[During the Spring of 1808, Coleridge, while delivering his lectures, had some correspondence with Matilda Betham between March and July. Matilda Betham was a portrait painter, and Coleridge had consented to sit for her. The letters to Matilda Betham are probably dated thus: I, (March) 1808; II, 4th April 1808; III, (April 1808); IV, 7th May 1808; V, (—— 1808). Fraser’s Magazine, 1878.

After paying a visit to the Clarkson’s, at Bury St. Edmunds, Coleridge went back to Grasmere and lived with the Wordsworths, now at Allan Bank. Coleridge felt that lecturing was not a permanent form of employment, and now projected a journal to disseminate what he called the Permanent Principles of Politics, Morality, and Religion. In a letter written about this time to his old friend Josiah Wade, he repudiates the accusation that he had lived to little purpose.

Letter 139. To Wade

My best and dearest friend,

I have barely time to scribble a few lines, so as not to miss the post, for here as every where, there are charitable people, who, taking for granted that you have no business of your own, would save from the pain of vacancy, by employing you in theirs.

As to the letter you propose to write to a man who is unworthy even of a rebuke from you, I might most unfeignedly object to some parts of it, from a pang of conscience forbidding me to allow, even from a dear friend, words of admiration, which are inapplicable in exact proportion to the power given to me of having deserved them, if I had done my duty.

It is not of comparative utility I speak: for as to what has been actually done, and in relation to useful effects produced, whether on the minds of individuals, or of the public, I dare boldly stand forward, and (let every man have his own, and that be counted mine which, but for, and through me, would not have existed) will challenge the proudest of my literary contemporaries to compare proofs with me, of usefulness in the excitement of reflection, and the diffusion of original or forgotten, yet necessary and important truths and knowledge; and this is not the less true, because I have suffered others to reap all the advantages. But, O dear friend, this consciousness, raised by insult of enemies, and alienated friends, stands me in little stead to my own soul, in how little then, before the all-righteous Judge! who, requiring back the talents he had entrusted, will, if the mercies of Christ do not intervene, not demand of me what I have done, but why I did not do more; why, with powers above so many, I had sunk in many things below most! But this is too painful, and in remorse we often waste the energy which should be better employed in reformation—that essential part, and only possible proof, of sincere repentance. * * *

May God bless you, and your affectionate friend,

To Davy Coleridge writes a little later.

Letter 140. To Davy

Grasmere, Kendal, Wednesday, December, 1808.

My dear Davy,

* * * My health and spirits are improved beyond my boldest hopes. A very painful effort of moral courage has been remunerated by tranquillity—by ease from the sting of self-disapprobation. I have done more for the last ten weeks than I had done for three years before. Among other things, I wrote what the few persons who saw it thought a spirited and close reasoned letter to Mr. Jeffery, respecting the introductory paragraph of the Edinburgh[16] review of your paper; but I was earnestly dissuaded from sending it, as from an act of undeserved respect—as from too great a condescension even on my part; and secondly (and which was of more weight with me), as an act involving you more or less, whatever I might say, and likely to be attributed to your instigation, direct or indirect, as it is not unknown that I have been on terms of intimacy with you. Yet I own I should be sorry to have it lost, as I think it is the most eloquent and manly composition I ever produced. If you think it worth the postage, it shall be transcribed, and I will send you the original. The passage in question was the grossest and most disgusting kick-up of envy that has deformed even the E. R. Had the author had the truth before his eyes, and purposely written in diametrical opposition, he could not have succeeded better. It is high time that the spear of Ithuriel should touch the toad at the ear of the public.

I would willingly inform you of my chance of success in obtaining a sufficient number of subscribers, so as to justify me prudentially in commencing the work (The Friend), but I do not at present possess grounds even for a sane conjecture. It will depend in a great measure on the zeal of my friends, on which I confess, not without remorse, I have more often cast water than oil. Here a conceit about the Greek fire might come in, but the simile is somewhat tritical.

Wordsworth has nearly finished a series of masterly essays on our late and present relations to Portugal and Spain. Southey is sending to the press his History of Brazil, and at the same time (the indefatigable!) composing a defence of religious missions to the East, etc. Excepting the introduction (which, however, I have heard highly praised, but myself think it shallow, flippant, and ipse dixitish), I have read few books with such deep interest as the Chronicle of the Cid. The whole scene in the Cortes is superior to any equal part of any epic poem, save the Paradise Lost—me saltem judice. The deep glowing, yet ever self-controlled passion of the Cid—his austere dignity, so finely harmonizing with his pride of loyal humility—the address to his swords, and the burst of contemptuous rage in his final charge and address to the Infantes of Carrion, and his immediate recall of his mind—are beyond all ordinary praises. It delights me to be able to speak thus of a work of Southey’s! I am so often forced to quarrel with his want of judgment and his unthinkingness—which, Heaven knows, I never do without pain, and the vexation of a disappointed wish. But I am encroaching on time more valuable than my own, and I, too, have enough to do. May God grant you health and the continuance of your intellectual vigour!

Letter 141. To Davy

Grasmere, Kendal, December 14 (1808).

Dear Davy,

The above written copies[17] will explain this second application to you. I understood from Mr. Bernard (afterwards Sir Thomas), as well as from yourself, that Mr. Savage had agreed to print and publish the work on the sole condition that he was to have five per cent. for the publisher, and to charge the printing, etc., at the price charged to the booksellers, or the trade (as they very ingenuously and truly style their art and mystery). To spare me the necessity of troubling Mr. Bernard with a fresh letter, I entreat you to transmit this to him as soon as possible. There is but one part of Mr. Savage’s letter that I can permit myself to comment upon, that of the propriety of pricing the essay at sixpence, and consequently of not having it stamped, nor finely printed, nor on fine paper. For him, and for a work conducted as he would have it conducted, i.e., one, the object of which is to attract as many purchasers as possible, this might answer. My purposes are widely different. I do not write in this work for the multitude, but for those who, by rank or fortune, or official situation, or talents and habits of reflection, are to influence the multitude. I write to found true principles, to oppose false principles in criticism, legislation, philosophy, morals, and international law. As giving me an opportunity of explaining myself, I say Cobbett sells his weekly sheet for tenpence. Now this differs from mine in two points, mainly: First, he applies himself to the passions that are gratified by curiosity, and sharp, often calumnious, personality; by the events and political topics of the day, and the names of notorious contemporaries. Now, from all these I abstain altogether—nay, to strangle this vicious temper of mind, by directing the interest to the nobler germs in human nature, is my express and paramount object. But of English readers three-fourths are led to purchase periodical works in the expectation of gratifying these passions—even periodical works professedly literary, of which the keen interest excited by the Edinburgh Review, and its wide circulation, yield a proof as striking as it is dishonourable to the moral taste of the present public—all these readers I give up all claim to. Secondly, Cobbett himself rarely writes more than a third of the weekly journal; the remainder of the sheet is either mere reprinting or stupid make-weights from correspondents (with few exceptions) of the very lowest order. And what are his own compositions? The undigested passionate monologues of a man of robust natural understanding, but one unenriched by various knowledge, undisciplined by a comprehensive philosophy; under the warping influence of rooted habits of opposing and attacking, and from this state of mind fruitful in thoughts which a purer taste would have rejected so long, that they would cease to occur, and promiscuous in the adoption of whatever such a state of mind suggests to him of these thoughts furnished by the occurrences of the day. Indeed, more often than otherwise his letters, etc., are mere comments on large extracts from the morning papers, such as a passionate man would talk at breakfast over a newspaper supporting the political party which he hated. No one thesis is proposed—there is no orderly origination, development, and conclusion; in short, none of those qualities which constitute the nicety and effort of composition. But I (and if I do not, my work will be dropped and abandoned)—I bring the results of a life of intense study and unremitted meditation, of toil and personal travels, and great unrepaid expense. Those to whom these reasons would not justify me in selling the work (stamped as Cobbett’s) for that part of twopence more which remains when the additional cost of finer paper and printing is deducted, I neither expect nor wish to have among my subscribers. It is scarcely necessary to remark, that in pointing out these differences I had no intention of depreciating the political journal (the style and contents of the work are perfectly well suited to the purpose of the writer). The labourer’s pocket knife was one excellently adapted to the cutting of bread and cheese, but it would be unfair to demand that the medical cutler A. should sell his case of lancets at the same price that the common cutler B. sells an equal weight of the bread-and-cheese knives, supposing them both equally good of their kind. This letter from Mr. Savage, added to his long delay in answering me at all, has a good deal perplexed my proceedings, but it shall not make me abandon my intention.

If anything new have occurred in chemistry from your own labours, or those of others, it would be deeply gratifying to me to be informed of it by you; for hitherto I have not been able to afford to take in any philosophical journal, or, indeed, any other. I was told by a friend that William Allen had proved that oxygen was absorbed in the lungs, but that its action consisted in carrying off the carbon from the blood—consequently that the old hypothesis of refrigeration was not altogether false. But my communicant was no chemist, and his account was so confused, that I am not sure that I have given an accurate statement of it.

My health and spirits are far better than I had dared hope, only from neglect of exercise I remain more corpulent than I ought, though I drink nothing but table-beer, and eat very moderately. When I was in London I was shocked at the alteration in our friend Tobin’s looks and appearance. Those who always interpret two coincidents into cause and effect would surmise that marriage has been less conducive to his health than to his moral comfort. It would give me serious pleasure to have a more cheerful account of him.

As soon as I have a little leisure I shall send my Greek accidence and vocabulary of terminations to the press with my Greek-English Lexicon, which will be followed by a Greek philosophical grammar. Heaven preserve and keep you!

Letter from Davy to Coleridge

December 27, 1808.

Alas! poor Beddoes is dead! He died on Christmas eve. He wrote to me two letters, on two successive days, 22nd and 23rd. From the first, which was full of affection and new feeling, I anticipated his state. He is gone at the moment when his mind was purified and exalted for noble affections and great works.

My heart is heavy. I would talk to you of your own plans, which I shall endeavour in every way to promote; I would talk to you of my own labours, which have been incessant since I saw you, and not without result; but I am interrupted by very melancholy feelings, which, when you see this, I know you will partake of.

Letter 142. To Davy

Grasmere, Kendal, Monday morning, January 30, 1809.

My dear Davy,

I was deeply affected by the passage in your letter respecting Dr. Beddoes. It was indeed the echo of my own experience. The intelligence of his departure from among us, came upon me abruptly and unexpectedly. I was sitting down to dinner, having quitted an unfinished sheet, which I had been writing, in answer to a long and affectionate letter from the Doctor. There was indeed a depth and flow of feeling in it, which filled me with bodings, but I had no thought that the event was so near at hand. The note, therefore, sent from one of his patients, who had placed himself at Clifton by mine and Wordsworth’s advice, (written) the day after his decease, struck me like a bodily blow, and was followed by a long and convulsive weeping, with scarce any inward suffering: but when some half hour after I recovered myself, and my tears flowed slowly, and with grief more worthy of the cause, I felt that more hope had been taken out of my life by this than by any former event. For Beddoes was good and beneficent to all men; but to me he had always been kind and affectionate, and latterly I had become attached to him by a personal tenderness. The death of Mr. Thomas Wedgwood pulled hard at my heart; I am sure no week of my life—almost I might have said scarce a day, in which I have not been made either sad or thoughtful by the recollection. But Dr. Beddoes’s death has pulled yet harder, probably because it came second—likewise, too, perhaps that I had been in the habit of connecting such oppression of despondency with my love of him. There are two things which I exceedingly wished, and in both have been disappointed: to have written the Life and prepared the Psychological Remains of my revered friend and benefactor, T. W.: and to have been entrusted with the Biography, etc., of Dr. B. This latter work (Southey informs me) was first offered to you, and then to Mr. Giddy, and is finally devolved on Dr. Stock. As my heart bears me full witness with what unalloyed satisfaction I should have seen this last duty in your hands or in D. Giddy’s, so I feel myself permitted to avow the pain, yea, the sense of shame, with which I contemplate Dr. Stock as the performant. I could not help assenting to Southey’s remark, that the proper vignette for the work would be a funeral lamp beside an urn, and Dr. Stock in the act of placing an extinguisher on it. * * *

I have just read a brief account of your first lecture of this season, and, though I did not see as clearly as I could wish, the pertinence of the religious declaration quoted from you, and am not quite at ease (especially when I think of Darwin), when I find theosophy mingled with science, and though I wished to have been with you to have expressed my doubts concerning the accuracy of your comparison between the great discoverers of science and the Miltons, Spinozas, and Rafaels; yet the intervening history (it is only that I am writing to you that I stopped and hesitate in using the word) overwhelmed me, and I dare avow, furnished to my understanding and conscience proofs more convincing than the dim analogies of natural organization to human mechanism, both of the Supreme Reason, as super-essential to the world of the senses; of an analogous mind in man not resulting from its perishable machine, nor even from the general spirit of life, its inclosed steam or perfluent water-force; and of the moral connection between the finite and the infinite Reason, and the awful majesty of the former, as both the revelation and the exponent voice of the latter, immortal timepiece, an eternal sun. Shame be with me in my death-hour if ever I withhold or fear to pay my first debt of due honour to the truly great man, because it has been my good lot to be his contemporary, or my happiness to have known, esteemed, and loved, as well as admired him.

It is impossible to pass otherwise than abruptly to my own affairs. I had from the very first informed Mr. Savage[19] that I would not undertake the work at all, except I could secure him from all possible risk. His proposals were such, that had I acceded to them, after years of toil, I should have been his debtor and slave, without having received a farthing—or, to use the strong, coarse illustration of a friend, a man of consummate good sense and knowledge of the world, and of twenty years’ experience in periodical works—“Savage’s proposals would have led you into a gulph of debt or obligation: you would have been like a girl who gets into a house of ill-fame, and whom the old bawd always keeps in debt, stripping her of every shilling she gets for prostitution.” What my error was, after my first conversation with Mr. S. I know, but shall not say: but his mistake has been in construing my indifference as to pecuniary matters, and apparent ignorance of business, into absolute silliness and passive idiocy. But this is passed. As soon as I received his letter I made up my mind to another mode of publication. The Friend will be printed as a newspaper, i.e. not in form or matter, but under the act of parliament, and with its privilege, printed at Kendal, and sent to each subscriber by the post.

My health is more regular; yet, spite of severe attention to my diet, etc., my sufferings are at times heavy. Please to make my best respects to Mr. Bernard.

The Prospectus of The Friend and the following correspondence with Southey explain Coleridge’s views of what he conceived as the requirements of a periodical devoted to the highest interests of Truth and Humanity.

Letter 143. To ——

1 June, 1809.

It is not unknown to you, that I have employed almost the whole of my Life in acquiring, or endeavouring to acquire, useful Knowledge by Study, Reflection, Observation, and by cultivating the Society of my Superiors in Intellect, both at Home and in foreign Countries. You know too, that at different Periods of my Life I have not only planned, but collected the materials for, many Works on various and important Subjects: so many indeed, that the Number of my unrealized Schemes, and the Mass of my miscellaneous Fragments, have often furnished my Friends with a Subject of Raillery, and sometimes of Regret and Reproof. Waiving the Mention of all private and accidental Hindrances, I am inclined to believe, that this Want of Perseverance has been produced in the Main by an Over-activity of Thought, modified by a constitutional Indolence, which made it more pleasant to me to continue acquiring, than to reduce what I had acquired to a regular Form. Add too, that almost daily throwing off my Notices or Reflections in desultory Fragments, I was still tempted onward by an increasing Sense of the Imperfection of my Knowledge, and by the Conviction, that, in Order fully to comprehend and develope any one Subject, it was necessary that I should make myself Master of some other, which again as regularly involved a third, and so on, with an ever-widening Horizon. Yet one Habit, formed during long Absences from those with whom I could converse with full Sympathy, has been of Advantage to me—that of daily noting down, in my Memorandum or Common-place Books, both Incidents and Observations; whatever had occurred to me from without, and all the Flux and Reflux of my Mind within itself. The Number of these Notices, and their Tendency, miscellaneous as they were, to one common End (“quid sumus et quid futuri gignimur,” what we are and what we are born to become; and thus from the End of our Being to deduce its proper Objects) first encouraged me to undertake the Weekly Essay, of which you will consider this Letter as the Prospectus.

Not only did the plan seem to accord better than any other with the Nature of my own Mind, both in its Strength and in its Weakness; but conscious that, in upholding some Principles both of Taste and Philosophy, adopted by the great Men of Europe from the Middle of the fifteenth till toward the Close of the seventeenth Century, I must run Counter to many Prejudices of many of my readers (for old Faith is often modern Heresy) I perceived too in a periodical Essay the most likely Means of winning, instead of forcing my Way. Supposing Truth on my Side, the Shock of the first Day might be so far lessened by Reflections of the succeeding Days, so as to procure for my next Week’s Essay a less hostile Reception, than it would have met with, had it been only the next Chapter of a present Volume. I hoped to disarm the Mind of those Feelings, which preclude Conviction by Contempt, and, as it were, fling the Door in the Face of Reasoning by a Presumption of its Absurdity. A Motive too for honourable Ambition was supplied by the Fact, that every periodical Paper of the Kind now attempted, which had been conducted with Zeal and Ability, was not only well received at the Time, but has become permanently, and in the best Sense of the Word, popular. By honourable Ambition I mean the strong Desire to be useful, aided by the Wish to be generally acknowledged to have been so. As I feel myself actuated in no ordinary Degree by this Desire, so the Hope of realizing it appears less and less presumptuous to me, since I have received from Men of highest Rank and established Character in the Republic of Letters, not only strong Encouragements as to my own fitness for the Undertaking, but likewise Promises of Support from their own Stores.

The Object of The Friend, briefly and generally expressed, is—to uphold those Truths and those Merits, which are founded in the nobler and permanent Parts of our Nature, against the Caprices of Fashion, and such Pleasures, as either depend on transitory and accidental Causes, or are pursued from less worthy Impulses. The chief Subjects of my own Essays will be:

Letter 144. To Southey

October 20, 1809.

My dear Southey,

* * * * * * *

What really makes me despond is the daily confirmation I receive of my original apprehension, that the plan and execution of The Friend is so utterly unsuitable to the public taste as to preclude all rational hopes of its success. Much, certainly, might have been done to have made the former numbers less so by the interposition of others written more expressly for general interest; and, if I could attribute it wholly to any removable error of my own, I should be less dejected. I will do my best, will frequently interpose tales and whole numbers of amusement, will make the periods lighter and shorter; and the work itself, proceeding according to its plan, will become more interesting when the foundations have been laid. Massiveness is the merit of a foundation; the gilding, ornaments, stucco-work, conveniences, sunshine, and sunny prospects will come with the superstructure. Yet still I feel the deepest conviction that no efforts of mine, compatible with the hope of effecting any good purpose, or with the duty I owe to my permanent reputation, will remove the complaint. No real information can be conveyed, no important errors radically extracted, without demanding an effort of thought on the part of the reader; but the obstinate, and now contemptuous, aversion to all energy of thinking is the mother evil, the cause of all the evils in politics, morals, and literature, which it is my object to wage war against; so that I am like a physician who, for a patient paralytic in both arms, prescribes, as the only possible cure, the use of the dumb-bells.[22] Whatever I publish, and in whatever form, this obstacle will be felt. The Rambler, which, altogether, has sold a hundred copies for one of the Connoisseur, yet, during its periodical appearance, did not sell one for fifty, and was dropped by reader after reader for its dreary gravity and massiveness of manner. Now what I wish you to do for me—if, amid your many labours, you can find or make a leisure hour—is, to look over the eight numbers, and to write a letter to The Friend in a lively style, chiefly urging, in a humorous manner, my Don Quixotism in expecting that the public will ever pretend to understand my lucubrations, or feel any interest in subjects of such sad and unkempt antiquity, and contrasting my style with the cementless periods of the modern Anglo-Gallican style, which not only are understood beforehand, but, being free from all connections of logic, all the hooks and eyes of intellectual memory, never oppress the mind by any after recollections, but, like civil visitors, stay a few moments, and leave the room quite free and open for the next comers. Something of this kind, I mean, that I may be able to answer it so as, in the answer, to state my own convictions at full on the nature of obscurity, etc. * * *

Southey’s Answer

To The Friend

[Without date.]

Sir,

I know not whether your subscribers have expected too much from you, but it appears to me that you expect too much from your subscribers; and that, however accurately you may understand the diseases of the age, you have certainly mistaken its temper. In the first place, Sir, your essays are too long. “Brevity,” says a contemporary journalist, “is the humour of the times; a tragedy must not exceed fifteen hundred lines, a fashionable preacher must not trespass above fifteen minutes upon his congregation. We have short waistcoats and short campaigns; everything must be short—except lawsuits, speeches in Parliament, and tax-tables.” It is expressly stated, in the prospectus of a collection of extracts, called the Beauties of Sentiment, that the extracts shall always be complete sense, and not very long. Secondly, Sir, though your essays appear in so tempting a shape to a lounger, the very fiends themselves were not more deceived by the lignum vitae apples, when

than the reader is who takes up one of your papers from breakfast table, parlour-window, sofa, or ottoman, thinking to amuse himself with a few minutes’ light reading. We are informed, upon the authority of no less a man than Sir Richard Phillips, how “it has long been a subject of just complaint among the lovers of English literature, that our language has been deficient in lounging or parlour-window books;” and to remove the opprobrium from the language, Sir Richard advertises a list, mostly ending in ana, under the general title of Lounging Books or Light Reading. I am afraid, Mr. Friend, that your predecessors would never have obtained their popularity unless their essays had been of the description ????? ???? fÍ???i,—and this is a light age.

You have yourself observed that few converts were made by Burke; but the cause which you have assigned does not sufficiently explain why a man of such powerful talents and so authoritative a reputation should have produced so little an effect upon the minds of the people. Was it not because he neither was nor could be generally understood? Because, instead of endeavouring to make difficult things easy of comprehension, he made things which were easy in themselves, difficult to be comprehended by the manner in which he presented them, evolving their causes and involving their consequences, till the reader, whose mind was not habituated to metaphysical discussions, neither knew in what his arguments began nor in what they ended? You have told me that the straightest line must be the shortest; but do not you yourself sometimes nose out your way, hound-like, in pursuit of truth, turning and winding, and doubling and running when the same object might be reached in a tenth part of the time by darting straightforward like a greyhound to the mark? Burke failed of effect upon the people for this reason,—there was the difficulty of mathematics without the precision in his writings. You looked through the process without arriving at the proof. It was the fashion to read him because of his rank as a political partizan; otherwise he would not have been read. Even in the House of Commons he was admired more than he was listened to; not a sentence came from him which was not pregnant with seeds of thought, if it had fallen upon good ground; yet his speeches convinced nobody, while the mellifluous orations of Mr. Pitt persuaded his majorities of whatever he wished to persuade them; because they were easily understood, what mattered it to him that they were as easily forgotten?

The reader, Sir, must think before he can understand you; is it not a little unreasonable to require from him an effort which you have yourself described as so very painful a one? and is not this effort not merely difficult but in many cases impossible? All brains, Sir, were not made for thinking: modern philosophy has taught us that they are galvanic machines, and thinking is only an accident belonging to them. Intellect is not essential to the functions of life; in the ordinary course of society it is very commonly dispensed with; and we have lived, Mr. Friend, to witness experiments for carrying on government without it. This is surely a proof that it is a rare commodity; and yet you expect it in all your subscribers!

Give us your moral medicines in a more “elegant preparation.” The Reverend J. Gentle administers his physic in the form of tea; Dr. Solomon prefers the medium of a cordial; Mr. Ching exhibits his in gingerbread nuts; Dr. Barton in wine; but you, Mr. Friend, come with a tonic bolus, bitter in the mouth, difficult to swallow, and hard of digestion.[23]

My dear Coleridge,

All this, were it not for the Sir and the Mr. Friend, is like a real letter from me to you: I fell into the strain without intending it, and would not send it were it not to show you that I have attempted to do something. From jest I got into earnest, and, trying to pass from earnest to jest failed. It was against the grain, and would not do. I had re-read the eight last numbers, and the truth is, they left me no heart for jesting or for irony. In time they will do their work; it is the form of publication only that is unlucky, and that cannot now be remedied. But this evil is merely temporary. Give two or three amusing numbers, and you will hear of admiration from every side. Insert a few more poems,—any that you have, except Christabel, for that is of too much value. There is scarcely anything you could do which would excite so much notice as if you were now to write the character of Bonaparte, announced in former times for “to-morrow.” and to-morrow and to-morrow; and I think it would do good by counteracting that base spirit of condescension towards him, which I am afraid is gaining ground; and by showing the people what grounds they have for hope.

God bless you!

Letter 145. To R. L.[24]

26 October, 1809.

Dear Sir,

When I first undertook the present Publication for the sake and with the avowed object of referring Men in all things to Principles or fundamental Truths, I was well aware of the obstacles which the plan itself would oppose to my success. For in order to the regular attainment of this object, all the driest and least attractive Essays must appear in the first fifteen or twenty Numbers, and thus subject me to the necessity of demanding effort or soliciting patience in that part of the Work, where it was most my interest to secure the confidence of my Readers by winning their favour. Though I dared warrant for the pleasantness of the Journey on the whole; though I might promise that the road would, for the far greater part of it, be found plain and easy, that it would pass through countries of various prospect, and that at every stage there would be a change of company; it still remained a heavy disadvantage, that I had to start at the foot of a high and steep hill: and I foresaw, not without occasional feelings of despondency, that during the slow and laborious ascent it would require no common management to keep my Passengers in good humour with the Vehicle and its Driver. As far as this inconvenience could be palliated by sincerity and previous confession, I have no reason to accuse myself of neglect. In the Prospectus of The Friend, which for this cause I re-printed and annexed to the first Number, I felt it my duty to inform such as might be inclined to patronize the Publication, that I must submit to be esteemed dull by those who sought chiefly for amusement: and this I hazarded as a general confession, though in my own mind I felt a chearful confidence that it would apply almost exclusively to the earlier Numbers. I could not therefore be surprised, however much I may have been depressed, by the frequency with which you hear The Friend complained of for its abstruseness and obscurity; nor did the highly flattering expressions, with which you accompanied your communication, prevent me from feeling its truth to the whole extent.

An Author’s pen like Children’s legs, improves by exercise. That part of the blame which rests on myself, I am exerting my best faculties to remove. A man long accustomed to silent and solitary meditation, in proportion as he encreases the power of thinking in long and connected trains, is apt to lose or lessen the talent of communicating his thoughts with grace and perspicuity. Doubtless too, I have in some measure injured my style, in respect to its facility and popularity, from having almost confined my reading, of late years, to the Works of the Ancients and those of the elder Writers in the modern languages. We insensibly imitate what we habitually admire; and an aversion to the epigrammatic unconnected periods of the fashionable Anglo-gallican Taste has too often made me willing to forget, that the stately march and difficult evolutions, which characterize the eloquence of Hooker, Bacon, Milton, and Jeremy Taylor, are, notwithstanding their intrinsic excellence, still less suited to a periodical Essay. This fault I am now endeavouring to correct; though I can never so far sacrifice my judgment to the desire of being immediately popular, as to cast my sentences in the French moulds, or affect a style which an ancient critic would have deemed purposely invented for persons troubled with the asthma to read, and for those to comprehend who labour under the more pitiable asthma of a short-witted intellect. It cannot but be injurious to the human mind never to be called into effort: the habit of receiving pleasure without any exertion of thought, by the mere excitement of curiosity and sensibility, may be justly ranked among the worst effects of habitual novel reading. It is true that these short and unconnected sentences are easily and instantly understood: but it is equally true, that wanting all the cement of thought as well as of style, all the connections, and (if you will forgive so trivial a metaphor) all the hooks-and-eyes of the memory, they are easily forgotten: or rather, it is scarcely possible that they should be remembered.—Nor is it less true, that those who confine their reading to such books dwarf their own faculties, and finally reduce their Understandings to a deplorable imbecility: the fact you mention, and which I shall hereafter make use of, is a fair instance and a striking illustration. Like idle morning Visitors, the brisk and breathless Periods hurry in and hurry off in quick and profitless succession; each indeed for the moments of its stay prevents the pain of vacancy, while it indulges the love of sloth; but all together they leave the Mistress of the house (the soul I mean) flat and exhausted, incapable of attending to her own concerns, and unfitted for the conversation of more rational Guests.

I know you will not suspect me of fostering so idle a hope, as that of obtaining acquittal by recrimination; or think that I am attacking one fault, in order that its opposite may escape notice in the noise and smoke of the battery. On the contrary, I shall do my best, and even make all allowable sacrifices, to render my manner more attractive and my matter more generally interesting. All the principles of my future Work, all the fundamental doctrines, in the establishment of which I must of necessity require the attention of my Reader to become my fellow-labourer; all the primary facts essential to the intelligibility of my principles, the existence of which facts I can prove to others only as far as I can prevail on them to retire into themselves and make their own minds the objects of their stedfast attention; these will, all together, not occupy more than six or seven of my future Essays, and between each of these I shall interpose one or more Numbers devoted to the rational entertainment of my various Readers; and, partly from the desire of gratifying particular requests, and partly as a specimen of the subjects which will henceforward have a due proportion of The Friend allotted to them, I shall fill up the present Paper with a miscellany. I feel too deeply the importance of the convictions which first impelled me to the present undertaking, to leave unattempted any honourable means of recommending them to as wide a circle as possible; and though all the opinions which I shall bring forward in the course of the Work, on politics, morals, religion, literature, and the fine arts, will with all their applications, be strictly deducible from the principles established in these earlier Numbers; yet I doubt not, that being Truths and interesting Truths (and such, of course, I must be supposed to deem them) their intrinsic beauty will procure them introduction to the feelings of my Readers, even of those whose habits or avocations preclude the fatigue of close reasoning, and that each Essay of itself, by the illustrations and the auxiliary and independent arguments appropriate to it, will become sufficiently intelligible and evident.

Hitherto, my dear Sir, I have been employed in laying the Foundation of my Work. But the proper merit of a foundation is its massiveness and solidity. The conveniences and ornaments, the gilding and stucco work, the sunshine and sunny prospects, will come with the Superstructure. Yet I dare not flatter myself, that any endeavours of mine, compatible with the duty I owe to Truth and the hope of permanent utility, will render The Friend agreeable to the majority of what is called the reading Public. I never expected it. How indeed could I, when I was to borrow so little from the influence of passing Events, and absolutely excluded from my plan all appeals to personal curiosity and personal interests? Yet even this is not my greatest impediment. No real information can be conveyed, no important errors rectified, no widely injurious prejudices rooted up, without requiring some effort of thought on the part of the Reader. But the obstinate (and toward a contemporary Writer, the contemptuous) aversion to all intellectual effort is the mother evil of all which I had proposed to war against, the Queen Bee in the Hive of our errors and misfortunes, both private and national. The proof of the Fact, positively and comparatively, and the enumeration of its various causes, will, as I have already hinted form the preliminary Essay of the disquisition on the elements of our moral and intellectual faculties. To solicit the attention of those on whom these debilitating causes have acted to their full extent, would be no less absurd than to recommend exercise with the dumb bells, as the only mode of cure, to a patient paralytic in both arms. You, my dear Sir, well know, that my expectations were more modest as well as more rational. I hoped, that my Readers in general would be aware of the impracticability of suiting every Essay to every Taste in any period of the work; and that they would not attribute wholly to the Author, but in part to the necessity of his plan, the austerity and absence of the lighter graces in the first fifteen or twenty Numbers. In my cheerful moods I sometimes flattered myself, that a few even among those, who foresaw that my lucubrations would at all times require more attention than from the nature of their own employments they could afford them, might yet find a pleasure in supporting The Friend during its infancy, so as to give it a chance of attracting the notice of others, to whom its style and subjects might be better adapted. But my main anchor was the Hope, that when circumstances gradually enabled me to adopt the ordinary means of making the Publication generally known, there might be found throughout the Kingdom a sufficient number of meditative minds, who, entertaining similar convictions with myself, and gratified by the prospect of seeing them reduced to form and system, would take a warm interest in the work from the very circumstance, that it wanted those allurements of transitory interest, which render particular patronage superfluous, and for the brief season of their Blow and Fragrance attract the eye of thousands, who would pass unregarded

I hoped that a sufficient number of such Readers would gradually be obtained, as to secure for the Paper that small extent of circulation and immediate Sale, which would permit the Editor to carry it on to its conclusion, and that they might so far interest themselves in recommending it to men of kindred judgments among their acquaintances, that the alterations in my list of Subscribers should not be exclusively of a discouraging nature. Hitherto, indeed, I have only to express gratitude, and acknowledge constancy; but I do not attempt to disguise from myself that I owe this, in many instances, to a generous reluctance hastily to withdraw from an Undertaking in its first struggles, and before the Adventurer had had a fair opportunity of displaying the quality of his goods, or the foundations of his credit.

* * *—the one tantum vidi: the other I know by his works only and his public character. To profess indifference to their praises would convict me either of insensibility or insincerity. Yet (and I am sure, that you will both understand, and sympathize with, the feeling) my delight was not unalloyed by a something like pain, as if I were henceforward less free to express my admiration of them with the same warmth and affection, which I have been accustomed to do, before I had even anticipated the honour of such a communication. You will therefore not judge me too harshly, if so confirmed and cheered, I have sometimes in the warmth of composition, and while I was reviewing the materials of the more important part of my intended Essays, if I had sometimes permitted my Hopes a bolder flight; and counted on a share of favour and protection from the soberly zealous among the professionally Learned, when the Principles of The Friend shall have been brought into clear view, and Specimens have been given of the mode and the direction in which I purpose to apply and enforce them.

There are charges, the very suspicion of which is painful to an ingenuous mind in exact proportion as they are unfounded and inapplicable. I can bear with resignation a charge of enthusiasm. Even if accused of presumption, I will repay myself by deriving from the accusation an additional motive to increased watchfulness over myself, that I may remain entitled to plead, Not guilty! to it in the Court of my own conscience. But if my anxiety to obviate hasty judgments and misapprehensions is imputed to a less honourable motive than the earnest wish to exert my best faculties, as to the most beneficial purposes, so in the way most likely to effectuate them, I can give but one answer: that however great my desires of profit may be, they cannot be greater than my ignorance of the world, if I have chosen a weekly paper planned, as The Friend is, written on such subjects, and composed in such a style, as the most promising method of gratifying them.

Letter 146. To Cantab

21 Dec. 1809.

I thank the “Friend’s friend and a Cantab” for his inspiriting Letter, and assure him, that it was not without its intended effect, of giving me encouragement. That this was not needless, he would feel as well as know, if I could convey to him the anxious thoughts and gloomy anticipations, with which I write any single paragraph, that demands the least effort of attention, or requires the Reader to enter into himself and question his own mind as to the truth of that which I am pressing on his notice. But both He and my very kind Malton Correspondent, and all of similar dispositions, may rest assured, that with every imaginable endeavour to make The Friend, collectively, as entertaining as is compatible with the main Object of the Work, I shall never so far forget the duty, I owe to them and to my own heart, as not to remember that mere amusement is not that main Object. I have taken upon myself (see Letter 145) all the blame that I could acknowledge without adulation to my readers and hypocritical mock-humility. But the principal source of the obscurity imputed must be sought for in the want of interest concerning the truths themselves. (Revel. iii, 17.) My sole Hope (I dare not say expectation) is, that if I am enabled to proceed with the work through an equal number of Essays with those already published, it will gradually find for itself its appropriate Public.

Coleridge worked pretty hard at The Friend. He was ably assisted by Miss Sarah Hutchinson, who acted as amanuensis. The Friend was first issued on 1st June 1809, and ceased with the twenty-seventh number on 10th March 1810. Like The Watchman, The Friend was published by subscription and was not a financial success. In The Friend Coleridge wrote in his most diffuse style. The long intricate sentence, imitative of that of the seventeenth century divines and political writers, was his favourite medium when writing on the Permanent Principles of things, and in it he often ran into prolixity. In a letter to Poole, of 28th January 1810 (Letters, 556), Coleridge defends himself for abandoning the Frenchified style of the Spectator, and the eighteenth-century Belles-Lettrists, who, in his estimation, had contributed to the taste for “unconnected writing” and “Reading made easy.” Coleridge tried to awaken a deeper note in the English magazine, and make the periodical a vehicle for profound reflection and logically connected thought; and although Coleridge’s own age was against him in this, the latter half of the nineteenth century has reversed the verdict in his favour.

While busy with The Friend, Coleridge was again contributing to The Courier a series of letters supporting the Spaniards in their struggle against Napoleon, and endeavouring to maintain British sympathy for the inhabitants of the Peninsula. These letters are written with Coleridge’s accustomed virility when writing for The Courier, and are almost as good as his Letters to Fox of 1802. It is a curious fact that when Coleridge stepped into The Courier office, he abandoned for the time being his over-refinement of ideas and subtle disquisitive method of writing for a more popular style, as good as any leader-writer of the day. He had great versatility of talent in prose; in fact he had three styles of writing—his Philosophic style, his Journalist style, and his Letter-Writer’s style, in the last of which he abandoned himself to the most curious and humorous freaks of construction and imagery, as when he apologizes for some warmth of expression, calling it “the dexterous toss, necessary to turn an idea out of its pudding-bag, round and unbroken.”—Letters, 410.]