine right of kings," the duty of submission, the necessity of belief and the sinfulness of doubt. The source of all knowledge was declared to be a book, and the right of interpretation of this book was given to one class alone--those who sided with and were a part of the Superior Class.

The reason the race has progressed so slowly is because the strong, vigorous and independent have been suppressed, either by legal process, or exterminated through war, which reaps the best and lets the weak, the diseased and the cowards go.

Those who doubted and questioned have been deprived of food and clothes, disgraced, mobbed, robbed, lashed naked at the cart's tail, burned at the stake, or separated from their families and transported beyond the sea to be devoured by wild beasts, die in jungles, or toil out their lives in slavery.

But still there were always a few who would doubt and a few who would question; and in the early part of the Eighteenth Century in England the government was being put to severe straits to cope with the difficulty. Lying in the Thames were receiving-ships on which were crowded men and women to be transported. When the ship was full, crowded to her utmost, she sailed away with her living cargo. From Sixteen Hundred Fifty to Seventeen Hundred Fifty, over forty thousand people were sent away for their country's good. The hangman worked overtime, all prisons were crowded, and the walls of Newgate bulged with men and women, old and young, who were believed to be dangerous to the stability and well-being of the superior class--that is, those who had the right to tax others.

Finally, the enormity of bloodshed and woe involved caused a sort of concession on both sides to be agreed upon. Oppression continued will surely lead to a point where it cures itself, and the superior class in England, with a wise weather-eye, saw the reef on which they were in danger of striking. They heard the breakers, and began to grant concessions--unwillingly of course--concessions wrung from them. The censorship was abolished, reform bills introduced, the rights of free speech and a free press were partially recognized. The clergy, taking the cue, began to preach more love and less damnation; for the pew ever dictates to the pulpit what it shall preach. Thus general relaxation was in order to meet the competition of rival sects and independent preachers that were springing up; for although creeds never change, yet their interpretation does, and liberal sects do their work, not by growing strong, but by making all others more liberal.

Thus the latter part of the Eighteenth Century witnessed a weakening of both sides through compromise. The schools and colleges were pedantic, complacent, smug and self-satisfied; by giving in a few points they had absorbed the radicals, and the political protesters had been bought off with snug places in the excise. Pretended knowledge passed for wisdom, dignity paraded as worth, affectation and hypocrisy patronized virtue. And Coleridge appears upon the scene, a conservative, with a beautiful innocence and an indifference to all pretended authority and asks, "How do you know?"

* * * * *

The number of people who have written their names large in literature, who were the children of clergymen, is no mere coincidence. Tennyson, Addison, Goldsmith, Emerson, Lowell, Jane Austen, Charlotte Bronte, Coleridge--you can add to the list to suit. Young people follow example, and the habit of the father in writing out his thoughts causes others of the family to try it, too. Then there is an atmosphere of books in a rectory, and leisure to think, and best of all the income is not so great but that the practise of economy of time and money is duly enforced by necessity. To be launched into a library and learn by absorption is a great blessing.

Samuel Taylor Coleridge was born in Seventeen Hundred Seventy-two, the son of the Reverend John Coleridge, of Ottery Saint Mary, a small village of Devonshire. The rector was also a schoolmaster, just as all clergymen were before division of labor forced itself upon us. This worthy clergyman was twice married, his first wife bearing him three children, the second ten. Samuel was the last of the brood--the thirteenth--but his parents were not superstitious.

The youngest in a big family, like the first, is apt to have a deal of love lavished upon him. The question of discipline has proved its own futility, and when a baby comes to parents approaching fifty, depend upon it, that child transforms the household into a monarchy, with himself as tyrant. This may be well and it may not.

Little Samuel Taylor seemed to be aware of his power; he evolved a wondrous precocity and ruled the rectory with a rod of iron. When he was five he propounded questions that shook the orthodoxy of the worthy vicar to its very center.

Yet, remarkable as was the intellect of Samuel Taylor Coleridge, the family would not have remained in obscurity without him. In fact, the very brightness of his fame caused the excellence of his brothers to be lost in the shadow. His brother James became the father of Henry Nelson Coleridge, who married his cousin Sara, the daughter of our poet.

To anticipate a little, it is well enough here to say that the daughter of Coleridge was a woman of remarkable excellence, and if you wish to disprove the adage that genius does not transmit itself she is a good example to bring up--even though there is a difference between fact and truth. James Coleridge was also the father of Mr. Justice Coleridge, himself the father of Lord Chief Justice Coleridge.

And since iconoclasm is not out of place in an essay on Coleridge, it can also be stated that when Sara Coleridge married her cousin she did a wise thing. The marriage was a most happy one, and the children of these cousins have shown themselves to be beyond the average. And once, certainly not with his daughter in mind, Coleridge debated the question of consanguinity with Charles Lamb, and proved to his own satisfaction at least that the marriage of cousins was eminently sane, proper, just and right, and fraught with the best results for humanity.

The only indictment that can be brought against the father of Coleridge is that he was a zealous Latin scholar, and proposed that the term "ablative" be abolished as insufficient, and in its stead should be used that of "quale-quare-quiddative case." He was a simple, amiable, excellent man who did his work the best he could, and was beloved by all the parish. As to the excellence of the established order of things he had no doubts--government and religion were divine institutions and should be upheld by all honest men.

As to the vicar's wife we know little, but enough of a glance is given into her character through letters to show that she had in her make-up a trace of noble discontent. She was not entirely happy in her surroundings, and the amiable ways of her husband were often an exasperation to her, rather than a pleasure--even amiability can be overdone. He never saw more than a mile from home, but her eyes swept England from Cornwall to Scotland, and few men, even, saw so far as that a hundred years ago. The discontent of Samuel Taylor Coleridge was the heritage of mother to son. When Samuel was nine years of age the father passed away. The widow would have been in sore financial straits had it not been for the older children, and even as it was, strict economy and untiring industry were in order. Out of sympathy, Mr. Justice Buller, who had been a pupil of the Reverend John Coleridge, proposed to secure the youngest boy a scholarship in Christ's Hospital School, and so we find him entered there, July Eighteenth, Seventeen Hundred Eighty-two. This was a year memorable in the history of America; and the alertness of the charity boy's intellect is shown in that he was aware of the struggle between England and the Colonies. He discussed the situation with his schoolfellows, and explained that the mother country had made a mistake in exacting too much. His sympathies were with the Colonies, but he thought submission on their part was in order when the stamp-tax was removed and that complete independence was absurd--the Colonies needed some one to protect them.

Such reasoning in a boy of ten years seems strange, especially in view of the fact that a noted professor of pedagogy has recently explained to us that no child under fourteen is capable of independent reasoning.

But it is quite certain that young Coleridge's opinions were not borrowed, for all the lad's acquaintances, who thought of the matter at all, considered the Americans simply "rebels" who merited death.

Coleridge remained at Christ's Hospital for eight years, and before he left had easily taken his place as "Deputy Grecian." Charles Lamb has given many delightful glimpses of that schoolboy life in the "Essays of Elia."

Middleton, afterward Bishop of Calcutta, called the attention of Boyer, the master, to Coleridge by saying, "There is a boy who reads Vergil for amusement!" Boyer was a strict disciplinarian, but he was ever on the lookout for a lad who loved books--the average youth getting out of all the study he could.

The master began to encourage young Coleridge, and Coleridge responded. He wrote verses and essays, and was a prodigy in memorizing. According to Boyer's idea, and it was the prevailing idea everywhere then, and is yet in some sections, memorization was the one thing desirable. If the subject were Plato, and the master had forgotten his book, he called on Coleridge to recite. And the tall, fair-haired boy, with the big dreamy eyes, would rise and give page after page, "verbatim et literatim."

* * * * *

Before Coleridge went to Cambridge, when nineteen years old he had taken on that masterly quality in conversation that made his society sought, even to the last. Lamb has told us of the gentle voice, not loud nor deep, but full of mellow intonations, and bell-like in its purity.

Such a voice, laden with fine feeling, carrying conviction, only goes with a great soul. No doubt, though, the young man had grown into a bit of a dictator, and this habit of harangue he carried with him to College. To talk enabled him to think, and expression is necessary to growth. So the habit of argument with Coleridge seemed Nature's method of developing his powers of mental analysis. No more foolish saying was ever launched than, "Children should be seen and not heard." From lisping babyhood Coleridge talked, and talked much. When he was twenty, at Cambridge, he drew the boys to his room, until it was crowded to suffocation, just by the magic of his voice, and the subtle quality of his thought. His questioning mind went right to the heart of things, and in his divisions and heads and subheads even the professors could not always follow him. Let us hope that he himself always knew what he was trying to explain.

He discussed metaphysics, theology and politics, and very naturally got to treading on thin ice.

In theology his reasoning led him into Unitarianism, then a very fearful thing; and in politics he dallied with Madame la Revolution.

A polite note from the Master of the College, suggesting that he talk less and follow the curriculum a little more closely, led him straight to the Master, with whom he proposed to argue the case, or publicly debate it. This was terrible!

Stephen Crane at Syracuse University, a hundred years later, did just such a thing. He sought to argue a point in the classroom with Chancellor Symms.

"Tut, tut!" said the Chancellor. "Have you forgotten what Saint Paul says on that very theme?"

"Yes, I know," replied the best catcher ever on the Syracuse Nine; "yes, I know what Saint Paul says, but I differ with Saint Paul." And Stevie, unconsciously, was standing on the well-lubricated chute that landed him, soon, well outside the campus.

The authorities did not admire the brilliant young Coleridge, full of his reasons and prolix abstractions. He was attracting too much attention to himself, and gradually gathering about him a throng of admirers who might disturb the balance of things. He was there anyway only through sufferance, and an intimation was given him that if he were not willing to accept things as they existed, and as they were taught, he had better go elsewhere.

Piqued by his treatment and feeling he had been misunderstood and wronged, he suddenly disappeared.

Some months afterwards, an acquaintance found him in a company of dragoons, duly enlisted in His Majesty's service, under an assumed name.

The authorities at Jesus College were notified, and knowing that such a youth was out of place serving as a soldier, and feeling further a small pang of regret possibly for having driven him away, a plan was set on foot to secure his discharge. This was soon brought about, and doubtless much to Coleridge's relief. Erelong he found himself back at Cambridge--a little subdued, and a trifle more discreet, for his rough contact with the workaday world.

A journey to Oxford, to visit an old friend, proved a pivotal point in his life. The fame of Coleridge as a poet had gone abroad, and the literary fledglings at Oxford sought to do the visitor honor in the proper way. Among others whom he met on this visit were Robert Southey and Robert Lovell, both poets of considerable local fame.

Lovell had been married but a few months before to a young woman by the name of Fricker. Southey was engaged to a sister of the bride, and there was still a third sister fancy-free. The three poets became fast friends. They were all radicals, full of ambition to make a name for themselves, and all intent on elevating society out of the ruts into which it had fallen. All had suffered contumely on account of advanced ideas; and all were out of conceit with the existing order.

They discussed the matter at length, and decided to set the world an example, by founding an ideal colony and showing how to make the most of life.

Coleridge had long been interested in America, and from an acquaintanceship with sundry soldiers who had helped fight the battles of George the Third in the New World, he had gathered a rather romantic idea of the country. The stories of returned sailors and soldiers, told to civilians, are seldom exactly authentic. And Coleridge the poet, bubbling with the effervescence of youth, argued that a home on the banks of the Susquehanna, with love and books and comradeship, was the ideal condition.

The matter was broached to the three sisters Fricker, and they of course responded--what woman worthy of the name of woman would not? And so the arrangements were fast being made, and as a necessary feature the three poets were duly and legally married to the three sisters, and Eden was to be peopled with the best.

A date was arranged for sailing, but some trifling matter of finance delayed the exodus--in fact, certain expected loans were not forthcoming. Coleridge put in the time lecturing and preaching from Unitarian pulpits. He also tried his hand as editor, but the publication scheme failed to bring the shekels that were to buy emancipation. The innate contrariness of things seemed to be blocking all his plans.

Meanwhile we find Lovell drifting off into commercialism. That is to say, Barabbas-like, he had turned publisher. Gadzooks! What would you have a man with a wife and baby do? Live on moonshine--well, well, well!

Death claimed poor Lovell before he could make a success either of commerce or of art.

Coleridge moved up to the Lake District, and at Keswick, near where the water comes down at Lodore--or did before the stream dried up--he rented rooms of a kind friend by the name of Johnson, who owned Greta Hall. Southey was writing articles for London papers. He received a guinea a column, and when he wrote a poem, as he did every little while, he sent it to a publisher who returned him a little good cash.

Southey's wife went up to Keswick on a visit to see her sister, Mrs. Coleridge. Southey followed up to Keswick, and rather liked the situation. The Southeys and the Coleridges all lived together as one happy family.

Southey was writing poetry and getting paid for it; and beside this had a small income. Coleridge allowed Southey to buy the supplies, and when he went away on tramp lecturing tours he felt perfectly safe in leaving his family with Southey.

While up that way he met a young man, a native, by the name of Wordsworth--William Wordsworth--and a poet, too.

Wordsworth had a sister named Dorothy, and this brother and sister lived together in a little whitewashed stone cottage, built up against the hillside at Grasmere, a village thirteen miles from Keswick. Coleridge liked these people first-rate and they liked him. He used to go down to visit them, and they would all sit up late listening to the splendid talk of the handsome Coleridge. William said he was the only great man he had ever met, and Dorothy agreed in the proposition.

Coleridge was discouraged: the world did not care for his work, and the men in power had set their faces against him--or he thought they had, which is the same thing. There was a conspiracy, he thought, to keep him down; and Wordsworth should have advised him to join it, but did not.

Dorothy Wordsworth was a most extraordinary woman--she was gentle, kind, low-voiced, sympathetic. She was not handsome, but she had the intellect that entitled her to a membership in the Brotherhood of Fine Minds. She knew the splendid excellence of Coleridge, and could follow him in his most abstract dissertations; and if his logic faltered she could lead him back to the trail.

Dorothy Wordsworth admired and pitied Coleridge; and from pity to love is but a step.

But Coleridge was not capable of a passionate love--the substance of his being was all absorbed in abstract thought. And yet Dorothy Wordsworth attracted him as no other woman ever did. He forgot his wife, Sara, up there at Southey's. Sara was a better-looking woman than Dorothy, but she lacked intellect. Her life was all bound up in housekeeping and going to church, and the petty little round of daily happenings to neighbors and friends. The world of thought and dreams to her was nothing. She loved her husband, but his foolish foibles vexed her, and his lack of application prompted her to chide him. And at such times he would turn to his friends at Dove Cottage for sympathy and rest.

They used to tramp the hills, and discuss philosophy, and recite their poems the livelong day. It was on one such jaunt that out of the ghost of shoreless seas they sighted the "Ancient Mariner." Then Coleridge went ahead, completed the plot and gave the poem to the world. And once he said, half-boastfully, to Dorothy: "This old seafaring poem is valuable in that it is a tale no one will understand, but which will excite universal interest. Only the perfectly sane and sensible is dull."

Wordsworth had read somewhat of the works of the German philosophers, and as he and his sister had a little money saved up they decided to go over and attend the lectures at the University of Göttingen for awhile. Coleridge had nothing in the way to prevent his going, too, save that he didn't have the money. However, he wanted to go and so decided to lay the case before the sons of Josiah Wedgwood. These young men had been schoolfellows of Coleridge at Cambridge, and once he had gone home with them and so had met their father.

And right here comes a very strong temptation to say not another word about Coleridge, but merge this essay off into a sketch of that most excellent, strong and noble man, Josiah Wedgwood. Here is a man who left his impress indelibly on the times, and whose influence outweighed that of a dozen prime ministers. The potter is gone, but he lives in his art, so we still have the best and purest and noblest of the soul of Josiah Wedgwood.

This man had assisted Coleridge at Cambridge, and it was to his sons Coleridge looked for help to realize his Susquehanna dream of Utopia. But the Wedgwoods knew the hazy, moonshine quality of the project and made excuses.

Coleridge now appealed to them for assistance in a saner project, and they supplied him the money to go to Göttingen.

His stay of fourteen months in Germany gave him a firm hold on the language, and a goodly glimpse into the philosophy of Kant, Leibnitz and Schleiermacher. When Coleridge returned to England, he went at once to see his interesting family. Rumor has it that Mrs. Coleridge, in addition to caring for her own little brood and assisting in the Southey household, had also been working in the Keswick lead-pencil factory for a weekly wage of twelve shillings. The philosopher did not much like this lowering of dignity, and said so mildly. This led to the truthful explanation that he had hardly done his duty by his family in allowing them to shift for themselves or be cared for by kinsmen; and therefore advice from him was out of place. In short, Southey intimated that while he would care for his sisters-in-law he drew the line at brothers-in-law. And Samuel Taylor Coleridge drifted up to London (being down) to see if something would not turn up.

His first task there was to translate "Werther," but the work did not seem to go. Grub Street took up the brilliant talker, and for a time he gave parlor lectures and filled the air of thought and speculation with his brilliant pyrotechnics. The force of his mind was everywhere acknowledged, but someway he did not seem to get on. Men who have managed the finances of a nation often have not been able successfully to control their own; and more than once we have had the spectacle of one who could do the thinking for a world failing in the humdrum duties of a citizen and neighbor. Coleridge tried various things, among others a secretaryship that took him to Malta, but the lack of system in his habits and his absent-mindedness made him the prey and butt of "practical" men.

* * * * *

When Carlyle said that no more dreary record than the lives of authors existed, save the Newgate Calendar, he spoke truth.

That the lives of most authors is a series of misunderstandings, blunders, heart-burnings, tragedies, is a fact. The author is a man who diverts and amuses us by doing the things we would do if we had time; and if we like him it is only because he expresses the things we already know. His is a hard task, requiring intense concentration--a concentration that can only be continued for a short time without the absolute burning out of existence.

To think one's best and write out ideas is an abnormal operation. The most artistic work is always done in a sort of fever or ecstacy, which in its very nature is transient. To hunt and fish and dream and to work with one's hands are all very natural; but to sit down and think and then express your thoughts by the artificial scheme of writing on paper is a dangerous operation. If carried to excess it shall be paid for by your life.

Coleridge had turned night into day in his hot zeal to follow the winding, dancing mystery of existence to its inmost recess. At times he had forgotten to eat or sleep; and then to reinforce despairing nature he had resorted to stimulants.

Digestion had become impaired, circulation faulty through lack of exercise, so sleeplessness followed stimulation. Then to quiet pain came the use of the drug that brings oblivion. And lo! thought burned up brighter than ever and all the dreams of youth and twenty came trooping back.

Coleridge had made a discovery. He thought he was getting the start of God Almighty; but he wasn't, for men have tried that before, and are trying it today, and many know not yet that we are strong only as we cling close to the skirts of Mother Nature and follow lovingly in her ways.

From his twenty-ninth year we find Coleridge a wreck in mind and body; shuffling, sick, disheartened, erratic, uncertain, yet occasionally brilliant. He tramped the streets, feared and shunned. His money was gone, his power of concentration had vanished. In search of bread he met an old-time friend, Doctor Gillman.

"Gillman," said Coleridge, "I am sick and helpless--look at me!"

"Why don't you come to my house and live with me?" asked the kind friend.

"Gillman," said the poor man, "Gillman, I am on my way there!"

So Gillman brought him to his house up at Highgate and took care of him as a child. And there he remained, the pride and pet of a group of brave, thinking men and women.

He lived on for thirty years, under the kindly, skilful care of his friend, but all the real work of his life was done before he was thirty. Occasionally the old fire would flash forth, and the wit and insight of his youth would shine out. Keats, Shelley, Lord Byron, and others strong and great sought him out to hold converse with him. And so he existed, a sort of oracle, amiable, kind and generous--wreck of a man that was--protected and defended by loving friends; while up at Keswick, Southey cared for his wife and educated his children as though they were his own.

"I am dying," said Coleridge to Gillman in July, Eighteen Hundred Thirty-four; "dying, but I should have died, like Keats, in youth and not have made myself a burden to you--do you forgive me?" We can guess the answer.