LETTERS OF
SAMUEL TAYLOR COLERIDGE

LETTERS

OF

SAMUEL TAYLOR COLERIDGE

EDITED BY
ERNEST HARTLEY COLERIDGE

IN TWO VOLUMES
VOL. I

LONDON
WILLIAM HEINEMANN
1895
[All rights reserved.]

The Riverside Press, Cambridge, Mass., U. S. A.
Printed by H. O. Houghton and Company.

[Pg iii]

Hitherto no attempt has been made to publish a collection of Coleridge’s Letters. A few specimens were published in his lifetime, both in his own works and in magazines, and, shortly after his death in 1834, a large number appeared in print. Allsop’s “Letters, Conversations, and Recollections of S. T. Coleridge,” which was issued in 1836, contains forty-five letters or parts of letters; Cottle in his “Early Recollections” (1837) prints, for the most part incorrectly, and in piecemeal, some sixty in all, and Gillman, in his “Life of Coleridge” (1838), contributes, among others, some letters addressed to himself, and one, of the greatest interest, to Charles Lamb. In 1847, a series of early letters to Thomas Poole appeared for the first time in the Biographical Supplement to the “Biographia Literaria,” and in 1848, when Cottle reprinted his “Early Recollections,” under the title of “Reminiscences of Coleridge and Southey,” he included sixteen letters to Thomas and Josiah Wedgwood. In Southey’s posthumous “Life of Dr. Bell,” five letters of Coleridge lie imbedded, and in “Southey’s Life and Correspondence” (1849-50), four of his letters find an appropriate place. An interesting series was published in 1858 in the “Fragmentary Remains of Sir H. Davy,” edited by his brother, Dr. Davy; and in the “Diary of H. C. Robinson,” published in 1869, a few letters from Coleridge are interspersed. In 1870, the late Mr. W. Mark W. Call printed in the “Westminster Review” eleven [Pg iv]letters from Coleridge to Dr. Brabant of Devizes, dated 1815 and 1816; and a series of early letters to Godwin, 1800-1811 (some of which had appeared in “Macmillan’s Magazine” in 1864), was included by Mr. Kegan Paul in his “William Godwin” (1876). In 1874, a correspondence between Coleridge (1816-1818) and his publishers, Gale & Curtis, was contributed to “Lippincott’s Magazine,” and in 1878, a few letters to Matilda Betham were published in “Fraser’s Magazine.” During the last six years the vast store which still remained unpublished has been drawn upon for various memoirs and biographies. The following works containing new letters are given in order of publication: Herr Brandl’s “Samuel T. Coleridge and the English Romantic School,” 1887; “Memorials of Coleorton,” edited by Professor Knight, 1887; “Thomas Poole and his Friends,” by Mrs. H. Sandford, 1888; “Life of Wordsworth,” by Professor Knight, 1889; “Memoirs of John Murray,” by Samuel Smiles, LL. D., 1891; “De Quincey Memorials,” by Alex. Japp, LL. D., 1891; “Life of Washington Allston,” 1893.

Notwithstanding these heavy draughts, more than half of the letters which have come under my notice remain unpublished. Of more than forty which Coleridge wrote to his wife, only one has been published. Of ninety letters to Southey which are extant, barely a tenth have seen the light. Of nineteen addressed to W. Sotheby, poet and patron of poets, fourteen to Lamb’s friend John Rickman, and four to Coleridge’s old college friend, Archdeacon Wrangham, none have been published. Of more than forty letters addressed to the Morgan family, which belong for the most part to the least known period of Coleridge’s life,—the years which intervened between his residence in Grasmere and his final settlement at Highgate,—only two or three, preserved in the MSS. Department of the British Museum, have been published. Of numerous letters written in later life to his friend and amanuensis, Joseph Henry Green; to Charles Augustus[Pg v] Tulk, M. P. for Sudbury; to his friends and hosts, the Gillmans; to Cary, the translator of Dante, only a few have found their way into print. Of more than forty to his brother, the Rev. George Coleridge, which were accidentally discovered in 1876, only five have been printed. Of some fourscore letters addressed to his nephews, William Hart Coleridge, John Taylor Coleridge, Henry Nelson Coleridge, Edward Coleridge, and to his son Derwent, all but two, or at most three, remain in manuscript. Of the youthful letters to the Evans family, one letter has recently appeared in the “Illustrated London News,” and of the many addressed to John Thelwall, but one was printed in the same series.

The letters to Poole, of which more than a hundred have been preserved, those addressed to his Bristol friend, Josiah Wade, and the letters to Wordsworth, which, though few in number, are of great length, have been largely used for biographical purposes, but much, of the highest interest, remains unpublished. Of smaller groups of letters, published and unpublished, I make no detailed mention, but in the latter category are two to Charles Lamb, one to John Sterling, five to George Cattermole, one to John Kenyon, and many others to more obscure correspondents. Some important letters to Lord Jeffrey, to John Murray, to De Quincey, to Hugh James Rose, and to J. H. B. Williams, have, in the last few years, been placed in my hands for transcription.

A series of letters written between the years 1796 and 1814 to the Rev. John Prior Estlin, minister of the Unitarian Chapel at Lewin’s Mead, Bristol, was printed some years ago for the Philobiblon Society, with an introduction by Mr. Henry A. Bright. One other series of letters has also been printed for private circulation. In 1889, the late Miss Stuart placed in my hands transcriptions of eighty-seven letters addressed by Coleridge to her father, Daniel Stuart, editor of “The Morning Post” and[Pg vi] “Courier,” and these, together with letters from Wordsworth and Southey, were printed in a single volume bearing the title, “Letters from the Lake Poets.” Miss Stuart contributed a short account of her father’s life, and also a reminiscence of Coleridge, headed “A Farewell.”

Coleridge’s biographers, both of the past and present generations, have met with a generous response to their appeal for letters to be placed in their hands for reference and for publication, but it is probable that many are in existence which have been withheld, sometimes no doubt intentionally, but more often from inadvertence. From his boyhood the poet was a voluminous if an irregular correspondent, and many letters which he is known to have addressed to his earliest friends—to Middleton, to Robert Allen, to Valentine and Sam Le Grice, to Charles Lloyd, to his Stowey neighbour, John Cruikshank, to Dr. Beddoes, and others—may yet be forthcoming. It is certain that he corresponded with Mrs. Clarkson, but if any letters have been preserved they have not come under my notice. It is strange, too, that among the letters of the Highgate period, which were sent to Henry Nelson Coleridge for transcription, none to John Hookham Frere, to Blanco White, or to Edward Irving appear to have been forthcoming.

The foregoing summary of published and unpublished letters, though necessarily imperfect, will enable the reader to form some idea of the mass of material from which the present selection has been made. A complete edition of Coleridge’s Letters must await the “coming of the milder day,” a renewed long-suffering on the part of his old enemy, the “literary public.” In the meanwhile, a selection from some of the more important is here offered in the belief that many, if not all, will find a place in permanent literature. The letters are arranged in chronological order, and are intended rather to[Pg vii] illustrate the story of the writer’s life than to embody his critical opinions, or to record the development of his philosophical and theological speculations. But letters of a purely literary character have not been excluded, and in selecting or rejecting a letter, the sole criterion has been, Is it interesting? is it readable?

In letter-writing perfection of style is its own recommendation, and long after the substance of a letter has lost its savour, the form retains its original or, it may be, an added charm. Or if the author be the founder of a sect or a school, his writings, in whatever form, are received by the initiated with unquestioning and insatiable delight. But Coleridge’s letters lack style. The fastidious critic who touched and retouched his exquisite lyrics, and always for the better, was at no pains to polish his letters. He writes to his friends as if he were talking to them, and he lets his periods take care of themselves. Nor is there any longer a school of reverent disciples to receive what the master gives and because he gives it. His influence as a teacher has passed into other channels, and he is no longer regarded as the oracular sage “questionable” concerning all mysteries. But as a poet, as a great literary critic, and as a “master of sentences,” he holds his own and appeals to the general ear; and though, since his death, in 1834, a second generation has all but passed away, an unwonted interest in the man himself survives and must always survive. For not only, as Wordsworth declared, was he “a wonderful man,” but the story of his life was a strange one, and as he tells it, we “cannot choose but hear.” Coleridge, often to his own detriment, “wore his heart on his sleeve,” and, now to one friend, now to another, sometimes to two or three friends on the same day, he would seek to unburthen himself of his hopes and fears, his thoughts and fancies, his bodily sufferings, and the keener pangs of the soul. It is, to quote his own words, these “profound touches of[Pg viii] the human heart” which command our interest in Coleridge’s Letters, and invest them with their peculiar charm.

At what period after death, and to what extent the private letters of a celebrated person should be given to the world, must always remain an open question both of taste and of morals. So far as Coleridge is concerned, the question was decided long age. Within a few years of his death, letters of the most private and even painful character were published without the sanction and in spite of the repeated remonstrances of his literary executor, and of all who had a right to be heard on the subject. Thenceforth, as the published writings of his immediate descendants testify, a fuller and therefore a fairer revelation was steadily contemplated. Letters collected for this purpose find a place in the present volume, but the selection has been made without reference to previous works or to any final presentation of the material at the editor’s disposal.

My acknowledgments are due to many still living, and to others who have passed away, for their generous permission to print unpublished letters, which remained in their possession or had passed into their hands.

For the continued use of the long series of letters which Poole entrusted to Coleridge’s literary executor in 1836, I have to thank Mrs. Henry Sandford and the Bishop of Gibraltar. For those addressed to the Evans family I am indebted to Mr. Alfred Morrison of Fonthill. The letters to Thelwall were placed in my hands by the late Mr. F. W. Cosens, who afforded me every facility for their transcription. For those to Wordsworth my thanks are due to the poet’s grandsons, Mr. William and Mr. Gordon Wordsworth. Those addressed to the Gillmans I owe to the great kindness of their granddaughter, Mrs. Henry Watson, who placed in my hands all the materials at her disposal. For the right to publish the letters to H. F. Cary I am indebted to my friend the Rev. Offley[Pg ix] Cary, the grandson of the translator of Dante. My acknowledgments are further due to the late Mr. John Murray for the right to republish letters which appeared in the “Memoirs of John Murray,” and two others which were not included in that work; and to Mrs. Watt, the daughter of John Hunter of Craigcrook, for letters addressed to Lord Jeffrey. From the late Lord Houghton I received permission to publish the letters to the Rev. J. P. Estlin, which were privately printed for the Philobiblon Society. I have already mentioned my obligations to the late Miss Stuart of Harley Street.

For the use of letters addressed to his father and grandfather, and for constant and unwearying advice and assistance in this work I am indebted, more than I can well express, to the late Lord Coleridge. Alas! I can only record my gratitude.

To Mr. William Rennell Coleridge of Salston, Ottery St. Mary, my especial thanks are due for the interesting collection of unpublished letters, many of them relating to the “Army Episode,” which the poet wrote to his brother, the Rev. George Coleridge.

I have also to thank Miss Edith Coleridge for the use of letters addressed to her father, Henry Nelson Coleridge; my cousin, Mrs. Thomas W. Martyn of Torquay, for Coleridge’s letter to his mother, the earliest known to exist; and Mr. Arthur Duke Coleridge for one of the latest he ever wrote, that to Mrs. Aders.

During the preparation of this work I have received valuable assistance from men of letters and others. I trust that I may be permitted to mention the names of Mr. Leslie Stephen, Professor Knight, Mrs. Henry Sandford, Dr. Garnett of the British Museum, Professor Emile Legouis of Lyons, Mrs. Henry Watson, the Librarians of the Oxford and Cambridge Club, and of the Kensington Public Library, and Mrs. George Boyce of Chertsey.

Of my friend, Mr. Dykes Campbell, I can only say that[Pg x] he has spared neither time nor trouble in my behalf. Not only during the progress of the work has he been ready to give me the benefit of his unrivalled knowledge of the correspondence and history of Coleridge and of his contemporaries, but he has largely assisted me in seeing the work through the press. For the selection of the letters, or for the composition or accuracy of the notes, he must not be held in any way responsible; but without his aid, and without his counsel, much, which I hope has been accomplished, could never have been attempted at all. Of the invaluable assistance which I have received from his published works, the numerous references to his edition of Coleridge’s “Poetical Works” (Macmillan, 1893), and his “Samuel Taylor Coleridge, A Narrative” (1894), are sufficient evidence. Of my gratitude he needs no assurance.

ERNEST HARTLEY COLERIDGE.

[Pg xi]

Born, October 21, 1772.

Death of his father, October 4, 1781.

Entered at Christ’s Hospital, July 18, 1782.

Elected a “Grecian,” 1788.

Discharged from Christ’s Hospital, September 7, 1791.

Went into residence at Jesus College, Cambridge, October, 1791.

Enlisted in King’s Regiment of Light Dragoons, December 2, 1793.

Discharged from the army, April 10, 1794.

Visit to Oxford and introduction to Southey, June, 1794.

Proposal to emigrate to America—Pantisocracy—Autumn, 1794.

Final departure from Cambridge, December, 1794.

Settled at Bristol as public lecturer, January, 1795.

Married to Sarah Fricker, October 4, 1795.

Publication of “Conciones ad Populum,” Clevedon, November 16, 1795.

Pantisocrats dissolve—Rupture with Southey—November, 1795.

Publication of first edition of Poems, April, 1796.

Issue of “The Watchman,” March 1-May 13, 1796.

Birth of Hartley Coleridge, September 19, 1796.

Settled at Nether-Stowey, December 31, 1796.

Publication of second edition of Poems, June, 1797.

Settlement of Wordsworth at Alfoxden, July 14, 1797.

The “Ancient Mariner” begun, November 13, 1797.

First part of “Christabel,” begun, 1797.

Acceptance of annuity of £150 from J. and T. Wedgwood, January, 1798.

Went to Germany, September 16, 1798.

Returned from Germany, July, 1799.

First visit to Lake Country, October-November, 1799.

Began to write for “Morning Post,” December, 1799.

Translation of Schiller’s “Wallenstein,” Spring, 1800.

Settled at Greta Hall, Keswick, July 24, 1800.

Birth of Derwent Coleridge, September 14, 1800.

Wrote second part of “Christabel,” Autumn, 1800.

Began study of German metaphysics, 1801.

Birth of Sara Coleridge, December 23, 1802.

Publication of third edition of Poems, Summer, 1803.

Set out on Scotch tour, August 14, 1803.

Settlement of Southey at Greta Hall, September, 1803.

Sailed for Malta in the Speedwell, April 9, 1804.

Arrived at Malta, May 18, 1804.

First tour in Sicily, August-November, 1804.

Left Malta for Syracuse, September 21, 1805.

[Pg xii]Residence in Rome, January-May, 1806.

Returned to England, August, 1806.

Visit to Wordsworth at Coleorton, December 21, 1806.

Met De Quincey at Bridgwater, July, 1807.

First lecture at Royal Institution, January 12, 1808.

Settled at Allan Bank, Grasmere, September, 1808.

First number of “The Friend,” June 1, 1809.

Last number of “The Friend,” March 15, 1810.

Left Greta Hall for London, October 10, 1810.

Settled at Hammersmith with the Morgans, November 3, 1810.

First lecture at London Philosophical Society, November 18, 1811.

Last visit to Greta Hall, February-March, 1812.

First lecture at Willis’s Rooms, May 12, 1812.

First lecture at Surrey Institution, November 3, 1812.

Production of “Remorse” at Drury Lane, January 23, 1813.

Left London for Bristol, October, 1813.

First course of Bristol lectures, October-November, 1813.

Second course of Bristol lectures, December 30, 1813.

Third course of Bristol lectures, April, 1814.

Residence with Josiah Wade at Bristol, Summer, 1814.

Rejoined the Morgans at Ashley, September, 1814.

Accompanied the Morgans to Calne, November, 1814.

Settles with Mr. Gillman at Highgate, April 16, 1816.

Publication of “Christabel,” June, 1816.

Publication of the “Statesman’s Manual,” December, 1816.

Publication of second “Lay Sermon,” 1817.

Publication of “Biographia Literaria” and “Sibylline Leaves,” 1817.

First acquaintance with Joseph Henry Green, 1817.

Publication of “Zapolya,” Autumn, 1817.

First lecture at “Flower-de-Luce Court,” January 27, 1818.

Publication of “Essay on Method,” January, 1818.

Revised edition of “The Friend,” Spring, 1818.

Introduction to Thomas Allsop, 1818.

First lecture on “History of Philosophy,” December 14, 1818.

First lecture on “Shakespeare” (last course), December 17, 1818.

Last public lecture, “History of Philosophy,” March 29, 1819.

Nominated “Royal Associate” of Royal Society of Literature, May, 1824.

Read paper to Royal Society on “Prometheus of Æschylus,” May 15, 1825.

Publication of “Aids to Reflection,” May-June, 1825.

Publication of “Poetical Works,” in three volumes, 1828.

Tour on the Rhine with Wordsworth, June-July, 1828.

Revised issue of “Poetical Works,” in three volumes, 1829.

Marriage of Sara Coleridge to Henry Nelson Coleridge, September 3, 1829.

Publication of “Church and State,” 1830.

Visit to Cambridge, June, 1833.

Death, July 25, 1834.

[Pg xiii]

1. The Complete Works of Samuel Taylor Coleridge. New York: Harper and Brothers, 7 vols. 1853.

2. Biographia Literaria [etc.]. By S. T. Coleridge. Second edition, prepared for publication in part by the late H. N. Coleridge: completed and published by his widow. 2 vols. 1847.

3. Essays on His Own Times. By Samuel Taylor Coleridge. Edited by his daughter. London: William Pickering. 3 vols. 1850.

4. The Table Talk and Omniana of Samuel Taylor Coleridge. Edited by T. Ashe. George Bell and Sons. 1884.

5. Letters, Conversations, and Recollections of S. T. Coleridge. [Edited by Thomas Allsop. First edition published anonymously.] Moxon. 2 vols. 1836.

6. The Life of S. T. Coleridge, by James Gillman. In 2 vols. (Vol. I. only was published.) 1838.

7. Memorials of Coleorton: being Letters from Coleridge, Wordsworth and his sister, Southey, and Sir Walter Scott, to Sir George and Lady Beaumont of Coleorton, Leicestershire, 1803-1834. Edited by William Knight, University of St. Andrews. 2 vols. Edinburgh. 1887.

8. Unpublished Letters from S. T. Coleridge to the Rev. John Prior Estlin. Communicated by Henry A. Bright (to the Philobiblon Society). n. d.

9. Letters from the Lake Poets—S. T. Coleridge, William Wordsworth, Robert Southey—to Daniel Stuart, editor of The Morning Post and The Courier. 1800-1838. Printed for private circulation. 1889. [Edited by Mr. Ernest Hartley Coleridge, in whom the copyright of the letters of S. T. Coleridge is vested.]

10. The Poetical Works of Samuel Taylor Coleridge. Edited, with a Biographical Introduction, by James Dykes Campbell. London and New York: Macmillan and Co. 1893.

11. Samuel Taylor Coleridge. A Narrative of the Events of His Life. By James Dykes Campbell. London and New York: Macmillan and Co. 1894.

12. Early Recollections: chiefly relating to the late S. T. Coleridge, during his long residence in Bristol. 2 vols. By Joseph Cottle. 1837.

13. Reminiscences of S. T. Coleridge and R. Southey. By Joseph Cottle. 1847.

14. Fragmentary Remains, literary and scientific, of Sir Humphry Davy, Bart. Edited by his brother, John Davy, M. D. 1838.

15. The Autobiography of Leigh Hunt. London. 1860.

[Pg xiv]16. Diary, Reminiscences, and Correspondence of Henry Crabb Robinson. Selected and Edited by Thomas Sadler, Ph.D. London. 1869.

17. A Group of Englishmen (1795-1815): being records of the younger Wedgwoods and their Friends. By Eliza Meteyard. 1871.

18. Memoir and Letters of Sara Coleridge [Mrs. H. N. Coleridge]. Edited by her daughter. 2 vols. 1873.

19. Samuel Taylor Coleridge and the English Romantic School. By Alois Brandl. English Edition by Lady Eastlake. London. 1887.

20. The Letters of Charles Lamb. Edited by Alfred Ainger. 2 vols. 1888.

21. Thomas Poole and his Friends. By Mrs. Henry Sandford. 2 vols. 1888.

22. The Life and Correspondence of R. Southey. Edited by his son, the Rev. Charles Cuthbert Southey. 6 vols. 1849-50.

23. Selections from the Letters of R. Southey. Edited by his son-in-law, John Wood Warter, B. D. 4 vols. 1856.

24. The Poetical Works of Robert Southey, Esq., LL.D. 9 vols. London. 1837.

25. Memoirs of William Wordsworth. By Christopher Wordsworth, D. D., Canon of Westminster [afterwards Bishop of Lincoln]. 2 vols. 1851.

26. The Life of William Wordsworth. By William Knight, LL.D. 3 vols. 1889.

27. The Complete Poetical Works of William Wordsworth. With an Introduction by John Morley. London and New York: Macmillan and Co. 1889.

[Pg xv]

Note. Where a letter has been printed previously to its appearance in this work, the name of the book or periodical containing it is added in parenthesis.

[Pg xx]

[Pg xxi]

[Pg 1]

[Pg 2]

[Pg 3]

LETTERS
OF
SAMUEL TAYLOR COLERIDGE

CHAPTER I
STUDENT LIFE
1785-1794

The five autobiographical letters addressed to Thomas Poole were written at Nether Stowey, at irregular intervals during the years 1797-98. They are included in the first chapter of the “Biographical Supplement” to the “Biographia Literaria.” The larger portion of this so-called Biographical Supplement was prepared for the press by Henry Nelson Coleridge, and consists of the opening chapters of a proposed “biographical sketch,” and a selection from the correspondence of S. T. Coleridge. His widow, Sara Coleridge, when she brought out the second edition of the “Biographia Literaria” in 1847, published this fragment and added some matter of her own. This edition has never been reprinted in England, but is included in the American edition of Coleridge’s Works, which was issued by Harper & Brothers in 1853.

The letters may be compared with an autobiographical note dated March 9, 1832, which was written at Gillman’s request, and forms part of the first chapter of his “Life of Coleridge.”[1] The text of the present issue of the autobiographical letters is taken from the original MSS., and differs in many important particulars from that of 1847.

 [Pg 4]

Monday, February, 1797.

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[2] 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 to plant there.

My family on my mother’s side can be traced up, I know not how far. The Bowdons inherited a small farm in the Exmoor country, in the reign of Elizabeth, as I have been told, and, to my own knowledge, they have inherited nothing better since that time. On my father’s side I can rise no higher than my grandfather, who was born in the Hundred of Coleridge[3] in the county of Devon,[Pg 5] christened, educated, and apprenticed to the parish. He afterwards became a respectable woollen-draper in the town of South Molton.[4] (I have mentioned these particulars, as the time may come in which it will be useful to be able to prove myself a genuine sans-culotte, my veins uncontaminated with one drop of gentility.) My father received a better education than the others of his family, in consequence of his own exertions, not of his superior advantages. When he was not quite sixteen years old, my grandfather became bankrupt, and by a series of misfortunes was reduced to extreme poverty. 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 sat 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 distresses, took my father with him, and settled him in a neighbouring town as a schoolmaster. His school increased and he got money and knowledge: for he commenced a severe and ardent student. Here, too, he married his first wife, by whom he had three daughters, all now alive. While his first wife lived, having scraped up money enough at the age of twenty[5] he[Pg 6] walked to Cambridge, entered at Sidney College, distinguished himself for Hebrew and Mathematics, and might have had a fellowship if he had not been married. He returned—his wife died. Judge Buller’s father gave him the living of Ottery St. Mary, and put the present judge to school with him. He married my mother, by whom he had ten children, of whom I am the youngest, born October 20, 1772.

These sketches I received from my mother and aunt, but I am utterly unable to fill them up by any particularity 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 them with those for the accuracy of which in the minutest parts I shall hold myself amenable to the Tribunal of Truth. You must regard this letter as the first chapter of an history which is devoted to dim traditions of times too remote to be pierced by the eye of investigation.

Yours affectionately,
S. T. Coleridge.

Sunday, March, 1797.

My dear Poole,—My father (Vicar of, and Schoolmaster at, Ottery St. Mary, Devon) was a profound mathematician, and well versed in the Latin, Greek, and Oriental 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, Sententiæ excerptæ, 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[Pg 7] nomenclature was not likely to become popular, although it must be allowed to be both sonorous and expressive. Exempli gratiâ, he calls the ablative the quippe-quare-quale-quia-quidditive case! My father 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, have been preserved free from all pollution. This piece of good luck promises to be hereditary; for all my compositions have the same amiable home-studying propensity. The truth is, my father was not a first-rate genius; he was, however, a first-rate Christian. I need not detain you with his character. In learning, good-heartedness, 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 went over to the East Indies in the Company’s service; he was a successful officer and a brave one, I have heard. He died of a consumption there about eight years ago. My second brother was called William. He went to Pembroke College, Oxford, and afterwards was assistant to Mr. Newcome’s School, at Hackney. He died of a putrid fever the year before my father’s death, and just as he was on the eve of marriage with Miss Jane Hart, the eldest daughter of a very wealthy citizen of Exeter. My third brother, James, has been in the army since the age of sixteen, has married a woman of fortune, and now lives at Ottery St. Mary, a respectable man. My brother Edward, the wit of the family, went to Pembroke College, and afterwards to Salisbury, as assistant to Dr. Skinner. He married a woman twenty years older than his mother. She is dead and he now lives at Ottery St. Mary. My fifth brother, George, was educated at Pembroke College, Oxford, and from there went to Mr. Newcome’s, Hackney, on the death of William. He stayed there fourteen years,[Pg 8] when the living of Ottery St. Mary[6] was given him. There he has now a fine school, and has lately married Miss Jane Hart, who with beauty and wealth had remained a faithful widow to the memory of William for sixteen years. My brother George is a man of reflective mind and elegant genius. 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; indeed, he is worth the whole family in a lump. My sixth brother, Luke (indeed, the seventh, for one brother, the second, died in his infancy, and I had forgot to mention him), was bred as a medical man. He married Miss Sara Hart, and died at the age of twenty-two, leaving one child, a lovely boy, still alive. My brother Luke was a man of uncommon genius, a severe student, and a good man. The eighth child was a sister, Anne.[7] She died a little after my brother Luke, aged twenty-one;

The ninth child was called Francis. He went out as a midshipman, under Admiral Graves. His ship lay on the Bengal coast, and he accidentally met his brother John, who took him to land, and procured him a commission in the Army. He died from the effects of a delirious fever brought on by his excessive exertions at the siege of Seringapatam, at which his conduct had been so gallant, that Lord Cornwallis paid him a high compliment in the presence of the army, and presented him with a[Pg 9] valuable gold watch, which my mother now has. All my brothers are remarkably handsome; but they were as inferior to Francis as I am to them. He went by the name of “the handsome Coleridge.” The tenth and last child was S. T. Coleridge, the subject of these epistles, born (as I told you in my last) October 20,[8] 1772.

From October 20, 1772, to October 20, 1773. Christened Samuel Taylor Coleridge—my godfather’s name being Samuel Taylor, Esq. I had another godfather (his name was Evans), and two godmothers, both called “Monday.”[9] From October 20, 1773, to October 20, 1774. In this year I was carelessly left by my nurse, ran to the fire, and pulled out a live coal—burnt myself dreadfully. While my hand was being dressed by a Mr. Young, I spoke for the first time (so my mother informs me) and said, “nasty Doctor 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,[Pg 10] the very image of Shenstone’s, was named Old Dame Key. She was nearly related to Sir Joshua Reynolds.

From October 20, 1774, to October 20, 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 the 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 three first years had nothing in them that seems to relate to it.

(Signature cut out.)

October 9, 1797.

My dearest Poole,—From March to October—a long silence! But [as] it is possible that I may have been preparing materials for future letters,[10] 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 breakfast I had a halfpenny given me, with which I bought three cakes at the baker’s close by the school of my old mistress; and these were my dinner on 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 having given me a penny for[Pg 11] having eat 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 that my attachment and penchant for it ought to be encouraged. My father was very fond of me, and I was my mother’s darling: in consequence 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. My father’s sister kept an everything shop at Crediton, and there I read through all the gilt-cover little books[11] that could be had at that time, and likewise all the uncovered tales of Tom Hickathrift, Jack the Giant-killer, etc., etc., etc., etc. And I[Pg 12] used to lie by the wall and mope, and my spirits used to come upon me suddenly; and in a flood of them I was accustomed to race up and down the churchyard, and act over all I had been reading, on the docks, the nettles, and the rank grass. At six years old 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 mending stockings), that I was haunted by spectres, whenever I was in the dark: and I distinctly remember the anxious and fearful eagerness with which I used to watch the window in which the books lay, and whenever the sun lay upon them, 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 burnt 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 an 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 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 from six to nine. In this year [1778] 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[Pg 13] 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 regarded 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 an’t afraid of catching it!” I suppose you know the prayer:—

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.

October 16, 1797.

Dear Poole,—From October, 1779, to October, 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[Pg 14] the mean time my brother Frank minced my cheese “to disappoint the favorite.” 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 moaning, 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 hill at the bottom of which the Otter flows, about one mile from Ottery. There I stayed; my rage died away, but my obstinacy vanquished my fears, and taking out a little shilling book which had, at the end, morning and evening prayers, I very devoutly repeated them—thinking at the same time with inward and gloomy 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[12] beyond the river. It grew dark and I fell asleep. It was towards the latter end of October, and it proved a dreadful stormy night. I felt the cold in my sleep, and dreamt that I was pulling the blanket over me, and actually pulled over me a dry thorn bush which lay on the hill. In my sleep I had rolled from the top of the hill to within three yards of the river, which flowed by the unfenced edge at the bottom. I awoke several times, and finding myself wet and stiff and cold, closed my eyes again that I might forget it.

In the mean time my mother waited about half an hour,[Pg 15] 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 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 where I was lying, having been dragged. But by good luck, Sir Stafford Northcote,[13] 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 near a quarter of a mile, when we met my father and Sir Stafford’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 in Ottery; and neither philosophy or religion have 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 the ague for many years after.

[Pg 16]My father (who had so little of parental ambition in him, that he had destined his children to be blacksmiths, etc., and had accomplished his intention but for my mother’s pride and spirit of aggrandizing her family)—my father had, however, 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 that at eight years old I walked with him one winter evening from a farmer’s house, a mile from Ottery, and he 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 shewed 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 genii, etc., etc., 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. Should children be permitted to read romances, and relations of giants and 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, that 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[Pg 17] 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 (very illogically) that anything could be seen, and uniformly put the negation 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 as midshipman under Admiral Graves, who was a friend of my father’s. My father settled my brother, and returned October 4, 1781. He arrived at Exeter about six o’clock, and was pressed to take a bed there at 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. He dreamt that Death had appeared to him as he is commonly painted, and touched him with his dart. Well, he returned home, and all his family, I excepted, were up. He told my mother his dream;[14] 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, etc. 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. My mother got him some peppermint water, 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 of my father’s return,[Pg 18] 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 the 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.

February 19, 1798.

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 mother by relating little instances of his deficiency in grammar knowledge,—every detraction from his merits seemed an oblation to the memory of my father, especially as Parson 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 by my mother’s brother, Mr. Bowdon, a tobacconist and (at the same time) clerk to an underwriter. My uncle lived at the corner of the Stock Exchange and carried on his shop by means of a confidential servant, who, I suppose, fleeced him most unmercifully. He was a widower and had one daughter who lived with a Miss Cabriere, an old maid of great sensibilities and a taste for literature. Betsy Bowdon had obtained an unlimited influence over her mind, which she still retains. Mrs. Holt (for this is her name now) was not the kindest of daughters—but, indeed, my poor uncle would have wearied the patience and affection of an Euphrasia. He received me with great affection,[Pg 19] and I stayed ten weeks at his house, during which time 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, etc., etc., etc., so that while I remained at my uncle’s I was most completely spoiled and pampered, both mind and body.

At length the time came, and I donned the blue coat[15] and yellow stockings and was sent down into 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 pudding and vegetables almost every day. I stayed there six weeks, and then was drafted up to the great school at 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 all together seven hundred boys, of whom I think nearly one third were the sons of clergymen. There are five schools,—a mathematical, a grammar, a drawing, a reading and a writing school,—all very large buildings. When a boy is admitted, if he reads very badly, he is either sent to Hertford or the reading school. (N. B. Boys are admissible from seven to twelve years old.) 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 attainments. 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 old, he is sent[Pg 20] into the Writing School, where he continues till fourteen or fifteen, and is then either apprenticed and articled as 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, 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 catechized 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.[16] Every morning, a bit of dry[Pg 21] 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; on Tuesday, roast mutton; Wednesday, bread and butter, and rice milk; Thursday, boiled beef and broth; Saturday, bread and butter, and pease-porritch. 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.

S. T. Coleridge.

February 4, 1785 [London, Christ’s Hospital].

Dear Mother,[17]—I received your letter with pleasure on the second instant, and should have had it sooner, but that we had not a holiday before last Tuesday, when my brother delivered it me. I also with gratitude received the two handkerchiefs and the half-a-crown from Mr. Badcock, to whom I would be glad if you would give my thanks. I shall be more careful of the somme, as I now consider that were it not for my kind friends I should be as destitute of many little necessaries as some of my schoolfellows are; and Thank God and my relations for them! My brother Luke saw Mr. James Sorrel, who gave my brother a half-a-crown from Mrs. Smerdon, but mentioned not a word of the plumb cake, and said he would call again. Return my most respectful thanks to Mrs. Smerdon for her kind favour. My aunt was so kind as to accommodate me with a box. I suppose my sister Anna’s beauty has many[Pg 22] admirers. My brother Luke says that Burke’s Art of Speaking would be of great use to me. If Master Sam and Harry Badcock are not gone out of (Ottery), give my kindest love to them. Give my compliments to Mr. Blake and Miss Atkinson, Mr. and Mrs. Smerdon, Mr. and Mrs. Clapp, and all other friends in the country. My uncle, aunt, and cousins join with myself and Brother in love to my sisters, and hope they are well, as I, your dutiful son,

S. Coleridge, am at present.

P. S. Give my kind love to Molly.

Undated, from Christ’s Hospital, before 1790.

Dear Brother,—You will excuse me for reminding you that, as our holidays commence next week, and I shall go out a good deal, a good pair of breeches will be no inconsiderable accession to my appearance. For though my present pair are excellent for the purposes of drawing mathematical figures on them, and though a walking thought, sonnet, or epigram would appear on them in very splendid type, yet they are not altogether so well adapted for a female eye—not to mention that I should have the charge of vanity brought against me for wearing a looking-glass. I hope you have got rid of your cold—and I am your affectionate brother,

Samuel Taylor Coleridge.

P. S. Can you let me have them time enough for re-adaptation before Whitsunday? I mean that they may be made up for me before that time.

October 16, 1791.

Dear Brother,—Here I am, videlicet, Jesus College. I had a tolerable journey, went by a night coach packed[Pg 23] up with five more, one of whom had a long, broad, red-hot face, four feet by three. I very luckily found Middleton at Pembroke College, who (after breakfast, etc.) conducted me to Jesus. Dr. Pearce is in Cornwall and not expected to return to Cambridge till the summer, and what is still more extraordinary (and, n. b., rather shameful) neither of the tutors are here. I keep (as the phrase is) in an absent member’s rooms till one of the aforesaid duetto return to appoint me my own. Neither Lectures, Chapel, or anything is begun. The College is very thin, and Middleton has not the least acquaintance with any of Jesus except a very blackguardly fellow whose physiog. I did not like. So I sit down to dinner in the Hall in silence, except the noise of suction which accompanies my eating, and rise up ditto. I then walk to Pembroke and sit with my friend Middleton. Pray let me hear from you. Le Grice will send a parcel in two or three days.

Believe me, with sincere affection and gratitude, yours ever,

S. T. Coleridge.

January 24, 1792.

Dear Brother,—Happy am I, that the country air and exercise have operated with due effect on your health and spirits—and happy, too, that I can inform you, that my own corporealities are in a state of better health, than I ever recollect them to be. This indeed I owe in great measure to the care of Mrs. Evans,[18] with whom I spent a fortnight at Christmas: the relaxation from study coöperating with the cheerfulness and attention, which I met[Pg 24] there, proved very potently medicinal. I have indeed experienced from her a tenderness scarcely inferior to the solicitude of maternal affection. I wish, my dear brother, that some time, when you walk into town, you would call at Villiers Street, and take a dinner or dish of tea there. Mrs. Evans has repeatedly expressed her wish, and I too have made a half promise that you would. I assure you, you will find them not only a very amiable, but a very sensible family.

I send a parcel to Le Grice on Friday morning, which (you may depend on it as a certainty) will contain your sermon. I hope you will like it.

I am sincerely concerned at the state of Mr. Sparrow’s health. Are his complaints consumptive? Present my respects to him and Mrs. Sparrow.

When the Scholarship falls, I do not know. It must be in the course of two or three months. I do not relax in my exertions, neither do I find it any impediment to my mental acquirements that prudence has obliged me to relinquish the mediæ pallescere nocti. We are examined as Rustats,[19] on the Thursday in Easter Week. The examination for my year is “the last book of Homer and Horace’s De Arte Poetica.” The Master (i. e. Dr. Pearce) told me that he would do me a service by pushing my examination as deep as he possibly could. If ever hogs-lard is pleasing, it is when our superiors trowel it on. Mr. Frend’s company[20] is by no means invidious. On the contrary, Pearce himself is very intimate with him. No![Pg 25] Though I am not an Alderman, I have yet prudence enough to respect that gluttony of faith waggishly yclept orthodoxy.

Philanthropy generally keeps pace with health—my acquaintance becomes more general. I am intimate with an undergraduate of our College, his name Caldwell,[21] who is pursuing the same line of study (nearly) as myself. Though a man of fortune, he is prudent; nor does he lay claim to that right, which wealth confers on its possessor, of being a fool. Middleton is fourth senior optimate—an honourable place, but by no means so high as the whole University expected, or (I believe) his merits deserved. He desires his love to Stevens:[22] to which you will add mine.

At what time am I to receive my pecuniary assistance? Quarterly or half yearly? The Hospital issue their money half yearly, and we receive the products of our scholarship at once, a little after Easter. Whatever additional supply you and my brother may have thought necessary would be therefore more conducive to my comfort, if I received it quarterly—as there are a number of little things which require us to have some ready money in our pockets—particularly if we happen to be unwell. But this as well as everything of the pecuniary kind I leave entirely ad arbitrium tuum.

I have written my mother, of whose health I am rejoiced to hear. God send that she may long continue to recede[Pg 26] from old age, while she advances towards it! Pray write me very soon.

Yours with gratitude and affection,
S. T. Coleridge.

February 13, 1792.

My very Dear,—What word shall I add sufficiently expressive of the warmth which I feel? You covet to be near my heart. Believe me, that you and my sister have the very first row in the front box of my heart’s little theatre—and—God knows! you are not crowded. There, my dear spectators! you shall see what you shall see—Farce, Comedy, and Tragedy—my laughter, my cheerfulness, and my melancholy. A thousand figures pass before you, shifting in perpetual succession; these are my joys and my sorrows, my hopes and my fears, my good tempers and my peevishness: you will, however, observe two that remain unalterably fixed, and these are love and gratitude. In short, my dear Mrs. Evans, my whole heart shall be laid open like any sheep’s heart; my virtues, if I have any, shall not be more exposed to your view than my weaknesses. Indeed, I am of opinion that foibles are the cement of affection, and that, however we may admire a perfect character, we are seldom inclined to love and praise those whom we cannot sometimes blame. Come, ladies! will you take your seats in this play-house? Fool that I am! Are you not already there? Believe me, you are!

I am extremely anxious to be informed concerning your health. Have you not felt the kindly influence of this more than vernal weather, as well as the good effects of your own recommenced regularity? I would I could transmit you a little of my superfluous good health! I am indeed at present most wonderfully well, and if I continue so, I may soon be mistaken for one of your very children:[Pg 27] at least, in clearness of complexion and rosiness of cheek I am no contemptible likeness of them, though that ugly arrangement of features with which nature has distinguished me will, I fear, long stand in the way of such honorable assimilation. You accuse me of evading the bet, and imagine that my silence proceeded from a consciousness of the charge. But you are mistaken. I not only read your letter first, but, on my sincerity! I felt no inclination to do otherwise; and I am confident, that if Mary had happened to have stood by me and had seen me take up her letter in preference to her mother’s, with all that ease and energy which she can so gracefully exert upon proper occasions, she would have lifted up her beautiful little leg, and kicked me round the room. Had Anne indeed favoured me with a few lines, I confess I should have seized hold of them before either of your letters; but then this would have arisen from my love of novelty, and not from any deficiency in filial respect. So much for your bet!

You can scarcely conceive what uneasiness poor Tom’s accident has occasioned me; in everything that relates to him I feel solicitude truly fraternal. Be particular concerning him in your next. I was going to write him an half-angry letter for the long intermission of his correspondence; but I must change it to a consolatory one. You mention not a word of Bessy. Think you I do not love her?

And so, my dear Mrs. Evans, you are to take your Welsh journey in May? Now may the Goddess of Health, the rosy-cheeked goddess that blows the breeze from the Cambrian mountains, renovate that dear old lady, and make her young again! I always loved that old lady’s looks. Yet do not flatter yourselves, that you shall take this journey tête-à-tête. You will have an unseen companion at your side, one who will attend you in your jaunt, who will be present at your arrival; one whose[Pg 28] heart will melt with unutterable tenderness at your maternal transports, who will climb the Welsh hills with you, who will feel himself happy in knowing you to be so. In short, as St. Paul says, though absent in body, I shall be present in mind. Disappointment? You must not, you shall not be disappointed; and if a poetical invocation can help you to drive off that ugly foe to happiness here it is for you.

In what part of the country is my dear Anne to be? Mary must and shall be with you. I want to know all your summer residences, that I may be on that very spot with all of you. It is not improbable that I may steal down from Cambridge about the beginning of April just to look at you, that when I see you again in autumn I may know how many years younger the Welsh air has made you. If I shall go into Devonshire on the 21st of May, unless my good fortune in a particular affair should detain me till the 4th of June.

I lately received the thanks of the College for a declamation[23] I spoke in public; indeed, I meet with the most pointed marks of respect, which, as I neither flatter nor fiddle, I suppose to be sincere. I write these things not from vanity, but because I know they will please you.

I intend to leave off suppers, and two or three other little unnecessaries, and in conjunction with Caldwell hire a garden for the summer. It will be nice exercise—your advice. La! it will be so charming to walk out in one’s own garding, and sit and drink tea in an arbour, and[Pg 30] pick pretty nosegays. To plant and transplant, and be dirty and amused! Then to look with contempt on your Londoners with your mock gardens and your smoky windows, making a beggarly show of withered flowers stuck in pint pots, and quart pots menacing the heads of the passengers below.

Now suppose I conclude something in the manner with which Mary concludes all her letters to me, “Believe me your sincere friend,” and dutiful humble servant to command!

Now I do hate that way of concluding a letter. ’Tis as dry as a stick, as stiff as a poker, and as cold as a cucumber. It is not half so good as my old

God bless you
and
Your affectionately grateful
S. T. Coleridge.

February 13, 11 o’clock.

Ten of the most talkative young ladies now in London!

Now by the most accurate calculation of the specific quantities of sounds, a female tongue, when it exerts itself to the utmost, equals the noise of eighteen sign-posts, which the wind swings backwards and forwards in full creak. If then one equals eighteen, ten must equal one hundred and eighty; consequently, the circle at Jermyn Street unitedly must have produced a noise equal to that of one hundred and eighty old crazy sign-posts, inharmoniously agitated as aforesaid. Well! to be sure, there are few disagreeables for which the pleasure of Mary and Anne Evans’ company would not amply compensate; but faith! I feel myself half inclined to thank God that I was fifty-two miles off during this clattering clapperation of tongues. Do you keep ale at Jermyn Street? If so, I hope it is not soured.

[Pg 31]Such, my dear Mary, were the reflections that instantly suggested themselves to me on reading the former part of your letter. Believe me, however, that my gratitude keeps pace with my sense of your exertions, as I can most feelingly conceive the difficulty of writing amid that second edition of Babel with additions. That your health is restored gives me sincere delight. May the giver of all pleasure and pain preserve it so! I am likewise glad to hear that your hand is re-whiten’d, though I cannot help smiling at a certain young lady’s effrontery in having boxed a young gentleman’s ears till her own hand became black and blue, and attributing those unseemly marks to the poor unfortunate object of her resentment. You are at liberty, certainly, to say what you please.

It has been confidently affirmed by most excellent judges (tho’ the best may be mistaken) that I have grown very handsome lately. Pray that I may have grace not to be vain. Yet, ah! who can read the stories of Pamela, or Joseph Andrews, or Susannah and the three Elders, and not perceive what a dangerous snare beauty is? Beauty is like the grass, that groweth up in the morning and is withered before night. Mary! Anne! Do not be vain of your beauty!!!!!

I keep a cat. Amid the strange collection of strange animals with which I am surrounded, I think it necessary to have some meek well-looking being, that I may keep my social affections alive. Puss, like her master, is a very gentle brute, and I behave to her with all possible politeness. Indeed, a cat is a very worthy animal. To be sure, I have known some very malicious cats in my lifetime, but then they were old—and besides, they had not nearly so many legs as you, my sweet Pussy. I wish, Puss! I could break you of that indecorous habit of turning your back front to the fire. It is not frosty weather now.

N. B.—If ever, Mary, you should feel yourself inclined[Pg 32] to visit me at Cambridge, pray do not suffer the consideration of my having a cat to deter you. Indeed, I will keep her chained up all the while you stay.

I was in company the other day with a very dashing literary lady. After my departure, a friend of mine asked her her opinion of me. She answered: “The best I can say of him is, that he is a very gentle bear.” What think you of this character?

What a lovely anticipation of spring the last three or four days have afforded. Nature has not been very profuse of her ornaments to the country about Cambridge; yet the clear rivulet that runs through the grove adjacent to our College, and the numberless little birds (particularly robins) that are singing away, and above all, the little lambs, each by the side of its mother, recall the most pleasing ideas of pastoral simplicity, and almost soothe one’s soul into congenial innocence. Amid these delightful scenes, of which the uncommon flow of health I at present possess permits me the full enjoyment, I should not deign to think of London, were it not for a little family, whom I trust I need not name. What bird of the air whispers me that you too will soon enjoy the same and more delightful pleasures in a much more delightful country? What we strongly wish we are very apt to believe. At present, my presentiments on that head amount to confidence.

Last Sunday, Middleton and I set off at one o’clock on a ramble. We sauntered on, chatting and contemplating, till to our great surprise we came to a village seven miles from Cambridge. And here at a farmhouse we drank tea. The rusticity of the habitation and the inhabitants was charming; we had cream to our tea, which though not brought in a lordly dish, Sisera would have jumped at. Being here informed that we could return to Cambridge another way, over a common, for the sake of diversifying our walk, we chose this road, “if road it might be called,[Pg 33] where road was none,” though we were not unapprized of its difficulties. The fine weather deceived us. We forgot that it was a summer day in warmth only, and not in length; but we were soon reminded of it. For on the pathless solitude of this common, the night overtook us—we must have been four miles distant from Cambridge—the night, though calm, was as dark as the place was dreary: here steering our course by our imperfect conceptions of the point in which we conjectured Cambridge to lie, we wandered on “with cautious steps and slow.” We feared the bog, the stump, and the fen: we feared the ghosts of the night—at least, those material and knock-me-down ghosts, the apprehension of which causes you, Mary (valorous girl that you are!), always to peep under your bed of a night. As we were thus creeping forward like the two children in the wood, we spy’d something white moving across the common. This we made up to, though contrary to our supposed destination. It proved to be a man with a white bundle. We enquired our way, and luckily he was going to Cambridge. He informed us that we had gone half a mile out of our way, and that in five minutes more we must have arrived at a deep quagmire grassed over. What an escape! The man was as glad of our company as we of his—for, it seemed, the poor fellow was afraid of Jack o’ Lanthorns—the superstition of this county attributing a kind of fascination to those wandering vapours, so that whoever fixes his eyes on them is forced by some irresistible impulse to follow them. He entertained us with many a dreadful tale. By nine o’clock we arrived at Cambridge, betired and bemudded. I never recollect to have been so much fatigued.

Do you spell the word scarsely? When Momus, the fault-finding God, endeavoured to discover some imperfection in Venus, he could only censure the creaking of her slipper. I, too, Momuslike, can only fall foul on a[Pg 34] single s. Yet will not my dear Mary be angry with me, or think the remark trivial, when she considers that half a grain is of consequence in the weight of a diamond.

I had entertained hopes that you would really have sent me a piece of sticking plaister, which would have been very convenient at that time, I having cut my finger. I had to buy sticking plaister, etc. What is the use of a man’s knowing you girls, if he cannot chouse you out of such little things as that? Do not your fingers, Mary, feel an odd kind of titillation to be about my ears for my impudence?

On Saturday night, as I was sitting by myself all alone, I heard a creaking sound, something like the noise which a crazy chair would make, if pressed by the tremendous weight of Mr. Barlow’s extremities. I cast my eyes around, and what should I behold but a Ghost rising out of the floor! A deadly paleness instantly overspread my body, which retained no other symptom of life but its violent trembling. My hair (as is usual in frights of this nature) stood upright by many degrees stiffer than the oaks of the mountains, yea, stiffer than Mr. ——; yet was it rendered oily-pliant by the profuse perspiration that burst from every pore. This spirit advanced with a book in his hand, and having first dissipated my terrors, said as follows: “I am the Ghost of Gray. There lives a young lady” (then he mentioned your name), “of whose judgment I entertain so high an opinion, that her approbation of my works would make the turf lie lighter on me; present her with this book, and transmit it to her as soon as possible, adding my love to her. And, as for you, O young man!” (now he addressed himself to me) “write no more verses. In the first place your poetry is vile stuff; and secondly” (here he sighed almost to bursting), “all poets go to —ll; we are so intolerably addicted to the vice of lying!” He vanished, and convinced me of the truth of his last dismal account by the sulphurous stink which he left behind him.

[Pg 35]His first mandate I have obeyed, and, I hope you will receive safe your ghostly admirer’s present. But so far have I been from obeying his second injunction, that I never had the scribble-mania stronger on me than for these last three or four days: nay, not content with suffering it myself, I must pester those I love best with the blessed effects of my disorder.

Besides two things, which you will find in the next sheet, I cannot forbear filling the remainder of this sheet with an Odeling, though I know and approve your aversion to mere prettiness, and though my tiny love ode possesses no other property in the world. Let then its shortness recommend it to your perusal—by the by, the only thing in which it resembles you, for wit, sense, elegance, or beauty it has none.

Are you quite asleep, dear Mary? Sleep on; but when you awake, read the following productions, and then, I’ll be bound, you will sleep again sounder than ever.

I have written too long a letter. Give me a hint, and I will avoid a repetition of the offence.

It’s a compensation for the above-written rhymes[Pg 37] (which if you ever condescend to read a second time, pray let it be by the light of their own flames) in my next letter I will send some delicious poetry lately published by the exquisite Bowles.

To-morrow morning I fill the rest of this sheet with a letter to Anne. And now, good-night, dear sister! and peaceful slumbers await us both!

S. T. Coleridge.

February 19, 1792.

Dear Anne,—To be sure I felt myself rather disappointed at my not receiving a few lines from you; but I am nevertheless greatly rejoiced at your amicable dispositions towards me. Please to accept two kisses, as the seals of reconciliation—you will find them on the word “Anne” at the beginning of the letter—at least, there I left them. I must, however, give you warning, that the next time you are affronted with Brother Coly, and show your resentment by that most cruel of all punishments, silence, I shall address a letter to you as long and as sorrowful as Jeremiah’s Lamentations, and somewhat in the style of your sister’s favourite lover, beginning with,—

TO THE IRASCIBLE MISS.

Dear Miss, &c.

My dear Anne, you are my Valentine. I dreamt of you this morning, and I have seen no female in the whole course of the day, except an old bedmaker belonging to the College, and I don’t count her one, as the bristle of her beard makes me suspect her to be of the masculine gender. Some one of the genii must have conveyed your image to me so opportunely, nor will you think this impossible, if you will read the little volumes which contain their exploits, and crave the honour of your acceptance.

[Pg 38]If I could draw, I would have sent a pretty heart stuck through with arrows, with some such sweet posy underneath it as this:—

But as the Gods have not made me a drawer (of anything but corks), you must accept the will for the deed.

You never wrote or desired your sister to write concerning the bodily health of the Barlowites, though you know my affection for that family. Do not forget this in your next.

Is Mr. Caleb Barlow recovered of the rheumatism? The quiet ugliness of Cambridge supplies me with very few communicables in the news way. The most important is, that Mr. Tim Grubskin, of this town, citizen, is dead. Poor man! he loved fish too well. A violent commotion in his bowels carried him off. They say he made a very good end. There is his epitaph:—

It was composed by a Mr. Thistlewait, the town crier, and is much admired. We are all mortal!!

His wife carries on the business. It is whispered about the town that a match between her and Mr. Coe, the shoemaker, is not improbable. He certainly seems very assiduous in consoling her, but as to anything matrimonial I do not write it as a well authenticated fact.

I went the other evening to the concert, and spent the time there much to my heart’s content in cursing Mr. Hague, who played on the violin most piggishly, and a Miss (I forget her name)—Miss Humstrum, who sung most sowishly. O the Billington! That I should be absent during the oratorios! The prince unable to conceal his pain! Oh! oh! oh! oh! oh! oh! oh! oh! oh!

[Pg 39]To which house is Mrs. B. engaged this season?

The mutton and winter cabbage are confoundedly tough here, though very venerable for their old age. Were you ever at Cambridge, Anne? The river Cam is a handsome stream of a muddy complexion, somewhat like Miss Yates, to whom you will present my love (if you like).

In Cambridge there are sixteen colleges, that look like workhouses, and fourteen churches that look like little houses. The town is very fertile in alleys, and mud, and cats, and dogs, besides men, women, ravens, clergy, proctors, tutors, owls, and other two-legged cattle. It likewise—but here I must interrupt my description to hurry to Mr. Costobadie’s lectures on Euclid, who is as mathematical an author, my dear Anne, as you would wish to read on a long summer’s day. Addio! God bless you, ma chère soeur, and your affectionate frère,

S. T. Coleridge.

P. S. I add a postscript on purpose to communicate a joke to you. A party of us had been drinking wine together, and three or four freshmen were most deplorably intoxicated. (I have too great a respect for delicacy to say drunk.) As we were returning homewards, two of them fell into the gutter (or kennel). We ran to assist one of them, who very generously stuttered out, as he lay sprawling in the mud: “N-n-n-no—n-n-no!—save my f-fr-fr-friend there; n-never mind me, I can swim.”

Won’t you write me a long letter now, Anne?

P. S. Give my respectful compliments to Betty, and say that I enquired after her health with the most emphatic energy of impassioned avidity.

February 22 [? 1792].

Dear Madam,—The incongruity of the dates in these letters you will immediately perceive. The truth is that[Pg 40] I had written the foregoing heap of nothingness six or seven days ago, but I was prevented from sending it by a variety of disagreeable little impediments.

Mr. Massy must be arrived in Cambridge by this time; but to call on an utter stranger just arrived with so trivial a message as yours and his uncle’s love to him, when I myself had been in Cambridge five or six weeks, would appear rather awkward, not to say ludicrous. If, however, I meet him at any wine party (which is by no means improbable) I shall take the opportunity of mentioning it en passant. As to Mr. M.’s debts, the most intimate friends in college are perfect strangers to each other’s affairs; consequently it is little likely that I should procure any information of this kind.

I hope and trust that neither yourself nor my sisters have experienced any ill effects from this wonderful change of weather. A very slight cold is the only favour with which it has honoured me. I feel myself apprehensive for all of you, but more particularly for Anne, whose frame I think most susceptible of cold.

Yesterday a Frenchman came dancing into my room, of which he made but three steps, and presented me with a card. I had scarcely collected, by glancing my eye over it, that he was a tooth-monger, before he seized hold of my muzzle, and, baring my teeth (as they do a horse’s, in order to know his age), he exclaimed, as if in violent agitation: “Mon Dieu! Monsieur, all your teeth will fall out in a day or two, unless you permit me the honour of scaling them!” This ineffable piece of assurance discovered such a genius for impudence, that I could not suffer it to go unrewarded. So, after a hearty laugh, I sat down, and let the rascal chouse me out of half a guinea by scraping my grinders—the more readily, indeed, as I recollected the great penchant which all your family have for delicate teeth.

[Pg 41]So (I hear) Allen[27] will be most precipitately emancipated. Good luck have thou of thy emancipation, Bob-bee! Tell him from me that if he does not kick Richards’[28] fame out of doors by the superiority of his own, I will never forgive him.

If you will send me a box of Mr. Stringer’s tooth powder, mamma! we will accept of it.

And now, Right Reverend Mother in God, let me claim your permission to subscribe myself with all observance and gratitude, your most obedient humble servant, and lowly slave,

Samuel Taylor Coleridge,

Reverend in the future tense, and scholar of Jesus College in the present time.

Jesus College, Cambridge, February 22 [1792].

Dear Mary,—Writing long letters is not the fault into which I am most apt to fall, but whenever I do, by[Pg 42] some inexplicable ill luck, my prolixity is always directed to those whom I would yet least of all wish to torment. You think, and think rightly, that I had no occasion to increase the preceding accumulations of wearisomeness, but I wished to inform you that I have sent the poem of Bowles, which I mentioned in a former sheet; though I dare say you would have discovered this without my information. If the pleasure which you receive from the perusal of it prove equal to that which I have received, it will make you some small return for the exertions of friendship, which you must have found necessary in order to travel through my long, long, long letter.

Though it may be a little effrontery to point out beauties, which would be obvious to a far less sensible heart than yours, yet I cannot forbear the self-indulgence of remarking to you the exquisite description of Hope in the third page and of Fortitude in the sixth; but the poem “On leaving a place of residence” appears to me to be almost superior to any of Bowles’s compositions.

I hope that the Jermyn Street ledgers are well. How can they be otherwise in such lovely keeping?

Your Jessamine Pomatum, I trust, is as strong and as odorous as ever, and the roasted turkeys at Villiers Street honoured, as usual, with a thick crust of your Mille (what do you call it?) powder.

I had a variety of other interesting inquiries to make, but time and memory fail me.

Without a swanskin waistcoat, what is man? I have got a swanskin waistcoat,—a most attractive external.

Yours with sincerity of friendship,
Samuel Taylor C.

Monday night, April [1792].

Dear Brother,—You would have heard from me long since had I not been entangled in such various[Pg 43] businesses as have occupied my whole time. Besides my ordinary business, which, as I look forward to a smart contest some time this year, is not an indolent one, I have been writing for all the prizes, namely, the Greek Ode, the Latin Ode, and the Epigrams. I have little or no expectation of success, as a Mr. Smith,[29] a man of immense genius, author of some papers in the “Microcosm,” is among my numerous competitors. The prize medals will be adjudged about the beginning of June. If you can think of a good thought for the beginning of the Latin Ode upon the miseries of the W. India slaves, communicate. My Greek Ode[30] is, I think, my chef d’œuvre in poetical composition. I have sent you a sermon metamorphosed from an obscure publication by vamping, transposition, etc. If you like it, I can send you two more of the same kidney. Our examination as Rustats comes [off] on the Thursday[Pg 44] in Easter week. After it a man of our college has offered to take me to town in his gig, and, if he can bring me back, I think I shall accept his offer, as the expense, at all events, will not be more than 12 shillings, and my very commons, and tea, etc., would amount to more than that in the week which I intend to stay in town. Almost all the men are out of college, and I am most villainously vapoured. I wrote the following the other day under the title of “A Fragment found in a Lecture-Room:”—

This morning I went for the first time with a party on the river. The clumsy dog to whom we had entrusted the sail was fool enough to fasten it. A gust of wind embraced the opportunity of turning over the boat, and baptizing all that were in it. We swam to shore, and walked dripping home, like so many river gods. Thank God! I do not feel as if I should be the worse for it.

I was matriculated on Saturday.[31] Oath-taking is very healthy in spring, I should suppose. I am grown very fat. We have two men at our college, great cronies,[Pg 45] their names Head and Bones; the first an unlicked cub of a Yorkshireman, the second a very fierce buck. I call them Raw Head and Bloody Bones.

As soon as you can make it convenient I should feel thankful if you could transmit me ten or five pounds, as I am at present cashless.

Pray, was the bible clerk’s place accounted a disreputable one at Oxford in your time? Poor Allen, who is just settled there, complains of the great distance with which the men treat him. ’Tis a childish University! Thank God! I am at Cambridge. Pray let me hear from you soon, and whether your health has held out this long campaign. I hope, however, soon to see you, till when believe me, with gratitude and affection, yours ever,

S. T. Coleridge.

February 5, 1793.

My dear Mrs. Evans,—This is the third day of my resurrection from the couch, or rather, the sofa of sickness. About a fortnight ago, a quantity of matter took it into its head to form in my left gum, and was attended with such violent pain, inflammation, and swelling, that it threw me into a fever. However, God be praised, my gum has at last been opened, a villainous tooth extracted, and all is well. I am still very weak, as well I may, since for seven days together I was incapable of swallowing anything but spoon meat, so that in point of spirits I am but the dregs of my former self—a decaying flame agonizing in the snuff of a tallow candle—a kind of hobgoblin, clouted and bagged up in the most contemptible shreds, rags, and yellow relics of threadbare mortality. The event of our examination[32] was such as surpassed[Pg 46] my expectations, and perfectly accorded with my wishes. After a very severe trial of six days’ continuance, the number of the competitors was reduced from seventeen to four, and after a further process of ordeal we, the survivors, were declared equal each to the other, and the Scholarship, according to the will of its founder, awarded to the youngest of us, who was found to be a Mr. Butler of St. John’s College. I am just two months older than he is, and though I would doubtless have rather had it myself, I am yet not at all sorry at his success; for he is sensible and unassuming, and besides, from his circumstances, such an accession to his annual income must have been very acceptable to him. So much for myself.

I am greatly rejoiced at your brother’s recovery; in proportion, indeed, to the anxiety and fears I felt on your account during his illness. I recollected, my most dear Mrs. Evans, that you are frequently troubled with a strange forgetfulness of yourself, and too apt to go far beyond your strength, if by any means you may alleviate the sufferings of others. Ah! how different from the majority of others whom we courteously dignify with the name of human—a vile herd, who sit still in the severest distresses of their friends, and cry out, There is a lion in the way! animals, who walk with leaden sandals in the paths of charity, yet to gratify their own inclinations will run a mile in a breath. Oh! I do know a set of little, dirty, pimping, petty-fogging, ambidextrous fellows, who would set your house on fire, though it were but to roast an egg for themselves! Yet surely, considering it were a selfish view, the pleasures that arise from whispering peace to those who are in trouble, and healing the broken in heart, are far superior to all the unfeeling can enjoy.

[Pg 47]I have inclosed a little work of that great and good man Archdeacon Paley; it is entitled Motives of Contentment, addressed to the poorer part of our fellow men. The twelfth page I particularly admire, and the twentieth. The reasoning has been of some service to me, who am of the race of the Grumbletonians. My dear friend Allen has a resource against most misfortunes in the natural gaiety of his temper, whereas my hypochondriac, gloomy spirit amid blessings too frequently warbles out the hoarse gruntings of discontent! Nor have all the lectures that divines and philosophers have given us for these three thousand years past, on the vanity of riches, and the cares of greatness, etc., prevented me from sincerely regretting that Nature had not put it into the head of some rich man to beget me for his first-born, whereas now I am likely to get bread just when I shall have no teeth left to chew it. Cheer up, my little one (thus I answer I)! better late than never. Hath literature been thy choice, and hast thou food and raiment? Be thankful, be amazed at thy good fortune! Art thou dissatisfied and desirous of other things? Go, and make twelve votes at an election; it shall do thee more service and procure thee greater preferment than to have made twelve commentaries on the twelve prophets. My dear Mrs. Evans! excuse the wanderings of my castle building imagination. I have not a thought which I conceal from you. I write to others, but my pen talks to you. Convey my softest affections to Betty, and believe me,

Your grateful and affectionate boy,
S. T. Coleridge.

Jesus College, Cambridge, February 7, 1793.

I would to Heaven, my dear Miss Evans, that the god of wit, or news, or politics would whisper in my ear something that might be worth sending fifty-four miles—but alas! I[Pg 48] am so closely blocked by an army of misfortunes that really there is no passage left open for mirth or anything else. Now, just to give you a few articles in the large inventory of my calamities. Imprimis, a gloomy, uncomfortable morning. Item, my head aches. Item, the Dean has set me a swinging imposition for missing morning chapel. Item, of the two only coats which I am worth in the world, both have holes in the elbows. Item, Mr. Newton, our mathematical lecturer, has recovered from an illness. But the story is rather a laughable one, so I must tell it you. Mr. Newton (a tall, thin man with a little, tiny, blushing face) is a great botanist. Last Sunday, as he was strolling out with a friend of his, some curious plant suddenly caught his eye. He turned round his head with great eagerness to call his companion to a participation of discovery, and unfortunately continuing to walk forward he fell into a pool, deep, muddy, and full of chickweed. I was lucky enough to meet him as he was entering the college gates on his return (a sight I would not have lost for the Indies), his best black clothes all green with duckweed, he shivering and dripping, in short a perfect river god. I went up to him (you must understand we hate each other most cordially) and sympathized with him in all the tenderness of condolence. The consequence of his misadventure was a violent cold attended with fever, which confined him to his room, prevented him from giving lectures, and freed me from the necessity of attending them; but this misfortune I supported with truly Christian fortitude. However, I constantly asked after his health with filial anxiety, and this morning, making my usual inquiries, I was informed, to my infinite astonishment and vexation, that he was perfectly recovered and intended to give lectures this very day!!! Verily, I swear that six of his duteous pupils—myself as their general—sallied forth to the apothecary’s house with a fixed determination to thrash him for having performed so speedy a cure, but,[Pg 49] luckily for himself, the rascal was not at home. But here comes my fiddling master, for (but this is a secret) I am learning to play on the violin. Twit, twat, twat, twit! “Pray, M. de la Penche, do you think I shall ever make anything of this violin? Do you think I have an ear for music?” “Un magnifique! Un superbe! Par honneur, sir, you be a ver great genius in de music. Good morning, monsieur!” This M. de la Penche is a better judge than I thought for.

This new whim of mine is partly a scheme of self-defence. Three neighbours have run music-mad lately—two of them fiddle-scrapers, the third a flute-tooter—and are perpetually annoying me with their vile performances, compared with which the gruntings of a whole herd of sows would be seraphic melody. Now I hope, by frequently playing myself, to render my ear callous. Besides, the evils of life are crowding upon me, and music is “the sweetest assuager of cares.” It helps to relieve and soothe the mind, and is a sort of refuge from calamity, from slights and neglects and censures and insults and disappointments; from the warmth of real enemies and the coldness of pretended friends; from your well wishers (as they are justly called, in opposition, I suppose, to well doers), men whose inclinations to serve you always decrease in a most mathematical proportion as their opportunities to do it increase; from the

from grievances that are the growth of all times and places and not peculiar to this age, which authors call this critical age, and divines this sinful age, and politicians this age of revolutions. An acquaintance of mine calls it this learned age in due reverence to his own abilities, and like Monsieur Whatd’yecallhim, who used to pull off his hat when he spoke of himself. The poet laureate calls it “this golden age,” and with good reason,—

Pope, in his “Dunciad,” makes it this leaden age, but I choose to call it without an epithet, this age. Many things we must expect to meet with which it would be hard to bear, if a compensation were not found in honest endeavours to do well, in virtuous affections and connections, and in harmless and reasonable amusements. And why should not a man amuse himself sometimes? Vive la bagatelle!

I received a letter this morning from my friend Allen. He is up to his ears in business, and I sincerely congratulate him upon it—occupation, I am convinced, being the great secret of happiness. “Nothing makes the temper so fretful as indolence,” said a young lady who, beneath the soft surface of feminine delicacy, possesses a mind acute by nature, and strengthened by habits of reflection. ’Pon my word, Miss Evans, I beg your pardon a thousand times for bepraising you to your face, but, really, I have written so long that I had forgot to whom I was writing.

Have you read Mr. Fox’s letter to the Westminster electors? It is quite the political go at Cambridge, and has converted many souls to the Foxite faith.

Have you seen the Siddons this season? or the Jordan? An acquaintance of mine has a tragedy coming out early in the next season, the principal character of which Mrs. Siddons will act. He has importuned me to write the prologue and epilogue, but, conscious of my inability, I have excused myself with a jest, and told him I was too good a Christian to be accessory to the damnation of anything.

There is an old proverb of a river of words and a spoonful of sense, and I think this letter has been a pretty good proof of it. But as nonsense is better than blank paper, I will fill this side with a song I wrote lately. My friend, Charles Hague[33] the composer, will set it to wild music.[Pg 51] I shall sing it, and accompany myself on the violin. Ça ira!

Cathloma, who reigned in the Highlands of Scotland about two hundred years after the birth of our Saviour, was defeated and killed in a war with a neighbouring prince, and Nina-Thoma his daughter (according to the custom of those times and that country) was imprisoned in a cave by the seaside. This is supposed to be her complaint:—

Are you asleep, my dear Mary? I have administered rather a strong dose of opium; however, if in the course[Pg 52] of your nap you should chance to dream that I am, with ardor of eternal friendship, your affectionate

S. T. Coleridge,

you will never have dreamt a truer dream in all your days.

Jesus College, Cambridge, February 10, 1793.

My dear Anne,—A little before I had received your mamma’s letter, a bird of the air had informed me of your illness—and sure never did owl or night-raven (“those mournful messengers of heavy things”) pipe a more loathsome song. But I flatter myself that ere you have received this scrawl of mine, by care and attention you will have lured back the rosy-lipped fugitive, Health. I know of no misfortune so little susceptible of consolation as sickness: it is indeed easy to offer comfort, when we ourselves are well; then we can be full of grave saws upon the duty of resignation, etc.; but alas! when the sore visitations of pain come home, all our philosophy vanishes, and nothing remains to be seen. I speak of myself, but a mere sensitive animal, with little wisdom and no patience. Yet if anything can throw a melancholy smile over the pale, wan face of illness, it must be the sight and attentions of those we love. There are one or two beings, in this planet of ours, whom God has formed in so kindly a mould that I could almost consent to be ill in order to be nursed by them.

But I will not proceed at this rate, for I am writing and thinking myself fast into the spleen, and feel very obligingly disposed to communicate the same doleful fit to you, my dear sister. Yet permit me to say, it is almost[Pg 53] your own fault. You were half angry at my writing laughing nonsense to you, and see what you have got in exchange—pale-faced, solemn, stiff-starched stupidity. I must confess, indeed, that the latter is rather more in unison with my present feelings, which from one untoward freak of fortune or other are not of the most comfortable kind. Within this last month I have lost a brother[35] and a friend! But I struggle for cheerfulness—and sometimes, when the sun shines out, I succeed in the effort. This at least I endeavour, not to infect the cheerfulness of others, and not to write my vexations upon my forehead. I read a story lately of an old Greek philosopher, who once harangued so movingly on the miseries of life, that his audience went home and hanged themselves; but he himself (my author adds) lived many years afterwards in very sleek condition.

God love you, my dear Anne! and receive as from a brother the warmest affections of your

S. T. Coleridge.

Wednesday morning, July 28, 1793.

My dear Brother,—I left Salisbury on Tuesday morning—should have stayed there longer, but that Ned, ignorant of my coming, had preëngaged himself on a journey to Portsmouth with Skinner. I left Ned well and merry, as likewise his wife, who, by all the Cupids, is a very worthy old lady.[36]

Monday afternoon, Ned, Tatum, and myself sat from four till ten drinking! and then arose as cool as three undressed cucumbers. Edward and I (O! the wonders[Pg 54] of this life) disputed with great coolness and forbearance the whole time. We neither of us were convinced, though now and then Ned was convicted. Tatum umpire sat,

I found all well in Exeter, to which place I proceeded directly, as my mother might have been unprepared from the supposition I meant to stay longer in Salisbury. I shall dine with James to-day at brother Phillips’.[37]

My ideas are so discomposed by the jolting of the coach that I can write no more at present.

A piece of gallantry!

I presented a moss rose to a lady. Dick Hart[38] asked her if she was not afraid to put it in her bosom, as perhaps there might be love in it. I immediately wrote the following little ode or song or what you please to call it.[39] It is of the namby-pamby genus.

An extempore! Ned during the dispute, thinking he had got me down, said, “Ah! Sam! you blush!” “Sir,” answered I,

There is no meaning in the lines, but we both agreed they were very pretty. If you see Mr. Hussy, you will not forget to present my respects to him, and to his accomplished daughter, who certes is a very sweet young lady.

God bless you and your grateful and affectionate

S. T. Coleridge.

[Postmark, August 5, 1793.]

My dear Brother,—Since my arrival in the country I have been anxiously expecting a letter from you, nor can I divine the reason of your silence. From the letter[Pg 56] to my brother James, a few lines of which he read to me, I am fearful that your silence proceeds from displeasure. If so, what is left for me to do but to grieve? The past is not in my power. For the follies of which I may have been guilty, I have been greatly disgusted; and I trust the memory of them will operate to future consistency of conduct.

My mother is very well,—indeed, better for her illness. Her complexion and eye, the truest indications of health, are much clearer. Little William and his mother are well. My brother James is at Sidmouth. I was there yesterday. He, his wife, and children are well. Frederick is a charming child. Little James had a most providential escape the day before yesterday. As my brother was in the field contiguous to his place he heard two men scream, and turning round saw a horse leap over little James, and then kick at him. He ran up; found him unhurt. The men said that the horse was feeding with his tail toward the child, and looking round ran at him open-mouthed, pushed him down and leaped over him, and then kicked back at him. Their screaming, my brother supposes, prevented the horse from repeating the blow. Brother was greatly agitated, as you may suppose. I stayed at Tiverton about ten days, and got no small kudos among the young belles by complimentary effusions in the poetic way.

A specimen:—

Do you know Fanny Nesbitt? She was my fellow-traveler in the Tiverton diligence from Exeter. [She is], I think, a very pretty girl. The orders for tea are: Imprimis, five pounds of ten shillings green; Item, four pounds of eight shillings green; in all nine pounds of tea.

God bless you and your obliged

S. T. Coleridge.

Henley, Thursday night, February 6 [1794].

Dear Tuckett,—I have this moment received your long letter! The Tuesday before last, an accident of the Reading Fair, our regiment was disposed of for the week in and about the towns within ten miles of Reading, and, as it was not known before we set off to what places we[Pg 58] would go, my letters were kept at the Reading post-office till our return. I was conveyed to Henley-upon-Thames, which place our regiment left last Tuesday; but I am ordered to remain on account of these dreadfully troublesome eruptions, and that I might nurse my comrade, who last Friday sickened of the confluent smallpox. So here I am, videlicet the Henley workhouse.[41] It is a little house of one apartment situated in the midst of a large garden, about a hundred yards from the house. It is four strides in length and three in breadth; has four windows, which look to all the winds. The almost total want of sleep, the putrid smell, and the fatiguing struggles with my poor comrade during his delirium are nearly too much for me in my present state. In return I enjoy external peace, and kind and respectful behaviour from the people of the workhouse. Tuckett, your motives must have been excellent ones; how could they be otherwise! As an agent, therefore, you are blameless, but your efforts in my behalf demand my gratitude—that my heart will pay you, into whatever depth of horror your mistaken activity may eventually have precipitated me. As an agent, you stand acquitted, but the action was morally base. In an hour of extreme anguish, under the most solemn imposition of secrecy, I entrusted my place and residence to the young men at Christ’s Hospital; the intelligence which you extorted from their imbecility should have remained sacred with you. It lost not the obligation of secrecy by the transfer. But your motives justify you? To the eye of your friendship the divulging might have appeared necessary, but what shadow of necessity is there to excuse you in showing my letters—to stab the very heart of confidence.[Pg 59] You have acted, Tuckett, so uniformly well that reproof must be new to you. I doubtless shall have offended you. I would to God that I, too, possessed the tender irritableness of unhandled sensibility. Mine is a sensibility gangrened with inward corruption and the keen searching of the air from without. Your gossip with the commanding officer seems so totally useless and unmotived that I almost find a difficulty in believing it.

A letter from my brother George! I feel a kind of pleasure that it is not directed—it lies unopened—am I not already sufficiently miserable? The anguish of those who love me, of him beneath the shadow of whose protection I grew up—does it not plant the pillow with thorns and make my dreams full of terrors? Yet I dare not burn the letter—it seems as if there were a horror in the action. One pang, however acute, is better than long-continued solicitude. My brother George possessed the cheering consolation of conscience—but I am talking I know not what—yet there is a pleasure, doubtless an exquisite pleasure, mingled up in the most painful of our virtuous emotions. Alas! my poor mother! What an intolerable weight of guilt is suspended over my head by a hair on one hand; and if I endure to live—the look ever downward—insult, pity, hell! God or Chaos, preserve me! What but infinite Wisdom or infinite Confusion can do it?

February 8, 1794.

My more than brother! What shall I say? What shall I write to you? Shall I profess an abhorrence of my past conduct? Ah me! too well do I know its iniquity! But to abhor! this feeble and exhausted heart supplies not so strong an emotion. O my wayward soul! I have been a fool even to madness. What shall I dare to promise? My mind is illegible to myself. I am lost in the[Pg 60] labyrinth, the trackless wilderness of my own bosom. Truly may I say, “I am wearied of being saved.” My frame is chill and torpid. The ebb and flow of my hopes and fears has stagnated into recklessness. One wish only can I read distinctly in my heart, that it were possible for me to be forgotten as though I had never been! The shame and sorrow of those who loved me! The anguish of him who protected me from my childhood upwards, the sore travail of her who bore me! Intolerable images of horror! They haunt my sleep, they enfever my dreams! O that the shadow of Death were on my eyelids, that I were like the loathsome form by which I now sit! O that without guilt I might ask of my Maker annihilation! My brother, my brother! pray for me, comfort me, my brother! I am very wretched, and, though my complaint be bitter, my stroke is heavier than my groaning.

S. T. Coleridge.

Tuesday night, February 11, 1794.

I am indeed oppressed, oppressed with the greatness of your love! Mine eyes gush out with tears, my heart is sick and languid with the weight of unmerited kindness. I had intended to have given you a minute history of my thoughts and actions for the last two years of my life. A most severe and faithful history of the heart would it have been—the Omniscient knows it. But I am so universally unwell, and the hour so late, that I must defer it till to-morrow. To-night I shall have a bed in a separate room from my comrade, and, I trust, shall have repaired my strength by sleep ere the morning. For eight days and nights I have not had my clothes off. My comrade is not dead; there is every hope of his escaping death. Closely has he been pursued by the mighty hunter! Undoubtedly, my brother, I could wish to return to College; I know what I must suffer there, but deeply do I feel [Pg 61]what I ought to suffer. Is my brother James still at Salisbury? I will write to him, to all.

Concerning my emancipation, it appears to me that my discharge can be easily procured by interest, with great difficulty by negotiation; but of this is not my brother James a more competent judge?

What my future life may produce I dare not anticipate. Pray for me, my brother. I will pray nightly to the Almighty dispenser of good and evil, that his chastisement may not have harrowed my heart in vain. Scepticism has mildewed my hope in the Saviour. I was far from disbelieving the truth of revealed religion, but still far from a steady faith—the “Comforter that should have relieved my soul” was far from me.

Farewell! to-morrow I will resume my pen. Mr. Boyer! indeed, indeed, my heart thanks him; how often in the petulance of satire, how ungratefully have I injured that man!

S. T. Coleridge.

February 20, 1794.

In a mind which vice has not utterly divested of sensibility, few occurrences can inflict a more acute pang than the receiving proofs of tenderness and love where only resentment and reproach were expected and deserved. The gentle voice of conscience which had incessantly murmured within the soul then raises its tone and speaks with a tongue of thunder. My conduct towards you, and towards my other brothers, has displayed a strange combination of madness, ingratitude, and dishonesty. But you forgive me. May my Maker forgive me! May the time arrive when I shall have forgiven myself!

With regard to my emancipation, every inquiry I have made, every piece of intelligence I could collect, alike tend to assure me that it may be done by interest, but[Pg 62] not by negotiation without an expense which I should tremble to write. Forty guineas were offered for a discharge the day after a young man was sworn in, and were refused. His friends made interest, and his discharge came down from the War Office. If, however, negotiation must be first attempted, it will be expedient to write to our colonel—his name is Gwynne—he holds the rank of general in the army. His address is General Gwynne, K. L. D., King’s Mews, London.

My assumed name is Silas Tomkyn Comberbacke, 15th, or King’s Regiment of Light Dragoons, G Troop. My number I do not know. It is of no import. The bounty I received was six guineas and a half; but a light horseman’s bounty is a mere lure; it is expended for him in things which he must have had without a bounty—gaiters, a pair of leather breeches, stable jacket, and shell; horse cloth, surcingle, watering bridle, brushes, and the long etc. of military accoutrement. I enlisted the 2d of December, 1793, was attested and sworn the 4th. I am at present nurse to a sick man, and shall, I believe, stay at Henley another week. There will be a large draught from our regiment to complete our troops abroad. The men were picked out to-day. I suppose I am not one, being a very indocile equestrian. Farewell.

S. T. Coleridge.

Our regiment is at Reading, and Hounslow, and Maidenhead, and Kensington; our headquarters, Reading, Berks. The commanding officer there, Lieutenant Hopkinson, our adjutant.

To Captain James Coleridge, Tiverton, Devonshire.

The Compasses, High Wycombe, March 12, 1794.

My dear Brother,—Accept my poor thanks for the day’s enclosed, which I received safely. I explained the[Pg 63] whole matter to the adjutant, who laughed and said I had been used scurvily; he deferred settling the bill till Thursday morning. A Captain Ogle,[42] of our regiment, who is returned from abroad, has taken great notice of me. When he visits the stables at night he always enters into conversation with me, and to-day, finding from the corporal’s report that I was unwell, he sent me a couple of bottles of wine. These things demand my gratitude. I wrote last week—currente calamo—a declamation for my friend Allen on the comparative good and evil of novels. The credit which he got for it I should almost blush to tell you. All the fellows have got copies, and they meditate having it printed, and dispersing it through the University. The best part of it I built on a sentence in a last letter of yours, and indeed, I wrote most part of it feelingly.

I met yesterday, smoking in the recess, a chimney corner of the pot-house[43] at which I am quartered, a man of the greatest information and most original genius I ever lit upon. His philosophical theories of heaven and hell would have both amused you and given you hints for much speculation. He solemnly assured me that he believed himself divinely inspired. He slept in the same room with me, and kept me awake till three in the morning with his ontological disquisitions. Some of the ideas[Pg 64] would have made, you shudder from their daring impiety, others would have astounded with their sublimity. My memory, tenacious and systematizing, would enable [me] to write an octavo from his conversation. “I find [says he] from the intellectual atmosphere that emanes from, and envelops you, that you are in a state of recipiency.” He was deceived. I have little faith, yet am wonderfully fond of speculating on mystical schemes. Wisdom may be gathered from the maddest flights of imagination, as medicines were stumbled upon in the wild processes of alchemy. God bless you. Your ever grateful

S. T. Coleridge.

Tuesday evening.—I leave this place [High Wycombe] on Thursday, 10 o’clock, for Reading. A letter will arrive in time before I go.

Sunday night, March 21, 1794.

I have endeavoured to feel what I ought to feel. Affiliated to you from my childhood, what must be my present situation? But I know you, my dear brother; and I entertain a humble confidence that my efforts in well-doing shall in some measure repay you. There is a vis inertiæ in the human mind—I am convinced that a man once corrupted will ever remain so, unless some sudden revolution, some unexpected change of place or station, shall have utterly altered his connection. When these shocks of adversity have electrified his moral frame, he feels a convalescence of soul, and becomes like a being recently formed from the hands of nature.

The last letter I received from you at High Wycombe was that almost blank letter which enclosed the guinea. I have written to the postmaster. I have breeches and waistcoats at Cambridge, three or four shirts, and some neckcloths, and a few pairs of stockings; the clothes,[Pg 65] which, rather from the order of the regiment than the impulse of my necessities, I parted with in Reading on my first arrival at the regiment, I disposed of for a mere trifle, comparatively, and at a small expense can recover them all but my coat and hat. They are gone irrevocably. My shirts, which I have with me, are, all but one, worn to rags—mere rags; their texture was ill-adapted to the labour of the stables.

Shall I confess to you my weakness, my more than brother? I am afraid to meet you. When I call to mind the toil and wearisomeness of your avocations, and think how you sacrifice your amusements and your health; when I recollect your habitual and self-forgetting economy, how generously severe, my soul sickens at its own guilt. A thousand reflections crowd in my mind; they are almost too much for me. Yet you, my brother, would comfort me, not reproach me, and extend the hand of forgiveness to one whose purposes were virtuous, though infirm, and whose energies vigorous, though desultory. Indeed, I long to see you, although I cannot help dreading it.

I mean to write to Dr. Pearce. The letter I will enclose to you. Perhaps it may not be proper to write, perhaps it may be necessary. You will best judge. The discharge should, I think, be sent down to the adjutant—yet I don’t know; it would be more comfortable to me to receive my dismission in London, were it not for the appearing in these clothes.

By to-morrow I shall be enabled to tell the exact expenses of equipping, etc.

I must conclude abruptly. God bless you, and your ever grateful

S. T. Coleridge.

 [Pg 66]

End of March, 1794.

My dear Brother,—I have been rather uneasy, that I have not heard from you since my departure from High Wycombe. Your letters are a comfort to me in the comfortless hour—they are manna in the wilderness. I should have written you long ere this, but in truth I have been blockaded by a whole army of petty vexations, bad quarters, etc., and within this week I have been thrown three times from my horse and run away with to the no small perturbation of my nervous system almost every day. I ride a horse, young, and as undisciplined as myself. After tumult and agitation of any kind the mind and all its affections seem to doze for a while, and we sit shivering with chilly feverishness wrapped up in the ragged and threadbare cloak of mere animal enjoyment.

On Sunday last I was surprised, or rather confounded, with a visit from Mr. Cornish, so confounded that for more than a minute I could not speak to him. He behaved with great delicacy and much apparent solicitude of friendship. He passed through Reading with his sister Lady Shore. I have received several letters from my friends at Cambridge, of most soothing contents. They write me, that with “undiminished esteem and increased affection, the Jesuites look forward to my return as to that of a lost brother!”

My present address is the White Hart, Reading, Berks.

Adieu, most dear brother!

S. T. Coleridge.

March 27, 1794.

My dear Brother,—I find that I was too sanguine in my expectations of recovering all my clothes. My coat, which I had supposed gone, and all the stockings, viz.,[Pg 67] four pairs of almost new silk stockings, and two pairs of new silk and cotton, I can get again for twenty-three shillings. I have ordered, therefore, a pair of breeches, which will be nineteen shillings, a waistcoat at twelve shillings, a pair of shoes at seven shillings and four pence. Besides these I must have a hat, which will be eighteen shillings, and two neckcloths, which will be five or six shillings. These things I have ordered. My travelling expenses will be about half a guinea. Have I done wrong in ordering these things? Or did you mean me to do it by desiring me to arrange what was necessary for my personal appearance at Cambridge? I have so seldom acted right, that in every step I take of my own accord I tremble lest I should be wrong. I forgot in the above account to mention a flannel waistcoat; it will be six shillings. The military dress is almost oppressively warm, and so very ill as I am at present I think it imprudent to hazard cold. I will see you at London, or rather at Hackney. There will be two or three trifling expenses on my leaving the army; I know not their exact amount. The adjutant dismissed me from all duty yesterday. My head throbs so, and I am so sick at stomach that it is with difficulty I can write. One thing more I wished to mention. There are three books, which I parted with at Reading. The bookseller, whom I have occasionally obliged by composing advertisements for his newspaper, has offered them me at the same price he bought them. They are a very valuable edition of Casimir[44] by Barbou,[45] a Synesius[46] by Canterus[Pg 68] and Bentley’s Quarto Edition. They are worth thirty shillings, at least, and I sold them for fourteen. The two first I mean to translate. I have finished two or three Odes of Casimir, and shall on my return to College send them to Dodsley as a specimen of an intended translation. Barbou’s edition is the only one that contains all the works of Casimir. God bless you. Your grateful

S. T. C.

Sunday night, March 30, 1794.

My dear Brother,—I received your enclosed. I am fearful, that as you advise me to go immediately to Cambridge after my discharge, that the utmost contrivances of economy will not enable [me] to make it adequate to all the expenses of my clothes and travelling. I shall go across the country on many accounts. The expense (I have examined) will be as nearly equal as well can be. The fare from Reading to High Wycombe on the outside is four shillings, from High Wycombe to Cambridge (for there is a coach that passes through Cambridge from Wycombe) I suppose about twelve shillings, perhaps a trifle more. I shall be two days and a half on the road, two nights. Can I calculate the expense at less than half a guinea, including all things? An additional guinea would perhaps be sufficient. Surely, my brother, I am not so utterly abandoned as not to feel the meaning and duty of economy. Oh me! I wish to God I were happy; but it would be strange indeed if I were so.

I long ago theoretically and in a less degree experimentally knew the necessity of faith in order to regulate[Pg 69] virtue, nor did I even seriously disbelieve the existence of a future state. In short, my religious creed bore and, perhaps, bears a correspondence with my mind and heart. I had too much vanity to be altogether a Christian, too much tenderness of nature to be utterly an infidel. Fond of the dazzle of wit, fond of subtlety of argument, I could not read without some degree of pleasure the levities of Voltaire or the reasonings of Helvetius; but, tremblingly alive to the feelings of humanity, and susceptible to the charms of truth, my heart forced me to admire the “beauty of holiness” in the Gospel, forced me to love the Jesus, whom my reason (or perhaps my reasonings) would not permit me to worship,—my faith, therefore, was made up of the Evangelists and the deistic philosophy—a kind of religious twilight. I said “perhaps bears,”—yes! my brother, for who can say, “Now I’ll be a Christian”? Faith is neither altogether voluntary; we cannot believe what we choose, but we can certainly cultivate such habits of thinking and acting as will give force and effective energy to the arguments on either side.

If I receive my discharge by Thursday, I will be, God pleased, in Cambridge on Sunday. Farewell, my brother! Believe me your severities only wound me as they awake the voice within to speak, ah! how more harshly! I feel gratitude and love towards you, even when I shrink and shiver.

Your affectionate
S. T. Coleridge.

April 7, 1794.

My dear Brother,—The last three days I have spent at Bray, near Maidenhead, at the house of a gentleman who has behaved with particular attention to me. I accepted his invitation as it was in my power in some measure to repay his kindness by the revisal of a performance he is about to publish, and by writing him a[Pg 70] dedication and preface. At my return I found two letters from you, the one containing the two guineas, which will be perfectly adequate to my expenses, and, my brother, what some part of your letter made me feel, I am ill able to express; but of this at another time. I have signed the certificate of my expenses, but not my discharge. The moment I receive it I shall set off for Cambridge immediately, most probably through London, as the gentleman, whose house I was at at Bray, has pressed me to take his horse, and accompany him on Wednesday morning, as he himself intends to ride to town that day. If my discharge comes down on Tuesday morning I shall embrace his offer, particularly as I shall be introduced to his bookseller, a thing of some consequence to my present views.

Clagget[47] has set four songs of mine most divinely, for two violins and a pianoforte. I have done him some services, and he wishes me to write a serious opera, which he will set, and have introduced. It is to be a joint work. I think of it. The rules for adaptable composition which he has given me are excellent, and I feel my powers greatly strengthened, owing, I believe, to my having read little or nothing for these last four months.

May 1, 1794.

My dear Brother,—I have been convened before the fellows.[48] Dr. Pearce behaved with great asperity, Mr. Plampin[49] with exceeding and most delicate kindness. My[Pg 71] sentence is a reprimand (not a public one, but implied in the sentence), a month’s confinement to the precincts of the College, and to translate the works of Demetrius Phalareus into English. It is a thin quarto of about ninety Greek pages. All the fellows tried to persuade the Master to greater leniency, but in vain. Without the least affectation I applaud his conduct, and think nothing of it. The confinement is nothing. I have the fields and grove of the College to walk in, and what can I wish more? What do I wish more? Nothing. The Demetrius is dry, and utterly untransferable to modern use, and yet from the Doctor’s words I suspect that he wishes it to be a publication, as he has more than once sent to know how I go on, and pressed me to exert erudition in some notes, and to write a preface. Besides this, I have had a declamation to write in the routine of college business, and the Rustat examination, at which I got credit. I get up every morning at five o’clock.

Every one of my acquaintance I have dropped solemnly and forever, except those of my College with whom before my departure I had been least of all connected—who had always remonstrated against my imprudences, yet have treated me with almost fraternal affection, Mr. Caldwell particularly. I thought the most decent way of dropping acquaintances was to express my intention, openly and irrevocably.

I find I must either go out at a by-term or degrade to the Christmas after next; but more of this to-morrow. I have been engaged in finishing a Greek ode. I mean to write for all the prizes. I have had no time upon my hands. I shall aim at correctness and perspicuity, not genius. My last ode was so sublime that nobody could[Pg 72] understand it. If I should be so very lucky as to win one of the prizes, I could comfortably ask the Doctor advice concerning the time of my degree. I will write to-morrow.

God bless you, my brother! my father!

S. T. Coleridge.

Gloucester, Sunday morning, July 6, 1794.

S. T. Coleridge to R. Southey, Health and Republicanism to be! When you write, direct to me, “To be kept at the Post Office, Wrexham, Denbighshire, N. Wales.” I mention this circumstance now, lest carried away by a flood of confluent ideas I should forget it. You are averse to gratitudinarian flourishes, else would I talk about hospitality, attentions, etc. 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. Our journeying has been intolerably fatiguing from the heat and whiteness of the roads, and the unhedged country presents nothing but stone fences, dreary to the eye and scorching to the touch. But we shall soon be in Wales.

Gloucester is a nothing-to-be-said-about town. The women have almost all of them sharp noses.

········

It is wrong, Southey! for a little girl with a[Pg 73] half-famished sickly baby in her arms to put her head in at the window of an inn—“Pray give me a bit of bread and meat!” from a party dining on lamb, green peas, and salad. Why? Because it is impertinent and obtrusive! “I am a gentleman! and wherefore the clamorous voice of woe intrude upon mine ear?” My companion is a man of cultivated, though not vigorous understanding; his feelings are all on the side of humanity; yet such are the unfeeling remarks, which the lingering remains of aristocracy occasionally prompt. When the pure system of pantisocracy shall have aspheterized—from ἀ, non, and σφέτερος, proprius (we really wanted such a word), instead of travelling along the circuitous, dusty, beaten highroad of diction, you thus cut across the soft, green, pathless field of novelty! Similes for ever! Hurrah! I have bought a little blank book, and portable ink horn; [and] as I journey onward, I ever and anon pluck the wild flowers of poesy, “inhale their odours awhile,” then throw them away and think no more of them. I will not do so! Two lines of mine:—

The cockatrice is a foul dragon with a crown on its head. The Eastern nations believe it to be hatched by a viper on a cock’s egg. Southey, dost thou not see wisdom in her Coan vest of allegory? The cockatrice is emblematic of monarchy, a monster generated by ingratitude or absurdity. When serpents sting, the only remedy is to kill the serpent, and besmear the wound with the fat. Would you desire better sympathy?

Description of heat from a poem I am manufacturing, the title: “Perspiration. A Travelling Eclogue.”

Farewell, sturdy Republican! Write me concerning Burnett and thyself, and concerning etc., etc. My next shall be a more sober and chastened epistle; but, you see, I was in the humour for metaphors, and, to tell thee the truth, I have so often serious reasons to quarrel with my inclination, that I do not choose to contradict it for trifles. To Lovell, fraternity and civic remembrances! Hucks’ compliments.

S. T. Coleridge.

Addressed to “Robert Southey. Miss Tyler’s, Bristol.”

Wrexham, Sunday, July 15, 1794.[50]

Your letter, Southey! made me melancholy. Man is a bundle of habits, but of all habits the habit of despondence is the most pernicious to virtue and happiness. I once shipwrecked my frail bark on that rock; a friendly plank was vouchsafed me. Be you wise by my experience,[Pg 75] and receive unhurt the flower, which I have climbed precipices to pluck. Consider the high advantages which you possess in so eminent a degree—health, strength of mind, and confirmed habits of strict morality. Beyond all doubt, by the creative powers of your genius, you might supply whatever the stern simplicity of republican wants could require. Is there no possibility of procuring the office of clerk in a compting-house? A month’s application would qualify you for it. For God’s sake, Southey! enter not into the church. Concerning Allen I say little, but I feel anguish at times. This earnestness of remonstrance! I will not offend you by asking your pardon for it. The following is a fact. A friend of Hucks’ after long struggles between principle and interest, as it is improperly called, accepted a place under government. He took the oaths, shuddered, went home and threw himself in an agony out of a two-pair of stairs window! These dreams of despair are most soothing to the imagination. I well know it. We shroud ourselves in the mantle of distress, and tell our poor hearts, “This is happiness!” There is a dignity in all these solitary emotions that flatters the pride of our nature. Enough of sermonizing. As I was meditating on the capability of pleasure in a mind like yours, I unwarily fell into poetry:[51]—

are lines eminently beautiful. The whole is pleasing. For a motto! Surely my memory has suffered an epileptic fit. A Greek motto would be pedantic. These lines will perhaps do:—

A better will soon occur to me. Poor Poland! They go on sadly there. Warmth of particular friendship does not imply absorption. The nearer you approach the sun, the more intense are his rays. Yet what distant corner of the system do they not cheer and vivify? The ardour of private attachments makes philanthropy a necessary habit of the soul. I love my friend. Such as he is, all mankind are or might be. The deduction is evident. Philanthropy (and indeed every other virtue) is a thing of concretion. Some home-born feeling is the centre of the ball, that rolling on through life collects and assimilates every congenial affection. What did you mean by H. has “my[Pg 77] understanding”? I have puzzled myself in vain to discover the import of the sentence. The only sense it seemed to bear was so like mock-humility, that I scolded myself for the momentary supposition.[53] My heart is so heavy at present, that I will defer the finishing of this letter till to-morrow.

I saw a face in Wrexham Church this morning, which recalled “Thoughts full of bitterness and images” too dearly loved! now past and but “Remembered like sweet sounds of yesterday!” At Ross (sixteen miles from Gloucester) we took up our quarters at the King’s Arms, once the house of Kyrle, the Man of Ross. I gave the window-shutter the following effusion:[54]—

I will resume the pen to-morrow.

[Pg 78]Monday, 11 o’clock. Well, praised be God! here I am. Videlicet, Ruthin, sixteen miles from Wrexham. At Wrexham Church I glanced upon the face of a Miss E. Evans, a young lady with [whom] I had been in habits of fraternal correspondence. She turned excessively pale; she thought it my ghost, I suppose. I retreated with all possible speed to our inn. There, as I was standing at the window, passed by Eliza Evans, and with her to my utter surprise her sister, Mary Evans, quam efflictim et perdite amabam. I apprehend she is come from London on a visit to her grandmother, with whom Eliza lives. I turned sick, and all but fainted away! The two sisters, as H. informs me, passed by the window anxiously several times afterwards; but I had retired.

My fortitude would not have supported me, had I recognized her—I mean appeared to do it! I neither ate nor slept yesterday. But love is a local anguish; I am sixteen miles distant, and am not half so miserable. I must endeavour to forget it amid the terrible graces of the wild wood scenery that surround me. I never durst even in a whisper avow my passion, though I knew she loved me. Where were my fortunes? and why should I make her miserable! Almighty God bless her! Her image is in the sanctuary of my heart, and never can it be torn away but with the strings that grapple it to life. Southey! there are few men of whose delicacy I think so highly as to have written all this. I am glad I have so deemed of you. We are soothed by communications.

Denbigh (eight miles from Ruthin).

And now to give you some little account of our journey. From Oxford to Gloucester, to Ross, to Hereford, to[Pg 79] Leominster, to Bishop’s Castle, to Welsh Pool, to Llanfyllin, nothing occurred worthy notice except that at the last place I preached pantisocracy and aspheterism with so much success that two great huge fellows of butcher-like appearance danced about the room in enthusiastic agitation. And one of them of his own accord called for a large glass of brandy, and drank it off to this his own toast, “God save the King! And may he be the last.” Southey! Such men may be of use. They would kill the golden calf secundum artem. From Llanfyllin we penetrated into the interior of the country to Llangunnog, a village most romantically situated. We dined there on hashed mutton, cucumber, bread and cheese, and beer, and had two pots of ale—the sum total of the expense being sixteen pence for both of us! From Llangunnog we walked over the mountains to Bala—most sublimely terrible! It was scorchingly hot. I applied my mouth ever and anon to the side of the rocks and sucked in draughts of water cold as ice, and clear as infant diamonds in their embryo dew! The rugged and stony clefts are stupendous, and in winter must form cataracts most astonishing. At this time of the year there is just water enough dashed down over them to “soothe, not disturb the pensive traveller’s ear.” I slept by the side of one an hour or more. As we descended the mountain, the sun was reflected in the river, that winded through the valley with insufferable brightness; it rivalled the sky. At Bala is nothing remarkable except a lake of eleven miles in circumference. At the inn I was sore afraid that I had caught the itch from a Welsh democrat, who was charmed with my sentiments: he grasped my hand with flesh-bruising ardor, and I trembled lest some disappointed citizens of the animalcular republic should have emigrated.

Shortly after, into the same room, came a well-dressed clergyman and four others, among whom (the landlady whispers me) was a justice of the peace and the doctor of[Pg 80] the parish. I was asked for a gentleman. I gave General Washington. The parson said in a low voice, “Republicans!” After which, the medical man said, “Damn toasts! I gives a sentiment: May all republicans be guillotined!” Up starts the Welsh democrat. “May all fools be gulloteen’d—and then you will be the first.” Thereon rogue, villain, traitor flew thick in each other’s faces as a hailstorm. This is nothing in Wales. They make calling one another liars, etc., necessary vent-holes to the superfluous fumes of the temper. At last I endeavoured to articulate by observing that, whatever might be our opinions in politics, the appearance of a clergyman in the company assured me we were all Christians; “though,” continued I, “it is rather difficult to reconcile the last sentiment with the spirit of Christianity.” “Pho!” quoth the parson, “Christianity! Why, we are not at church now, are we? The gemman’s sentiment was a very good one; it showed he was sincere in his principles.” Welsh politics could not prevail over Welsh hospitality. They all, except the parson, shook me by the hand, and said I was an open-hearted, honest-speaking fellow, though I was a bit of a democrat.

From Bala we travelled onward to Llangollen, a most beautiful village in a most beautiful situation. On the road we met two Cantabs of my college, Brookes and Berdmore. These rival pedestrians—perfect Powells—were vigorously pursuing their tour in a post-chaise! We laughed famously. Their only excuse was that Berdmore had been ill. From Llangollen to Wrexham, from Wrexham to Ruthin, to Denbigh. At Denbigh is a ruined castle; it surpasses everything I could have conceived. I wandered there an hour and a half last evening (this is Tuesday morning). Two well-dressed young men were walking there. “Come,” says one, “I’ll play my flute; ’twill be romantic.” “Bless thee for the thought, man of genius and sensibility!” I exclaimed, and preattuned my[Pg 81] heartstring to tremulous emotion. He sat adown (the moon just peering) amid the awful part of the ruins, and the romantic youth struck up the affecting tune of “Mrs. Carey.”[55] ’Tis fact, upon my honour.

God bless you, Southey! We shall be at Aberystwith[56] this day week. When will you come out to meet us? There you must direct your letter. Hucks’ compliments. I anticipate much accession of republicanism from Lovell. I have positively done nothing but dream of the system of no property every step of the way since I left you, till last Sunday. Heigho!

Robert Southey, No. 8 Westcott Buildings, Bath.

10 o’clock, Thursday morning, September 18, 1794.

Well, my dear Southey! I am at last arrived at Jesus. My God! how tumultuous are the movements of my heart. Since I quitted this room what and how important events have been evolved! America! Southey! Miss Fricker! Yes, Southey, you are right. Even Love is the creature of strong motive. I certainly love her. I think of her incessantly and with unspeakable tenderness,—with that inward melting away of soul that symptomatizes it.

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[Pg 82] 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. Harwood—pish! I say nothing of him.

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.

Brookes and Berdmore, as I suspected, have spread my opinions in mangled forms at Cambridge. Caldwell, the most pantisocratic of aristocrats, has been laughing at me. Up I arose, terrible in reasoning. He fled from me, because “he could 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 influence to my imagination. Four months ago the remark would not have been more elegant than just. Now it is nothing.

I like your sonnets exceedingly—the best of any I have yet seen.[57] “Though to the eye fair is the extended vale” should be “to the eye though fair the extended vale.” I by no means disapprove of discord introduced to produce effect, nor is my ear so fastidious as to be angry with it where it could not have been avoided without weakening the sense. But discord for discord’s sake is rather too licentious.

“Wild wind” has no other but alliterative beauty; it applies to a storm, not to the autumnal breeze that makes the trees rustle mournfully. Alter it to “That rustle to the sad wind moaningly.”

“’Twas a long way and tedious,” and the three last lines are marked beauties—unlaboured strains poured soothingly along from the feeling simplicity of heart. The[Pg 83] next sonnet is altogether exquisite,—the circumstance common yet new to poetry, the moral accurate and full of soul.[58] “I never saw,” etc., is most exquisite. I am almost ashamed to write the following, it is so inferior. Ashamed? No, Southey! God knows my heart! I am delighted to feel you superior to me in genius as in virtue.

I have heard from Allen, and write the third letter to him. Yours is the second. Perhaps you would like two sonnets I have written to my Sally. When I have received an answer from Allen I will tell you the contents of his first letter.

My compliments to Heath.

I will write you a huge, big letter next week. At present I have to transact the tragedy business, to wait on the Master, to write to Mrs. Southey, Lovell, etc., etc.

God love you, and

S. T. Coleridge.

 [Pg 84]

Friday morning, September 19, 1794.

My fire was blazing cheerfully—the tea-kettle even now boiled over on it. Now sudden sad it looks. But, see, it blazes up again as cheerily as ever. Such, dear Southey, was the effect of your this morning’s letter on my heart. Angry, no! I esteem and confide in you the more; but it did make me sorrowful. I was blameless; it was therefore only a passing cloud empictured on the breast. Surely had I written to you the first letter you directed to me at Cambridge, I would not have believed that you could have received it without answering it. Still less that you could have given a momentary pain to her that loved you. If I could have imagined no rational excuse for you, I would have peopled the vacancy with events of impossibility!

On Wednesday, September 17, I arrived at Cambridge. Perhaps the very hour you were writing in the severity of offended friendship, was I pouring forth the heart to Sarah Fricker. I did not call on Caldwell; I saw no one. On the moment of my arrival I shut my door, and wrote to her. But why not before?

In the first place Miss F. did not authorize me to direct immediately to her. It was settled that through you in our weekly parcels were the letters to be conveyed. The moment I arrived at Cambridge, and all yesterday, was I writing letters to you, to your mother, to Lovell, etc., to complete a parcel.

In London I wrote twice to you, intending daily to go to Cambridge; of course I deferred the parcel till then. I was taken ill, very ill. I exhausted my finances, and ill as I was, I sat down and scrawled a few guineas’ worth of nonsense for the booksellers, which Dyer disposed of for me. Languid, sick at heart, in the back room of an inn! Lofty conjunction of circumstances for me to write[Pg 85] to Miss F. Besides, I told her I should write the moment I arrived at Cambridge. I have fulfilled the promise. Recollect, Southey, that when you mean to go to a place to-morrow, and to-morrow, and to-morrow, the time that intervenes is lost. Had I meant at first to stay in London, a fortnight should not have elapsed without my writing to her. If you are satisfied, tell Miss F. that you are so, but assign no reasons—I ought not to have been suspected.

The tragedy[60] will be printed in less than a week. I shall put my name, because it will sell at least a hundred copies in Cambridge. It would appear ridiculous to put two names to such a work. But, if you choose it, mention it and it shall be done. To every man who praises it, of course I give the true biography of it; to those who laugh at it, I laugh again, and I am too well known at Cambridge to be thought the less of, even though I had published James Jennings’ Satire.

········

Southey! Precipitance is wrong. There may be too high a state of health, perhaps even virtue is liable to a plethora. I have been the slave of impulse, the child of imbecility. But my inconsistencies have given me a tarditude and reluctance to think ill of any one. Having been often suspected of wrong when I was altogether right, from fellow-feeling I judge not too hastily, and from appearances. Your undeviating simplicity of rectitude has made you rapid in decision. Having never erred, you feel more indignation at error than pity for it. There is phlogiston in your heart. Yet am I grateful for it. You would not have written so angrily but for the greatness of your esteem and affection. The more highly we have been wont to think of a character, the[Pg 86] more pain and irritation we suffer from the discovery of its imperfections. My heart is very heavy, much more so than when I began to write.

Yours most fraternally.
S. T. Coleridge.

Friday night, September 26, 1794.

My dear, dear Southey,—I am beyond measure distressed and agitated by your letter to Favell. On the evening of the Wednesday before last, I arrived in Cambridge; that night and the next day I dedicated to writing to you, to Miss F., etc. On the Friday I received your letter of phlogistic rebuke. I answered it immediately, wrote a second letter to Miss F., inclosed them in the aforesaid parcel, and sent them off by the mail directed to Mrs. Southey, No. 8 Westcott Buildings, Bath. They should have arrived on Sunday morning. Perhaps you have not heard from Bath; perhaps—damn perhapses! My God, my God! what a deal of pain you must have suffered before you wrote that letter to Favell. It is an Ipswich Fair time, and the Norwich company are theatricalizing. They are the first provincial actors in the kingdom. Much against my will, I am engaged to drink tea and go to the play with Miss Brunton[61] (Mrs. Merry’s[Pg 87] sister). The young lady, and indeed the whole family, have taken it into their heads to be very much attached to me, though I have known them only six days. The father (who is the manager and proprietor of the theatre) inclosed in a very polite note a free ticket for the season. The young lady is said to be the most literary of the beautiful, and the most beautiful of the literatæ. It may be so; my faculties and discernments are so completely jaundiced by vexation that the Virgin Mary and Mary Flanders, alias Moll, would appear in the same hues.

All last night, I was obliged to listen to the damned chatter of our mayor, a fellow that would certainly be a pantisocrat, were his head and heart as highly illuminated as his face. At present he is a High Churchman, and a Pittite, and is guilty (with a very large fortune) of so many rascalities in his public character, that he is obliged to drink three bottles of claret a day in order to acquire a stationary rubor, and prevent him from the trouble of running backwards and forwards for a blush once every five minutes. In the tropical latitudes of this fellow’s nose was I obliged to fry. I wish you would write a lampoon upon him—in me it would be unchristian revenge.

Our tragedy is printed, all but the title-page. It will be complete by Saturday night.

God love you. I am in the queerest humour in the world, and am out of love with everybody.

S. T. Coleridge.

October 21, 1794.

To you alone, Southey, I write the first part of this letter. To yourself confine it.

“Is this handwriting altogether erased from your memory? To whom am I addressing myself? For whom am I now violating the rules of female delicacy?[Pg 88] Is it for the same Coleridge, whom I once regarded as a sister her best-beloved Brother? Or for one who will ridicule that advice from me, which he has rejected as offered by his family? I will hazard the attempt. I have no right, nor do I feel myself inclined to reproach you for the Past. God forbid! You have already suffered too much from self-accusation. But I conjure you, Coleridge, earnestly and solemnly conjure you to consider long and deeply, before you enter into any rash schemes. There is an Eagerness in your Nature, which is ever hurrying you in the sad Extreme. I have heard that you mean to leave England, and on a Plan so absurd and extravagant that were I for a moment to imagine it true, I should be obliged to listen with a more patient Ear to suggestions, which I have rejected a thousand times with scorn and anger. Yes! whatever Pain I might suffer, I should be forced to exclaim, ‘O what a noble mind is here o’erthrown, Blasted with ecstacy.’ You have a country, does it demand nothing of you? You have doting Friends! Will you break their Hearts! There is a God—Coleridge! Though I have been told (indeed I do not believe it) that you doubt of his existence and disbelieve a hereafter. No! you have too much sensibility to be an Infidel. You know I never was rigid in my opinions concerning Religion—and have always thought Faith to be only Reason applied to a particular subject. In short, I am the same Being as when you used to say, ‘We thought in all things alike.’ I often reflect on the happy hours we spent together and regret the Loss of your Society. I cannot easily forget those whom I once loved—nor can I easily form new Friendships. I find women in general vain—all of the same Trifle, and therefore little and envious, and (I am afraid) without sincerity; and of the other sex those who are offered and held up to my esteem are very prudent, and very worldly. If you value my peace of mind, you must on no account answer this[Pg 89] letter, or take the least notice of it. I would not for the world any part of my Family should suspect that I have written to you. My mind is sadly tempered by being perpetually obliged to resist the solicitations of those whom I love. I need not explain myself. Farewell, Coleridge! I shall always feel that I have been your Sister.”

No name was signed,—it was from Mary Evans. I received it about three weeks ago. I loved her, Southey, almost to madness. Her image was never absent from me for three years, for more than three years. My resolution has not faltered, but I want a comforter. I have done nothing, I have gone into company, I was constantly at the theatre here till they left us, I endeavoured to be perpetually with Miss Brunton, I even hoped that her exquisite beauty and uncommon accomplishments might have cured one passion by another. The latter I could easily have dissipated in her absence, and so have restored my affections to her whom I do not love, but whom by every tie of reason and honour I ought to love. I am resolved, but wretched! But time shall do much. You will easily believe that with such feelings I should have found it no easy task to write to ——. I should have detested myself, if after my first letter I had written coldly—how could I write as warmly? I was vexed too and alarmed by your letter concerning Mr. and Mrs. Roberts, Shad, and little Sally. I was wrong, very wrong, in the affair of Shad, and have given you reason to suppose that I should assent to the innovation. I will most assuredly go with you to America, on this plan, but remember, Southey, this is not our plan, nor can I defend it. “Shad’s children will be educated as ours, and the education we shall give them will be such as to render them incapable of blushing at the want of it in their parents”—Perhaps! With this one word would every Lilliputian reasoner demolish the system. Wherever men can be vicious, some[Pg 90] will be. The leading idea of pantisocracy is to make men necessarily virtuous by removing all motives to evil—all possible temptation. “Let them dine with us and be treated with as much equality as they would wish, but perform that part of labour for which their education has fitted them.” Southey should not have written this sentence. My friend, my noble and high-souled friend should have said to his dependents, “Be my slaves, and ye shall be my equals;” to his wife and sister, “Resign the name of Ladyship and ye shall retain the thing.” Again. Is every family to possess one of these unequal equals, these Helot Egalités? Or are the few you have mentioned, “with more toil than the peasantry of England undergo,” to do for all of us “that part of labour which their education has fitted them for”? If your remarks on the other side are just, the inference is that the scheme of pantisocracy is impracticable, but I hope and believe that it is not a necessary inference. Your remark of the physical evil in the long infancy of men would indeed puzzle a Pangloss—puzzle him to account for the wish of a benevolent heart like yours to discover malignancy in its Creator. Surely every eye but an eye jaundiced by habit of peevish scepticism must have seen that the mothers’ cares are repaid even to rapture by the mothers’ endearments, and that the long helplessness of the babe is the means of our superiority in the filial and maternal affection and duties to the same feelings in the brute creation. It is likewise among other causes the means of society, that thing which makes them a little lower than the angels. If Mrs. S. and Mrs. F. go with us, they can at least prepare the food of simplicity for us. Let the married women do only what is absolutely convenient and customary for pregnant women or nurses. Let the husband do all the rest, and what will that all be? Washing with a machine and cleaning the house. One hour’s addition to our daily labor, and pantisocracy in its most[Pg 91] perfect sense is practicable. That the greater part of our female companions should have the task of maternal exertion at the same time is very improbable; but, though it were to happen, an infant is almost always sleeping, and during its slumbers the mother may in the same room perform the little offices of ironing clothes or making shirts. But the hearts of the women are not all with us. I do believe that Edith and Sarah are exceptions, but do even they know the bill of fare for the day, every duty that will be incumbent upon them?

All necessary knowledge in the branch of ethics is comprised in the word justice: that the good of the whole is the good of each individual, that, of course, it is each individual’s duty to be just, because it is his interest. To perceive this and to assent to it as an abstract proposition is easy, but it requires the most wakeful attentions of the most reflective mind in all moments to bring it into practice. It is not enough that we have once swallowed it. The heart should have fed upon the truth, as insects on a leaf, till it be tinged with the colour, and show its food in every the minutest fibre. In the book of pantisocracy I hope to have comprised all that is good in Godwin, of whom and of whose book I will write more fully in my next letter (I think not so highly of him as you do, and I have read him with the greatest attention). This will be an advantage to the minds of our women.

What have been your feelings concerning the War with America, which is now inevitable? To go from Hamburg will not only be a heavy additional expense, but dangerous and uncertain, as nations at war are in the habit of examining neutral vessels to prevent the importation of arms and seize subjects of the hostile governments. It is said that one cause of the ministers having been so cool on the business is that it will prevent emigration, which it seems would be treasonable to a hostile country. Tell me all you think on these subjects. What[Pg 92] think you of the difference in the prices of land as stated by Cowper from those given by the American agents? By all means read, ponder on Cowper, and when I hear your thoughts I will give you the result of my own.

When a man is unhappy he writes damned bad poetry, I find. My Imitations too depress my spirits—the task is arduous, and grows upon me. Instead of two octavo volumes, to do all I hoped to do two quartos would hardly be sufficient.

Of your poetry I will send you a minute critique, when I send you my proposed alterations. The sonnets are exquisite.[63] Banquo is not what it deserves to be. Towards the end it grows very flat, wants variety of imagery—you dwell too long on Mary, yet have made less of her than I expected. The other figures are not sufficiently distinct; indeed, the plan of the ode (after the first forty lines which are most truly sublime) is so evident an imitation of Gray’s Descent of Odin, that I would rather[Pg 93] adopt Shakespeare’s mode of introducing the figures themselves, and making the description now the Witches’ and now Fleance’s. I detest monodramas, but I never wished to establish my judgment on the throne of critical despotism. Send me up the Elegy on the Exiled Patriots and the Scripture Sonnets. I have promised them to Flower.[64] The first will do good, and more good in a paper than in any other vehicle.

My thoughts are floating about in a most chaotic state. I had almost determined to go down to Bath, and stay two days, that I might say everything I wished. You mean to acquaint your aunt with the scheme? As she knows it, and knows that you know that she knows it, justice cannot require it, but if your own comfort makes it necessary, by all means do it, with all possible gentleness. She has loved you tenderly; be firm, therefore, as a rock, mild as the lamb. I sent a hundred “Robespierres” to Bath ten days ago and more.

Five hundred copies of “Robespierre” were printed. A hundred [went] to Bath; a hundred to Kearsley, in London; twenty-five to March, at Norwich; thirty I have sold privately (twenty-five of these thirty to Dyer, who found it inconvenient to take fifty). The rest are dispersed among the Cambridge booksellers; the delicacies of academic gentlemanship prevented me from disposing of more than the five propriâ personâ. Of course we only get ninepence for each copy from the booksellers. I expected that Mr. Field would have sent for fifty, but have heard nothing of it. I sent a copy to him, with my respects, and have made presents of six more. How they sell in London, I know not. All that are in Cambridge will sell—a great many are sold. I have been blamed for publishing it, considering the more important work I have offered to the public. N’importe. ’Tis thought a very aristocratic performance; you may suppose how[Pg 94] hyper-democratic my character must have been. The expenses of paper, printing, and advertisements are nearly nine pounds. We ought to have charged one shilling and sixpence a copy.

I presented a copy to Miss Brunton with these verses in the blank leaf:[65]—

Jes. Coll., Cambridge.

Till I dated this letter I never recollected that yesterday was my birthday—twenty-two years old.

I have heard from my brothers—from him particularly who has been friend, brother, father. ’Twas all remonstrance and anguish, and suggestions that I am deranged! Let me receive from you a letter of consolation; for, believe me, I am completely wretched.

Yours most affectionately,
S. T. Coleridge.

November, 1794.

My feeble and exhausted heart regards with a criminal indifference the introduction of servitude into our society; but my judgment is not asleep, nor can I suffer your reason, Southey, to be entangled in the web which your feelings have woven. Oxen and horses possess not intellectual appetites, nor the powers of acquiring them. We are therefore justified in employing their labour to our own benefit: mind hath a divine right of sovereignty over body.[Pg 96] But who shall dare to transfer “from man to brute” to “from man to man”? To be employed in the toil of the field, while we are pursuing philosophical studies—can earldoms or emperorships boast so huge an inequality? Is there a human being of so torpid a nature as that placed in our society he would not feel it? A willing slave is the worst of slaves! His soul is a slave. Besides, I must own myself incapable of perceiving even the temporary convenience of the proposed innovation. The men do not want assistance, at least none that Shad can particularly give; and to the women, what assistance can little Sally, the wife of Shad, give more than any other of our married women? Is she to have no domestic cares of her own? No house? No husband to provide for? No children? Because Mr. and Mrs. Roberts are not likely to have children, I see less objection to their accompanying us. Indeed, indeed, Southey, I am fearful that Lushington’s prophecy may not be altogether vain. “Your system, Coleridge, appears strong to the head and lovely to the heart; but depend upon it, you will never give your women sufficient strength of mind, liberality of heart, or vigilance of attention. They will spoil it.”

I am extremely unwell; have run a nail into my heel, and before me stand “Embrocation for the throbbing of the head,” “To be shaked up well that the ether may mix,” “A wineglass full to be taken when faint.” ’Sdeath! how I hate the labels of apothecary’s bottles. Ill as I am, I must go out to supper. Farewell for a few hours.

’Tis past one o’clock in the morning. I sat down at twelve o’clock to read the “Robbers” of Schiller.[66] I had read, chill and trembling, when I came to the part where the Moor fixes a pistol over the robbers who are asleep. I could read no more. My God, Southey, who is this Schiller, this convulser of the heart? Did he write his tragedy amid the yelling of fiends? I should not like to be[Pg 97] able to describe such characters. I tremble like an aspen leaf. Upon my soul, I write to you because I am frightened. I had better go to bed. Why have we ever called Milton sublime? that Count de Moor horrible wielder of heart-withering virtues? Satan is scarcely qualified to attend his execution as gallows chaplain.

Tuesday morning.—I have received your letter. Potter of Emanuel[67] drives me up to town in his phaeton on Saturday morning. I hope to be with you by Wednesday week. Potter is a “Son of Soul”—a poet of liberal sentiments in politics—yet (would you believe it?) possesses six thousand a year independent.

I feel grateful to you for your sympathy. There is a feverish distemperature of brain, during which some horrible phantom threatens our eyes in every corner, until, emboldened by terror, we rush on it, and then—why then we return, the heart indignant at its own palpitation! Even so will the greater part of our mental miseries vanish before an effort. Whatever of mind we will to do, we can do! What, then, palsies the will? The joy of grief. A mysterious pleasure broods with dusky wings over the tumultuous mind, “and the Spirit of God moveth on the darkness of the waters.” She was very lovely, Southey! We formed each other’s minds; our ideas were blended. Heaven bless her! I cannot forget her. Every day her memory sinks deeper into my heart.

I wish, Southey, in the stern severity of judgment, that the two mothers were not to go, and that the children stayed with them. Are you wounded by my want of feeling? No! how highly must I think of your rectitude of soul, that I should dare to say this to so affectionate a son! That Mrs. Fricker! We shall have her teaching the infants Christianity,—I mean, that mongrel whelp that goes under its name,—teaching them by stealth in some ague fit of superstition.

There is little danger of my being confined. Advice offered with respect from a brother; affected coldness, an assumed alienation mixed with involuntary bursts of anguish and disappointed affection; questions concerning the mode in which I would have it mentioned to my aged mother—these are the daggers which are plunged into my peace. Enough! I should rather be offering consolation to your sorrows than be wasting my feelings in egotistic complaints. “Verily my complaint is bitter, yet my stroke is heavier than my groaning.”

God love you, my dear Southey!

S. T. Coleridge.

A friend of mine hath lately departed this life in a frenzy fever induced by anxiety. Poor fellow, a child of frailty like me! Yet he was amiable. I poured forth these incondite lines[68] in a moment of melancholy dissatisfaction:—

God love you.

Autumn, 1794.

Last night, dear Southey, I received a special invitation from Dr. Edwards[70] (the great Grecian of Cambridge and heterodox divine) to drink tea and spend the evening. I there met a councillor whose name is Lushington, a democrat, and a man of the most powerful and Briarean intellect. I was challenged on the subject of pantisocracy, which is, indeed, the universal topic at the University. A discussion began and continued for six hours. In conclusion, Lushington and Edwards declared the system impregnable, supposing the assigned quantum of virtue and genius in the first individuals. I came home at one o’clock this morning in the honest consciousness of having exhibited closer argument in more elegant and appropriate language than I had ever conceived myself capable of. Then my heart smote me, for I saw your letter on the propriety of taking servants with us. I had answered that letter, and feel conviction that you will perceive the error into which the tenderness of your nature had led you. But other queries obtruded themselves on my understanding. The more perfect our system is, supposing the necessary premises, the more eager in anxiety am I that the necessary premises exist. O for that Lyncean eye that can discover in the acorn of Error the rooted and widely spreading oak of Misery! Quære: should not all who mean to[Pg 102] become members of our community be incessantly meliorating their temper and elevating their understandings? Qu.: whether a very respectable quantity of acquired knowledge (History, Politics, above all, Metaphysics, without which no man can reason but with women and children) be not a prerequisite to the improvement, of the head and heart? Qu.: whether our Women have not been taught by us habitually to contemplate the littleness of individual comforts and a passion for the novelty of the scheme rather than a generous enthusiasm of Benevolence? Are they saturated with the Divinity of Truth sufficiently to be always wakeful? In the present state of their minds, whether it is not probable that the Mothers will tinge the minds of the infants with prejudication? The questions are meant merely as motives to you, Southey, to the strengthening the minds of the Women, and stimulating them to literary acquirements. But, Southey, there are Children going with us. Why did I never dare in my disputations with the unconvinced to hint at this circumstance? Was it not because I knew, even to certainty of conviction, that it is subversive of rational hopes of a permanent system? These children,—the little Frickers, for instance, and your brothers,—are they not already deeply tinged with the prejudices and errors of society? Have they not learned from their schoolfellows Fear and Selfishness, of which the necessary offsprings are Deceit and desultory Hatred? How are we to prevent them from infecting the minds of our children? By reforming their judgments? At so early an age, can they have felt the ill consequences of their errors in a manner sufficiently vivid to make this reformation practicable? How can we insure their silence concerning God, etc.? Is it possible they should enter into our motives for this silence? If not, we must produce their Obedience by Terror. Obedience? Terror? The repetition is sufficient. I need not inform you that they are as inadequate as inapplicable. I have told[Pg 103] you, Southey, that I will accompany you on an imperfect system. But must our system be thus necessarily imperfect? I ask the question that I may know whether or not I should write the Book of Pantisocracy.

I received your letter of Oyez; it brought a smile on a countenance that for these three weeks has been cloudy and stern in its solitary hours. In company, wit and laughter are Duties. Slovenly? I could mention a lady of fashionable rank, and most fashionable ideas, who declared to Caldwell that I (S. T. Coleridge) was a man of the most courtly and polished manners, of the most gentlemanly address she had ever met with. But I will not crow! Slovenly, indeed!

Thursday, November 6, 1794.

My dear Brother,—Your letter of this morning gave me inexpressible consolation. I thought that I perceived in your last the cold and freezing features of alienated affection. Surely, said I, I have trifled with the spirit of love, and it has passed away from me! There is a vice of such powerful venom, that one grain of it will poison the overflowing goblet of a thousand virtues. This vice constitution seems to have implanted in me, and habit has made it almost Omnipotent. It is indolence![71] Hence, whatever web of friendship my presence may have woven, my absence has seldom failed to unravel. Anxieties that stimulate others infuse an additional narcotic into my mind. The appeal of duty to my judgment, and the pleadings of affection at my heart, have been heard indeed, and heard with deep regard. Ah! that they had[Pg 104] been as constantly obeyed. But so it has been. Like some poor labourer, whose night’s sleep has but imperfectly refreshed his overwearied frame, I have sate in drowsy uneasiness, and doing nothing have thought what a deal I had to do. But I trust that the kingdom of reason is at hand, and even now cometh!

How often and how unkindly are the ebullitions of youthful disputations mistaken for the result of fixed principles. People have resolved that I am a dηmocrat, and accordingly look at everything I do through the spectacles of prejudication. In the feverish distemperature of a bigoted aristocrat’s brain, some phantom of Dηmocracy threatens him in every corner of my writings.

“Are these lines in character,” observed a sensible friend of mine, “in a speech on the death of the man whom it just became the fashion to style ‘The ambitious Theocrat’?” “I fear not,” was my answer, “I gave way to my feelings.” The first speech of Adelaide,[73] whose Automaton is this character? Who spoke through Le Gendre’s mouth,[74] when he says, “Oh, what a precious name is Liberty To scare or cheat the simple into slaves”? But in several parts I have, it seems, in the strongest language boasted the impossibility of subduing France. Is not this sentiment highly characteristic? Is it forced into the mouths of the speakers? Could I[Pg 105] have even omitted it without evident absurdity? But, granted that it is my own opinion, is it an anti-pacific one? I should have classed it among the anti-polemics. Again, are all who entertain and express this opinion dηmocrats? God forbid! They would be a formidable party indeed! I know many violent anti-reformists, who are as violent against the war on the ground that it may introduce that reform, which they (perhaps not unwisely) imagine would chant the dirge of our constitution. Solemnly, my brother, I tell you, I am not a dηmocrat. I see, evidently, that the present is not the highest state of society of which we are capable. And after a diligent, I may say an intense, study of Locke, Hartley, and others who have written most wisely on the nature of man, I appear to myself to see the point of possible perfection, at which the world may perhaps be destined to arrive. But how to lead mankind from one point to the other is a process of such infinite complexity, that in deep-felt humility I resign it to that Being “Who shaketh the Earth out of her place, and the pillars thereof tremble,” “Who purifieth with Whirlwinds, and maketh the Pestilence his Besom,” Who hath said, “that violence shall no more be heard of; the people shall not build and another inhabit; they shall not plant and another eat;” “the wolf and the lamb shall feed together.” I have been asked what is the best conceivable mode of meliorating society. My answer has been this: “Slavery is an abomination to my feeling of the head and the heart. Did Jesus teach the abolition of it? No! He taught those principles of which the necessary effect was to abolish all slavery. He prepared the mind for the reception before he poured the blessing.” You ask me what the friend of universal equality should do. I answer: “Talk not politics. Preach the Gospel!”

Yea, my brother! I have at all times in all places exerted my power in the defence of the Holy One of Nazareth against the learning of the historian, the libertinism of[Pg 106] the wit, and (his worst enemy) the mystery of the bigot! But I am an infidel, because I cannot thrust my head into a mud gutter, and say, “How deep I am!” And I am a dηmocrat, because I will not join in the maledictions of the despotist—because I will bless all men and curse no one! I have been a fool even to madness; and I am, therefore, an excellent hit for calumny to aim her poisoned probabilities at! As the poor flutterer, who by hard struggling has escaped from the bird-limed thornbush, still bears the clammy incumbrance on his feet and wings, so I am doomed to carry about with me the sad mementos of past imprudence and anguish from which I have been imperfectly released.

Mr. Potter of Emanuel drives me up to town in his phaeton, on Saturday morning. Of course I shall see you on Sunday. Poor Smerdon! the reports concerning his literary plagiarism (as far as concerns my assistance) are falsehoods. I have felt much for him, and on the morning I received your letter I poured forth these incondite rhymes. Of course they are meant for a brother’s eye.

God love you, dear brother, and your affectionate and grateful

S. T. Coleridge.

December 11, 1794.

My dear Southey,—I sit down to write to you, not that I have anything particular to say, but it is a relief, and forms a very respectable part in my theory of “Escapes from the Folly of Melancholy.” I am so habituated to philosophizing that I cannot divest myself of it, even when my own wretchedness is the subject. I appear to[Pg 107] myself like a sick physician, feeling the pang acutely, yet deriving a wonted pleasure from examining its progress and developing its causes.

Your poems and Bowles’ are my only morning companions. “The Retrospect!”[76] Quod qui non prorsus amat et deperit, illum omnes et virtutes et veneres odere! It is a most lovely poem, and in the next edition of your works shall be a perfect one. The “Ode to Romance”[77][Pg 108] is the best of the odes. I dislike that to Lycon, excepting the last stanza, which is superlatively fine. The phrase of “let honest truth be vain” is obscure. Of your blank verse odes, “The Death of Mattathias”[78] is by far the best. That you should ever write another, Pulcher Apollo veta! Musæ prohibete venustæ! They are to poetry what dumb-bells are to music; they can be read only for exercise, or to make a man tired that he may be sleepy. The sonnets are wonderfully inferior to those which I possess of yours, of which that “To Valentine”[79] (“If long and lingering seem one little day The motley crew of travellers among”); that on “The Fire”[80] (not your last, a very so-so one); on “The Rainbow”[81] (particularly the four last lines), and two or three others, are all divine and fully equal to Bowles. Some parts of “Miss Rosamund”[82] are beautiful—the working scene, and that line with which the poem ought to have concluded, “And think who lies so cold and pale below.” Of the “Pauper’s Funeral,”[83] that part in which you have done me the honour to imitate me is by far the worst; the[Pg 109] thought has been so much better expressed by Gray. On the whole (like many of yours), it wants compactness and totality; the same thought is repeated too frequently in different words. That all these faults may be remedied by compression, my editio purgata of the poem shall show you.

Now! Is it not a beautiful poem? Of the sonnet, “No more the visionary soul shall dwell,”[84] I wrote the[Pg 110] whole but the second and third lines. Of the “Old Man in the Snow,”[85] ten last lines entirely, and part of the four first. Those ten lines are, perhaps, the best I ever did write.

Lovell has no taste or simplicity of feeling. I remarked that when a man read Lovell’s poems he mus cus (that is a rapid way of pronouncing “must curse”), but when he thought of Southey’s, he’d “buy on!” For God’s sake let us have no more Bions or Gracchus’s. I abominate them! Southey is a name much more proper and handsome, and, I venture to prophesy, will be more famous. Your “Chapel Bell”[86] I love, and have made it, by a few alterations and the omission of one stanza (which, though beautiful quoad se, interrupted the run of the thought “I love to see the aged spirit soar”), a perfect poem. As it followed the “Exiled Patriots,” I altered the second and fourth lines to, “So freedom taught, in high-voiced minstrel’s weed;” “For cap and gown to leave the patriot’s meed.”

The last verse now runs thus:—

Would not this be a fine subject for a wild ode?

[Pg 111]I shall set about one when I am in a humour to abandon myself to all the diableries that ever met the eye of a Fuseli!

Le Grice has jumbled together all the quaint stupidity he ever wrote, amounting to about thirty pages, and published it in a book about the size and dimensions of children’s twopenny books. The dedication is pretty. He calls the publication “Tineum;”[87] for what reason or with what meaning would give Madame Sphinx a complete victory over Œdipus.

A wag has handed about, I hear, an obtuse angle of wit, under the name of “An Epigram.” ’Tis almost as bad as the subject.

Of the following sonnet, the four last lines were written by Lamb, a man of uncommon genius. Have you[Pg 112] seen his divine sonnet of “O! I could laugh to hear the winter winds,” etc.?

The four last lines are beautiful, but they have no particular meaning which “that thought is vain” does not convey. And I cannot write without a body of thought. Hence my poetry is crowded and sweats beneath a heavy burden of ideas and imagery! It has seldom ease. The little song ending with “I heav’d the painless sigh for thee!” is an exception, and, accordingly, I like it the best of all I ever wrote. My sonnets to eminent contemporaries are among the better things I have written. That to Erskine is a bad specimen. I have written ten, and mean to write six more. In “Fayette” I unwittingly (for I did not know it at the time) borrowed a thought from you.

I will conclude with a little song of mine,[90] which has no other merit than a pretty simplicity of silliness.

I am a complete necessitarian, and understand the subject as well almost as Hartley himself, but I go farther than Hartley, and believe the corporeality of thought, namely, that it is motion. Boyer thrashed Favell most cruelly the day before yesterday, and I sent him the following note of consolation: “I condole with you on the unpleasant motions, to which a certain uncouth automaton has been mechanized; and am anxious to know the motives that impinged on its optic or auditory nerves so as to be communicated in such rude vibrations through the medullary substance of its brain, thence rolling their stormy surges into the capillaments of its tongue, and the muscles of its arm. The diseased violence of its thinking corporealities will, depend upon it, cure itself by exhaustion. In the mean time I trust that you have not been assimilated in degradation by losing the ataxy of your temper, and that necessity which dignified you by a sentience of the pain has not lowered you by the accession of anger or resentment.”

God love you, Southey! My love to your mother!

S. T. Coleridge.

 [Pg 114]

Wednesday, December 17, 1794.

When I am unhappy a sigh or a groan does not feel sufficient to relieve the oppression of my heart. I give a long whistle. This by way of a detached truth.

“How infinitely more to be valued is integrity of heart than effulgence of intellect!” A noble sentiment, and would have come home to me, if for “integrity” you had substituted “energy.” The skirmishes of sensibility are indeed contemptible when compared with the well-disciplined phalanx of right-onward feelings. O ye invincible soldiers of virtue, who arrange yourselves under the generalship of fixed principles, that you would throw up your fortifications around my heart! I pronounce this a very sensible, apostrophical, metaphorical rant.

I dined yesterday with Perry and Grey (the proprietor and editor of the “Morning Chronicle”) at their house, and met Holcroft. He either misunderstood Lovell, or Lovell misunderstood him. I know not which, but it is very clear to me that neither of them understands nor enters into the views of our system. Holcroft opposes it violently and thinks it not virtuous. His arguments were such as Nugent and twenty others have used to us before him; they were nothing. There is a fierceness and dogmatism of conversation in Holcroft for which you receive little compensation either from the veracity of his information, the closeness of his reasoning, or the splendour of his language. He talks incessantly of metaphysics, of which he appears to me to know nothing, to have read nothing. He is ignorant as a scholar, and neglectful of the smaller humanities as a man. Compare him with Porson! My God! to hear Porson crush Godwin, Holcroft, etc. They absolutely tremble before him! I had the honour of working H. a little, and by my great coolness and command of impressive language certainly did him over. “Sir!” said[Pg 115] he, “I never knew so much real wisdom and so much rank error meet in one mind before!” “Which,” answered I, “means, I suppose, that in some things, sir, I agree with you, and in others I do not.” He absolutely infests you with atheism; and his arguments are such that the nonentities of Nugent consolidate into oak or ironwood by comparison! As to his taste in poetry, he thinks lightly, or rather contemptuously, of Bowles’ sonnets; the language flat and prosaic and inharmonious, and the sentiments only fit for girls! Come, come, Mr. Holcroft, as much unintelligible metaphysics and as much bad criticism as you please, but no blasphemy against the divinity of a Bowles! Porson idolizes the sonnets. However it happened, I am higher in his good graces than he in mine. If I am in town I dine with him and Godwin, etc., at his house on Sunday.

I am astonished at your preference of the “Elegy.” I think it the worst thing you ever wrote.

Why, ’tis almost as bad as Lovell’s “Farmhouse,” and that would be at least a thousand fathoms deep in the dead sea of pessimism.

These two stanzas are exquisite, but the lovely thought of the “hot sun,” etc., as pitiless as proud prosperity loses part of its beauty by the time being night. It is among the chief excellences of Bowles that his imagery appears almost always prompted by surrounding scenery.

Before you write a poem you should say to yourself, “What do I intend to be the character of this poem;[Pg 116] which feature is to be predominant in it?” So you make it unique. But in this poem now Charlotte speaks and now the Poet. Assuredly the stanzas of Memory, “three worst of fiends,” etc., and “gay fancy fond and frolic” are altogether poetical. You have repeated the same rhymes ungracefully, and the thought on which you harp so long recalls too forcibly the Εὕδεις βρέφος of Simonides. Unfortunately the “Adventurer” has made this sweet fragment an object of popular admiration. On the whole, I think it unworthy of your other “Botany Bay Eclogues,” yet deem the two stanzas above selected superior almost to anything you ever wrote; quod est magna res dicere, a great thing to say.

 [Pg 117]

Tell me which you like the best of the above two. I have written one to Godwin, but the mediocrity of the eight first lines is most miserably magazinish! I have plucked, therefore, these scentless road-flowers from the chaplet, and entreat thee, thou river god of Pieria, to weave into it the gorgeous water-lily from thy stream, or the far-smelling violets on thy bank. The last six lines are these:—

Give me your minutest opinion concerning the following sonnet, whether or no I shall admit it into the number. The move of bepraising a man by enumerating the beauties of his polygraph is at least an original one; so much so that I fear it will be somewhat unintelligible to[Pg 118] those whose brains are not του ἀμείνονος πηλοῦ. (You have read S.’s poetry and know that the fancy displayed in it is sweet and delicate to the highest degree.)

I will give the second number as deeming that it possesses mind:—

 [Pg 119]

How do you like it?

I took the liberty—Gracious God! pardon me for the aristocratic frigidity of that expression—I indulged my feelings by sending this among my Contemporary Sonnets:

God love you and your mother and Edith and Sara and Mary and little Eliza, etc., etc., etc., etc., etc., and

S. T. Coleridge.

[The following lines in Southey’s handwriting are attached to this letter:—

 [Pg 121]

Monday morning, December, 1794.

My dear Southey,—I will not say that you treat me coolly or mysteriously, yet assuredly you seem to look upon me as a man whom vanity, or some other inexplicable cause, has alienated from the system, or what could build so injurious a suspicion? Wherein, when roused to the recollection of my duty, have I shrunk from the performance of it? I hold my life and my feeble feelings as ready sacrifices to justice—καυκάω ὑπορᾶς γάρ. I dismiss a subject so painful to me as self-vindication; painful to me only as addressing you on whose esteem and affection I have rested with the whole weight of my soul.

Southey! I must tell you that you appear to me to write as a man who is aweary of the world because it accords not with his ideas of perfection. Your sentiments look like the sickly offspring of disgusted pride. It flies not away from the couches of imperfection because the patients are fretful and loathsome.

Why, my dear, very dear Southey, do you wrap yourself in the mantle of self-centring resolve, and refuse to us your bounden quota of intellect? Why do you say, “I, I, I will do so and so,” instead of saying, as you were wont to do, “It is all our duty to do so and so, for such and such reasons”?

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 proved the preponderating utility of our aspheterizing in Wales, let us by our speedy and united inquiries discover the sum of money necessary, whether such a farm with so[Pg 122] very large a house is to be procured without launching our frail and unpiloted bark on a rough sea of anxieties. How much is necessary for the maintenance of so large a family—eighteen people for a year at least?

I have read my objections to Lovell. If he has not answered them altogether to my fullest conviction, he has however shown me the wretchedness that would fall on the majority of our party from any delay in so forcible a light, that if three hundred pounds be adequate to the commencement of the system (which I very much doubt), I am most willing to give up all my views and embark immediately with you.

If it be determined that we shall go to Wales (for which I now give my vote), in what time? Mrs. Lovell thinks it impossible that we should go in less than three months. If this be the case, I will accept of the reporter’s place to the “Telegraph,” live upon a guinea a week, and transmit the [? balance], finishing in the same time my “Imitations.”

However, I will walk to Bath to-morrow morning and return in the evening.

Mr. and Mrs. Lovell, Sarah, Edith, all desire their best love to you, and are anxious concerning your health.

May God love you and your affectionate

S. T. Coleridge.

(?) December, 1794.

Too long has my heart been the torture house of suspense. After infinite struggles of irresolution, I will at last dare to request of you, Mary, that you will communicate to me whether or no you are engaged to Mr. ——. I conjure you not to consider this request as presumptuous indelicacy. Upon mine honour, I have made it with no other design or expectation than that of arming my fortitude by total hopelessness. Read this letter with benevolence—and consign it to oblivion.

[Pg 123]For four years I have endeavoured to smother a very ardent attachment; in what degree I have succeeded you must know better than I can. With quick perceptions of moral beauty, it was impossible for me not to admire in you your sensibility regulated by judgment, your gaiety proceeding from a cheerful heart acting on the stores of a strong understanding. At first I voluntarily invited the recollection of these qualities into my mind. I made them the perpetual object of my reveries, yet I entertained no one sentiment beyond that of the immediate pleasure annexed to the thinking of you. At length it became a habit. I awoke from the delusion, and found that I had unwittingly harboured a passion which I felt neither the power nor the courage to subdue. My associations were irrevocably formed, and your image was blended with every idea. I thought of you incessantly; yet that spirit (if spirit there be that condescends to record the lonely beatings of my heart), that spirit knows that I thought of you with the purity of a brother. Happy were I, had it been with no more than a brother’s ardour!

The man of dependent fortunes, while he fosters an attachment, commits an act of suicide on his happiness. I possessed no establishment. My views were very distant; I saw that you regarded me merely with the kindness of a sister. What expectations could I form? I formed no expectations. I was ever resolving to subdue the disquieting passion; still some inexplicable suggestion palsied my efforts, and I clung with desperate fondness to this phantom of love, its mysterious attractions and hopeless prospects. It was a faint and rayless hope![95] Yet it soothed my solitude with many a delightful day-dream. It was a faint and rayless hope! Yet I nursed it in my bosom with an agony of affection, even as a mother her[Pg 124] sickly infant. But these are the poisoned luxuries of a diseased fancy. Indulge, Mary, this my first, my last request, and restore me to reality, however gloomy. Sad and full of heaviness will the intelligence be; my heart will die within me. I shall, however, receive it with steadier resignation from yourself, than were it announced to me (haply on your marriage day!) by a stranger. Indulge my request; I will not disturb your peace by even a look of discontent, still less will I offend your ear by the whine of selfish sensibility. In a few months I shall enter at the Temple and there seek forgetful calmness, where only it can be found, in incessant and useful activity.

Were you not possessed of a mind and of a heart above the usual lot of women, I should not have written you sentiments that would be unintelligible to three fourths of your sex. But our feelings are congenial, though our attachment is doomed not to be reciprocal. You will not deem so meanly of me as to believe that I shall regard Mr. —— with the jaundiced eye of disappointed passion. God forbid! He whom you honour with your affections becomes sacred to me. I shall love him for your sake; the time may perhaps come when I shall be philosopher enough not to envy him for his own.

S. T. Coleridge.

I return to Cambridge to-morrow morning.

Miss Evans, No. 17 Sackville Street, Piccadilly.

December 24, 1794.

I have this moment received your letter, Mary Evans. Its firmness does honour to your understanding, its gentleness to your humanity. You condescend to accuse yourself—most unjustly! You have been altogether blameless. In my wildest day-dream of vanity, I never supposed that you entertained for me any other than a common friendship.

[Pg 125]To love you, habit has made unalterable. This passion, however, divested as it now is of all shadow of hope, will lose its disquieting power. Far distant from you I shall journey through the vale of men in calmness. He cannot long be wretched, who dares be actively virtuous.

I have burnt your letters—forget mine; and that I have pained you, forgive me!

May God infinitely love you!

S. T. Coleridge.

December, 1794.

I am calm, dear Southey! as an autumnal day, when the sky is covered with gray moveless clouds. To love her, habit has made unalterable. I had placed her in the sanctuary of my heart, nor can she be torn from thence but with the strings that grapple it to life. This passion, however, divested as it now is of all shadow of hope, seems to lose its disquieting power. Far distant, and never more to behold or hear of her, I shall sojourn in the vale of men, sad and in loneliness, yet not unhappy. He cannot be long wretched who dares be actively virtuous. I am well assured that she loves me as a favourite brother. When she was present, she was to me only as a very dear sister; it was in absence that I felt those gnawings of suspense, and that dreaminess of mind, which evidence an affection more restless, yet scarcely less pure than the fraternal. The struggle has been well nigh too much for me; but, praised be the All-Merciful! the feebleness of exhausted feelings has produced a calm, and my heart stagnates into peace.

Southey! my ideal standard of female excellence rises not above that woman. But all things work together for good. Had I been united to her, the excess of my affection would have effeminated my intellect. I should have fed on her looks as she entered into the room, I[Pg 126] should have gazed on her footsteps when she went out from me.

To lose her! I can rise above that selfish pang. But to marry another. O Southey! bear with my weakness. Love makes all things pure and heavenly like itself,—but to marry a woman whom I do not love, to degrade her whom I call my wife by making her the instrument of low desire, and on the removal of a desultory appetite to be perhaps not displeased with her absence! Enough! These refinements are the wildering fires that lead me into vice. Mark you, Southey! I will do my duty.

I have this moment received your letter. My friend, you want but one quality of mind to be a perfect character. Your sensibilities are tempestuous; you feel indignation at weakness. Now Indignation is the handsome brother of Anger and Hatred. His looks are “lovely in terror,” yet still remember who are his relations. I would ardently that you were a necessitarian, and (believing in an all-loving Omnipotence) an optimist. That puny imp of darkness yclept scepticism, how could it dare to approach the hallowed fires that burn so brightly on the altar of your heart?

Think you I wish to stay in town? I am all eagerness to leave it; and am resolved, whatever be the consequence, to be at Bath by Saturday. I thought of walking down.

I have written to Bristol and said I could not assign a particular time for my leaving town. I spoke indefinitely that I might not disappoint.

I am not, I presume, to attribute some verses addressed to S. T. C., in the “Morning Chronicle,” to you. To whom? My dear Allen! wherein has he offended? He did never promise to form one of our party. But of all this when we meet. Would a pistol preserve integrity? So concentrate guilt? no very philosophical mode of preventing it. I will write of indifferent subjects. Your[Pg 127] sonnet,[96] “Hold your mad hands!” is a noble burst of poetry; and—but my mind is weakened and I turn with selfishness of thought to those wilder songs that develop my lonely feelings. Sonnets are scarcely fit for the hard gaze of the public. I read, with heart and taste equally delighted, your prefatory sonnet.[97] I transcribe it, not so much to give you my corrections, as for the pleasure it gives me.

It is a lovely sonnet. Lamb likes it with tears in his eyes. His sister has lately been very unwell, confined to her bed, dangerously. She is all his comfort, he hers. They dote on each other. Her mind is elegantly stored; her heart feeling. Her illness preyed a good deal on his spirits, though he bore it with an apparent equanimity as beseemed him who, like me, is a Unitarian Christian, and an advocate for the automatism of man.

[Pg 128]I was writing a poem, which when finished you shall see, and wished him to describe the character and doctrines of Jesus Christ for me; but his low spirits prevented him. The poem is in blank verse on the Nativity. I sent him these careless lines, which flowed from my pen extemporaneously:—

Wynne is indeed a noble fellow. More when we meet.

Your
S. T. Coleridge.

[Pg 130]

[Pg 131]

[Pg 132]

[Pg 133]

CHAPTER II
EARLY PUBLIC LIFE
1795-1796

Spring, 1795.

My dear Sir,—Can you conveniently lend me five pounds, as we want a little more than four pounds to make up our lodging bill, which is indeed much higher than we expected; seven weeks and Burnett’s lodging for twelve weeks, amounting to eleven pounds?

Yours affectionately,
S. T. Coleridge.