I will write for "The Permanent", or not at all." (Letter to Sir G. Beaumont, "Coleorton Memorials", ii, 162.) "Woe is me! that at 46 I am under the necessity of appearing as a lecturer, and obliged to regard every hour given to "The Permanent", whether as poet or philosopher, an hour stolen from others as well as from my own maintenance." (Letter to Mudford, Brandl's "Life of Coleridge", p. 359.)

* * * * *

The conventional view of Coleridge that opium killed the poet in him does not commend itself to the scientific consciousness. Opium has the tendency to stimulate rather than to deaden the poetic imagination, as the history of De Quincey can testify; and one of Coleridge's most imaginative pieces, "Kubla Khan", is said to have been occasioned by an overdose of the drug.

The poet in Coleridge was extinguished by a very different thing than opium. Coleridge's poetic faculty was suspended by the loss of hope and also by the growth of his intellect, by the development of his reasoning and philosophic powers, and by the multiplication of the interests which appealed to him, and the many problems which presented themselves for his solution. He was, constitutionally, the most comprehensive mind of a new age, and just because he was its greatest thinker he was perplexed and attracted by the majority of the problems which arose around him, and which he himself helped to raise. Poetry, the poetry of the Romantic Movement, in which he far excelled all his contemporaries, was no longer capable of grappling with the philosophic, theological, political and social questions now on the horizon or which Coleridge felt would soon, by the development of international affinities, be on the horizon of the English mind. Hence Coleridge's thirst for the new lore of the German philosophy, which seemed to him to supply a want in the Intellectualism of his native country.

In spite of this, Coleridge knew that in being deserted by the poetic spirit, he was leaving a high artistic realm for one of lesser glory; and hence his letter to Godwin of 25th March 1801, and, later on, his dirge over himself in "Dejection".

Coleridge, in choosing to follow Wordsworth to the Lake District in preference to remaining at Nether Stowey with Poole, had experienced some contrition, for Poole, after all, was a more profound appreciator of his many-sidedness and the Cervantean vein of his character than Wordsworth, who appreciated Coleridge only from that side of him which resembled himself.

Tom Poole regretted, like others, that Coleridge had no permanent calling, or could not fix upon an undertaking worthy of his powers. Poole looked upon Coleridge's devotion to journalism while he was engaged upon the "Morning Post" as a "turning aside of his powers from higher ends" ("T. Poole and his Friends", ii, 2), and wished him to give himself up to something more "permanently" useful to society ("T. Poole and his Friends", ii, 3). The correspondence of Coleridge and Poole from 1800 onwards, often turns upon the subject ("T. Poole and his Friends", ii, 66, 68, 122, 177, 187, 205, 226, 247); and Coleridge admitted a "distracting manifoldness" in his objects and attainments ("T. Poole and his Friends", ii, 122). "You," said Coleridge, "are nobly employed—most worthy of you. "You" are made to endear yourself to mankind as an immediate benefactor: I must throw my bread on the waters" ("T. Poole and his Friends", ii, 122).

While engaged in these argumentations with his best friend, Coleridge was striving to think out in his deep philosophic and musing mind many problems of the time; and there arose in his imagination the Idea of the Permanent. He was henceforth no longer the Poet of Romanticism, whose significance he had exhausted, but the philosopher of the Permanent, which presented itself as a splendid possibility in all departments of human knowledge and activity. In his prose works and letters we find a continual reference to what Coleridge now calls "The Permanent"—the permanent principles of Morals, Philosophy, and Religion, and of the permanent principles of criticism as applied to Poetry and the Fine Arts. Everything is now adjusted by Coleridge to this idea. Art, morals, religion, and politics are tried by its standard, to find if they are founded in the permanent principles of human nature.

It is in the light of this Idea, the ideal of Coleridge's later life, that we must judge Coleridge and weigh him. To continue to see in opium the sole or even the principal cause of his failure, is to misjudge him altogether. To compare him with others of different powers who accomplished more in one direction in the matter of literary output, with Sir Walter Scott or Byron, for instance, is misleading. It is the man of profound genius, who in his own time, is feeling on all sides into the Future, who is least likely to give forth "finished productions," as they are called, in which the subjects of which they treat are often exhausted, and please the ear of the Present. Coleridge is such a man of genius; nearly all his works are fragmentary, unfinished, suggestive rather than "complete," just because they verge upon that Transcendentalism which he was the first to make audible to English ears in his day. Ill health, and opium in conjunction with ill health, contributed no doubt to enfeeble his utterance; but to assert that opium was the cause or the main cause of Coleridge's inability to do what he wanted himself to do, or what his friends and contemporaries expected him to do, is a gross perversion of the facts of the case. Coleridge's inability arose from his multiplicity of motive, his visionary faculty of seeing in the light of a new principle a host of problems rise up on all sides, all claiming recognition and solution. "That is the disease of my mind—it is comprehensive in its conceptions, and wastes itself in the contemplations of the many things which it might do." (Letter to Poole, 4th January 1799, "Letters", p. 270). A greater than Coleridge had felt this tendency before him, and created as its embodiment "Hamlet"; and Coleridge has been called the Hamlet of literature.

CHAPTER X

ILL HEALTH; SOUTHEY COMES TO KESWICK

On 13th April 1801 Coleridge wrote to Southey the following letter, and Southey replied in cordial terms, from which it will be gathered a reconciliation had been made since the Lloyd and Lamb quarrel. [1]

[Footnote 1: See "Letters", vol. i, 304.]

LETTER 106. TO ROBERT SOUTHEY, ESQ.

Greta Hall, Keswick; April 13. 1801.

My dear Southey,

I received your kind letter on the evening before last, and I trust that this will arrive at Bristol just in time to rejoice with them that rejoice. Alas! you will have found the dear old place sadly "minus"ed by the removal of Davy. It is one of the evils of long silence, that when one recommences the correspondence, one has so much to say that one can say nothing. I have enough, with what I have seen, and with what I have done, and with what I have suffered, and with what I have heard, exclusive of all that I hope and all that I intend—I have enough to pass away a great deal of time with, were you on a desert isle, and I your "Friday". But at present I purpose to speak only of myself relatively to Keswick and to you.

Our house stands on a low hill, the whole front of which is one field and an enormous garden, nine-tenths of which is a nursery garden. Behind the house is an orchard, and a small wood on a steep slope, at the foot of which flows the river Greta, which winds round and catches the evening lights in the front of the house. In front we have a giant's camp—an encamped army of tent-like mountains, which by an inverted arch gives a view of another vale. On our right the lovely vale and the wedge-shaped lake of Bassenthwaite; and on our left Derwentwater and Lodore full in view, and the fantastic mountains of Borrodale. Behind us the massy Skiddaw, smooth, green, high, with two chasms and a tentlike ridge in the larger. A fairer scene you have not seen in all your wanderings. Without going from our own grounds we have all that can please a human being. As to books, my landlord, who dwells next door,[1] has a very respectable library, which he has put with mine; histories, encyclopaedias, and all the modern gentry. But then I can have, when I choose, free access to the princely library of Sir Guilfred Lawson, which contains the noblest collection of travels and natural history of, perhaps, any private library in England; besides this, there is the Cathedral library of Carlisle, from whence I can have any books sent to me that I wish; in short, I may truly say that I command all the libraries in the county. …

Our neighbour is a truly good and affectionate man, a father to my children, and a friend to me. He was offered fifty guineas for the house in which we are to live, but he preferred me for a tenant at twenty-five; and yet the whole of his income does not exceed, I believe, £200 a year. A more truly disinterested man I never met with; severely frugal, yet almost carelessly generous; and yet he got all his money as a common carrier[2], by hard labour, and by pennies. He is one instance among many in this country of the salutary effect of the love of knowledge—he was from a boy a lover of learning. The house is full twice as large as we want; it hath more rooms in it than Allfoxden; you might have a bed-room, parlour, study, etc., etc., and there would always be rooms to spare for your or my visitors. In short, for situation and convenience,—and when I mention the name of Wordsworth, for society of men of intellect,—I know no place in which you and Edith would find yourselves so well suited.

S. T. C.

[Footnote 1: Greta Hall was at this time divided into two houses, which were afterwards thrown together.]

[Footnote 2: This person, whose name was Jackson, was the "master" in Wordsworth's poem of 'The Waggoner', the circumstances of which are accurately correct.]

The remainder of this letter, as well as another of later date, was filled with a most gloomy account of his own health, to which Southey refers in the commencement of his reply.

SOUTHEY TO COLERIDGE

Bristol, July 11, 1801.

Yesterday I arrived, and found your letters; they did depress me, but I have since reasoned or dreamt myself into more cheerful anticipations. I have persuaded myself that your complaint is gouty; that good living is necessary, and a good climate. I also move to the south; at least so it appears: and if my present prospects ripen, we may yet live under one roof. …

You may have seen a translation of "Persius", by Drummond, an M.P. This man is going ambassador, first to Palermo and then to Constantinople: if a married man can go as his secretary, it is probable that I shall accompany him. I daily expect to know. It is a scheme of Wynn's to settle me in the south, and I am returned to look about me. My salary will be small—a very trifle; but after a few years I look on to something better, and have fixed my mind on a consulship. Now, if we go, you must join us as soon as we are housed, and it will be marvellous if we regret England. I shall have so little to do, that my time may be considered as wholly my own: our joint amusements will easily supply us with all expenses. So no more of the Azores; for we will see the Great Turk, and visit Greece, and walk up the Pyramids, and ride camels in Arabia. I have dreamt of nothing else these five weeks. As yet every thing is so uncertain, for I have received no letter since we landed, that nothing can be said of our intermediate movements. If we are not embarked too soon, we will set off as early as possible for Cumberland, unless you should think, as we do, that Mahomet had better come to the mountain; that change of all externals may benefit you; and that bad as Bristol weather is, it is yet infinitely preferable to northern cold and damp. Meet we must, and will.

You know your old Poems are a third time in the press; why not set forth a second volume? * * * Your "Christabel", your "Three Graces",[1] which I remember as the very consummation of poetry. I must spur you to something, to the assertion of your supremacy; if you have not enough to muster, I will aid you in any way—manufacture skeletons that you may clothe with flesh, blood, and beauty; write my best, or what shall be bad enough to be popular;—we will even make plays "a-la-mode" Robespierre. * * * Drop all task-work, it is ever unprofitable; the same time, and one twentieth part of the labour, would produce treble emolument. For "Thalaba" I received £115; it was just twelve months' "intermitting" work, and the after-editions are my own. …

I feel here as a stranger; somewhat of Leonard's feeling. God bless Wordsworth for that poem![2] What tie have I to England? My London friends? There, indeed, I have friends. But if you and yours were with me, eating dates in a garden at Constantinople, you might assert that we were in the best of all possible places; and I should answer, Amen: and if our wives rebelled, we would send for the chief of the black eunuchs, and sell them to the Seraglio. Then should Moses [3] learn Arabic, and we would know whether there was anything in the language or not. We would drink Cyprus wine and Mocha coffee, and smoke more tranquilly than ever we did in the Ship in Small Street.

Time and absence make strange work with our affections; but mine are ever returning to rest upon you. I have other and dear friends, but none with whom the whole of my being is intimate—with whom every thought and feeling can amalgamate. Oh! I have yet such dreams! Is it quite clear that you and I were not meant for some better star, and dropped, by mistake, into this world of pounds, shillings, and pence? …

God bless you!

ROBERT SOUTHEY.

[Footnote 1: "The Three Graves".]

[Footnote 2: "The Brothers" is the title of this poem.]

[Footnote 3: Hartley Coleridge.]

SOUTHEY TO COLERIDGE

July 25.

In about ten days we shall be ready to set forward for Keswick; where, if it were not for the rains, and the fogs, and the frosts, I should, probably, be content to winter; but the climate deters me. It is uncertain when I may be sent abroad, or where, except that the south of Europe is my choice. The appointment hardly doubtful, and the probable destination Palermo or Naples. We will talk of the future, and dream of it, on the lake side. * * * I may calculate upon the next six months at my own disposal; so we will climb Skiddaw this year, and scale Etna the next; and Sicilian air will keep us alive till Davy has found out the immortalising elixir, or till we are very well satisfied to do without it, and be immortalised after the manner of our fathers. My pocket-book contains more plans than will ever be filled up; but whatever becomes of those plans, this, at least, is feasible. * * * Poor H——, he has literally killed himself by the law: which, I believe, kills more than any disease that takes its place in the bills of mortality. Blackstone is a needful book, and my Coke is a borrowed one; but I have one law book whereof to make an auto-da-fe; and burnt he shall be: but whether to perform that ceremony, with fitting libations, at home, or fling him down the crater of Etna directly to the Devil, is worth considering at leisure.

I must work at Keswick; the more willingly, because with the hope, hereafter, the necessity will cease. My Portuguese materials must lie dead, and this embarrasses me. It is impossible to publish any thing about that country now, because I must one day return there,—to their libraries and archives; otherwise I have excellent stuff for a little volume; and could soon set forth a first vol. of my History, either civil or literary. In these labours I have incurred a heavy and serious expense. I shall write to Hamilton, and review again, if he chooses to employ me. * * * It was Cottle who told me that your Poems were reprint"ing" in a "third" edition: this cannot allude to the "Lyrical Ballads", because of the number and the participle present. * * * I am bitterly angry to see one new poem [1] smuggled into the world in the "Lyrical Ballads", where the 750 purchasers of the first can never get at it. At Falmouth I bought Thomas Dermody's "Poems", for old acquaintance sake; alas! the boy wrote better than the man! * * * Pye's "Alfred" (to distinguish him from Alfred the pious [2]) I have not yet inspected; nor the wilful murder of Bonaparte, by Anna Matilda; nor the high treason committed by Sir James Bland Burgess, Baronet, against our lion-hearted Richard. Davy is fallen stark mad with a play, called the "Conspiracy of Gowrie", which is by Rough; an imitation of "Gebir", with some poetry; but miserably and hopelessly deficient in all else: every character reasoning, and metaphorising, and metaphysicking the reader most nauseously. By the by, there is a great analogy between hock, laver, pork pie, and the "Lyrical Ballads",—all have a "flavour", not beloved by those who require a taste, and utterly unpleasant to dram-drinkers, whose diseased palates can only feel pepper and brandy. I know not whether Wordsworth will forgive the stimulant tale of "Thalaba",—'tis a turtle soup, highly seasoned, but with a flavour of its own predominant. His are sparagrass (it ought to be spelt so) and artichokes, good with plain butter, and wholesome.

I look on "Madoc" with hopeful displeasure; probably it must be corrected, and published now; this coming into the world at seven months is a bad way; with a Doctor Slop of a printer's devil standing ready for the forced birth, and frightening one into an abortion. * * * Is there an emigrant at Keswick, who may make me talk and write French? And I must sit at my almost forgotten Italian, and read German with you; and we must read Tasso together.

God bless you!

Yours,

R. S.

[Footnote 1: Coleridge's poem of "Love".]

[Footnote 2: This alludes to Mr. Cottle's "Alfred".]

The next two letters to Davy indicate that Coleridge's health was now of the worst, and that he was thinking seriously of emigrating for some time.