1865. Article in the "North British Review" for December of this year.
1903. "From Ottery to Highgate, the story of the childhood and later years of Samuel Taylor Coleridge". By Wilfred Brown (Coleberd and Co., Ltd., Ottery St. Mary).
CONTENTS
PART I.—POETRY
Page CHAPTER I. EARLY YEARS I, 3 Letter 1. To Thomas Poole. — Feby. 1797 5 2. " — Mch. 1797 7 3. " 9 Oct. 1797 11 4. " 16 Oct. 1797 15 5. " 19 Feby. 1798 19
CHAPTER II. CAMBRIDGE AND PANTISOCRACY 29 Letter 6. To George Coleridge. 31 Mch. 1791 29 7. Robert Southey. 6 July, 1794 34 8. Henry Martin. 22 July, 1794 35 9. Southey. 6 Sept. 1794 42 10. " 18 Sept. 1794 43 11. Charles Heath. — — 1794 44 12. Henry Martin. 22 Sept. 1794 46 13. Southey. — Dec. 1794 47
CHAPTER III. "THE WATCHMAN" 50 Letter 14. To Thomas Poole. 7 Oct. 1795 50 15. Joseph Cottle. — Dec. 1795 52 16. " 1 Jany. 1796 52 17. Josiah Wade. — Jany. 1796 55 18. " — — 1796 55 19. " — — 1796 56 20. " — — 1796 58 21. " 7 Jany. 1796 59 22. " — Jany. 1796 60 23. Cottle. — Feby. 1796 62 24. " — — 1796 62 25. " 22 Feby. 1796 63 26. Poole. 30 Mch. 1796 65 27. Benjamin Flower. 1 April, 1796 28. Caius Gracchus. 1 April, 1796 29. Poole. 11 April, 1796 30. Cottle. 15 April, 1796 31. " — April, 1796 32. " — April, 1796 33. Poole. 6 May, 1796 34. " 12 May, 1796 35. " 29 May, 1796 36. " 4 July, 1796 37. " — Aug. 1796 38. Wade. — Sept. 1796 39. Poole. 24 Sept. 1796 40. Charles Lamb. 29 Sept. 1796 41. Cottle. 18 Oct. 1796 42. Poole. 1 Nov. 1796 43. " 5 Nov. 1796 44. Charles Lloyd, Senr. 15 Oct. 1796 45. " 14 Nov. 1796 46. " 4 Dec. 1796 47. Poole. 26 Dec. 1796
While here, thou fed'st upon etherial beams, As if thou had'st not a terrestrial birth;— Beyond material objects was thy sight; In the clouds woven was thy lucid robe! "Ah! who can tell how little for this sphere That frame was fitted of empyreal fire!" [1]
Samuel Taylor Coleridge was the youngest child of the Reverend John Coleridge, Chaplain-Priest and Vicar of the parish of Ottery St. Mary, in the county of Devon, and Master of the Free Grammar, or King's School, as it is called, founded by Henry VIII in that town. His mother's maiden name was Ann Bowdon. He was born at Ottery on the 21st of October 1772, "about eleven o'clock in the forenoon," as his father, the Vicar, has, with rather unusual particularity, entered it in the register.
John Coleridge, who was born in 1719, and finished his education at Sidney-Sussex College, Cambridge,[2] was a country clergyman and schoolmaster of no ordinary kind. He was a good Greek and Latin scholar, a profound Hebraist, and, according to the measure of his day, an accomplished mathematician. He was on terms of literary friendship with Samuel Badcock, and, by his knowledge of Hebrew, rendered material assistance to Dr. Kennicott, in his well known critical works. Some curious papers on theological and antiquarian subjects appear with his signature in the early numbers of "The Gentleman's Magazine", between the years 1745 and 1780; almost all of which have been inserted in the interesting volumes of Selections made several years ago from that work. In 1768 he published miscellaneous Dissertations arising from the 17th and 18th chapters of the Book of Judges; in which a very learned and ingenious attempt is made to relieve the character of Micah from the charge of idolatry ordinarily brought against it; and in 1772 appeared a "Critical Latin Grammar", which his son called "his best work," and which is not wholly unknown even now to the inquisitive by the proposed substitution of the terms "prior, possessive, attributive, posterior, interjective, and quale-quare-quidditive," for the vulgar names of the cases. This little Grammar, however, deserves a philologer's perusal, and is indeed in many respects a very valuable work in its kind. He also published a Latin Exercise book, and a Sermon. His school was celebrated, and most of the country gentlemen of that generation, belonging to the south and east parts of Devon, had been his pupils. Judge Buller was one. The amiable character and personal eccentricities of this excellent man are not yet forgotten amongst some of the elders of the parish and neighbourhood, and the latter, as is usual in such cases, have been greatly exaggerated. He died suddenly in the month of October 1781, after riding to Ottery from Plymouth, to which latter place he had gone for the purpose of embarking his son Francis, as a midshipman, for India. Many years afterwards, in 1797, S. T. Coleridge commenced a series of Letters to his friend Thomas Poole, of Nether Stowey, in the county of Somerset, in which he proposed to give an account of his life up to that time. Five only were written, and unfortunately they stop short of his residence at Cambridge. This series will properly find a place here.
[Footnote 1: From a Sonnet To Coleridge by Sir Egerton Brydges—written 16th Feb. 1837. S. C.]
[Footnote 2: He was matriculated at Sidney a sizar on the 18th of March 1748, but does not appear to have taken any degree at the University. S. C.]
LETTER 1. TO MR. POOLE
My Dear Poole,
I could inform the dullest author how he might write an interesting book. Let him relate the events of his own life with honesty, not disguising the feelings that accompanied them. I never yet read even a Methodist's "Experience" in the Gospel Magazine without receiving instruction and amusement; and I should almost despair of that man who could peruse the Life of John Woolman without an amelioration of heart. As to my Life, it has all the charms of variety,—high life and low life, vices and virtues, great folly and some wisdom. However, what I am depends on what I have been; and you, my best friend, have a right to the narration. To me the task will be a useful one. It will renew and deepen my reflections on the past; and it will perhaps make you behold with no unforgiving or impatient eye those weaknesses and defects in my character, which so many untoward circumstances have concurred in planting there.
My family on my Mother's side can be traced up, I know not how far. The Bowdons inherited a good farm and house thereon in the Exmoor country, in the reign of Elizabeth, as I have been told; and to my knowledge they have inherited nothing better since that time. My Grandfather was in the reign of George I a considerable woollen trader in Southmolton; so that I suppose, when the time comes, I shall be allowed to pass as a "Sans-culotte" without much opposition. My Father received a better education than the rest of his family in consequence of his own exertions, not of his superiour advantages. When he was not quite sixteen years of age, my grandfather, by a series of misfortunes, was reduced to great distress. My Father received the half of his last crown and his blessing, and walked off to seek his fortune. After he had proceeded a few miles, he sate him down on the side of the road, so overwhelmed with painful thoughts that he wept audibly. A gentleman passed by who knew him, and, inquiring into his sorrow, took him home and gave him the means of maintaining himself by placing him in a school. At this time he commenced being a severe and ardent student. He married his first wife, by whom he had three daughters, all now alive. While his first wife lived, having scraped up money enough, he at the age of twenty walked to Cambridge, entered himself at Sidney College, distinguished himself in Hebrew and Mathematics, and might have had a fellowship if he had not been married. He returned and settled as a schoolmaster in Southmolton where his wife died. In 1760 he was appointed Chaplain-Priest and Master of the School at Ottery St. Mary, and removed to that place; and in August, 1760, Mr. Buller, the father of the present Judge, procured for him the living from Lord Chancellor Bathurst. By my Mother, his second wife, he had ten children, of whom I am the youngest, born October 20th,[1] 1772.
These facts I received from my Mother; but I am utterly unable to fill them up by any further particulars of times, or places, or names. Here I shall conclude my first Letter, because I cannot pledge myself for the accuracy of the accounts, and I will not therefore mingle it with that for the truth of which, in the minutest parts, I shall hold myself responsible. You must regard this Letter as a first chapter devoted to dim traditions of times too remote to be pierced by the eye of investigation.
Yours affectionately, S. T. COLERIDGE.
Feb. 1797. Monday.
[Footnote 1: A mistake, should be October 21st.]
LETTER 2. To MR. POOLE
My Dear Poole,
My Father (Vicar of, and Schoolmaster at, Ottery St. Mary, Devon) was a good mathematician, and well versed in the Greek, Latin, and Hebrew languages. He published, or rather attempted to publish, several works;—1st, Miscellaneous Dissertations arising from the 17th and 18th chapters of the Book of Judges; 2d, "Sententiae Excerptcae" for the use of his own School; and 3d, his best work, a Critical Latin Grammar, in the Preface to which he proposes a bold innovation in the names of the cases. My Father's new nomenclature was not likely to become popular, although it must be allowed to be both sonorous and expressive. "Exempli gratia", he calls the ablative case "the quare-quale-quidditive case!" He made the world his confidant with respect to his learning and ingenuity, and the world seems to have kept the secret very faithfully. His various works, uncut, unthumbed, were preserved free from all pollution in the family archives, where they may still be for anything that I know. This piece of good luck promises to be hereditary; for all "my" compositions have the same amiable home-staying propensity. The truth is, my Father was not a first-rate genius; he was, however, a first-rate Christian, which is much better. I need not detain you with his character. In learning, goodheartedness, absentness of mind, and excessive ignorance of the world, he was a perfect Parson Adams.
My Mother was an admirable economist, and managed exclusively. My eldest brother's name was John. He was a Captain in the East India Company's service; a successful officer and a brave one, as I have heard. He died in India in 1786. My second brother William went to Pembroke College, Oxford. He died a clergyman in 1780, just on the eve of his intended marriage. My brother James has been in the army since the age of fifteen, and has married a woman of fortune, one of the old Duke family of Otterton in Devon. Edward, the wit of the family, went to Pembroke College, and is now a clergyman. George also went to Pembroke. He is in orders likewise, and now has the same School, a very flourishing one, which my Father had. He is a man of reflective mind and elegant talent. He possesses learning in a greater degree than any of the family, excepting myself. His manners are grave, and hued over with a tender sadness. In his moral character he approaches every way nearer to perfection than any man I ever yet knew. He is worth us all. Luke Herman was a surgeon, a severe student, and a good man. He died in 1790, leaving one child, a lovely boy still alive. [1] My only sister, Ann, died at twenty-one, a little after my brother Luke:—
Rest, gentle Shade! and wait thy Maker's will; Then rise unchang'd, and be an angel still!
Francis Syndercombe went out to India as a midshipman under Admiral Graves. He accidentally met his brother John on board ship abroad, who took him ashore, and procured him a commission in the Company's army. He died in 1792, aged twenty-one, a Lieutenant, in consequence of a fever brought on by excessive fatigue at and after the siege of Seringapatam, and the storming of a hill fort, during all which his conduct had been so gallant that his Commanding Officer particularly noticed him, and presented him with a gold watch, which my Mother now has. All my brothers are remarkably handsome; but they were as inferiour to Francis as I am to them. He went by the name of "the handsome Coleridge." The tenth and last child was Samuel Taylor, the subject and author of these Epistles.
From October 1772 to October 1773. Baptized Samuel Taylor, my Godfather's name being Samuel Taylor, Esquire. I had another called Evans, and two Godmothers, both named Munday.
From October 1773 to October 1774. In this year I was carelessly left by my nurse, ran to the fire, and pulled out a live coal, and burned myself dreadfully. While my hand was being drest by Mr. Young, I spoke for the first time, (so my Mother informs me) and said, "nasty Dr. Young!" The snatching at fire, and the circumstance of my first words expressing hatred to professional men—are they at all ominous? This year I went to school. My Schoolmistress, the very image of Shenstone's, was named Old Dame Key. She was nearly related to Sir Joshua Reynolds.
From October 1774 to 1775. I was inoculated; which I mention, because I distinctly remember it, and that my eyes were bound; at which I manifested so much obstinate indignation, that at last they removed the bandage, and unaffrighted I looked at the lancet, and suffered the scratch. At the close of this year I could read a chapter in the Bible.
Here I shall end, because the remaining years of my life all assisted to form my particular mind;—the first three years had nothing in them that seems to relate to it.
God bless you and your sincere S. T. COLERIDGE.
Sunday, March, 1797.
[Footnote 1: William Hart Coleridge, Bishop of Barbadoes and the Leeward Islands.
(He was appointed to that See in 1824, retired from it in 1842; and afterwards accepted the Wardenship of St. Augustine's College, Canterbury. S. C.) [He died in 1849.] ]
A letter from Francis S. Coleridge to his sister has been preserved in the family, in which a particular account is given of the chance meeting of the two brothers in India, mentioned shortly in the preceding Letter. There is something so touching and romantic in the incident that the Reader will, it is hoped, pardon the insertion of the original narrative here.
Dear Nancy,
You are very right, I have neglected my absent friends, but do not think I have forgot them, and indeed it would be ungrateful in me if I did not write to them.
You may be sure, Nancy, I thank Providence for bringing about that meeting, which has been the cause of all my good fortune and happiness, which I now in fulness enjoy. It was an affectionate meeting, and I will inform you of the particulars. There was in our ship one Captain Mordaunt, who had been in India before, when we came to Bombay. Finding a number of his friends there he went often ashore. The day before the Fleet sailed he desired one Captain Welsh to go aboard with him, who was an intimate friend of your brother's. "I will," said Welsh, "and will write a note to Coleridge to go with us." Upon this Captain Mordaunt, recollecting me, said there was a young midshipman, a favourite of Captain Hicks, of that name on board. Upon that they agreed to inform my brother of it, which they did soon after, and all three came on board. I was then in the lower deck, and, though you won't believe it, I was sitting upon a gun and thinking of my brother, that is, whether I should ever see or hear anything of him; when seeing a Lieutenant, who had been sent to inform me of my brother's being on board, I got up off the gun: but instead of telling me about my brother, he told me that Captain Hicks was very angry with me and wanted to see me. Captain Hicks had always been a Father to me, and loved me as if I had been his own child. I therefore went up shaking like an aspen leaf to the Lieutenant's apartments, when a Gentleman took hold of my hand. I did not mind him at first, but looked round for the Captain; but the Gentleman still holding my hand, I looked, and what was my surprise, when I saw him too full to speak and his eyes full of tears. Whether crying is catching I know not, but I began a crying too, though I did not know the reason, till he caught me in his arms, and told me he was my brother, and then I found I was paying nature her tribute, for I believe I never cried so much in my life. There is a saying in Robinson Crusoe, I remember very well, viz.—sudden joy like grief confounds at first. We directly went ashore having got my discharge, and having took a most affectionate leave of Captain Hicks, I left the ship for good and all.
My situation in the army is that I am one of the oldest Ensigns, and before you get this must in all probability be a Lieutenant. How many changes there have been in my life, and what lucky ones they have been, and how young I am still! I must be seven years older before I can properly style myself a man, and what a number of officers do I command, who are old enough to be my Father already!
LETTER 3. To MR. POOLE
October 9th, 1797.
My Dearest Poole,
From March to October—a long silence! But it is possible that I may have been preparing materials for future Letters, and the time cannot be considered as altogether subtracted from you.
From October 1775 to October 1778. These three years I continued at the Reading School, because I was too little to be trusted among my Father's schoolboys. After break-fast I had a halfpenny given me, with which I bought three cakes at the baker's shop close by the school of my old mistress; and these were my dinner every day except Saturday and Sunday, when I used to dine at home, and wallowed in a beef and pudding dinner. I am remarkably fond of beans and bacon: and this fondness I attribute to my Father's giving me a penny for having eaten a large quantity of beans on Saturday. For the other boys did not like them, and, as it was an economic food, my Father thought my attachment to it ought to be encouraged. He was very fond of me, and I was my Mother's darling: in consequence whereof I was very miserable. For Molly, who had nursed my brother Francis, and was immoderately fond of him, hated me because my Mother took more notice of me than of Frank; and Frank hated me because my Mother gave me now and then a bit of cake when he had none,—quite forgetting that for one bit of cake which I had and he had not, he had twenty sops in the pan, and pieces of bread and butter with sugar on them from Molly, from whom I received only thumps and ill names.
So I became fretful, and timorous, and a tell-tale; and the schoolboys drove me from play, and were always tormenting me. And hence I took no pleasure in boyish sports, but read incessantly. I read through all gilt-cover little books that could be had at that time, and likewise all the uncovered tales of Tom Hickathrift, Jack the Giant Killer, and the like. And I used to lie by the wall, and mope; and my spirits used to come upon me suddenly, and in a flood;—and then I was accustomed to run up and down the churchyard, and act over again all I had been reading on the docks, the nettles, and the rank grass. At six years of age I remember to have read Belisarius, Robinson Crusoe, and Philip Quarles; and then I found the Arabian Nights' Entertainments, one tale of which, (the tale of a man who was compelled to seek for a pure virgin,) made so deep an impression on me, (I had read it in the evening while my mother was at her needle,) that I was haunted by spectres, whenever I was in the dark: and I distinctly recollect the anxious and fearful eagerness, with which I used to watch the window where the book lay, and when the sun came upon it, I would seize it, carry it by the wall, and bask, and read. My father found out the effect which these books had produced, and burned them.
So I became a dreamer, and acquired an indisposition to all bodily activity; and I was fretful, and inordinately passionate; and as I could not play at anything, and was slothful, I was despised and hated by the boys: and because I could read and spell, and had, I may truly say, a memory and understanding forced into almost unnatural ripeness, I was flattered and wondered at by all the old women. And so I became very vain, and despised most of the boys that were at all near my own age, and before I was eight years old I was a "character". Sensibility, imagination, vanity, sloth, and feelings of deep and bitter contempt for almost all who traversed the orbit of my understanding, were even then prominent and manifest.
From October 1778 to 1779. That which I began to be from three to six, I continued to be from six to nine. In this year I was admitted into the Grammar School, and soon outstripped all of my age. I had a dangerous putrid fever this year. My brother George lay ill of the same fever in the next room. My poor brother, Francis, I remember, stole up in spite of orders to the contrary, and sat by my bedside, and read Pope's Homer to me. Frank had a violent love of beating me; but whenever that was superseded by any humour or circumstances, he was always very fond of me, and used to regard me with a strange mixture of admiration and contempt. Strange it was not, for he hated books, and loved climbing, fighting, playing, and robbing orchards, to distraction. My Mother relates a story of me, which I repeat here, because it must be reckoned as my first piece of wit.—During my fever, I asked why Lady Northcote, our neighbour, did not come and see me. My Mother said she was afraid of catching the fever. I was piqued, and answered, "Ah! Mamma! the four Angels round my bed a'n't afraid of catching it!" I suppose you know the old prayer:—
Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John, Bless the bed that I lie on!— Four good Angels round me spread, Two at my feet and two at my head.
This "prayer" I said nightly, and most firmly believed the truth of it. Frequently have I, (half-awake and half-asleep; my body diseased, and fevered by my imagination,)—seen armies of ugly things bursting in upon me, and these four Angels keeping them off.
In my next I shall carry on my life to my Father's death.
God bless you, my dear Poole,
And your affectionate, S.T. COLERIDGE.
In a note written in after life Mr. Coleridge speaks of this period of his life in the following terms:
"Being the youngest child, I possibly inherited the weakly state of health of my Father, who died, at the age of sixty-two, before I had reached my ninth year; and from certain jealousies of old Molly, my brother Frank's dotingly fond nurse—and if ever child by beauty and loveliness deserved to be doted on, my brother Francis was that child—and by the infusion of her jealousies into my brother's mind, I was in earliest childhood huffed away from the enjoyments of muscular activity in play, to take refuge at my Mother's side on my little stool, to read my little book, and to listen to the talk of my elders. I was driven from life in motion to life in thought and sensation. I never played except by myself, and then only acted over what I had been reading or fancying, or half one, half the other, with a stick cutting down weeds and nettles, as one of the "Seven Champions of Christendom." Alas! I had all the simplicity, all the docility of the little child, but none of the child's habits. I never thought as a child, never had the language of a child." [1]
[Footnote 1: Gillman's "Life of Coleridge", p. 10.]
LETTER 4. TO MR. POOLE
Dear Poole,
From October 1779 to 1781. I had asked my Mother one evening to cut my cheese entire, so that I might toast it. This was no easy matter, it being a "crumbly" cheese. My Mother however did it. I went into the garden for something or other, and in the mean time my brother Frank minced my cheese, to "disappoint the favourite." I returned, saw the exploit, and in an agony of passion flew at Frank. He pretended to have been seriously hurt by my blow, flung himself on the ground, and there lay with outstretched limbs. I hung over him mourning and in a great fright; he leaped up, and with a horse-laugh gave me a severe blow in the face. I seized a knife, and was running at him, when my Mother came in and took me by the arm. I expected a flogging, and, struggling from her, I ran away to a little hill or slope, at the bottom of which the Otter flows, about a mile from Ottery. There I staid; my rage died away, but my obstinacy vanquished my fears, and taking out a shilling book, which had at the end morning and evening prayers, I very devoutly repeated them—thinking at the same time with a gloomy inward satisfaction—how miserable my Mother must be! I distinctly remember my feelings, when I saw a Mr. Vaughan pass over the bridge at about a furlong's distance, and how I watched the calves in the fields beyond the river. It grew dark, and I fell asleep. It was towards the end of October, and it proved a stormy night. I felt the cold in my sleep, and dreamed that I was pulling the blanket over me, and actually pulled over me a dry thorn-bush which lay on the ground near me. In my sleep I had rolled from the top of the hill till within three yards of the river, which flowed by the unfenced edge of the bottom. I awoke several times, and finding myself wet, and cold, and stiff, closed my eyes again that I might forget it.
In the meantime my Mother waited about half an hour, expecting my return when the "sulks" had evaporated. I not returning, she sent into the churchyard, and round the town. Not found! Several men and all the boys were sent out to ramble about and seek me. In vain! My Mother was almost distracted; and at ten o'clock at night I was 'cried' by the crier in Ottery, and in two villages near it, with a reward offered for me. No one went to bed;—indeed I believe half the town were up all the night. To return to myself. About five in the morning, or a little after, I was broad awake, and attempted to get up, and walk; but I could not move. I saw the shepherds and workmen at a distance, and cried, but so faintly, that it was impossible to hear me thirty yards off. And there I might have lain and died;—for I was now almost given over, the ponds and even the river, near which I was lying, having been dragged. But providentially Sir Stafford Northcote, who had been out all night, resolved to make one other trial, and came so near that he heard me crying. He carried me in his arms for nearly a quarter of a mile, when we met my father and Sir Stafford Northcote's servants. I remember, and never shall forget, my Father's face as he looked upon me while I lay in the servant's arms—so calm, and the tears stealing down his face; for I was the child of his old age. My Mother, as you, may suppose, was outrageous with joy. Meantime in rushed a young lady, crying out—"I hope you'll whip him, Mrs. Coleridge." This woman still lives at Ottery; and neither philosophy nor religion has been able to conquer the antipathy which I feel towards her, whenever I see her. I was put to bed, and recovered in a day or so. But I was certainly injured; for I was weakly and subject to ague for many years after.
My Father—who had so little parental ambition in him, that, but for my Mother's pride and spirit, he would certainly have brought up his other sons to trades—had nevertheless resolved that I should be a parson. I read every book that came in my way without distinction; and my Father was fond of me, and used to take me on his knee, and hold long conversations with me. I remember, when eight years old, walking with him one winter evening from a farmer's house, a mile from Ottery; and he then told me the names of the stars, and how Jupiter was a thousand times larger than our world, and that the other twinkling stars were suns that had worlds rolling round them; and when I came home, he showed me how they rolled round. I heard him with a profound delight and admiration, but without the least mixture of wonder or incredulity. For from my early reading of fairy tales and about genii, and the like, my mind had been habituated "to the Vast"; and I never regarded "my senses" in any way as the "criteria" of my belief. I regulated all my creeds by my conceptions, not by my sight, even at that age. Ought children to be permitted to read romances, and stories of giants, magicians, and genii? I know all that has been said against it; but I have formed my faith in the affirmative. I know no other way of giving the mind a love of the Great and the Whole. Those who have been led to the same truths step by step, through the constant testimony of their senses, seem to me to want a sense which I possess. They contemplate nothing but parts, and all parts are necessarily little, and the universe to them is but a mass of little things. It is true, the mind may become credulous and prone to superstition by the former method;—but are not the experimentalists credulous even to madness in believing any absurdity, rather than believe the grandest truths, if they have not the testimony of their own senses in their favour? I have known some who have been rationally educated, as it is styled. They were marked by a microscopic acuteness; but when they looked at great things, all became a blank, and they saw nothing, and denied that anything could be seen, and uniformly put the negative of a power for the possession of a power, and called the want of imagination, judgment, and the never being moved to rapture, philosophy.
Towards the latter end of September 1781, my Father went to Plymouth with my brother Francis, who was to go out as midshipman under Admiral Graves, who was a friend of my Father's. He settled Frank as he wished, and returned on the 4th of October, 1781. He arrived at Exeter about six o'clock, and was pressed to take a bed there by the friendly family of the Harts; but he refused; and to avoid their entreaties he told them that he had never been superstitious, but that the night before he had had a dream, which had made a deep impression on him. He dreamed that Death had appeared to him, as he is commonly painted, and had touched him with his dart. Well, he returned home; and all his family, I excepted, were up. He told my Mother his dream; but he was in high health and good spirits; and there was a bowl of punch made, and my Father gave a long and particular account of his travel, and that he had placed Frank under a religious Captain, and so forth. At length he went to bed, very well and in high spirits. A short time after he had lain down, he complained of a pain in his bowels, to which he was subject, from wind. My Mother got him some peppermint water, which he took, and after a pause, he said, "I am much better now, my dear!"—and lay down again. In a minute my Mother heard a noise in his throat, and spoke to him, but he did not answer; and she spoke repeatedly in vain. Her shriek awaked me, and I said—"Papa is dead!" I did not know my Father's return; but I knew that he was expected. How I came to think of his death, I cannot tell; but so it was. Dead he was. Some said it was gout in the heart;—probably it was a fit of apoplexy. He was an Israelite without guile, simple, generous, and, taking some Scripture texts in their literal sense, he was conscientiously indifferent to the good and the evil of this world. God love you and
S.T. COLERIDGE.
He was buried at Ottery on the 10th of October 1781. "O! that I might so pass away," said Coleridge, thirty years afterwards, "if, like him, I were an Israelite without guile! The image of my Father, very reverend, kind, learned, simple-hearted Father is a religion to me."
At his Father's death Coleridge was nearly nine years old. He continued with his Mother at Ottery till the spring of 1782, when he was sent to London to wait the appointed time for admission into Christ's Hospital, to which a presentation had been procured from Mr. John Way through the influence of his father's old pupil Sir Francis Buller. Ten weeks he lived in London with an Uncle, and was entered in the books on the 8th of July 1782.
LETTER 5. TO MR. POOLE
From October 1781 to October 1782. After the death of my Father, we, of course, changed houses, and I remained with my Mother till the spring of 1782, and was a day scholar to Parson Warren, my Father's successor. He was not very deep, I believe; and I used to delight my poor Mother by relating little instances of his deficiency in grammar knowledge—every detraction from his merits seeming an oblation to the memory of my Father, especially as Warren did certainly "pulpitize" much better. Somewhere I think about April 1782, Judge Buller, who had been educated by my Father, sent for me, having procured a Christ's Hospital presentation. I accordingly went to London, and was received and entertained by my Mother's brother, Mr. Bowdon. He was generous as the air, and a man of very considerable talents, but he was fond, as others have been, of his bottle. He received me with great affection, and I staid ten weeks at his house, during which I went occasionally to Judge Buller's. My Uncle was very proud of me, and used to carry me from coffee-house to coffee-house, and tavern to tavern, where I drank, and talked, and disputed as if I had been a man. Nothing was more common than for a large party to exclaim in my hearing, that I was a prodigy, and so forth; so that while I remained at my Uncle's, I was most completely spoilt and pampered, both mind and body.
At length the time came, and I donned the blue coat and yellow stockings, and was sent down to Hertford, a town twenty miles from London, where there are about three hundred of the younger Blue-coat boys. At Hertford I was very happy on the whole, for I had plenty to eat and drink, and we had pudding and vegetables almost every day. I remained there six weeks, and then was drafted up to the great school in London, where I arrived in September, 1782, and was placed in the second ward, then called Jefferies' Ward, and in the Under Grammar School. There are twelve wards, or dormitories, of unequal sizes, beside the sick ward, in the great school; and they contained altogether seven hundred boys, of whom I think nearly one-third were the sons of clergymen. There are five schools,—mathematical, grammar, drawing, reading, and writing—all very large buildings. When a boy is admitted, if he reads very badly, he is either sent to Hertford, or to the reading school. Boys are admissible from seven to twelve years of age. If he learns to read tolerably well before nine, he is drafted into the Lower Grammar School, if not, into the Writing School, as having given proof of unfitness for classical studies. If, before he is eleven, he climbs up to the first form of the Lower Grammar School, he is drafted into the Head Grammar School. If not, at eleven years of age, he is sent into the Writing School, where he continues till fourteen or fifteen, and is then either apprenticed or articled as a clerk, or whatever else his turn of mind or of fortune shall have provided for him. Two or three times a year the Mathematical Master beats up for recruits for the King's boys, as they are called; and all who like the navy are drafted into the Mathematical and Drawing Schools, where they continue till sixteen or seventeen years of age, and go out as midshipmen, and schoolmasters in the Navy. The boys who are drafted into the Head Grammar School, remain there till thirteen; and then, if not chosen for the University, go into the Writing School.
Each dormitory has a nurse or matron, and there is a head matron to superintend all these nurses. The boys were, when I was admitted, under excessive subordination to each other according to rank in school; and every ward was governed by four Monitors,—appointed by the Steward, who was the supreme governor out of school—our temporal lord,—and by four Markers, who wore silver medals, and were appointed by the Head Grammar Master, who was our supreme spiritual lord. The same boys were commonly both Monitors and Markers. We read in classes on Sundays to our Markers, and were catechised by them, and under their sole authority during prayers, etc. All other authority was in the Monitors; but, as I said, the same boys were ordinarily both the one and the other. Our diet was very scanty. Every morning a bit of dry bread and some bad small beer. Every evening a larger piece of bread, and cheese or butter, whichever we liked. For dinner,—on Sunday, boiled beef and broth; Monday, bread and butter, and milk and water; Tuesday, roast mutton; Wednesday, bread and butter, and rice milk; Thursday, boiled beef and broth; Friday, boiled mutton and broth; Saturday, bread and butter, and pease-porridge. Our food was portioned; and, excepting on Wednesdays, I never had a belly full. Our appetites were damped, never satisfied; and we had no vegetables. [1]
[Footnote 1: The above five letters are I-V of Mr. E. H. Coleridge's "Letters of S. T. C". Letter VI is dated 1785; Letter VII of "Letters" is dated "before 1790."]
S. T. COLERIDGE.
"O! what a change!" he writes in another note; "depressed, moping, friendless, poor orphan, half starved; at that time the portion of food to the Blue-coats was cruelly insufficient for those who had no friends to supply them." And he afterwards says:—"When I was first plucked up and transplanted from my birth-place and family, at the death of my dear Father, whose revered image has ever survived in my mind to make me know what the emotions and affections of a son are, and how ill a father's place is likely to be supplied by any other relation, Providence, (it has often occurred to me,) gave me the first intimation that it was my lot, and that it was best for me, to make or find my way of life a detached individual, a "terrae filius", who was to ask love or service of no one on any more specific relation than that of being a man, and as such to take my chance for the free charities of humanity."
Coleridge continued eight years at Christ's Hospital. It was a very curious and important part of his life, giving him Bowyer for his teacher, and Lamb for his friend. [1]
[Footnote 1: A few particulars of this "most remarkable and amiable man," the well-known author of "Essays of Elia, Rosamund Gray, Poems", and other works, will interest most readers of the "Biographia".
He was born on the 18th of February, 1775, in the Inner Temple; died 27th December, 1834, about five months after his friend Coleridge, who continued in habits of intimacy with him from their first acquaintance till his death in July of the same year. In "one of the most exquisite of all the Essays of Elia," "The Old Benchers of the Middle Temple" ("Works", vol. ii, p. 188), Lamb has given the characters of his father, and of his father's master, Samuel Salt. The few touches descriptive of this gentleman's "unrelenting bachelorhood"—which appears in the sequel to have been a persistent mourner-hood—and the forty years' hopeless passion of mild Susan P.—which very permanence redeems and almost dignifies, is in the author's sweetest vein of mingled humour and pathos, wherein the latter, as the stronger ingredient, predominates.
Mr. Lamb never married, for, as is recorded in the Memoir, "on the death of his parents, he felt himself called upon by duty to repay to his sister [a] the solicitude with which she had watched over his infancy. To her, from the age of twenty-one he devoted his existence, seeking thenceforth no connection which could interfere with her supremacy in his affections, or impair his ability to sustain and to comfort her."
[[Sub-footnote a: "A word Timidly uttered, for she "lives", the meek, The self-restraining, the ever kind."
From Mr. Wordsworth's memorial poem to her brother. P. W. V. P. 333.]]
Mr. Coleridge speaks of Miss Lamb, to whom he continued greatly attached, in these verses, addressed to her brother:
"Cheerily, dear Charles! Thou thy best friend shall cherish many a year; Such warm presages feel I of high hope! For not uninterested the dear maid I've viewed—her soul affectionate yet wise, Her polished wit as mild as lambent glories That play around a sainted infant's head."
(See the single volume of Coleridge's Poems, p. 28.)
Mr. Lamb has himself described his dear and only sister, whose proper name is Mary Anne, under the title of "Cousin Bridget," in the Essay called "Mackery End", a continuation of that entitled "My Relations", in which he has drawn the portrait of his elder brother. "Bridget Elia," so he commences the former, "has been my housekeeper for many a long year. I have obligations to Bridget, extending beyond the period of memory. We house together, old bachelor and maid, in a sort of double singleness; with such tolerable comfort upon the whole, that I, for one, find in myself no sort of disposition to go out upon the mountains, with the rash king's offspring, to bewail my celibacy."—("Works", vol. ii, p. 171.) He describes her intellectual tastes in this essay, but does not refer to her literary abilities. She wrote "Mrs. Leicester's School", which Mr. C. used warmly to praise for delicacy of taste and tenderness of feeling.
Miss Lamb still survives, in the words of Mr. Talfourd, "to mourn the severance of a life-long association, as free from every alloy of selfishness, as remarkable for moral beauty, as this world ever witnessed in brother and sister. "I have felt desirous to place in relief, as far as might be, such an interesting union—to show how blest a fraternal marriage may be, and what sufficient helpmates a brother and sister have been to each other. Marriages of this kind would perhaps be more frequent but for the want of some pledge or solid warranty of continuance equivalent to that which rivets wedlock between husband and wife. Without the vow and the bond, formal or virtual, no society, from the least to the greatest, will hold together. Many persons are so constituted that they cannot feel rest or satisfaction of spirit without a single supreme object of tender affection, in whose heart they are conscious of holding a like supremacy,—who has common hopes, loves, and interests with themselves. Without this the breezes do not refresh nor the sunbeams gladden them. A "share" in ever so many kind hearts does not suffice to their happiness; they must have the whole of one, as no one else has any part of it, whatever love of another kind that heart may still reserve for others. There is no reason why a brother and sister might not be to each other this second-self—this dearer half—though such an attachment is beyond mere fraternal love, and must have something in it "of choice and election," superadded to the natural tie: but it is seldom found to exist, because the durable cement is wanting—the sense of security and permanence, without which the body of affection cannot be consolidated, nor the heart commit itself to its whole capacity of emotion. I believe that many a brother and sister spend their days in uncongenial wedlock, or in a restless faintly expectant-singlehood, who might form a "comfortable couple" could they but make up their minds early to take each other for better for worse.
Two other poems of Mr. C. besides the one in which his sister is mentioned, are addressed to Mr. Lamb—"This Lime-tree-bower my Prison", and the lines "To a Friend, who had declared his intention of writing no more Poetry".—("Poetical Works", i, p. 201 and p. 205.) In a letter to the author ("Ainger", i, p. 121), Lamb inveighs against the soft epithet applied to him in the first of these. He hoped his ""virtues" had done "sucking""—and declared such praise fit only to be a "cordial to some greensick sonnetteer."
"Yes! they wander on In gladness all; but thou, methinks, most glad, My "gentle-hearted" Charles! for thou hast pined And hungered after nature, many a year, In the great city pent, winning thy way With sad yet patient soul through evil and pain And strange calamity."
In the next poem he is called "wild-eyed boy." The two epithets, "wild-eyed" and "gentle-hearted," will recall Charles Lamb to the minds of all who knew him personally. Mr. Talfourd seems to think that the special delight in the country, ascribed to him by my father, was a distinction scarcely merited. I rather imagine that his indifference to it was a sort of "mock apparel" in which it was his humour at times to invest himself. I have been told that, when visiting the Lakes, he took as much delight in the natural beauties of the region as might be expected from a man of his taste and sensibility. [b]
[[Sub-footnote b:
"Thou wert a scorner of the field, my Friend, But more in show than truth."
From Mr. W.'s poem "To a good man of most dear memory", quoted in p. 323.]]
Mr. Coleridge's expression, recorded in the "Table Talk", that he "looked on the degraded men and things around him like moonshine on a dunghill, that shines and takes no pollution," partly alludes to that tolerance of moral evil, both in men and books, which was so much remarked in Charles Lamb, and was, in so good a man, really remarkable. His toleration of it in books is conspicuous in the view he takes of the writings of Congreve and Wycherley, in his essay on the artificial comedy of the last century ("Works", vol. ii, p. 322), and in many of his other literary criticisms. His toleration of it in men—at least his faculty of merging some kinds and degrees of it in concomitant good, or even beholding certain errors rather as objects of interest, or of a meditative pity and tenderness, than of pure aversion and condemnation, Mr. Talfourd has feelingly described in his "Memoir" (vol. ii, p. 326-9), "Not only to opposite opinions," he says, "and devious habits of thought was Lamb indulgent; he discovered the soul of goodness in things evil so vividly, that the surrounding evil disappeared from his mental vision." This characteristic of his mind is not to be identified with the idolizing propensity common to many ardent and imaginative spirits. He "not only loved his friends in spite of their errors," as Mr. Talfourd observes, "but loved them, "errors and all";" which implies that he was not unconscious of their existence. He saw the failings as plainly as any one else, nay, fixed his gentle but discerning eye upon them; whereas the idolizers behold certain objects in a bedarkening blaze of light, or rather of light-confounding brightness, the multiplied and heightened reflection of whatever is best in them, to the obscurity or transmutation of all their defects. Whence it necessarily follows that the world presents itself to their eyes divided, like a chess-board, into black and white compartments—a moral and intellectual chequer-work; not that they love to make darkness, but that they luxuriate too eagerly in light: and their "over-muchness" toward some men involves an over-littleness towards others, whom they involuntarily contrast, in all their poor and peccant reality, with gorgeous idealisms. The larger half of mankind is exiled for them into a hemisphere of shadow, as dim, cold, and negative as the unlit portion of the crescent moon. Lamb's general tendency, though he too could warmly admire, was in a different direction; he was ever introducing streaks and gleams of light into darkness, rather than drowning certain objects in floods of it; and this, I think, proceeded in him from indulgence toward human nature rather than from indifference to evil. To his friend the disposition to exalt and glorify co-existed, in a very remarkable manner, with a power of severe analysis of character and poignant exhibition of it,—a power which few possess without exercising it some time or other to their own sorrow and injury. The consequence to Mr. Coleridge was that he sometimes seemed untrue to himself, when he had but brought forward, one after another, perfectly real and sincere moods of his mind.
In his fine poem commemorating the deaths of several poets, Mr. Wordsworth thus joins my father's name with that of his almost life-long friend:
"Nor has the rolling year twice measured, From sign to sign, its steadfast course, Since every mortal power of Coleridge Was frozen at its marvellous source; The rapt One of the godlike forehead, The heaven-eyed creature sleeps in earth; And Lamb, the frolic and the gentle, Has vanished from his lonely hearth."
S. C. Footnote 1 ends: main text resumes:]
Numerous retrospective notices by himself and others exist of this period; but none of his really boyish letters have been preserved. The exquisite Essay intitled, "Christ's Hospital five and thirty years ago", by Lamb, is principally founded on that delightful writer's recollections of the boy Coleridge, and that boy's own subsequent descriptions of his school days. Coleridge is Lamb's "poor friendless boy."—"My parents and those who should care for me, were far away. Those few acquaintances of theirs, which they could reckon upon being kind to me in the great city, after a little forced notice, which they had the grace to take of me on my first arrival in town, soon grew tired of my holiday visits. They seemed to them to recur too often, though I thought them few enough; and, one after another, they all failed me, and I felt myself alone among six hundred playmates. O the cruelty of separating a poor lad from his early homestead! The yearnings which I used to have toward it in those unfledged years! How, in my dreams would my native town, far in the west, come back with its church, its trees, and faces! How I would wake weeping, and in the anguish of my heart exclaim upon sweet "Calne in Wiltshire!""
Yet it must not be supposed that Coleridge was an unhappy boy. He was naturally of a joyous temperament, and in one amusement, swimming, he excelled and took singular delight. Indeed he believed, and probably with truth, that his health was seriously injured by his excess in bathing, coupled with such tricks as swimming across the New River in his clothes, and drying them on his back, and the like. But reading was a perpetual feast to him. "From eight to fourteen," he writes, "I was a playless day-dreamer, a "helluo librorum", my appetite for which was indulged by a singular incident: a stranger, who was struck by my conversation, made me free of a circulating library in King Street, Cheapside."—"Here," he proceeds, "I read through the catalogue, folios and all, whether I understood them, or did not understand them, running all risks in skulking out to get the two volumes which I was entitled to have daily. Conceive what I must have been at fourteen; I was in a continual low fever. My whole being was, with eyes closed to every object of present sense, to crumple myself up in a sunny comer, and read, read, read,—fancy myself on Robinson Crusoe's island, finding a mountain of plum-cake, and eating a room for myself, and then eating it into the shapes of tables and chairs—hunger and fancy!"—"My talents and superiority," he continues, "made me for ever at the head in my routine of study, though utterly without the desire to be so; without a spark of ambition; and as to emulation, it had no meaning for me; but the difference between me and my form-fellows, in our lessons and exercises, bore no proportion to the measureless difference between me and them in the wide, wild, wilderness of useless, unarranged book knowledge and book thoughts. Thank Heaven! it was not the age for getting up prodigies; but at twelve or fourteen I should have made as pretty a juvenile prodigy as was ever emasculated and ruined by fond and idle wonderment. Thank Heaven! I was flogged instead of being flattered. However, as I climbed up the school, my lot was somewhat alleviated."
CHAPTER II
CAMBRIDGE AND PANTISOCRACY
(1791 to 1795)
Come back into memory, like as thou wert in the day-spring of thy fancies, with Hope like a fiery column before thee—the dark pillar not yet turned—Samuel Taylor Coleridge—Logician, Metaphysician, Bard!—
S. T. Coleridge entered at Jesus College, Cambridge, the 5th of February, 1791. [He did not go into residence till October 1791.]
The poems he wrote about this time and during his first vacation at College are rather conventional, and give few indications of his future deft handling of verse. His "Mathematical Problem" sent to his brother George, is a piece of droll nonsense, but the letter accompanying it is much better than the verse. It reads as follows:
LETTER 6. TO GEORGE COLERIDGE, WITH A POEM ENTITLED "A MATHEMATICAL PROBLEM"
Dear Brother,
I have often been surprised that Mathematics, the quintessence of Truth, should have found admirers so few and so languid. Frequent consideration and minute scrutiny have at length unravelled the cause; viz. that though Reason is feasted, Imagination is starved; whilst Reason is luxuriating in its proper Paradise, Imagination is wearily travelling on a dreary desert. To assist Reason by the stimulus of Imagination is the design of the following production. In the execution of it much may be objectionable. The verse (particularly in the introduction of the ode) may be accused of unwarrantable liberties, but they are liberties equally homogeneal with the exactness of Mathematical disquisition, and the boldness of Pindaric daring. I have three strong champions to defend me against the attacks of Criticism: the Novelty, the Difficulty, and the Utility of the work. I may justly plume myself that I first have drawn the nymph Mathesis from the visionary caves of abstracted idea, and caused her to unite with Harmony. The first-born of this Union I now present to you; with interested motives indeed—as I expect to receive in return the more valuable offspring of your Muse.
Thine ever S. T. C.
Christ's Hospital, March 31, 1791. [1]
[Footnote 1: Letters VIII-XXXI follow No. 6 of our collection.]
The piece of doggerel, to which this epistle is a preface, will be found in vol. ii, p. 386, of the Aldine Edition of Coleridge's Poems.
Coleridge's brother George also wrote verses, and "Mathematical Problem" is just one of the cantrips in verse that passed between the brothers.]
He gained Sir William Browne's gold medal for the Greek Ode in the summer of that year. It was on the Slave Trade. The poetic force and originality of this Ode were, as he said himself, much beyond the language in which they were conveyed. In the winter of 1792-3 he stood for the University (Craven) Scholarship with Dr. Keate, the late head-master of Eton, Mr. Bethell (of Yorkshire) and Bishop Butler, who was the successful candidate. In 1793 he wrote without success for the Greek Ode on Astronomy, the prize for which was gained by Dr. Keate. The original is not known to exist, but the reader may see what is probably a very free version of it by Mr. Southey in his Minor Poems. ("Poetical Works", vol. ii, p. 170.) "Coleridge"—says a schoolfellow [1] of his who followed him to Cambridge in 1792, "was very studious, but his reading was desultory and capricious. He took little exercise merely for the sake of exercise: but he was ready at any time to unbend his mind in conversation; and, for the sake of this, his room, (the ground-floor room on the right hand of the staircase facing the great gate,) was a constant rendezvous of conversation-loving friends. I will not call them loungers, for they did not call to kill time, but to enjoy it. What evenings have I spent in those rooms! What little suppers, or "sizings", as they were called, have I enjoyed; when Aeschylus, and Plato, and Thucydides were pushed aside, with a pile of lexicons and the like, to discuss the pamphlets of the day. Ever and anon a pamphlet issued from the pen of Burke. There was no need of having the book before us;—Coleridge had read it in the morning, and in the evening he would repeat whole pages "verbatim"."—"College Reminiscences, Gentleman's Mag"., Dec. 1834.
[Footnote 1: C. V. Le Grice.]
In May and June, 1793, Frend's trial took place in the Vice- Chancellor's Court, and in the Court of Delegates, at Cambridge. Frend was a Fellow of Jesus, and a slight acquaintance had existed between him and Coleridge, who however soon became his partizan. Mr. C. used to relate a remarkable incident, which is thus preserved by Mr. Gillman:—"The trial was observed by Coleridge to be going against Frend, when some observation or speech was made in his favour;—a dying hope thrown out, as it appeared, to Coleridge, who in the midst of the Senate House, whilst sitting on one of the benches, extended his hands and clapped them. The Proctor in a loud voice demanded who had committed this indecorum. Silence ensued. The Proctor, in an elevated tone, said to a young man sitting near Coleridge, "Twas you, Sir!' The reply was as prompt as the accusation; for, immediately holding out the stump of his right arm, it appeared that he had lost his hand;—'I would, Sir,' said he, 'that I had the power!' That no innocent person should incur blame, Coleridge went directly afterwards to the Proctor, who told him that he saw him clap his hands, but fixed on this person, who he knew had not the power. 'You have had,' said he, 'a narrow escape.'"—"Life of S. T. C"., i, p. 55.
Coleridge passed the summer of 1793 at Ottery, and whilst there wrote his "Songs of the Pixies" ("Poetical Works", i, p. 13), and some other little pieces. He returned to Cambridge in October, but, in the following month, in a moment of despondency and vexation of spirit, occasioned principally by some debts not amounting to £100 he suddenly left his college and went to London. In a few days he was reduced to want, and observing a recruiting advertisement he resolved to get bread and overcome a prejudice at the same time by becoming a soldier. He accordingly applied to the sergeant, and after some delay was marched down to Reading, where he regularly enlisted as a private in the 15th Light Dragoons on the 3d of December, 1793. He kept his initials under the names of Silas Tomkyn Comberbacke. "I sometimes," he writes in a letter, "compare my own life with that of Steele, (yet O! how unlike!)—led to this from having myself also for a brief time borne arms, and written 'private' after my name, or rather another name; for, being at a loss when suddenly asked my name, I answered "Cumberback", and verily my habits were so little equestrian, that my horse, I doubt not, was of that opinion." Coleridge continued four months a light dragoon, during which time he saw and suffered much. He rode his horse ill, and groomed him worse; but he made amends by nursing the sick, and writing letters for the sound. His education was detected by one of his officers, Captain Nathaniel Ogle, who observed the words,—"Eheu! quam infortunii miserrimum est fuisse felicem!"—freshly written in pencil on the stable-wall or door, and ascertained that Comberbacke was the writer. But the termination of his military career was brought about by a chance recognition in the street: his family was apprized of his situation, and after some difficulty he was duly discharged on the both of April, 1794, at Hounslow.
Coleridge now returned to Cambridge, and remained there till the commencement of the summer vacation. But the adventures of the preceding six months had broken the continuity of his academic life, and given birth to new views of future exertion. His acquaintance with Frend had materially contributed to his adoption of the system called Unitarianism, which he now openly professed, and this alone made it imperative on his conscience to decline availing himself of any advantages dependent on his entering into holy orders, or subscribing the Articles of the English Church. He lived, nevertheless, to see and renounce his error, and to leave on record his deep and solemn faith in the catholic doctrine of Trinal Unity, and the Redemption of man through the sacrifice of Christ, both God and Man. Indeed his Unitarianism, such as it was, was not of the ordinary quality. "I can truly say"—were Coleridge's words in after life—"that I never falsified the Scripture. I always told the Unitarians that their interpretations of the Scripture were intolerable upon any principles of sound criticism; and that if they were to offer to construe the will of a neighbour as they did that of their Maker, they would be scouted out of society. I said then plainly and openly that it was clear enough that John and Paul were not Unitarians. But at that time I had a strong sense of the repugnancy of the doctrine of vicarious atonement to the moral being, and I thought nothing could counterbalance that. 'What care I,' I said, 'for the Platonisms of John, or the Rabbinisms of Paul?—My conscience revolts!' That was the ground of my Unitarianism."—"Table Talk", Bohn Library edition, p. 290.
At the commencement of the Long Vacation, in June, 1794, Coleridge went to Oxford on a visit to an old school-fellow, intending probably to proceed afterwards to his mother at Ottery. But an accidental introduction to Robert Southey, then an under-graduate at Balliol College, first delayed, and ultimately prevented, the completion of this design, and became, in its consequences, the hinge on which a large part of Coleridge's after life was destined to turn.
The first letter to Southey was written from Gloucester on 6th July 1794, and it shows the degree of intimacy on which the two undergraduates stood at this time. They had met only about a month before, for Southey writes on 12th June to his friend Grosvenor Bedford: "Allen is with us daily and his friend from Cambridge, Coleridge, whose poems you will oblige me by subscribing to, either at Hookam's or Edward's. He is of most uncommon merit, of the strongest genius, the clearest judgment, the best heart. My friend he already is, and must hereafter be yours," ("Life and Correspondence of Southey", i, 210). The poems mentioned were a projected volume of "Imitations from Modern Latin Poets", of which an ode after Casimir is the only relic. Coleridge's first letter to Southey reads as follows:
LETTER 7. TO SOUTHEY
6 July 1794.
You are averse to gratitudinarian flourishes, else would I talk about hospitality, attention, &c. &c.; however, as I must not thank you, I will thank my stars. Verily, Southey, I like not Oxford, nor the inhabitants of it. I would say thou art a nightingale among owls; but thou art so songless and heavy towards night that I will rather liken thee to the matin lark, thy "nest" is in a blighted cornfield, where the sleepy poppy nods its red-cowled head, and the weak-eyed mole plies his dark work; but thy soaring is even unto heaven. Or let me add (for my appetite for similes is truly canine at this moment), that as the Italian nobles their new-fashioned doors, so thou dost make the adamantine gate of Democracy turn on its golden hinges to most sweet music. [1]
[Footnote 1: Letter XXXII gives the full text of No. 7. Letter XXXIII is dated 15 July, 1794.]
For the next fifteen months Coleridge and Southey were close companions, Coleridge being the elder by two years.
Upon the present occasion, however, he left Oxford with an acquaintance, Mr. Hucks, for a pedestrian tour in Wales. [2] Two other friends, Brookes and Berdmore, joined them in the course of their ramble; and at Caernarvon Mr. Coleridge wrote the following letter to Mr. Martin, of Jesus College.
[Footnote 2: It is to this tour that he refers in the "Table Talk", p. 88.—"I took the thought of "grinning for joy" in that poem ("The Ancient Mariner") from my companion (Berdmore's) remark to me, when we had climbed to the top of Penmaenmaur, and were nearly dead with thirst. We could not speak from the constriction, till we found a little puddle under a stone. He said to me,—'You grinned like an idiot.' He had done the same."]
LETTER 8. To HENRY MARTIN [1]
July 22d, 1794.
Dear Martin,
From Oxford to Gloucester,+ to Ross,+ to Hereford, to Leominster, to Bishop's Castle,+ to Montgomery, to Welshpool, Llanvelling,+ Llangunnog, Bala,+ Druid House,+ Llangollin, Wrexham,++ Ruthin, Denbigh,+ St. Asaph, Holywell,+ Rudland, Abergeley,+ Aberconway,+ Abber,+ over a ferry to Beaumaris+ (Anglesea), Amlock,+ Copper Mines, Gwindu, Moeldon, over a ferry to Caernarvon, have I journeyed, now philosophizing with Hucks, 1 now melancholizing by myself, or else indulging those daydreams of fancy, that make realities more gloomy. To whatever place I have affixed the mark +, there we slept. The first part of our tour was intensely hot—the roads, white and dazzling, seemed to undulate with heat—and the country, bare and unhedged, presenting nothing but stone fences, dreary to the eye and scorching to the touch. At Ross we took up our quarters at the King's Arms, once the house of Mr. Kyrle, the celebrated Man of Ross. I gave the window-shutter a few verses, Which I shall add to the end of the letter. The walk from Llangunnog to Bala over the mountains was most wild and romantic; there are immense and rugged clefts in the mountains, which in winter must form cataracts most tremendous; now there is just enough sun-glittering water dashed down over them to soothe, not disturb the ear. I climbed up a precipice on which was a large thorn-tree, and slept by the side of one of them near two hours.
At Bala I was apprehensive that I had caught the itch from a Welsh democrat, who was charmed with my sentiments; he bruised my hand with a grasp of ardour, and I trembled lest some discontented citizens of the "animalcular" republic might have emigrated. Shortly after, in came a clergyman well dressed, and with him four other gentlemen. I was asked for a public character; I gave Dr. Priestley. The clergyman whispered his neighbour, who it seems is the apothecary of the parish—"Republicans!" Accordingly when the doctor, as they call apothecaries, was to have given a name, "I gives a sentiment, gemmen! may all republicans be "gull"oteened!" Up starts the democrat; "May all fools be gulloteened, and then you will be the first!" Fool, rogue, traitor, liar, &c. flew in each other's faces in hailstorms of vociferation. This is nothing in Wales—they make if necessary vent-holes for the sulphureous fumes of their temper! I endeavoured to calm the tempest by observing that however different our political opinions might be, the appearance of a clergyman assured me that we were all Christians, though I found it rather difficult to reconcile the last sentiment with the spirit of Christianity! "Pho!" quoth the clergyman; "Christianity! Why we a'nt at "church" now, are we? The gentleman's sentiment was a very good one, because it shows him to be sincere in his principles." Welsh politics, however, could not prevail over Welsh hospitality; they all shook hands with me (except the parson), and said I was an open-speaking, honest-hearted fellow, though I was a bit of a democrat.
On our road from Bala to Druid House, we met Brookes and Berdmore. Our rival pedestrians, a "Gemini" of Powells, were vigorously marching onward, in a postchaise! Berdmore had been ill. We were not a little glad to see each other. Llangollen is a village most romantically situated; but the weather was so intensely hot that we saw only what was to be admired—we could not admire.
At Wrexham the tower is most magnificent; and in the church is a white marble monument of Lady Middleton, superior, "mea quidem sententia", to anything in Westminster Abbey. It had entirely escaped my memory, that Wrexham was the residence of a Miss E. Evans, a young lady with whom in happier days I had been in habits of fraternal correspondence; she lives with her grandmother. As I was standing at the window of the inn, she passed by, and with her, to my utter astonishment, her sister, Mary Evans, "quam afflictim et perdite amabam",—yea, even to anguish. They both started, and gave a short cry, almost a faint shriek; I sickened, and well nigh fainted, but instantly retired. Had I appeared to recognise her, my fortitude would not have supported me:
Vivit, sed mihi non vivit—nova forte marita. Ah, dolor! alterius nunc a cervice pependit. Vos, malefida valete accensae insomnia mentis, Littora amata valete; vale ah! formosa Maria.
Hucks informed me that the two sisters walked by the window four or five times, as if anxiously. Doubtless they think themselves deceived by some face strikingly like me. God bless her! Her image is in the sanctuary of my bosom, and never can it be torn from thence, but by the strings that grapple my heart to life! This circumstance made me quite ill. I had been wandering among the wild-wood scenery and terrible graces of the Welsh mountains to wear away, not to revive, the images of the past;—but love is a local anguish; I am fifty miles distant, and am not half so miserable.
At Denbigh is the finest ruined castle in the kingdom; it surpassed everything I could have conceived. I wandered there two hours in a still evening, feeding upon melancholy. Two well dressed young men were roaming there. "I will play my flute here," said the first; "it will have a romantic effect." "Bless thee, man of genius and sensibility," I silently exclaimed. He sate down amid the most awful part of the ruins; the moon just began to make her rays pre-dominant over the lingering daylight; I preattuned my feelings to emotion;—and the romantic youth instantly struck up the sadly pleasing tunes of "Miss Carey"—"The British Lion is my sign—A roaring trade I drive on", &c.
Three miles from Denbigh, on the road to St. Asaph, is a fine bridge with one arch of great, great grandeur. Stand at a little distance, and through it you see the woods waving on the hill-bank of the river in a most lovely point of view.
A "beautiful" prospect is always more picturesque when seen at some little distance through an arch. I have frequently thought of Michael Taylor's way of viewing a landscape between his thighs. Under the arch was the most perfect echo I ever heard. Hucks sang "Sweet Echo" with great effect.
At Holywell I bathed in the famous St. Winifred's Well. It is an excellent cold bath. At Rudland is a fine ruined castle. Abergeley is a large village on the sea-coast. Walking on the sea sands I was surprised to see a number of fine women bathing promiscuously with men and boys perfectly naked. Doubtless the citadels of their chastity are so impregnably strong, that they need not the ornamental bulwarks of modesty; but, seriously speaking, where sexual distinctions are least observed, men and women live together in the greatest purity. Concealment sets the imagination a-working, and as it were, "cantharadizes" our desires.
Just before I quitted Cambridge, I met a countryman with a strange walking-stick, five feet in length. I eagerly bought it, and a most faithful servant it has proved to me. My sudden affection for it has mellowed into settled friendship. On the morning of our leaving Abergeley, just before our final departure, I looked for my stick in the place in which I had left it over night. It was gone. I alarmed the house; no one knew any thing of it. In the flurry of anxiety I sent for the Crier of the town, and gave him the following to cry about the town and the beach, which he did with a gravity for which I am indebted to his stupidity.
"Missing from the Bee Inn, Abergeley, a curious walking-stick. On one side it displays the head of an eagle, the eyes of which represent rising suns, and the ears Turkish crescents; on the other side is the portrait of the owner in wood-work. Beneath the head of the eagle is a Welsh wig, and around the neck of the stick is a Queen Elizabeth's ruff in tin. All down it waves the line of beauty in very ugly carving. If any gentleman (or lady) has fallen in love with the above described stick, and secretly carried off the same, he (or she) is hereby earnestly admonished to conquer a passion, the continuance of which must prove fatal to his (or her) honesty. And if the said stick has slipped into such gentleman's (or lady's) hand through inadvertence, he (or she) is required to rectify the mistake with all convenient speed. God save the king."
Abergeley is a fashionable Welsh watering place, and so singular a proclamation excited no small crowd on the beach, among the rest a lame old gentleman, in whose hands was descried my dear stick. The old gentleman, who lodged at our inn, felt great confusion, and walked homewards, the solemn Crier before him, and a various cavalcade behind him. I kept the muscles of my face in tolerable subjection. He made his lameness an apology for borrowing my stick, supposed he should have returned before I had wanted it, &c. &c. Thus it ended, except that a very handsome young lady put her head out of a coach-window, and begged my permission to have the bill which I had delivered to the Crier. I acceded to the request with a compliment, that lighted up a blush on her cheek, and a smile on her lip.
We passed over a ferry to Aberconway. We had scarcely left the boat ere we descried Brookes and Berdmore, with whom we have joined parties, nor do we mean to separate. Our tour through Anglesea to Caernarvon has been repaid by scarcely one object worth seeing. To-morrow we visit Snowdon. Brookes, Berdmore, and myself, at the imminent hazard of our lives, scaled the very summit of Penmaenmaur. It was a most dreadful expedition. I will give you the account in some future letter.
I sent for Bowles's Works while at Oxford. How was I shocked! Every omission and every alteration disgusted taste, and mangled sensibility. Surely some Oxford toad had been squatting at the poet's ear, and spitting into it the cold venom of dulness. It is not Bowles; he is still the same, (the added poems will prove it) descriptive, dignified, tender, sublime. The sonnets added are exquisite. Abba Thule has marked beauties, and the little poem at Southampton is a diamond; in whatever light you place it, it reflects beauty and splendour. The "Shakespeare" is sadly unequal to the rest. Yet in whose poems, except those of Bowles, would it not have been excellent? Direct to me, to be left at the Post Office, Bristol, and tell me everything about yourself, how you have spent the vacation, &c.
Believe me, with gratitude and fraternal friendship,
Your obliged S. T. COLERIDGE.
[Footnote 1: Long portions of this letter appear in a letter to Southey of 15 September 1794. See "Letters", p. 74.]
[Footnote 2: Hucks published, in 1795, an account of the holiday entitled "Tour in North Wales".]
On his return from this excursion Coleridge went, by appointment, to Bristol for the purpose of meeting Southey, whose person and conversation had excited in him the most lively admiration. This was at the end of August or beginning of September. Southey, whose mother then lived at Bath, came over to Bristol accordingly to receive his new friend, who had left as deep an impression on him, and in that city introduced Coleridge to Robert Lovell, a young Quaker, then recently married to Mary Fricker, and residing in the Old Market. After a short stay at Bristol, where he first saw Sarah Fricker, Mrs. Lovell's elder sister, Coleridge accompanied Southey on his return to Bath. There he remained for some weeks, principally engaged in making love, and in maturing, with his friend, the plan, which he had for some time cherished, of a social community to be established in America upon what he termed a pantisocratical basis.
Much discussion has taken place regarding the origin of Pantisocracy, most writers on the subject attributing the scheme to Coleridge. A perusal of the letters of Southey, however, leads to a different conclusion. Southey was enamoured during his stay at Oxford with Plato, and especially with the "Republic" of the Greek philosopher; and he frequently quotes from the work or refers to its principles in his correspondence with Grosvenor and Horace W. Bedford between 11th November 1793 and 12th June 1794. Before his meeting with Southey no trace of ideal Republicanism appears in the letters of Coleridge. His leaning notwithstanding this was already towards Republicanism, and the friendship struck up between him and Southey was a natural consequence of flint coming into contact with steel. The next two letters, to Southey, indicate the fiery nature of the young Republicans.
LETTER 9. To SOUTHEY
6 Sept. 1794.
The day after my arrival I finished the first act: I transcribed it. The next morning Franklin (of Pembroke Coll. Cam., a "ci-devant Grecian" of our school—so we call the first boys) called on me, and persuaded me to go with him and breakfast with Dyer, author of "The Complaints of the Poor, A Subscription", &c. &c. I went; explained our system. He was enraptured; pronounced it impregnable. He is intimate with Dr. Priestley, and doubts not that the Doctor will join us. He showed me some poetry, and I showed him part of the first act, which I happened to have about me. He liked it hugely; it was "a nail that would drive…." Every night I meet a most intelligent young man, who has spent the last five years of his life in America, and is lately come from thence as an agent to sell land. He was of our school. I had been kind to him: he remembers it, and comes regularly every evening to "benefit by conversation," he says. He says £2,000 will do; that he doubts not we can contract for our passage under £400; that we shall buy the land a great deal cheaper when we arrive at America than we could do in England; "or why," he adds, "am I sent over here?" That twelve men may "easily" clear 300 acres in four or five months; and that, for 600 dollars, a thousand acres may be cleared, and houses built on them. He recommends the Susquehanna, from its excessive beauty and its security from hostile Indians. Every possible assistance will be given us; we may get credit for the land for ten years or more, as we settle upon. That literary characters make "money" there: &c. &c. He never saw a "bison" in his life, but has heard of them: they are quite backwards. The mosquitos are not so bad as our gnats; and, after you have been there a little while, they don't trouble you much.
LETTER 10. TO SOUTHEY
18 Sept. 1794.
Since I quitted this room what and how important events have been evolved! America! Southey! Miss Fricker!… Pantisocracy! Oh! I shall have such a scheme of it! My head, my heart, are all alive. I have drawn up my arguments in battle array: they shall have the "tactician" excellence of the mathematician, with the enthusiasm of the poet. The head shall be the mass; the heart, the fiery spirit that fills, informs and agitates the whole. SHAD GOES WITH US: HE IS MY BROTHER!! I am longing to be with you: make Edith my sister. Surely, Southey, we shall be frendotatoi meta frendous—most friendly where all are friends. She must, therefore, be more emphatically my sister…. C——, the most excellent, the most Pantisocratic of aristocrats, has been laughing at me. Up I arose, terrible is reasoning. He fled from me, because "he would not answer for his own sanity, sitting so near a madman of genius." He told me that the strength of my imagination had intoxicated my reason, and that the acuteness of my reason had given a directing influ-* *ence to my imagination. Four months ago the remark would not have been more elegant than just: now it is nothing. [1]
[Footnote 1: This letter is given in full in "Letters", No. XXXIV.]
These letters show that Pantisocracy was now the all absorbing topic.
The following letter written at this time by Coleridge to Mr. Charles Heath, of Monmouth, is a curious evidence of his earnestness upon this subject:
LETTER 11. To CHARLES HEATH OF MONMOUTH [1]
(——1794).
Sir,
Your brother has introduced my name to you; I shall therefore offer no apology for this letter. A small but liberalized party have formed a scheme of emigration on the principles of an abolition of individual property. Of their political creed, and the arguments by which they support and elucidate it they are preparing a few copies—not as meaning to publish them, but for private distribution. In this work they will have endeavoured to prove the exclusive justice of the system and its practicability; nor will they have omitted to sketch out the code of contracts necessary for the internal regulation of the Society; all of which will of course be submitted to the improvements and approbation of each component member. As soon as the work is printed, one or more copies shall be transmitted to you. Of the characters of the individuals who compose the party I find it embarrassing to speak; yet, vanity apart, I may assert with truth that they have each a sufficient strength of head to make the virtues of the heart respectable, and that they are all highly charged with that enthusiasm which results from strong perceptions of moral rectitude, called into life and action by ardent feelings. With regard to pecuniary matters it is found necessary, if twelve men with their families emigrate on this system, that £2,000 should be the aggregate of their contributions—but infer not from hence that each man's "quota" is to be settled with the littleness of arithmetical accuracy. No; all will strain every nerve; and then, I trust, the surplus money of some will supply the deficiencies of others. The "minutiae" of topographical information we are daily endeavouring to acquire; at present our plan is, to settle at a distance, but at a convenient distance, from Cooper's Town on the banks of the Susquehanna. This, however, will be the object of future investigation. For the time of emigration we have fixed on next March. In the course of the winter those of us whose bodies, from habits of sedentary study or academic indolence, have not acquired their full tone and strength, intend to learn the theory and practice of agriculture and carpentry, according as situation and circumstances make one or the other convenient.
Your fellow Citizen, S. T. COLERIDGE. [Footnote: Letter XXXV is dated 19 Sept. 1794.]
[Footnote 1: One of the Pantisocrats.]
The members of the society at that time were Coleridge himself, Southey, Lovell, and George Burnett, a Somersetshire youth and fellow collegian with Southey. Toward the beginning of September, Coleridge left Bath and went, for the last time, as a student, to Cambridge, apparently with the view of taking his degree of B.A. after the ensuing Christmas. Here he published "The Fall of Robespierre" ("Lit. Remains", i, p. 1), of which the first act was written by himself, and the second and third by Mr. Southey, and the particulars of the origin and authorship of which may be found stated in an extract from a letter of Mr. Southey's there printed. The dedication to Mr. Martin is dated at Jesus College, 22nd of September 1794.
[The following is the Dedication:]
LETTER 12. To HENRY MARTIN, ESQ., OF JESUS COLLEGE, CAMBRIDGE. DEDICATORY LETTER TO THE "FALL OF ROBESPIERRE," A DRAMA IN THREE ACTS BY COLERIDGE AND SOUTHEY.
Dear Sir,
Accept as a small testimony of my grateful attachment, the following Dramatic Poem, in which I have endeavoured to detail, in an interesting form, the fall of a man whose great bad actions have cast a disastrous lustre on his name. In the execution of the work, as intricacy of plot could not have been attempted without a gross violation of recent facts, it has been my sole aim to imitate the impassioned and highly figurative language of the French Orators, and to develop the characters of the chief actors on a vast stage of horrors.
Yours fraternally, S. T. COLERIDGE.
Jesus College, September 22, 1794.
[Note: Letters XXXVI-XLII follow No. 12.]
This dedicatory letter is no doubt an apology for a play destitute of dramatic art. The declamatory speeches may be an intentional imitation of the harangues of the Revolutionaries, but they are more likely to be the product of the inflation of youth. The redeeming feature of the play is the beautiful little lyric, "Domestic Peace", which is in rhythm an imitation of Collins' "How Sleep the Brave".
The scheme of Pantisocracy was not much further forward at the close of 1794 than it had been in the summer; and Southey had been advised to try it in Wales instead of on the banks of the Susquehanna. Coleridge writes in December:
LETTER 13. TO SOUTHEY —Dec. 1794.
For God's sake, my dear fellow, tell me what we are to gain by taking a Welsh farm? Remember the principles and proposed consequences of Pantisocracy, and reflect in what degree they are attainable by Coleridge, Southey, Lovell, Burnett, and Co., some five men going partners together! In the next place, supposing that we have found the preponderating utility of our aspheterising in Wales, let us by our speedy and united inquiries discover the sum of money necessary. Whether such a farm with so very large a house is to be procured without launching our frail and unpiloted bark on a rough sea of anxieties? How much money will be necessary for "furnishing" so large a house? How much necessary for the maintenance of so large a family—eighteen people—for a year at least?]
[Note: Letters XLIII gives the full text of this Letter 13. Letters XLIV-L follow 13.]
In January 1795, he was to return—and then with Spring breezes to repair to the banks of the Susquehanna! But his fate withstood;—he took no degree, nor ever crossed the Atlantic. Michaelmas Term, 1794, was the last he kept at Cambridge; the vacation following was passed in London with Charles Lamb, and in the beginning of 1795 he returned with Southey to Bristol, and there commenced man.
The whole spring and summer of this year he devoted to public Lectures at Bristol, making in the intervals several excursions in Somersetshire, one memorial of which remains in the "Lines composed while climbing Brockley Combe". It was in one of these excursions that Mr. Coleridge and Mr.Wordsworth first met at the house of Mr. Pinney. [1] The first six of those Lectures constituted a course presenting a comparative view of the Civil War under Charles I and the French Revolution. Three of them, or probably the substance of four or five, were published at Bristol in the latter end of 1795, the first two together, with the title of "Conciones ad Populum", and the third with that of "The Plot Discovered". The eloquent passage in conclusion of the first of these Addresses was written by Mr. Southey. The tone throughout them all is vehemently hostile to the policy of the great minister of that day; but it is equally opposed to the spirit and maxims of Jacobinism. It was late in life that, after a reperusal of these "Conciones", Coleridge wrote on a blank page of one of them the following words:—"Except the two or three pages involving the doctrine of philosophical necessity and Unitarianism, I see little or nothing in these outbursts of my youthful zeal to retract; and with the exception of some flame-coloured epithets applied to persons, as to Mr. Pitt and others, or rather to personifications—(for such they really were to me)—as little to regret."
Another course of six Lectures followed, "On Revealed Religion, its corruptions, and its political views". The Prospectus states—"that these Lectures are intended for two classes of men, Christians and Infidels;—the former, that they may be able to "give a reason for the hope that is in them";—the latter, that they may not determine against Christianity from arguments applicable to its corruptions only." Nothing remains of these Addresses, nor of two detached Lectures on the Slave Trade and the Hair Powder Tax, which were delivered in the interval between the two principal courses. They were all very popular amongst the opponents of the Governments; and those on religion in particular were highly applauded by his Unitarian auditors, amongst whom Dr. and Mrs. Estlin and Mr. Hort were always remembered by Coleridge with regard and esteem.
The Transatlantic scheme, though still a favourite subject of conversation, was now in effect abandoned by these young Pantisocrats. Mr. C. was married at St. Mary Redcliff Church to Sarah Fricker on the 4th of October, 1795, and went to reside in a cottage at Clevedon on the Bristol Channel; and six weeks afterwards Mr. Southey was also married to Edith Fricker, and left Bristol on the same day on his route to Portugal. At Clevedon Mr. and Mrs. Coleridge resided with one of Mrs. C.'s unmarried sisters and Burnett until the beginning of December.
[Footnote 1: This statement of H. N. Coleridge, and a remark by Wordsworth in a letter to Wrangham of November 20th, 1795, are the only evidence on which rests the belief that Coleridge and Wordsworth met before 1797. The letter is quoted in the "Athenaeum" of December 8th, 1894. See also Letter LXXXI, to Estlin, May 1798.]
