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LETTERS, 
 
 CONVERSATIONS AND RECOLLECTIONS 
 
 OF 
 
 S. T. COLERIDGE. 
 
 WITH A PREFACE BT THE EDITOR, 
 
 THOMAS ALLSOP, 
 
 _i'lATE OF NUTFIELD, IN THE COUNTY OF SURREY, AND FORMERLY OF THE STOCK 
 EXCHANGE AND ROYAL EXCHANGE BUILDINGS." 
 
 Pliiiy writ his Letters for the Public ; so did Seneca, so did Balzac, Voiture, &c. &c. ; Tully 
 did not : and therefore these give us more pleasure than any which have come down to us 
 from antiquity. When we read them we pry into a secret which was intended to be kept 
 from us. That is a pleasure. We see Cato and Brutus and Pompey and others such as they 
 really were, and not such as the gaping multitude of their own age took them to be, or as 
 Historians and Poets have represented them to ours. That is another pleasure. — BOLING- 
 ekoke to Swift. 
 
 THIRD EDITION. 
 
 LONDON : 
 
 FREDERICK FARE AH, 282, STRAND. 
 
 1864. 
 
Tv.RmA. 
 
 PREFACE 
 
 THIRD EDITION. 
 
 A new Edition of this work appearing, the Publisher 
 asks of me some words of Preface. 
 
 I have little to add to the literary remains of this 
 wonderful intellect — the very sweepings of whose mind 
 have been foisted on an indulgent public by men whose 
 passions, prejudices, professions and profits have found 
 a reflex in their books, and have rendered the name of 
 Samuel Taylor Coleridge a puzzle to this later genera- 
 tion. 
 
 All that is really Coleridge's own, even the abstruse 
 musings in the Biographia Literaria, grows in value — 
 like good wine — with age. Before its time, fresh and 
 new when said, it is ripening for this and future ages. 
 Thus the reader of this day finds the name of Coleridge 
 so often recurring — now more than ever — that a right 
 appreciation of the inner mind of this extraordinary 
 
 1 r 
 
 H'SS.l 
 
PREFACE. 
 
 man is more needful than when his cotemporaries were 
 more numerous. 
 
 He was a thinker so profound that the men attracted 
 by his rare eloquence were often the most impressed by 
 his affluence of thought and the extent of his research : 
 whilst those who sought him for aid to their intellect 
 were led captive by the felicities of his diction and the 
 charm of his voice. 
 
 'In the first edition of this work I had purposed to 
 have entered at some length into the esoteric views 
 entertained by Coleridge, but was compelled by my 
 <pyj .fxjfa publisher to relinquish this purpose. I blame him not. 
 , He was influenced by his patron and by his patrons. 
 {*"* This indirect species of surveillance of the Press, of the 
 liberty of printing, has escaped the notice of John 
 Milton, and finds no place in the instances or applica- 
 tions of John Stuart Mill's great work " On Liberty." 
 
 I now distinctly state that Coleridge ever retained 
 the convictions of his early, earnest youth. That he 
 often repeated the saying of Plutarch, quoted so often 
 with approval by Bacon : u That it was better to believe 
 that there was no God, than to believe in a God who eat 
 (or roasted) his children :" that it excited in him one 
 only feeling, to see men full grown, and apparently 
 sane, thinking, first, that they needed salvation ; second, 
 that they had been saved before they were born; and 
 lastly, that they had to seek forgiveness for sins they 
 had never committed. 
 
 It is true that in later years, when his health failed, 
 when his bodily sufferings were great and constant, that 
 
PKEFACE. 
 
 he leant to a system, a scheme rather, which should, if 
 it might be, reconcile religion with philosophy ; that as 
 the Mosaic dispensation of denunciations and punish- 
 ment was superseded by the Christo-Platonic, so the 
 contradictory dogmas of the existing Christianity needed 
 a complement to fit it for the present era. . This he 
 diligently sought in the German philosophers of the 
 past century, in Lessing, Kant, Fichte and Schelling, 
 as well as in Hegel and the Neo-Christian writers of a 
 later period. To this he alludes in that most beautiful 
 and most affecting poem " Dejection," in which more 
 entirely than in any other of his writings may be traced 
 the habit of his soul — 
 
 " And haply by abstruse research to steal." 
 
 This research availed nothing ; yet he became deeply 
 interested in the views of these metaphysical writers, 
 and when interrogated by men who had grievous doubts 
 and wanted their minds propped, gave them these 
 gatherings for a staff. 
 
 Finding little in these writers to strengthen his faith, 
 he sought to purify the existing Bibliolatry, or blind 
 Bible worship, in the hope that hidden harmonies might 
 be discovered. Hence, though he aimed chiefly to aid 
 his readers to enquiry and research, they were led by 
 their own previous study, by the pre-occupation of their 
 minds, to conclude that he had faith in a Clergy, whilst 
 he avowed his belief in a Cforisy — in the advantage 
 gained by a system which secured one educated man in 
 every parish in the kingdom. 
 
 His wont to dilate on the fallacy of the Unitarian 
 
PREFACE. 
 
 system, to expose its coldness, hollowness, and the want 
 of earnestness to which it led or attracted its adherents, 
 was often mistaken for faith in the church creed, than 
 which nothing was farther from his inmost conviction. 
 
 That he urged his doubts in later years, in the midst 
 of great suffering, less decidedly, is less to be wondered 
 at — rather to be admired, that in such pain he should 
 still earnestly urge upon all who approached him those 
 eager questionings which in earlier days he uttered in 
 sarcasm, repeating the saying of Pascal : " Since nothing 
 is certain, let us believe in the absurd" or, quoting the 
 well-known aphorism of Tertullian, that oddest of 
 Fathers and father of oddities : " / believe, because it is 
 impossible." 
 
 To think of Coleridge, the myriad-minded, believing 
 in, as he phrased it, " the raw-head-and-bloody-bones " 
 jumble which it pleases the mystery-men who profit and 
 those who from habit adhere to them, to call Christianity, 
 would be to affirm that it was midnight at noon. 
 
 To utilize a system existing, since no better might be, 
 was 
 
 " His sole resource, his only plan ;" 
 
 and if, in attempting to give life to a corse he caused 
 some of his hearers and even some careless readers to 
 misconceive the scope and tendency of his teachings, 
 the most charitable conclusion is that they were self- 
 deceived. And yet, when they heard him state, as was 
 his wont, that he should have been a Christian had Christ 
 never lived; that all that was good in the teaching of 
 Christ was to be found in Plato, in Zoroaster, Confucius, 
 
PREFACE. 
 
 and the Gymnosophists ; that the miracles had no force 
 as affirming truths, were of no more weight than so 
 many conjuring tricks, it must have been a heavy draft 
 on their bank of faith. Speaking of the Church of 
 England, he repeatedly asserted that it was incapable 
 of defence on the ground put forward by Churchmen, 
 and that had Lord Byron, with his great facility and 
 command of language, only had patience to understand 
 its weakness, he could easily have demolished it.* 
 
 In speaking of St. Xavier, the great Apostle of the 
 Indies, of his great powers and perseverance, he often 
 referred to that intrinsic perception of truth belonging 
 to Asiatics, which led the Japanese to reject at once 
 and with one voice the doctrine of eternal (or everlasting) 
 damnation, crying out "Annihilation! annihilation! 
 annihilation !" repelling by an impulse of nature and 
 conscience a doctrine as abhorrent to the universal 
 feeling of humanity as it is baseless in fact, and opposed 
 to all known facts. 
 
 That there was ever an earnest striving after truth, 
 and a hope of reconciling truth with Christianity, is 
 clearly to be found in all his later works. In the later 
 years his sufferings were terrible. Enough is shown in 
 the letters to shadow forth the causes of this agony. 
 Evil and pain and strange calamity, concurred to render 
 
 * The two notices from the Quarterly Review, at the end of this 
 Preface, are not given as examples of consistency, but as samples of the 
 judicial and of the priestly mind. The one written, I have been told, by 
 a Barrister of eminence, the translator of Goethe's Faust, who probably 
 does not see any reasonableness in the belief of a devil and everlasting 
 damnation, by which priests profit and prosper ; the other, by the Rev. 
 John Moultrie, is given as a sample of the courtesies of clerical criticism. 
 
PKEFACE. 
 
 his late years very painful. I may not dwell on this 
 
 picture farther than to say that though hi the last years 
 
 of his life he was not " a drivel and a show," his mind 
 
 was enfeebled and his surroundings were not entirely 
 
 suited to his state. May we not say, in his own 
 
 affecting words, — 
 
 " Oh ! first the age and. then the man compare ; 
 That age how dark, congenial minds how rare !" 
 
 To show his love of liberty, his hatred of despotism, 
 it will be enough to know that he justified Brutus and 
 Cassius, whilst admitting the wonderful gifts of Caesar, 
 just as he would have justified tyrannicide at the 
 present day. 
 
 The last written work, " The Confessions of an 
 Enquiring Spirit," humble as is its tone, bears unmis- 
 takable evidence of the author's doubts as to the 
 everlasting fire and brimstone of, what he was wont to 
 call, the vulgar Christianity. 
 
 The respect for free-thought, as contra-distinguished 
 from so-called belief, is well shown in his rejoinder to 
 William Smith, of Norwich, who on his secession from 
 Unitarianism had accused him of Atheism. 
 
 Opposed from habit and conviction to theological 
 controversy, he ever maintained that the best road to 
 real progress, until truths have made some advance hi 
 the public mind, was by enquiry and suggestion ; feeling 
 confident that in the present era, the philosophy of one 
 generation would become the common sense of the 
 next. He used to affirm that as reeds which bend 
 before the blast recover their upright form, whilst the 
 
PREFACE. 
 
 oaks which resist are laid low, so the Reformation owed 
 more to Cranmer, who yielded to the King, than to the 
 Martyrs who stood firm to their new creed. In con- 
 clusion, I cannot do better than to transcribe the last or 
 nearly the last words he ever wrote : — 
 
 " Proposed preface to the first volume of my work, 
 the ' Magnum opus et labor mea vita.' In my judg- 
 ment there are but two schemes worthy the name of 
 religion ; and I believe that the first is to the second, 
 as the acorn to the same acorn expanded into an oak. 
 The first is that of Lieutenant Bowling in his reply to 
 the zealous Romish Priest : ' As for me, friend, d'ye 
 see, I have no objection to what you say. It may be 
 either true or false, for what I know. I meddle with 
 nobody's affairs but my own ; the gunner to his linstock, 
 and the steersman to the helm, as the saying is. I 
 trust to no creed but the compass, and do unto every 
 man as I would be done by ; so that I defy the Devil, 
 the Pope, and the Pretender, and hope to be saved as 
 well as another.' The second scheme the reader will 
 find in the following system of Faith and Philosophy, 
 or Catena veritatem, de Deo, Homine et Natura. — 
 
 S. T. COLERTDGE." 
 
 T. A. 
 
" A book of considerable interest," 
 
 —Quarterly Review, No. CX. 
 
 1 TO THE ANONYMOUS EDITOR OF COLERIDGE'S LETTERS. 
 
 " A gibbering ape that leads an elephant; 
 A dwarf deformed, the presenee heralding 
 Of potent wizard, or the Elfin King ; 
 Caliban deigning sage advice to grant 
 To mighty Prosper in some hour of want ; 
 Sweet Bully Bottom, while the Fairies sing, 
 Braying applause to their rich carolling, 
 But feebly typify thy flippant cant, 
 Stupid defamer, who for many a year 
 With Earth's profoundest teacher wast at school, 
 And notwithstanding dost at last appear 
 A brainless, heartless, faithless, hopeless fool. 
 Come, take thy cap and bells and throne thee here, 
 Conspicuous on the dunce's loftiest stool." 
 
 —QUARTERLY REVIEW, No. CXVIT. 
 
LETTERS, CONVERSATIONS, 
 
 AND 
 
 RECOLLECTIONS. 
 
 / LETTEE I. M*Y<UJ^ 
 
 Dear Sir, Jan. 28th, 1818. 
 
 Your friendly letter was first delivered to me at the lec- 
 ture-room door on yesterday evening, ten minutes before the 
 lecture, and my spirits were so sadly depressed by the circum- 
 stance of my hoarseness, that I was literally incapable of read- 
 ing it. I now express my acknowledgments, and with them 
 the regret that I had not received the letter in time to have 
 availed myself of it. 
 
 When I was young I used to laugh at flattery, as, on account 
 of its absurdity, I now abhor it, from my repeated observations 
 of its mischievous effects. Amongst these, not the least is, that 
 it renders honourable natures more slow and reluctant in ex- 
 pressing their real feelings in praise of the deserving, than, for 
 the interests of truth and virtue, might be desired. For the 
 weakness of our moral and intellectual being, of which the 
 comparatively strongest are often the most, and the most pain- 
 fully conscious, needs the confirmation derived from the coin- 
 cidence and sympathy of the friend, as much as the voice of 
 honour within us denounces the pretences of the flatterer. Be 
 assured, then, that I write as I think, when I tell you that, 
 from the style and thoughts of your letter, I should have drawn 
 
 1 
 
2 LETTERS, ETC. 
 
 a very different conclusion from that which you appear to have 
 done, concerning both your talents and the cultivation which 
 they have received. Both the matter and manner are manly, 
 simple, and correct. 
 
 Had I the time in my power, compatibly with the perform- 
 ance of duties of immediate urgency, I would endeavour to 
 give you, by letter, the most satisfactory answer to your ques- 
 tions that my reflections and the experience of my own fortunes 
 could supply. But, at all events, I will not omit to avail myself 
 of your judicious suggestion in my last lecture, in which it will 
 form a consistent part of the subject and purpose of the dis- 
 course. Meantime, believe me, with great respect, 
 Your obliged fellow- student 
 
 of the true and the beseeming, 
 
 S. T. Coleridge. 
 
 The suggestion here alluded to was, if I remember rightly, 
 as to the best mode of re-exciting that interest in and for 
 mental cultivation and refinement, which, from lapse of time, 
 had in most men actively employed, become dormant. This 
 was fully treated in the last lecture. 
 
 LETTER II. 
 
 Dear Sir, Sept. 20th, 1818. 
 
 Those who have hitherto chosen to take notice of me, as 
 known to them only by my public character, have for the 
 greater part taken out, not, indeed, a poetical, but a critical, 
 license, to make game of me, instead of sending game to me. 
 Thank heaven ! I am in this respect more tough than tender. 
 But, to be serious, I heartily thank you for your polite remem- 
 brance ; and, though my feeble health and valetudinarian 
 stomach force me to attach no little value to the present itself, 
 I feel still more obliged by the kindness that prompted it. 
 I trust that you will not come within the purlieus of Highgate 
 
LETTERS, ETC. 
 
 without giving me the opportunity of assuring you personally 
 that I am, with sincere respect, 
 
 Your obliged, 
 T. Allsop, Esq. S.. T. Coleridge. 
 
 
 LETTER IIL\ 
 
 My Dear Sir, Dec. 2nd, 1818. 
 
 I cannot express how kind I felt your letter. Would to 
 Heaven I had had many with feelings like yours, " accustomed 
 to express themselves warmly and (as far as the word is ap- 
 plicable to you, even) enthusiastically." But, alas ! during 
 the prime manhood of my intellect I had nothing but cold 
 water thrown on my efforts. I speak not now of my systematic 
 and most unprovoked maligners. On them I have retorted 
 only by pity and by prayer. These may have, and doubtless 1^/^/ ) 
 
 have, joined with the frivolity of " the reading public " in J*^^ 
 checking and almost in preventing the sale of my works ; and 
 so far have done injury to my purse. Me they have not 
 injured. But I have loved with enthusiastic self-oblivion those 
 who have been so well pleased that I should, year after year, 
 flow with a hundred nameless rills into their main stream, that 
 they could find nothing but cold praise and effective dis- 
 couragement of every attempt of mine to roll onward in a 
 distinct current of my own ; who admitted that the Ancient 
 Mariner, the Christabel, the Remorse, and some pages of the 
 Friend were not without merit, but were abundantly anxious 
 to acquit their judgments of any blindness to. the very nu- 
 merous defects. Yet they knew that to praise, as mere praise, 
 I was characteristically, almost constitutionally, indifferent. In 
 sympathy alone I found at once nourishment and stimulus ; 
 and for sympathy alone did my heart crave. They knew, too, 
 how long and faithfully I had acted on the maxim, never to 
 admit the faults of a work of genius to those who denied or 
 

 4 LETTERS, ETC. 
 
 were incapable of feeling and understanding the beauties ; not 
 from wilful partiality, but as well knowing that in saying truth 
 I should, to such critics, convey falsehood. If, in one instance, 
 in my literary life, I have appeared to deviate from this rule, 
 first, it was not till the fame of the writer (which I had been 
 for fourteen years successively toiling like a second AH to 
 build up) had been established ; and, secondly and chiefly, with 
 the purpose and, I may safely add, with the effect of rescuing 
 the necessary task from Malignant Defamers, and in order to 
 set forth the excellences and the trifling proportion which the 
 defects bore to the excellences. But this, my dear sir, is a 
 mistake to which affectionate natures are too liable, though I 
 do not remember to have ever seen it noticed, — the mistaking 
 those who are desirous and well pleased to be loved by you, 
 for those who love you. Add, as a more general cause, the 
 fact that I neither am nor ever have been of any party. What 
 wonder, then, if I am left to decide which has been my worse 
 enemy, the broad, pre-determined abuse of the Edinburgh 
 Review, &c, or the cold and brief compliments, with the warm 
 regrets, of the Quarterly? After all, however, I have now but 
 one sorrow relative to the ill success of my literary toils (and 
 toils they have been, though not undelightful toils), and this 
 arises wholly from the almost insurmountable difficulties which 
 the anxieties of to-day oppose to my completion of the great 
 work, the form and materials of which it has been the employ- 
 ment of the best and most genial hours of the last twenty years 
 to mature and collect. 
 
 If I could but have a tolerably numerous audience to my 
 first, or first and second Lectures on the History of Philo- 
 sophy, I should entertain a strong hope of success, because I 
 know that these lectures will be found by far the most interest- 
 ing and entertaining of any that I have yet delivered, inde- 
 pendent of the more permanent interests of rememberable 
 instruction. Few and unimportant would the errors of men 
 be, if they did but know, first, what they themselves meant ; 
 
LETTERS, ETC. O 
 
 and, secondly, what the words mean by which they attempt to 
 convey their meaning ; and I can conceive no subject so well 
 fitted to exemplify the mode and the importance of these two 
 points as the History of Philosophy, treated as in the scheme 
 of these lectures. Trusting that I shall shortly have the 
 pleasure of seeing you here, 
 
 I remain, my dear Sir, 
 
 Yours, most sincerely, 
 T. Allsop, Esq. S. T. Coleridge. 
 
 This letter, as well as some more specific allusions and 
 charges in after letters, I have thought it a sacred duty to 
 publish ; no admiration or reverence for the Great Living 
 being for a moment to be placed against the higher duty to the 
 greater, or, perhaps, I should say, the more greatly various, 
 Dead. The conclusion to which I have come, from an intimate 
 and thorough knowledge of the circumstances, is, that judged 
 by all received rules, my much-loved friend had not generous 
 usage. Far from me, however, be it to attribute blame ; I am 
 rather inclined to ascribe this seeming want of generous feeling 
 of sympathy, to an incompatibility of adaptation. How ex- 
 pressive is this passage : — " In sympathy alone 1 found at 
 once nourishment and stimulus ; and for sympathy alone 
 did my heart crave," coupled as it is in my knowledge with 
 the mention of his labour for fourteen years to build up the 
 fame of his friend ; and how affecting the allusion to the 
 mistake of having supposed " those to love him who were well 
 pleased to be loved by him.". 
 
 LETTER IV. 
 
 My dear Sir, Highgate, Sept. 30^A, 1819. 
 
 Returned from Ramsgate, I hasten to assure you that, 
 
 next to seeing you, I have pleasure in hearing from you : and 
 
 wish the former in preference, not merely from the greater 
 
b LETTERS, ETC. 
 
 mutual enjoyment, but likewise because one can convey more, 
 and with greater assurance of being understood, in an hour, 
 than one could write in a day. On the other hand, letters 
 are more permanent, and an epistolary correspondence more 
 endearing, like all marks of remembrance in absence. 
 
 My sentiments concerning the expediency, and both moral 
 and intellectual advantages, of a trade or profession, for such as 
 fix their ultimate end on objects nobler than trades or profes- 
 sions can bestow on the most favoured of their followers, may 
 be learnt from the eleventh chapter of my Literaiy Life, which, 
 though addressed to a small and particular class, yet permits a 
 more general application. To you, my dear young friend, I 
 should say, temptations and preventives — the poisons and the 
 antidotes — are pretty evenly dispersed through all the different 
 accredited paths of life. Nay, those temptations which are 
 foreknown and foreseen as most appertinent to our particular 
 calling, are commonly least dangerous, or even cease to be 
 temptations to a mind forearmed by principles and aspirations 
 like yours. The false step is more likely to take place in the 
 recoil than the advance ; in the neglect rather than in the too 
 eager pursuit of the means ; in under, rather than over, valuing 
 the advantages of wealth and worldly respectability. The true 
 plan on which you should regulate your conduct and feelings, 
 (that at least, which to me appears such) is the following. 
 Propose to yourself from the present hour such views of action 
 and enjoyment, as will make the leisure attached to indepen- 
 dence, and honourably earned by previous industry, the fair 
 object of a wise man's efforts and a good man's desires. Mean- 
 time, let the chosen employments of the years in hope be the 
 relaxations of the time present, of the years devoted to present 
 duties, and, among these, to the means of realising that hope ; 
 thus you will answer two great ends at once. Your inward 
 trains of thought, your faculties, and your feelings, will be pre- 
 served in a fitness and, as it were, contempered to a life of ease, 
 and capable of enjoying leisure, because both able and disposed 
 
LETTERS, ETC. 7 
 
 to employ it. Secondly, while you thus render future affluence 
 more and more desirahle, you will at the same time prevent all 
 undue impatience, and disarm the temptation of poisoning the 
 allotted interval by anxieties, and anxious schemes and efforts 
 to get rich in haste. There is yet one other inducement to look 
 on your existing appointment with complacency. Every im- 
 provement in knowledge, and the moral power of wielding and 
 directing it, will tell for more, — have a wider and more 
 benignant influence, — than the same accomplishment would in 
 a man who belonged to one of the learned professions. Both 
 your information and your example will fall where they are 
 most wanted, like the noiseless dews in Malta, where rain comes 
 seldom and no regular streams are to be met with. As to your 
 present studies, for such portions of your time as you can pru- 
 dently appropriate to reading, without wrong to the claims of 
 health and social relaxation, there is one department of know- 
 ledge, which, like an ample palace, contains within itself 
 mansions for every other knowledge ; which deepens and ex- 
 tends the interest of every other, gives it new charms and 
 additional purpose ; the study of which, rightly and liberally 
 pursued, is beyond any other entertaining, beyond all others 
 tends at once to tranquillize and enliven, to keep the mind 
 elevated and stedfast, the heart humbler and tender : it is 
 biblical theology — the philosophy of religion, the religion of 
 philosophy. I would that I could refer you to any book in 
 which such a plan of reading had been sketched out, in detail 
 or even but generally. 
 
 Alas ! I know of none. But most gladly will I make the 
 attempt to supply this desideratum by conversation, ^and then 
 by letter. But of this when I have next the pleasure of seeing 
 you at Highgate. 
 
 You have perhaps heard that my publisher is a bankrupt. 
 
8 LETTERS, ETC. 
 
 All the profits from the sale of my writings, which I should 
 have had, and which, in spite of the accumulated disadvantages 
 under which the works were published, would have been con- 
 siderable, I have lost ; and not only so, but have been obliged, 
 at a sum larger than all the profits made by my lectures, to 
 purchase myself my own books and the half copyrights. Well, 
 I am now sole proprietor, and representing my works by 
 cyphers, and the author by I, my emblem might be 00001. 
 I have withdrawn them from sale. This is rather hard, but 
 perhaps my comet may some time or other have its perihelion 
 of popularity, and then the tail, you know, whisks round to 
 the other end; and for 00001, lo! and behold, 10,000. Mean- 
 time, enough for me to thank Grod that, relatively to my 
 fellow men at least, I have been " sinned against, not sinning;" 
 and relatively to my Maker, these afflictions are but penances 
 of mercy, less than the least of my forfeitures. — I hope you will 
 soon take pot-luck with us. 
 
 Believe me, with esteem and regard, yours, 
 T. Allsop, Esq. S. T. Coleridge. 
 
 Leaving out the particular expression of Ublical theology, 
 liable to be interpreted, or, rather, misinterpreted by every 
 believer in belief according to his own particular faith or delu- 
 sion, and keeping constantly in mind what the writer intended 
 to convey, viz., the philosophy of humanity, the humanity of 
 philosophy, I am not aware that I can recommend to your 
 perusal, or press earnestly and affectionately upon your atten- 
 tion, any letter, essay, or advice, so beautifully expressed, or, 
 when applied to practice, so well adapted to secure that hap- 
 piness which surpasseth understanding ; far, very far, surpasseth 
 adequate expression. Often do I dwell upon the recommenda- 
 tion, to " let the chosen employments of the years in hope be 
 the relaxations of the time present, of the years devoted to 
 present duties, and, among these, to the means of realising that 
 hope: thus you will answer two great ends at once. Your 
 
LETTERS, ETC. 9 
 
 inward trains of thought, your faculties and your feelings, will 
 be preserved in a fitness, and, as it were, contempered to a life 
 of ease, and capable of enjoying leisure, because both able and 
 disposed to employ it. Secondly ; while you thus render 
 affluence more desirable, you will prevent all undue impatience, 
 and disarm the temptation of poisoning the allotted interval by 
 anxieties, and anxious schemes and efforts to get rich in haste." 
 I would fain hope that, not only for you, but for all others, 
 riches, as such, will be better appreciated ere your career com- 
 mences ; this is my anxious hope for others — for all. For you, 
 it shall be my care to place before you irresistible examples and 
 illustrations of the frightful evils of contemplating riches, 
 power, fame, as ends to be sought and valued for their own 
 sake, not as means to greater and higher ends, — the high aim 
 and purpose of destroying these fruitful sources of crime and 
 misery, or of subjecting them to general not individual ad- 
 vancement. Alas ! could I but recal 
 
 " The time when, though my path was rough, 
 The joy within me dallied with distress, 
 And all misfortunes were but as the stuff 
 Whence Fancy made me dreams of happiness ; 
 When hope grew round me like the twining vine, 
 And fruits and foliage, not my own, seemed mine;'' 
 
 I might then have some hope of conveying to you with good 
 effect the results of my experience. 
 
 " But seared thoughts now how me down to earth, 
 Nor care I that they rob me of my mirth. 
 But, oh ! each visitation 
 Suspends what nature gave me at my birth, 
 My shaping spirit of imagination. 
 For not to think of what I needs must feel, 
 But to be still and patient all I can, 
 And haply by abstruse research to steal 
 From my own nature all the natural man, — 
 This is my sole resource, my only plan ; 
 Till that which suits a part infects the whole, 
 And now is almost grown the habit of my soul." 
 
10 LETTERS, ETC. 
 
 LETTER V. 
 
 My dear Sir, Dec. 13th, 1819. 
 
 Accept my affectionate thanks ; and, in mine, conceive 
 those of my housemates included. Would to heaven I had 
 more than barren thanks to offer you. • If you, or rather your 
 residence, were nearer to me, and I could have more of your 
 society, I should feel this the less. It was, for me at least, 
 unfortunate, that, almost every time you have been here, I 
 should have been engaged in the only way that I should have 
 suffered to be a pre-engagement, viz. the duties of friendship. 
 These are now discharged ; and whenever you can give me a 
 day, henceforward, I shall have nothing to do but to enjoy it. 
 I could not help "winning an hour from the hard season," as 
 Milton says, the day before yesterday, by surrendering my 
 reason to the detail of a day dream, as I was going over, and 
 after I had gone over, a very pretty house, with beautiful 
 garden and grounds, and a still more lovely prospect, at the 
 moderate rent of £60 and taxes proportionally low, discussing 
 the question with myself, as seriously as if it were actually to 
 be decided, how far the rising at eight, breakfasting, and 
 riding, driving, or staging to London, and returning by the 
 stage or otherwise, would be advantageous to your health ; 
 and then the ways and means of improving and enjoying our 
 Sundays, &c. All I can say in excuse of these air-built 
 castles is, that they bring with them no bills for brick and 
 mortar, no quarrels with the masons, no indignation at the 
 deceits and lures of the architects, surveyor, &c, when the 
 final expense is found to treble the amount of the well-paid 
 and costly calculation : in short, that if they do no honour to 
 the head, they leave no harm in the heart. And then, poeta 
 fuimus : and the philosopher, though pressing with the weight 
 of an Etna, cannot prevent the poet from occasionally changing 
 sides, and manifesting his existence by smoke traversed by 
 electrical flashes from the crater. 
 
LETTERS, ETC. 11 
 
 Have you seen Cobbett's last number? It is the most 
 plausible and tbe best written of anything I have seen from 
 his pen, and apparently written in a less fiendish spirit than 
 the average of his weekly effusions. The self-complacency 
 with which he assumes to himself exclusively, truths which he 
 can call his own only as a horse-stealer can appropriate a 
 stolen horse, by adding mutilation and deformities to robbery, 
 is as artful as it is amusing. Still, however, he has given 
 great additional publicity to weighty truths, as ex. gr. the 
 hollowness of commercial wealth ; and from whatever dirty 
 corner or straw moppet the ventriloquist Truth causes her 
 words to proceed, I not only listen, but must bear witness that 
 it is Truth talking. His conclusions, however, are palpably 
 absurd — give to an over-peopled island the countless back 
 settlements of America, and countless balloons to carry thither 
 man and maid, wife and brat, beast and baggage — and then we 
 might rationally expect that a general crash of trade, manu- 
 factures, and credit, might be as mere a summer thunderstorm 
 in Great Britain as he represents it to be in America. 
 
 One deep, most deep, impression of melancholy, did Cobbett's 
 letter to Lord Liverpool leave on my mind, — the conviction 
 that, wretch as he is, he is an overmatch in intellect for those, 
 in whose hands Providence, in its retributive justice, seems to 
 place the destinies of our country ; and who yet rise into 
 respectability, when we compare them with their parliamen- 
 tary opponents. 
 
 I am commanded to add an especial request, that it may not 
 be long before you make yourself visible on the banks of Lake 
 Superior. 
 
 Ever, my dear sir, 
 Yours faithfully and affectionately, 
 T. Allsop, Esq. S. T. Coleridge. 
 
 The tendency of the age is now decidedly practical, and the 
 advocates of abstractions will do well to admit the superiority 
 
12 LETTERS, ETC. 
 
 of practical knowledge ; and to lay claim to it as springing 
 directly from their speculations, from their generalizations. 
 The very opinions here said to be heretical and damnable, are 
 now held (such is the rapid advance of public opinion) to be 
 stale and common-place, and have already given way to a far 
 more searching inquiry into the nature and uses of all pro- 
 perty. When we see a man so highly gifted, so far differing 
 from the common sense of his contemporaries and immediate 
 successors, stigmatize as a wretch, one of the most extraordi- 
 nary writers of the day, for holding opinions which those con- 
 temporaries have for the greatest part adopted, and many gone 
 far beyond, we are forcibly struck with the absurdity of all 
 ille-isms or affirmations. If we confine ourselves to the ex- 
 pression of an opinion, or, if more honest, we confess our igno- 
 rance of the matter at issue, we shall be more likely to approach 
 true conclusions. 
 
 Neither is it the fact, that Cobbett claimed himself to be the 
 discoverer of any or all of the principles he advanced or advo- 
 cated ; he combined the scattered truths of Paine and the pre- 
 ceding writers into a practical shape ; and in that form he has 
 brought them forward so clearly, so often, and in so many 
 ways, that he has forced the attention of his countrymen to the 
 causes of the evils by which they are environed ; so impressed 
 with the importance of those principles, that he will take no 
 denial ; but, at the sacrifice of ease, and that loved country- 
 life, and those rural pursuits, in the midst of which he is so 
 happy, and so fond of creating happiness, he prostrates oppo- 
 sition, and is determined that what he has devoted his whole 
 life to make easy to the meanest capacity, shall not perish for 
 want of a fair trial. That Cobbett himself commits the same 
 injustice towards others, I well know ; but this proceeds in his 
 case from an impatience of any remedies but his own, until his 
 own has been tried. To you, to whom personal controversies 
 will, as I hope, be pitiable, if not painful, I would say, that 
 speculation upon the cause of an evil, is, like the punishment 
 
LETTERS, ETC. 13 
 
 of a crime, useless in remedying that crime, and is only useful, 
 if useful at all, in preventing future crimes or evils. The 
 direction of existing powers and combinations, and the forma- 
 tion of new combinations, upon scientific and practical prin- 
 ciples, are the matters of most importance at this time ; and 
 the knowledge necessary to the attainment and application of 
 these principles, does not to me appear likely to be attained 
 whilst men are in a state of social warfare ; whilst the imme- 
 diate or apparent interests of one man are constantly opposed 
 to those of another, and both, impediments to the well-being of 
 the whole. 
 
 LETTER VI. 
 
 My dear Sir, 20th March, 1820. 
 
 You must have thought it strange that I had taken no 
 notice of so kind a letter from you ; but the truth is, I received 
 the little packet supposing it to contain the Cobbett only, put 
 it in my pocket for my reading at a leisure hour, and had not 
 opened it until the day before I last saw you. Within a few 
 days, I hope to lay myself open to you in an express letter ; 
 till when, I can only say, that the affectionate interest you 
 have taken in my well-being, has been not only a comfort but 
 a spur, when I needed both, and was almost yielding at times 
 to the apprehension, that I had sacrificed all that the world 
 holds precious, without being able to do any effective good in 
 a higher and nobler kind. I have sent the three volumes of 
 the Friend, with my MS. corrections, and additions. The 
 largest, that towards the end of the last philosophical essay in 
 the third volume, had a two-fold object — to guard my own 
 character from the suspicion of pantheistic opinions, or Spino- 
 sism (it was written, though not so much at large, before the 
 work was printed, and omitted by wilfulness, or such careless- 
 ness as does not fall far short of it) ; and next, to impress, aa 
 
14 LETTERS, ETC. 
 
 far as I could, the conviction that true philosophy, so far from 
 having any tendency to unsettle the principles of faith, that 
 may and ought to be common to all men, does itself actually 
 require them as its premises ; nay, that it supposes them as its 
 ground.* — I was highly gratified to hear, and from such a 
 man too as Mr. John Hookham Frere, that a man of rank, 
 and of a highly cultivated mind, who had become reluctantly 
 a sceptic, or something more, respecting the Christian Religion, 
 wholly in consequence of studying Leland, Lardner, Watson, 
 Paley, and other defenders of the Gospel on the strength of 
 the external evidences — not of Christianity, but of the miracles 
 with which its first preaching was accompanied — and of having 
 been taught to regard the arguments, and mode of proof 
 adopted in the works above mentioned, as the only rational 
 ones, had read the Friend with great attention, and when he 
 came to the passage in which I had explained the nature of 
 miracles, their necessary dependance on a credible religion for 
 their own credibility, &c, dropped the book (as he himself 
 informed Mr. Frere), and exclaimed, " Thank God ! I can 
 still believe in the Gospel — I can yet be a Christian." The 
 remark that a miracle, divested of all connection with a doctrine, 
 is identical with witchcraft, which in all ages has been re- 
 garded with instinctive horror by the human mind, and the 
 reference to our Lord's own declarations concerning miracles, 
 were among the passages that particularly impressed his 
 mind. 
 
 I should have sent a corrected copy of the Sibylline Leaves ; 
 but for a two-legged little accident having torn out two leaves 
 at the beginning, and I will no longer delay this parcel, but will 
 transcribe at another time what I had written in them, and I 
 hope it will not be long before you let us see you. The people 
 
 * Though myself opposed to apologetic prefaces or modifications of 
 opinion to suit conventional influences, I give this note as an act of 
 justice to its author. 
 
LETTERS, ETC. 15 
 
 here are occupied in raising and distributing relief for the poor 
 of the hamlet. On the first day there were seven hundred and 
 fifty applicants to whom small sums were given ! It would he 
 most un-christian moroseness not to feel delight in the un- 
 wearied zeal with which every mode and direction of charity 
 is supported ; and I hope that this is a sunshiny spot in our 
 national character, and that this virtue will suspend the judg- 
 ments that threaten the land. But it would, on the other 
 hand, be wilful blindness not to see that the lower orders 
 become more and more improvident in consequence, more and 
 more exchange the sentiments of Englishmen for the feelings 
 of Lazzaroni. 
 
 God bless you ; and, S. T. Coleridge. 
 
 P.S. — Charles and Mary Lamb dined with us on Sunday. 
 
 When I next see you, that excellent brother and sister will 
 supply me with half an hour's interesting conversation. When 
 you know the whole of him, you will love him in spite of all 
 oddities and even faults — nay, I had almost said, for them — 
 at least, admire that under his visitations they were so few 
 and of so little importance. Thank God, his circumstances 
 are comfortable ; and so they ought, for he has been in the 
 India House since his fourteenth year. 
 
 I have subjoined the MS. addition mentioned above, and 
 should wish you to read it with great care and attention in its 
 proper place ; which is, after the word ' vacuum,' in page 263, 
 vol. iii. of the ' Friend.' 
 
 If we thoughtfully review the course of argument pursued, we 
 shall rest in the following as our sum and ultimatum. The dialectic 
 intellect, by exertion of its own powers exclusively, may enable us to 
 affirm the reality of an absolute Being, generally. But here it 
 stops. It can command neither insight nor conviction concerning the 
 existence (or even the possibility) of the world as distinct and different 
 from Deity. It finds itself constrained to confound the Creator with 
 the creation ; and then, cutting the knot it cannot solve, merges the 
 latter in the former, and denies reality to all finite existence. But 
 
16 LETTERS, ETC. 
 
 here, the philosophizer is condemned to meet with his sure confutation 
 in his own secret dissatisfaction, and is forced at length to shelter 
 himself from his own importunate queries in the wretched evasion, 
 that of Nothings no solution can he required. Wretched indeed, and 
 weak as desperate ! Nature herself — his own inevitable Nature — 
 through every organ of sense, compels his own abused reason to 
 reiterate the demand : How and whence did this sterile Nothing split 
 or multiply into plurality ? Whence this portentous transnihilation 
 of Nothing into Nothings ? What, above all, is that inward mirror, 
 the human mind, in and for which these Nothings possess at least 
 a relative existence ? Or dost thou wait till, with a more bit- 
 ter irony, Pain and Anguish and Remorse ask thee, Are we too 
 Nothings ? 
 
 O youthful reader ! (for such The Friend dares anticipate), thou, 
 that in my mind's eye, standest beside me, like my own youth ! 
 Fresh and keen as the morning Hunter in the pursuit of Truth, 
 glad and restless in the feeling of mental growth ! O learn early, 
 that if the Head be the Light of the Heart, the Heart is the 
 Life of the Head : yea, that Consciousness itself, that Conscious- 
 ness of which all reasoning is the varied modification, is but the 
 Reflex of the Conscience when most luminous ; and too often a 
 fatuous vapour, a warmthless bewildering mockery of Light, exhaled 
 from its corruption or stagnation. Mark the inevitable result of all 
 consequent reasoning, when the intellect refuses to acknowledge a 
 higher and deeper ground than itself can supply, and weens to possess 
 within itself the centre of its own system ! From Zeno the Eleatrice 
 to Spinoza, and from Spinoza to Schelling, Oken, and the German 
 " ^atur-philosophen'' of the present day, the Result has been, and ever 
 must be, pantheism, under some one or other of its modes or dis- 
 guises : and it is of awful importance to the speculative Inquirer to 
 be aware, that the seemliest of these modes differs from the most 
 repulsive, not in its consequences, which in all alike are Atheistic, but 
 only as far as it evinces the efforts of the individual to hide these 
 consequences from his own consciousness. 
 
 This, then, I again repeat, is our ultimate conclusion. All specula- 
 tive disquisition must begin with Postulates, authorised and substan- 
 tiated by the conscience exclusively. From whatever point the 
 reason may start, whether from the Things that are seen to the One 
 Invisible, or from the idea of the Absolute One to the things that are 
 seen, it will in either case find a chasm, which the moral being, the 
 spirit and the religion of man, can alone fill up or overbridge. " The 
 
 LIFE IS THE LIGHT OF MAN : '' and " WE LIVE BY FAITH." 
 
LETTERS, ETC. 17 
 
 I may as well state here that the writer, possessing con- 
 fessedly great and extraordinary powers, has been wholly and 
 entirely misconceived, and by none more so than those who 
 fondly deemed him of their belief. His belief was so capacious 
 that it contained not only theirs and a hundred others, but also 
 their opposites, and existed in the equipoise or equilibrium. Thus 
 in speaking as was his wont, of Peter, towards whom he felt an 
 especial distaste, he was accustomed to refer to the passage in 
 Matthew, ch. xix. ver. 27, where the Janitor asks, " Behold, we 
 have forsaken all, and followed thee ; what shall we have there- 
 fore?" and in a humorous strain of contemptuous remark, 
 exhibit the selfishness of the (in mind) vulgar fisherman who, 
 having left a wretched and precarious calling, seeks to make of 
 this a merit, and to demand a reward for that which could only 
 be a merit, as it did not seek to obtain any earthly reward or ad- 
 vantage. It ought to be known that many men in these latter 
 days, many even from the especial land of cant and notions, 
 used to seek to pick up the crumbs from his mental banquets ; 
 and, as these were chiefly weak-minded and superstitious men, 
 with a few men of strong heads and minim hearts, which latter 
 class are not, however, self- deceived, he was led, being then 
 feeble in health, to assent to their conclusions, seeing that 
 between minds like theirs and his giant intellect an impassable 
 chasm existed ; in short, for peace' sake he humoured them, 
 and for sympathy, as he used to say of Cromwell, spoke in the 
 language but not in the sense of the canters. 
 
 Charles and Mary Lamb ! what recollections, pleasant and 
 painful, do these twin names recall. Well do I remember the 
 first time I met this most delightful couple, and the kindness 
 with which I was received and greeted by this twin union in 
 partition ; now, alas ! for a short time separated. No man 
 that I have ever known was so well fitted to attract and engage 
 the sympathies, tbe love, the affectionate regards, and the respect 
 of ingenuous natures. To all others his heart was (I will not 
 say closed) unresponsive. To you, my dear children, who from 
 
 2 
 
18 LETTERS, ETC. 
 
 your earliest years have been familiar with his incomings, the 
 impression made by the remarkable appearance of this model- 
 man, his kindness, his expressive and pensive face and figure, 
 must, and ever will remain ; would that I could even faintly 
 shadow out the more admirable qualities of his mind. Utterly 
 unlike any or all of his contemporaries, having had his lot cast 
 in hard places, he yet by a sweetness, an uncomplainingness 
 the very opposite, however, of torpid sorrow or resignation, had 
 fashioned for himself a happiness, a well-being peculiarly his 
 own. To a sound mind in a sound body, if we take sound to 
 mean robust, my kind and gentle-hearted friend had no claim ; 
 but out of his very infirmities had he made delights for himself 
 and for all those who had the unspeakable privilege of his 
 intimacy. When I think of this loved and loveable being, and 
 of all he has been to me, I am almost tempted to repine at 
 that inevitable destiny by which our being is borne onwards ; 
 an absurdity than which nothing can be more deplorable, if 
 indeed that were not necessary. Often as the recollection of 
 that familiar face flits across my memory, and the consciousness 
 that I cannot, as heretofore, meet him in his old haunts, or see 
 him walk in as was his wont frequently, I am tempted to repeat 
 his own lines. 
 
 " A month or more hath he been dead, 
 Yet cannot I by force be led 
 To think on him and the wormy bed 
 
 Together. 
 
 " My sprightly neighbour, gone before 
 To that unknown and silent shore ; 
 Shall we not meet as heretofore 
 
 Some summer morning ?'' 
 
 What a beautiful thing is faith, if it would but last for 
 ever. 
 
 The following lines from a short poem in the Sibylline 
 Leaves, will more vividly impress you, if you should ever be 
 able to catch the pai-ticular, the very peculiar cadence or 
 
LETTEKS, ETC. 
 
 19 
 
 rhythm, which of right belongs to the poetry of Coleridge in 
 somewhat the same relation as a tune to a song, and without 
 which it would not be a song. 
 
 " Yes ! they wander on 
 
 In gladness all ; but thou, methinks, most glad, 
 
 My gentle hearted Charles ! for thou hast pined 
 
 And hungered after Nature many a year, 
 
 In the great city pent, winning thy way 
 
 With sad yet patient soul, through evil and pain 
 
 And strange calamity . . . Henceforth I shall know 
 
 That Nature ne'er deserts the wise and pure, 
 
 No plot so narrow, be but Nature there, 
 
 No waste so vacant, but may well employ 
 
 Each faculty of sense, and keep the heart 
 
 Awake to Love and Beauty ! and sometimes 
 
 ' Tis well to be bereft of promised good, 
 
 That we may lift the soul and contemplate 
 
 With lively joy, the joys we cannot share. 
 
 My gentle hearted Charles ! when the last rook 
 
 Beat its straight path along the dusky air 
 
 Homewards, I blest it ! deeming, its black wing 
 
 (Now a dim speck, now vanishing in light) 
 
 Had crossed the mighty orb's dilated glory, 
 
 While thou stoodst gazing ; or, when all was still, 
 
 Flew creaking o'er thy head, and had a charm 
 
 For thee, my gentle hearted Charles, to whom 
 
 No sound is dissonant that tells of life." 
 
 I have said that I never knew any one who at all approached 
 or resembled our delightful housemate. I am wrong ; I once 
 met a man with his smile, — his smile. There is nothing like 
 it upon earth ; unless, perchance, this man survives. And yet 
 how unlike in every other regard personal and mental ; not 
 that the man, who had by some most extraordinary means 
 acquired or appropriated this sunshine of the face, was at all 
 deficient in mental qualities. He seemed amiable, thoughtful, 
 and introspective ; a man better than his condition, or rather, 
 his calling. He was, I believe, a stock-broker, and had been 
 
20 LETTERS, ETC. 
 
 with his son to traverse the haunts of his childhood, near 
 Lymington ; with his son, afflicted with a sudden and complete 
 deafness ; hence, perchance, these sweet smiles springing from, 
 and compounded of, love and pain. Yet this man had never 
 known Lamb ; still his smile was the same — the self-same 
 expression on a different face, — if, indeed, whilst that smile 
 passed over it, you could see any difference. I mentioned this 
 strange encounter to Coleridge, and he immediately constructed 
 a most delightful theory of association, and corroborated it 
 with so many instances, that he must have been sceptical that 
 could at the moment have refused him credence. To those 
 who wish to see the only thing left on earth, if it is still left, 
 of Lamb, his best and most beautiful remain, — his smile, I 
 will indicate its possessor, — Mr. Harman, of Throgmorton 
 Street. 
 
 Subjoined is a tribute of love and admiration from one least 
 fitted by genius and intellectual sympathies to appreciate the 
 loved being so much deplored. If, to this disciple of the useful 
 and the prudent, Lamb appeared so worthy of homage, judge 
 you what he was to me, and to a herd, each more worthy than 
 I. If by a Scotchman, with whom as a nation and as indi- 
 viduals he acknowledged no sympathy, he was esteemed and 
 reverenced, think what must be the loss to those better fitted, 
 by position and by sympathy, to relish and enter into his 
 opinions and pursuits. Contrast this tribute, forced as it were, 
 from strange lips, with the reminiscences of one on whom all 
 his kindness and self-devotion were lavished, and upon whom 
 his charities both of mind and purse were poured out even to 
 self-sacrifice, and then bear in mind that gratitude is a feeble 
 flame, which needs constantly to be kept alive by a repetition 
 of benefits, or that in improvident natures it gives place to 
 rancorous disparagement, even after death. 
 
 " One of the conductors of this journal did justice to a long- 
 cherished and deeply-rooted admiration of this writer, by making a 
 kind of pilgrimage to his house at Edmonton, where a letter from a 
 
LETTERS, ETC. 21 
 
 mutual friend introduced him to the presence of one whom he would 
 willingly have gone ten times farther to see. All stranger as he was, 
 he had the gratification of experiencing a share — and he thought it a 
 large one — of that kindness which Mr. Lamh had in store for all his 
 fellow- creatures ; and, after an hour's conversation, parted with the 
 object of his journey near the famed ' Bell,' carrying with him a pro- 
 found sense of the excellence of one of the finest model-beings whom it 
 ever was his fortune to meet." — Chambers' Journal. 
 
 LETTER VII. 
 
 My dear Friend, Highgate, April 10th, 1820. 
 
 May I venture to obtrude on you what I cannot intrust to 
 a messenger, much less to the post. Sackville- street is not I 
 hope more than fifteen or twenty minutes' walk from your 
 house. It is to inquire if Mr. Caldwell is in town ; if he be, 
 then to leave the letter, and that is all ; but if not, to learn 
 whether he is at his living, and if so, then to transfer his 
 present address to the letter, and put it into the nearest Gene- 
 ral Post Office box. It is of serious importance to Derwent 
 that the inclosed should reach Mr. Caldwell with as little delay 
 as possible, or I need not say that I should not have taxed 
 your time and kindness merely to make a letter-carrier of 
 you. 
 
 On Saturday evening I received a note from Mathews, which 
 I have inclosed. I took it very kind of him ; but to obtrude 
 myself on Walter Scott, nolentem volentem, and within a 
 furlong of my own abode, as he knows (for Mr. Frere told him 
 my address), was a liberty I had no right to take ; and though 
 it would have highly gratified me to have conversed with a 
 brother bard, and to have renewed on the mental retina the 
 image of, perhaps, the most extraordinary man, assuredly the 
 most extraordinary writer, of his age, yet I dared not purchase 
 
22 LETTERS, ETC. 
 
 the gratification at so high a price as that of risking the 
 respect which I trust has not hitherto been forfeited by, 
 My dear friend, 
 Your obliged and very affectionate friend, 
 T. Allsop, Esq. S. T. Coleridge. 
 
 P.S. I had not the least expectation, yet I could not suppress 
 a sort of fluttering hope, that my letter might have reached you 
 on Saturday night, and that you might be disengaged and turn 
 your walk Highgate-ward. You will be delighted with the 
 affectionate attachment of the two brothers to each other, the 
 boyish high spirits with manly independence of intellect, and, 
 in one word, with the simplicity which is their nature, and the 
 common ground on which the differences of their mind and 
 characters (for no two can be more distinct) shoot and play. 
 When I say that nothing can exceed their fondness for their 
 father, I need not add that they are impatient to be introduced 
 to you. And I can offer no better testimony of the rank you 
 hold in my bosom, my dear Allsop, than the gladness with 
 which I anticipate their becoming your friends, in the noblest 
 sense of the word. Would to Heaven their dear sister were 
 with us, the cup of paternal joy would be full to the brim ! The 
 rapture with which both Hartley and Derwent talk of her, 
 quite affects Mrs. Gillman, who has always felt with a sort of 
 lofty yet refined enthusiasm respecting the relations of an only 
 sister to her brothers. Of all women I ever knew, Mrs. G. is 
 the woman who seems to have been framed by Nature for a 
 heroine in that rare species of love which subsists in a tri- 
 unity of the heart, the moral sense, and the faculty, correspond- 
 ing to what Spurzheim calls the organ of ideality. What in 
 other women is refinement exists in her as by implication, and, 
 d, fortiori, in a native fineness of character. She often repre- 
 sents to my mind the best parts of the Spanish Santa Teresa, 
 ladyhood of nature. 
 
 Vexation I and Mrs. Gillman has- this moment burnt 
 
BETTERS, ETC. 23 
 
 Mathews' note. The purport, however, was as follows : — " I 
 have just received a note from Terry, informing me that Sir 
 Walter Scott will call upon me to-morrow morning (i. e. Sunday) 
 at half-past eleven. Will you contrive to he here at the same 
 time ? Perhaps the promise of your company may induce Sir 
 Walter to appoint a day on which he will dine with me before 
 he returns to the north." 
 
 Now as Scott had asked Terry for my address on his first 
 arrival in town, it is not impossible, though not very probable, 
 that Terry may have said, — " You will meet Coleridge at 
 Mathews's," though I was not entitled to presume this. The 
 bottom of all this, my dear friend, is neither more nor less than 
 as follows : — I seem to feel that I ought to feel more desire to 
 see an extraordinary man than than I really do feel ; and I do 
 not wish to appear to two or three persons (as the Mr. Freres, 
 William Rose, &c), as if I cherished any dislike to Scott 
 respecting the Christabel, and generally an increasing dislike 
 to appear out of the common and natural mode of thinking 
 and acting. All this is, I own, sad weakness, but I am weary 
 of dyspathy. 
 
 In this last sentence may be read the whole secret of the 
 writer's latter days. In thought, action, opinion, he always 
 sought for harmony and agreement, and frequently created a 
 harmony of his own. Hence his dislike of, and distaste for, 
 the new sciences, so called, of Political Economy and the 
 Utilitarian Philosophy, in which nothing is proved, nothing 
 settled, and with respect to the very elements of which no two 
 professors are agreed. When one of the self-sufficient of this 
 last class, now so numerous as to infest, beset, and defile all 
 places of public resort wher£ anything is to be obtained, was 
 controverting one of the more profound opinions of Coleridge, 
 upon which he had brought to bear, but not exhausted, all the 
 stores of a mind perfectly unequalled, both with respect to 
 
 y 
 
24 LETTERS, ETC. 
 
 the mass of knowledge, — nay more, true wisdom, — and the 
 eloquence with which that knowledge was adorned, and assert- 
 ing, in opposition to views, to the comprehension of the least 
 of which his mechanical mind was unequal, that the tendency 
 of public opinion and the state of things was in another direc- 
 tion, Coleridge, taking up the down of a thistle which lay by 
 the road side, and holding it up, said, after observing the direc- 
 tion in which it was born hy the wind, — " The tendency of 
 that thistle is towards China, but I know with assured cer- 
 tainty that it will never get there ; nay, that it is more than 
 probable that, after sundry eddyings and gyrations up and 
 down, backwards and forwards, that it will be found some- 
 where near the place in which it grew." Then, turning to 
 me, — " I refer to your experience, if you ever knew the pro- 
 babilities, the suppositions of any man or set of men, realised 
 in their main features, permanently. No ! no ! Hence, such 
 institutions as poor laws have never answered, never can 
 answer, unless the framers could compel society to remain in 
 the same state as when these laws or regulations were made, 
 which is a manifest absurdity. It was not the barbarism of 
 our forefathers, as is so complacently taken for granted, but 
 the flux and change of events which unfit all laws for after- 
 times. Bishop Berkely, in his imaginary travels, shows veiy 
 ingeniously the evil of all laws ; and I have no doubt that the 
 time will arrive when all penal laws will be held to be bar- 
 barous, and proofs of the barbarism of this and all antecedent 
 ages." 
 
 LETTER VIII. 
 
 My dear Friend, Eighgate, April 8th, 1820. 
 
 It is not the least advantage of friendship, that by com 
 municating our thoughts to another, we render them distinct 
 to ourselves, and reduce the subjects of our sorrow and anxiety 
 to their just magnitude for our own contemplation. 
 
LETTERS, ETC. 25 
 
 As long as we inly brood over a misfortune (there being no 
 divisions or separate circumscriptions in things of mind, no 
 proper beginning nor ending to any thought, on the one hand ; 
 and, on the other, the confluence of our recollections being 
 determined far more by sameness or similarity of the feelings 
 that have been produced by them, than by any positive resem- 
 blance or connection between the things themselves that are 
 thus recalled to our attention) we establish a centre, as it were, 
 a sort of nucleus in the reservoir of the soul ; and toward this, 
 needle shoots after needle, cluster points on cluster points, from 
 all parts of contained fluid, and in all directions, till the mind 
 with its best faculties is locked up in one ungenial frost. I 
 cannot adequately express the state of feeling in which I wrote 
 my last letter ; the letter itself, I doubt not, bore evidence of 
 its nest and mode of incubation, as certain birds and lizards 
 drag along with them part of the egg-shells from which they 
 had forced their way. Still one good end was answered. I 
 had made a clearance, so far as to have my head in light and 
 my eyes open ; and your answer, every way worthy of you, 
 has removed the rest. 
 
 But before I enter on this subject, permit me to refer to some 
 points of comparative indifference, lest I should forget them 
 altogether. I occasioned you to misconceive me respecting 
 Sir Walter Scott. My purpose was to bring proofs of the 
 energetic or inenergetic state of the minds of men, induced by 
 the excess and unintermitted action of stimulating events and 
 circumstances, — revolutions, battles, newspapers, mobs, sedi- 
 tion and treason trials, public harangues, meetings, dinners; 
 the necessity in every individual of ever increasing activity 
 and anxiety in the improvement of his estate, trade, &c, in 
 proportion to the decrease of the actual value of money, to the 
 multiplication of competitors, and to the almost compulsory 
 expedience of expense, and prominence, even as the means of 
 obtaining or retaining competence; the consequent craving 
 after amusement as proper relaxation, as rest freed from the 
 
26 LETTERS, ETC. 
 
 tedium of vacancy ; and, again, after such knowledge and 
 such acquirements as are ready coin, that will pass at once, 
 unweighed and unassayed ; to the unexampled facilities 
 afforded for this end by reviews, magazines, &c, &c. The 
 theatres, to which few go to see a play, but to see Master Betty 
 or Mr. Kean, or some one individual in some one part : and the 
 single fact that our neighbour, Mathews, has taken more, night 
 after night, than both the regular theatres conjointly, and when 
 the best comedies or whole plays have been acted at each 
 house, and those by excellent comedians, would have yielded a 
 striking instance, and illustration of my position. But I chose 
 an example in literature, as more in point for the subject of my 
 particular remarks, and because every man of genius, who is 
 born for his age, and capable of acting immediately and widely 
 on that age, must of necessity reflect the age in the first instance, 
 though as far as he is a man of genius, he will doubtless be 
 himself reflected by it reciprocally. Now I selected Scott for 
 the very reason, that I do hold him for a man of very extra- 
 ordinary powers ; and when I say that I have read the far 
 greater part of his novels twice, and several three times over, 
 with undiminished pleasure and interest; and that, in my 
 reprobation of the Bride of Lammermoor (with the exception, 
 however, of the almost Shakspearian old witch-wives at the 
 funeral) and of the Ivanhoe, I mean to imply the grounds of 
 my admiration of the others, and the permanent nature of the 
 interest which they excite. In a word, I am far from thinking 
 that Old Mortality or Guy Mannering would have been less 
 admired in the age of Sterne, Fielding, and Kichardson, than 
 they are in the present times ; but only that Sterne, &c, would 
 not have had the same immediate popularity in the present day 
 as in their own less stimulated and, therefore, less languid 
 reading world. 
 
 Of Sir Walter Scott's poems I cannot speak so highly, still 
 less of the Poetry in his Poems ; though even in these the 
 power of presenting the most numerous figures, and figures 
 
LETTERS, ETC. 27 
 
 with the most complex movements, and under rapid succession, 
 in true picturesque unity, attests true and peculiar genius. You 
 cannot imagine with how much pain I used, many years ago, 
 
 to hear 's contemptuous assertions respecting Scott; 
 
 and if I mistake not, I have yet the fragments of the rough 
 draft of a letter written by me so long ago as my first lectures 
 at the London Philosophical Society, Fetter Lane, and on the 
 hacks of the unused admission tickets. 
 
 One more remark. My criticism was confined to the one 
 point of the higher degree of intellectual activity implied in the 
 reading and admiration of Fielding, Eichardson, and Sterne ; — 
 in moral, or, if that be too high and inwardly a word, in man- 
 nerly manliness of taste the present age and its best writers 
 have the decided advantage, and I sincerely trust that Walter 
 Scott's readers would be as little disposed to relish the stupid 
 lechery of the courtship of Widow Wadman, as Scott himself 
 would be capable of presenting it. And, that though I cannot 
 pretend to have found in any of these novels a character that 
 even approaches in genius, in truth of conception, or boldness 
 and freshness of execution, to Parson Adams, Blifil, Strap, 
 Lieutenant Bowling, Mr. Shandy, Uncle Toby and Trim, and 
 Lovelace ; and though Scott's female characters will not, even 
 the very best, bear a comparison with Miss Byron, Clementina 
 Emily, in Sir Charles Grandison ; nor the comic ones with 
 Tabitha Bramble, or with Betty (in Mrs. Bennet's Beggar 
 Girl) ; and though, by the use of the Scotch dialect, by Ossianic 
 mock-highland inotley-heroic, and by extracts from the printed 
 sermons, memoirs, &c, of the fanatic preachers, there is a good 
 deal of false effect and stage trick : still the number of cha- 
 racters so good produced by one man, and in so rapid a suc- 
 cession, must ever remain an illustrious phenomenon in literature, 
 after all the subtractions for those borrowed from English and 
 German sources, or compounded by blending two or three of 
 the old drama into one — ex. gr. the Caleb in the Bride of 
 Lammermoor. 
 
28 LETTERS, ETC. 
 
 Scott's great merit, and, at the same time, his felicity, and 
 the true solution of the long-sustained interest novel after 
 novel excited, lie in the nature of the subject ; not merely, or 
 even chiefly, because the struggle between the Stuarts and the 
 Presbyterians and sectaries, is still in lively memory, and the 
 passions of the adherency to the former, if not the adherency 
 itself, extant in our own fathers' or grandfathers' times ; nor 
 yet (though this is of great weight) because the language, 
 manners, &c, introduced are sufficiently different from our own 
 for poignancy, and yet sufficiently near and similar for sym- 
 pathy ; nor yet because, for the same reason, the author, 
 speaking, reflecting, and descanting in his own person, remains 
 still (to adopt a painter's phrase) in sufficient keeping with 
 his subject matter, while his characters can both talk and feel 
 interesting to us as men, without recourse to antiquarian 
 interest, and nevertheless without moral anachronism (in all 
 which points the Ivanhoe is so wofully the contrary, for what 
 Englishman cares for Saxon or Norman, both brutal invaders, 
 more than for Chinese and Cochin-Chinese ?) — yet great as 
 all these causes are, the essential wisdom and happiness of the 
 subject consists in this, — that the contest between the loyalists 
 and their opponents can never be obsolete, for it is the contest 
 between the two great moving principles of social humanity ; 
 religious adherence to the past and the ancient, the desire and 
 the admiration of permanence, on the one hand ; and the 
 passion for increase of knowledge, for truth, as the offspring 
 of reason — in short, the mighty instincts of progression and 
 free agency, on the other. In all subjects of deep and lasting 
 interest, you will detect a struggle between two opposites, two 
 polar forces, both of which are alike necessary to our human 
 well-being, and necessary each to the continued existence of 
 the other. Well, therefore, may we contemplate with intense 
 feelings those whirlwinds which are for free agents the 
 appointed means, and the only possible condition of that equi- 
 librium in which our moral Being subsists ; while the 
 
LETTERS, ETC. 29 
 
 disturbance of the same constitutes our sense of life. Thus 
 in the ancient Tragedy, the lofty struggle between irresistible 
 fate and unconquerable free will, which finds its equilibrium 
 in the Providence and the future retribution of Christianity. 
 If, instead of a contest between Saxons and Normans, or the 
 Fantees and Ashantees, — a mere contest of indifferents ! of 
 minim surges in a boiling fish-kettle, — Walter Scott had taken 
 the struggle between the men of arts and the men of arms in 
 the time of Becket, and made us feel how much to claim our 
 well-wishing there was in the cause and character of the 
 priestly and papal party, no less than in those of Henry and 
 his knights, he would have opened a new mine, instead of 
 translating into Leadenhall Street Minerva Library sentences, 
 a cento of the most common incidents of the stately self-con- 
 gruous romances of D'Urfe, Scuderi, &c. N".B. I have not 
 read the Monastery, but I suspect that the thought or element 
 of the faery work is from the German. I perceive from that 
 passage in the Old Mortality, where Morton is discovered by 
 old Alice in consequence of calling his dog Elphin, that 
 Walter Scott has been reading Tieck's Phantasies (a collection 
 of faery or witch tales), from which both the incident and 
 name is borrowed. 
 
 1 forget whether I ever mentioned to you, that some 
 eighteen months ago I had planned and half collected, half 
 manufactured and invented a work, to be entitled The Weather- 
 bound Traveller ; or, Histories, Lays, Legends, Incidents, 
 Anecdotes, and Eemarks, contributed during a detention in 
 one of the Hebrides, recorded by their Secretary, Lory 
 McHaroldson, Senachy in the Isle of . 
 
 The principle of the work I had thus expressed in the first 
 chapter: — " Though not fact, must it needs be false ? These 
 things have a truth of their own, if we but knew how to look 
 for it. There is a humanity (meaning by this word whatever 
 contradistinguishes man), there is a humanity common to all 
 periods of life, which each period from childhood has its own 
 
30 LETTERS, ETC. 
 
 way of representing. Hence, in whatever laid firm hold of us 
 in early life, there lurks an interest and a charm for our 
 maturest years, hut which he will never draw forth, who, con- 
 tent with mimicking the unessential, though natural defects of 
 thought and expression, has not the skill to remove the 
 childish, yet leave the childlike untouched. Let each of us 
 then relate that which has left the deepest impression on his 
 mind, at whatever period of his life he may have seen, heard, 
 or read it ; hut let him tell it in accordance with the present 
 state of his intellect and feelings, even as he has, perhaps 
 ( Alnaschar-like), acted it over again by the parlour fire-side of 
 a rustic inn, with the fire and the candles for his only com- 
 panions." 
 
 On the hope of my Lectures answering, I had intended to 
 have done this work out of hand, dedicating the most genial 
 hours to the completion of Christabel, in the belief that in the 
 former I should be rekindling the feeling, and recalling the 
 state of mind, suitable to the latter. — But the Hope was vain. 
 
 In stating the names and probable size of my works, I by 
 no means meant any reference to the mode of their publica- 
 tion ; I merely wished to communicate to you the amount of 
 my labours. In two moderate volumes it was my intention to 
 comprise all those more prominent and systematic parts of my 
 lucubrations on Shakspeare as should be published (in the first 
 instance at least, in the form of books), and having selected and 
 arranged them, to send the more particular illustrations and 
 analysis to some respectable magazine. In like manner, I pro- 
 posed to include the philosophical critiques on Dante, Milton, 
 Cervantes, &c, in a series of Letters entitled The Reviewer 
 in Exile, or Critic confined to an Old Library. Provided the 
 truths (which are, I dare affirm, original, and all tending to the 
 same principles, and proving the endless fertility of true prin- 
 ciple, and the decision and power of growth which it commu- 
 nicates to all the faculties of the mind) are but in existence, 
 and to be read by such as might wish to read, I have no choice 
 
LETTEES, ETC. 31 
 
 as to the mode ; nay, I should prefer that mode which most 
 multiplied the chances. — So too as to the order. — For many 
 reasons, it had been my wish to commence with the Theolo- 
 gical Letters : one, and not the least, is the strong desire I 
 have to put you and Hartley and Derwent Coleridge in full 
 possession of my whole Christian creed, with the grounds of 
 reason and authority on which it rests ; but especially to 
 unfold the true " glorious liberty of the Gospel," by showing 
 the distinction between doctrinal faith and its sources and his- 
 torical belief, with their reciprocal action on each other ; and 
 thus, on the one hand, to do away the servile superstition which 
 makes men Bibliolators, and yet hides from them the proper 
 excellences, the one continued revelation of the Bible docu- 
 ments, which they idolise ; and, on the other hand, to expose, 
 in its native worthlessness, the so-called evidences of Chris- 
 tianity first brought into toleration by Arminius, and into 
 fashion by Grotius and the Socinian divines : for as such I 
 consider all those who preach and teach in the spirit of 
 Socinianism, though even in the outward form of a defence 
 of the thirty -nine articles. 
 
 I have been interrupted by the arrival of my sons, Hartley 
 and Derwent, the latter of whom I had not seen for so dreary 
 a time. I promise myself great pleasure in introducing him 
 to you. Hartley you have already met. Indeed, I am so 
 desirous of this, that I will defer what I have to add, that I 
 may put this letter in the post, time enough for you to receive 
 it this evening ; saying only, that it was not my purpose to 
 have had any further communication on the subject but with 
 Mr. Frere, and with him only as a counsellor. Let me see 
 you as soon as you can and as often. I shall be better able 
 hereafter to talk with you than to write to you on the contents 
 of your last. 
 
 Tour very affectionate friend, 
 
 T. Allsop, Esq. S. T. Coleridge. 
 
32 LETTERS, ETC. 
 
 If it had been possible for tbe writer of this letter to have 
 been both oracle and priest (or rather popular expounder), then 
 indeed should we have wanted little (for the present time at 
 least) in the way of aids to knowledge in its highest aim and 
 tendency. But powers like his have never yet existed in con- 
 junction with familiar and popular elucidation. There was 
 nothing shapeless and unmeaning in anything he ever said or 
 wrote. There were no crudities, no easy reading in his produc- 
 tions. To follow the train of his reasoning demanded at first 
 severe and continued attention ; and to this how few of the 
 self-called seekers after that knowledge which is truth are equal. 
 To him, details were of little value, except as far as they illus- 
 trated, proved, a principle ; whilst to the greater part of those 
 who latterly became his hearers, they constituted the only part 
 of his conversation which was intelligible or of the least in- 
 terest. Would that it were possible to recall some of those 
 delightful tales which my friend used to relate in his inimitable 
 manner, as forming part of the collection existing in his mind 
 of the " Weather-bound Traveller." Myself a proficient when 
 a youth as a raconteur, I was still surprised at the extraordi- 
 nary ease with which he produced story after story, each more 
 incredible, more mystic, and more abounding with materials for 
 future meditation, than the one preceding. Ardently do I hope 
 that the fragments above alluded to have been saved, and that 
 the worthy and excellent friend to whom they are confided 
 will give them to the world as he finds them. 
 
 The allusion to the Socinians may need some explanation. 
 Having for a short time, in early youth, been a convert to what 
 is now called Unitarianism, through the instrumentality of a 
 Mr. Friend, of Cambridge (no friend to him), he had opportu- 
 nities of free and unrestrained intei'course and intercom- 
 munion with the more influential and distinguished of this sect ; 
 and the result was a conviction of the insincerity (conscious or 
 otherwise), selfishness, or, as he expressed it, self-centering, and 
 want of moral courage, produced by this faith, or, as he again 
 
LETTERS, ETC. 33 
 
 termed it, this want of faith. That this was the fact at that 
 time, I am willing to admit ; hut my own experience, my own 
 knowledge, of many who delight in, or endure this name, leads 
 me to the conclusion, that a change has come over their spirit. 
 To the charge of want of moral courage they appear as ob- 
 noxious now as at any previous period : nay, more — for in the 
 earlier period of their history, the very expression of these 
 opinions was an act of great moral daring ; whilst at this time, 
 when toleration is universal, it would be more in unison with 
 that universal progression which we see in every other sect and 
 party, to find them casting away the small remnant of super- 
 stition which they have hitherto retained, out of consideration, 
 as it should seem, to the fouler superstitions and mental degra- 
 dation by which they are still surrounded. 
 
 But my excellent friend had another cause of quarrel with this 
 sect. He saw with what readiness they received and adopted 
 the atrocious, the, in any, in every sense, hateful opinions 
 and views of Malthus and the so called economists ; a sect and 
 a class having about as much title to that name (as first gene- 
 rally given to Turgot and his associates), as a crab to an apple, 
 or a mule to a race-horse. This he attributed to the selfish 
 and cold character of minds in which neither imagination nor 
 love had a place, and to the restlessness superinduced by the 
 absence of those two faculties. To observations as to their 
 being the slaves of the circumstances by which they were sur- 
 rounded, or to the education which they had received, he 
 opposed the fact, that they were all to a great degree sceptical, 
 and not therefore passive, recipients of any faith. 
 
 I have thought it fitting and desirable thus to notice, in 
 passing, his great dislike to this class, that it may lead to a 
 more full and satisfactory elucidation from the pen of his friend 
 and biographer. For myself, opposed as I am both from prin- 
 ciple and feeling to the plans and practices which this class 
 encourages and abets, — a system at once petty in its details and 
 mighty in the extent of its application, that tends to a tyranny, 
 
 3 
 
34 LETTERS, ETC. 
 
 compared with which the cruelties of a Nero and a Caligula 
 were mild and beneficent, — I am desirous and anxious to do 
 justice to individuals who adhere from habit to this sect, and 
 who thus share in the odium so justly incurred by the more 
 restless, and unhappy because restless, of this party. To you 
 especially, my dear children, and to the ingenuous youth of this 
 age (if, perchance, this mechanical and utilitarian age should 
 permit of ingenuous youth), there can be no need to teach or 
 preach toleration. If it were necessary to enforce the great 
 truth, that opinion is always the result of previous circum- 
 stances and influences, not the consequence of any choice or 
 will of the individual mind, I should be able with ease to prove 
 the necessity of charity ; but this has been made so manifest, 
 that I shall content myself with giving in this place a short 
 extract from the " Friend " in relation to this great truth. 
 
 " For a subdued sobriety of temper, a practical faith in the doctrine 
 of philosophical necessity seems the only preparative. That vice is 
 the effect of error and the offspring of surrounding circumstances, 
 the object therefore of condolence, not of anger, is a proposition easily 
 understood and as easily demonstrated. But to make it spread from 
 the understanding to the affections, to call it into action, not only in 
 the great exertions of patriotism, but in the daily and hourly occur- 
 rences of social life, requires the most watchful attentions of the most 
 energetic mind. 
 
 " It is not enough that we have once swallowed these truths ; we must 
 feed on them, as insects on a leaf, till the whole heart be coloured by 
 their qualities, and show its food in every the minutest fibre." 
 
 As I have begun to quote, I cannot deny myself the 
 gratification of transcribing an admirable passage, in which 
 the author feelingly denounces and exposes the attempts of the 
 mischievous and heartless meddlers who are now tyrannising 
 alike over poor and rich, who, hating all above, are applying 
 the power extorted from the aristocracy to purposes to which 
 the oligarchy would neither have desired nor dared to apply 
 it, — to the coercion and frightful slavery of the poor. But to 
 my quotation : — 
 
LETTERS, ETC. 35 
 
 " If we hope to instruct others, we should familiarise our own 
 minds to some fixed and determinate principles of action. The world 
 is a vast labyrinth, in which almost every one is running a different 
 way, and almost every one manifesting hatred to those who do not 
 run the same way. A few, indeed, stand motionless, and, not seeking 
 to lead themselves or others out of the maze, laugh at the failures of 
 their brethren. Yet with little reason ; for more grossly than the 
 most bewildered wanderer does he err who never aims to go right. It 
 is more honourable to the head, as well as to the heart, to be misled 
 by our eagerness in the pursuit of truth, than to be safe from blunder- 
 ing by contempt of it. The happiness of mankind is the end of 
 virtue, and truth is the knowledge of the means, which he will never 
 seriously attempt to discover who has not habitually interested him- 
 self in the welfare of others. The searcher after truth must love and he 
 beloved, for general benevolence is a necessary motive to constancy of 
 pursuit ; and this general benevolence is begotten and rendered 
 permanent by social and domestic affections. Let us beware of that 
 reasoning which affects to- inculcate philanthropy, while it denounces 
 evert home-born feeling by ivhich it is produced and nurtured. 
 The paternal and filial duties discipline the heart and prepare it 
 for the love of mankind. The intensity of private attachments 
 encourages, not prevents, universal benevolence. The nearer we 
 approach to the sun the more intense his heat ; yet what corner of 
 the system does he not cheer and vivify ? '' 
 
 Well do I recollect the very last conversation I had with 
 my lamented friend. The projected Poor Law Bill was 
 mentioned as an instance of the tyranny contemplated by the 
 new parliament. He predicted that it would be carried. I 
 remember that in allusion to the system of coercive regulation 
 which formed part of the bill by which all relief was denied at 
 home, he made the affecting remark, — "It is not bread alone, 
 but the place where you eat it" He then, by a felicitous 
 transition, turned to a beautiful tale of Tieck, in which there 
 is an allusion to the question of pauperism, introduced by an 
 affecting story of a beggar in Switzerland, who, being offended 
 by a refusal where he had hitherto met with kindness, said, as 
 he departed, — " Well, you will find I shall not come again, 
 and then you may see if you can get another beggar." The 
 
36 LETTERS, ETC. 
 
 whole is so admirably stated and reasoned, as well as felt, that, 
 for the gratification as well as the profit of the ingenuous and 
 affectionate natures to whom I address myself, I will extract 
 the passage, premising only that the conversation is carried on 
 at the table of an old counsellor, between old and young 
 Eisenschlicht, Erich an old bachelor, Sophia, the daughter of 
 the counsellor, and Edward, her suitor. 
 
 In reading this extract the reader will recognise, in the 
 arguments and reasoning of old and young Eisenschlicht, a 
 faint resemblance to the bolder daring of Lord Brougham and 
 Chadwick, whilst in Edward and Sophia may be recognised a 
 noble and high-purposed humanity which, however, has few 
 counterparts in any of our public men. 
 
 " ' But why,' said Erich to his neighbour, ' are you disgusted with 
 most of the works of the Flemish school here ?' 
 
 " ' Because they represent so many tatterdemalions and beggars,' 
 answered the rich man. ' Nor are these Netberlanders the sole objects 
 of my dislike : I hate particularly that Spaniard Murillo on that 
 account, and even a great number of your Italians. It is melancholy 
 enough that one cannot escape this vermin in the streets and market- 
 places, nay, even in our very houses ; but that an artist should require 
 me besides to amuse myself with this noisome crew upon a motley 
 canvass is expecting rather too much from my patience.'* 
 
 " ' Perhaps then,' said Edward, ' Quintin Matsys would suit you, 
 who so frequently sets before us with such truth and vigour money- 
 changers at their couters, with coins and ledgers.' 
 
 " ' Not so either, young gentleman,' sail the old man : 'that we 
 can see easily and without exertion in reality. If I am to be enter- 
 tained with a painting, I would have stately royal scenes, abundance 
 of massy silk stuffs, crowns and purple mantles, pages and black- 
 amoors ; that combined with a perspective of palaces and great squares, 
 and down broad straight streets, elevates the soul ; it often puts me in 
 spirits for a long time, and I am never tired of seeing it over and over 
 again.' 
 
 " ' Undoubtedly,' said Erich, ' Paul Veronese, and several other 
 Italians, have done many capital things in this department also.' 
 
 * This man was an economist of the worst kind, without knowing 
 anything of political economy. 
 
LETTERS, ETC. 37 
 
 " ' What say you to a marriage of Cana in this manner? ' asked 
 Edward. 
 
 - "'All eating,' replied the old man, ' grows tiresome in pictures, 
 because it never stirs from its place ; and the roast peacocks and high- 
 built pasties, as well as the cup-bearers half bent double, are in all 
 such representations annoying things. But it is a different case when 
 they are drawing a little Moses out of the water, and the king's 
 daughter is standing by, in her most costly attire, surrounded by 
 richly dressed ladies, who might themselves pass for princesses, men 
 with halberds and armour, and even dwarfs and dogs : I cannot 
 express how delighted I am when I meet with one of these stories, 
 which in my youth I was forced to read in the uneasy confinement 
 of a gloomy school-room, so gloriously dressed up. But you my dear 
 Mr. Walther, have too few things of this sort. Most of your pictures 
 are for the feelings, and I never wish to be affected*, and least of all 
 by works of art. Nor, indeed, am I ever so, but only provoked.' 
 
 "' Still worse,' began young Eisenschlicht, 'is the case with our 
 comedies. When we leave an agreeable company, and, after a bril- 
 liant entertainment, step into the lighted theatre, how can it be 
 expected that we should interest ourselves in the variety of wretched- 
 ness and pitiful distress that is here served up for our amusement ? 
 Would it not be possible to adopt the same laudable regulation which 
 is established by the police in most cities, to let me subscribe once 
 for all for the relief of poverty, and then not be incommoded any 
 farther by the tattered and hungry individuals ? ' 
 
 " ' It would be convenient, undoubtedly,' said Edward ; ' but whe- 
 ther absolutely laudable, either as a regulation of police, or a maxim 
 of art, I am not prepared say. For my own part, I cannot resist a 
 feeling of pity towards the individual unfortunates ; and would not 
 wish to do so, though to be sure one is often unseasonably disturbed, 
 impudently importuned, and sometimes even grossly imposed upon. 
 
 " ' I am of your opinion,' cried Sophia : ' I cannot endure those 
 dumb blind books, in which one is to write one's name, in order 
 placidly to rely upon an invisible board of management, which is 
 to relieve the distress as far as possible. In many places even it is 
 desired that the charitable should engage to give nothing to in- 
 dividuals.! But how is it possible to resist the sight of woe ? When 
 I give to him who complains to me of his distress, I at all events see 
 his momentary joy, and may hope to have comforted him.' 
 
 * Just so. 
 t Surely H. B. must have read this. 
 
38 LETTERS, ETC. 
 
 " ' This is the very thing,' said the old merchant, ' which in all 
 countries maintains mendicity, that we cannot and will not rid our- 
 selves of this petty feeling of soft-hearted vanity and mawkish 
 philanthropy. This it is, at the same time, that renders the better * 
 measures of states abortive and impracticable.' 
 
 " ' You are of a different way of thinking from those Swiss whom I 
 have heard of,' said Edward. ' It was in a Catholic canton, where an old 
 beggar had long been in the habit of receiving his alms on stated days, 
 and as the rustic solitude did not allow much trade and commerce, 
 was accounted in almost every house one of the family. It happened, 
 however, that once, when he called at a cottage where the inmates 
 were extremely busied in attending a woman in labour, in the confusion 
 and anxiety for the patient he met with a refusal. When, after 
 repeating his request, he really obtained nothing, he turned angrily 
 away, and cried as he departed, ' Well, I promise you, you shall find 
 I do not come again, and then you may see where you can catch 
 another beggar.' 
 
 " All laughed, except Sophia, who would have it the beggar's threat 
 was perfectly rational, and concluded with these words : — ' Surely if 
 it were put out of our power to perform acts of benevolence, our 
 life itself would become pook enough. If it were possible that 
 the impulse of pity could die in us, there would ee a melancholy 
 prospect for our jot and our pleasure. The man wlio is fortunate 
 enough to be able to bestow, receives more than the poor taker. Alas ! it 
 is the only thing? she added with great emotion, ' that can at all excuse 
 and mitigate the harshness of property, the cruelty of possession, 
 that a part of what is disproportionately accumulated is dropped upon 
 the wretched creatures who are pining below us, that it may not be 
 
 UTTERLY FORGOTTEN THAT WE ARE ALL BRETHREN.f 
 
 * This is of the very essence of the new blasphemy. This general 
 system will be found to require modification in a small parish of fifty 
 souls. How can it be enforced throughout a whole nation without 
 frightful suffering ?— S. T. C. 
 
 t I know nothing so ludicrous, and at the same time so affectino-, 
 as this little incident and the after remarks of Sophia. The very 
 essence of femineity seems to speak in the few and delicate, yet true 
 and touching words. I am not ashamed to say that when I first read 
 them the tears came into my eyes, and often, as I have read them 
 since to others, I cannot refrain from praying inwardly that the 
 time may be far distant when such sentiments shall be scouted by our 
 women.— S. T. C. 
 
LETTERS, ETC. 39 
 
 " The father looked at her with a disapproving air, and was on the 
 point of saying something, when Edward, his beaming eyes fixed on 
 the moist eyes of the maid, interposed with vehemence: 'If the 
 majority of mankind were of the same way of thinking, we should 
 live in a different and a better world. We are struck with horror 
 when we read of the distress that awaits the innocent traveller in 
 wildernesses and deserts of foreign climes, or of the terrible fate 
 which wastes a ship's crew on the inhospitable sea, when, in their 
 sorest need, no vessel or no coast will appear on the immeasurable 
 expanse ; we are struck with horror when monsters of the deep tear 
 to pieces the unfortunate mariner ; — and yet, do we not live in great 
 cities, as upon the peak of a promontory, where immediately at our feet 
 all this woe, the same horrible spectacle displays itself, only 
 more slowly, and therefore the more cruelly ?* But, from the 
 midst of our concerts and banquets, and from the safe hold of our 
 opulence, we look down into this abyss, where the shapes of miseryf 
 are tortured and wasted in a thousand fearful groups, as in Dante's 
 imagery, and do not venture even to raise their eyes to us, 
 because they know what a cold look they meet, when their cry rouses 
 us at times out of the torpor of our cold apathy.' 
 
 " ' These,' said the elder Eisenschlicht, ' are youthful exaggerations. 
 I still maintain, the really good citizen, the genuine patriot, ought not 
 to suffer himself to be urged by a momentary emotion to support 
 beggary. Let him bestow on those charitable institutions as much as 
 he can conveniently spare ; but let him not waste his slight means, 
 which ought in this respect also to be subservient to the higher views 
 of the state. For, in the opposite case, what is it he does? He 
 promotes by his weakness — nay, I should be inclined to call it a 
 voluptuous itching of the heart — imposture, laziness, and impudence, 
 and withdraAvs his little contribution from real poverty, which, after 
 all, he cannot always meet with or discern. Should we, however, be 
 willing to acknowledge that overcharged picture of wretchedness to 
 be correct, what good, even in this case, can a single individual effect ? 
 Is it in his power to improve the condition of the wretch who is 
 
 * Say selfishness, for the opulent have not a monopoly of cruelty. 
 
 t Say rather the punishments the selfish seek to inflict upon those 
 by and through whom they have the opportunity of punishing. All 
 men might be improvident, and all would be better if all were lavish, 
 profuse, generous. It would not be possible for all to be selfish and 
 grasping.— S. T. C. 
 
40 LETTERS, ETC. 
 
 driven to despair ? What does it avail to give relief for a single day 
 or hour ? The unfortunate being will only feel his misery the more 
 deeply, if he cannot change his state into a happy one ; he will grow 
 still more dissatisfied, still more wretched, and I injure instead of 
 benefiting him.' 
 
 " ' Oh ! do not say so,' exclaimed Edward, ' if you would not have 
 me think harshly of you, for it sounds to me like blasphemy. What 
 the poor man gains in such a moment of sunshine ! Oh ! sir, he who is 
 accustomed to he thrust out of the society of men; he, for whom there 
 is no holiday, no market-place, no society, and scarcely a church ; for 
 whom ceremony, courtesy, and all the attentions which every man 
 usually pays to his neighbour, are extinct ; this wretched creature, 
 for whom, in public walks and venial nature, there shoots and blossoms 
 nothing but contempt, often turns his dry eye to heaven and the stars 
 above him, and sees there even, nothing but vacancy and doubts ; but 
 in such an hour as that which unexpectedly bestows on him a more liberal 
 boon, and enables him to return to his gloomy hovel, to cheer his 
 pining family with more than momentary comfort, faith in God, in his 
 father, again rises in his heart, he becomes once more a man, he feels 
 again the neighbourhood of a brother, and can again love him and him- 
 self. Sappy the rich man, who can promote this faith, who can bestow 
 with the visible the invisible gift ; and woe to the prodigal, who, through 
 Ms criminal thoughtlessness, deprives himself of those means of being a 
 man among men; for most severely will his feelings punish him, for 
 having poured out in streams in the wilderness, like a heartless barbarian, 
 the refreshing draught, of which a single drop might have cheered his 
 brother, who lay drooping under the load of his wearisome existence.' He 
 could not utter the last words without a tear ; he covered his face, 
 and did not observe that the strangers and Erich had taken leave of 
 their host. Sophia too wept j but she roused herself and recovered 
 her composure as her father returned." 
 
 LETTEE IX. 
 
 My very dear Friend, 31st July, 1820. 
 
 Before I opened your letter, or rather before I gave it to 
 
 my best sister, and, under God, best comforter, to open, a heavy, 
 
 a very heavy affliction came upon me with all the aggravations 
 
LETTERS, ETC. 41 
 
 of surprise, sudden as a peal of thunder from a cloudless 
 sky.* 
 
 Alas ! both Mr. and Mrs. Gillman had spoken to him with 
 all the earnestness of the fondest parents; his cousins had 
 warned him, and I (long ago) had written to him, conjuring 
 him to reflect with what a poisoned dagger it would arm my 
 enemies : yea, and the phantoms that, half-counterfeiting, half- 
 expounding the conscience, woidd persecute my sleep. My 
 conscience indeed bears me witness, that from the time I 
 quitted Cambridge, no human being was more indifferent to 
 the pleasures of the table than myself, or less needed any 
 stimulation to my spirits ; and that by a most unhappy 
 quackery, after having been almost bedrid for six months with 
 swollen knees and other distressing symptoms of disordered 
 digestive functions, and through that most pernicious form of 
 ignorance, medical half-knowledge, I was seduced into the use 
 of narcotics, not secretly, but (such was my ignorance) openly 
 and exultingly, as one who had discovered, and was never 
 weary of recommendiug, a grand panacea, and saw not the 
 truth till my body had contracted a habit and a necessity ; and 
 that, even to the latest, my responsibility is for cowardice and 
 defect of fortitude, not for the least craving after gratification 
 or pleasurable sensation of any sort, but for yielding to pain, 
 terror, and haunting bewilderment. But this I say to man 
 only, who knows only what has been yielded not what has been 
 
 * Here follows a detail of charges brought against one very near, 
 and deservedly dear, to the writer, originating with, or adopted by 
 the present Bishop of Llandaff. These charges were afterwards, I 
 believe, withdrawn ; at all events compensation was tendered to the 
 party implicated. 
 
42 LETTERS, ETC. 
 
 resisted ; before God I have but one voice — " Mercy ! mercy ! 
 woe is me." — This was the sin of his nature, and this has been 
 fostered by the culpable indulgence, at least non-interference, 
 on my part ; while, in a different quarter, contempt of the self- 
 interest he saw seduced him unconsciously into selfishness. 
 
 Pray for me, my dear friend, that I may not pass such 
 another night as the last. While I am awake and retain my 
 reasoning powers, the pang is gnawing, but I am, except for a 
 fitful moment or two, tranquil ; it is the howling wilderness of 
 sleep that I dread. 
 
 I am most reluctant thus to transplant the thorns from 
 my own pillow to yours, but sooner or later you must know it, 
 and how else could I explain to you the incapability I am under 
 of answering your letter ? For the present (my late visitation 
 and sorrow out of the question) my anxiety is respecting your 
 health. Mr. Gillman feels satisfied that there is nothing in 
 your case symptomatic of aught more dangerous than irritable, 
 and at present disordered, organs of digestion, requiring indeed 
 great care, but by no means incompatible with comfortable 
 health on the whole. Would to God ! that your uncle lived 
 near Highgate, or that we were settled near Clapham. Most 
 anxious am I — (for I am sure I do not overrate Gillman's 
 medical skill and sound medical good sense, and I have had 
 every possible opportunity of satisfying myself on this head, 
 comparatively as well as positively, from my intimate acquaint- 
 ance with so many medical men in the course of my life) — I 
 am most anxious that you should not apply to any medical 
 practitioner at Clapham, till you have consulted some physician 
 recommended by Gillman, and with whom our friend might 
 have some confidential conversation. — The next earnest petition 
 I make to you, — for should I lose you from this world, I fear 
 that religious terrors would shake my strength of mind, and to 
 how many are you, must you be, very dear, — is that you 
 would stay in the country as long as is morally practicable. 
 Let nothing but coercive motives have weight with you; a 
 
LETTERS, ETC. 
 
 43 
 
 month's tranquillity in pure air (O ! that I could spend that 
 month with you, with no greater efforts of mental or bodily 
 exercise than would exhilarate both body and mind) might save 
 you many months' interrupted and half-effective labour. 
 
 If any thoughts occur to you at Clapkam on which it would 
 amuse or gratify you to have my notions, write to me, and I 
 shall be served by having something to think and write about 
 not connected with myself. But, at all events, write as often 
 as you can, and as much as (but not a syllable more than) you 
 ought. Need I say how unspeakably dear you are to your, 
 you must not refuse me to say in heart, 
 
 S. T. Coleridge. 
 T. Allsop, Esq. 
 
 This letter, interesting as it is to me from the recollections 
 and associations of those delightful days, when its writer was 
 to me a guide, philosopher, and, above and before all, a dear, 
 very dear, and valued friend, has an interest and a value from 
 the clear and simple account of his first using laudanum. If 
 any other testimony were or could be needed, I have received 
 ample confirmation from subsequent communications. From 
 this bodily slavery [for it was bodily) to a baneful drug, he 
 was never entirely free, though the quantity was so greatly 
 reduced as not materially to affect his health or spirits. For 
 this alleviation he was indebted to the skill and attention of the 
 medical friend of whom mention is made above, who, in a 
 calling which, as at present pursued, tends more than perhaps 
 any other trade, to degrade the moral being, has preserved a 
 simplicity and singleness of purpose, united to a manly frank- 
 ness, and combined with, or rather springing out of, a kindness 
 and disinterestedness, which, as far as I have seen, has few 
 equals. This excellent man seems to realise, in suburban 
 practice, the example given in the following extract from the 
 conversations of Coleridge : — 
 
 " The functions of a simple, earnest, and skilful country 
 
44 LETTERS, ETC. 
 
 surgeon, living in a small town or village, and circulating in a 
 radius of ten miles, are, and might always be made, superior in 
 real, urgent, instant, and fitting relief, to the Lady Bountiful, and 
 even to that of the Parson of the parish. I often think with 
 pleasure of the active practical benevolence of Salter.* His 
 rides were often sixty, averaging more than thirty miles, every 
 day, over bad roads and in dark nights ; yet not once has he 
 been known to refuse a summons, though quite sure that he 
 would receive no remuneration, nay, not sure that it would not 
 be necessary to supply wine or cordials, which, in the absence 
 of the landlord of his village, must be at his own expense. 
 This man was generally pitied by the affluent and the idle, on 
 the score of his constant labours, and the drudgery which he 
 almost seemed to court. Yet with little reason : for never 
 knew I the man more to be envied, one more cheerful, more 
 invariably kind, or more patient : always kind from real kind- 
 ness and delicacy of feeling ; never, even for a moment, angry. 
 The present system of money-making, and, what is worse, 
 sleight of hand, and other tricks for ostentation and stage effect, 
 leave little hope of future Salters." 
 
 As I have extracted a part, I will even give the remainder 
 of the conversation of the day ; one of those — alas ! too few — 
 which I have preserved at great length. Bitterly do I now 
 regret, both for my own sake, and still more for yours, my dear 
 children and youthful readers (for such chiefly do I wish), that 
 a contempt for the character and pursuits of Boswell deterred 
 me from making constant memorandums of conversations, 
 which spread over a period of seventeen years, and, for a part 
 of that time, almost daily, would now to me have been a 
 treasure and a consolation unspeakable, in the dear and delight- 
 ful recollections which they would have contained. These 
 recollections, which are now so misty, so shadowy, and so 
 
 * Salter, if I recollect right, lived in Devonshire ; but whether at 
 Ottery or in its neighbourhood, I am ignorant. 
 
LETTERS, ETC. 45 
 
 unsubstantial, as to present little that is tangible, little tbat 
 can be recalled bodily, would not be the less delightful to me 
 as harmonising with the general character of my mind, if they 
 did not also include regret the most poignant at the oppor- 
 tunities that I suffered to pass unimproved. 
 
 It may seem a contradiction, but I am never more grateful, 
 never more thankful for the communion vouchsafed, never 
 more revere the memory of the illustrious departed, than when 
 I am compelled to come to conclusions directly opposed to 
 those of the great teacher himself. 
 
 I have not observed the transitions from one subject to 
 another ; indeed, this was not possible without giving the 
 whole conversation, with the remarks and observations of 
 others — a course quite out of the question, seeing that each 
 conversation would make a small volume ; a volume, I may 
 add, of great and most delightful interest throughout. 
 
 " I believe that processes of thought might be carried on 
 independent and apart from spoken or written language. I do 
 not in the least doubt, that if language had been denied or 
 withheld from man, or that he had not discovered and improved 
 that mode of intercommunication, thought, as thought would 
 have been a process more simple, more easy, and more perfect 
 than at present, and would both have included and evolved 
 other and better means for its own manifestations, than any 
 that exist now." 
 
 " A clergyman has even more influence with the women 
 than the handsome captain. The captain will captivate the 
 fancy, whilst the young parson seizes upon the imagination, 
 and subdues it to his service. The captain is conscious of his 
 advantages, and sees the impression he has made long before 
 his victim suspects the reality of any preference. The parson, 
 unless he be the vain fop, for which, however, his education 
 
46 LETTERS, ETC. 
 
 essentially unfits him, has often secured to himself the imagi- 
 nation, and, through the imagination, the best affections of 
 those amongst whom he lives, before he is seriously attached 
 himself." 
 
 " Hark yet again to that sweet strain ! See how calm, how 
 beauteous that prospect toward my garden ! (thus he used 
 sportively to call the demesne of Caen Wood, and its honest, 
 though unreasoning owner, his head gardener). Would to 
 God I could give out my being amidst flowers, and the sight 
 of meadowy fields, and the chaunt of birds. Death without 
 pain at such a time, in such a place as this, would be a reward 
 for life. If I fear at all, I fear dying — I do not fear death." 
 
 " No, no; Lamb's scepticism has not come lightly, nor is he 
 a sceptic. The harsh reproof to Godwin for his contemptuous 
 allusion to Christ before a well-trained child, proves that he 
 is not a sceptic. His mind, never prone to analysis, seems to 
 have been disgusted with the hollow pretences, the false 
 reasonings, and absurdities of the rogues and fools with which 
 all establishments, and all creeds seeking to become established, 
 abound. I look upon Lamb as one hovering between earth 
 and heaven ; neither hoping much nor fearing anything. 
 
 " It is curious that he should retain many usages which he 
 learnt or adopted in the fervour of his early religious feelings, 
 now that his faith is in a state of suspended animation. 
 Believe me, who know him well, that Lamb, say what he will, 
 has more of the essentials of Christianity than ninety-nine out 
 of a hundred professing Christians. He has all that would 
 still have been Christian had Christ never lived or been made 
 manifest upon earth."* 
 
 * It will be interesting to compare Lamb's estimate of the belief of 
 Coleridge — balf serious, half sportive — with this defence of Lamb 
 from the charge of scepticism. After a visit to Coleridge, during 
 
LETTERS, ETC. 47 
 
 .." I_deprecate a literal still more than an ideal religion. The 
 miracles may be fairly illustrated by the familiar example of a 
 lecture with experiments at the institution. A man ignorant 
 of the law whence these conjurations proceeded woidd be acted 
 upon in a very different manner, when compared with the 
 philosopher who, familiar with the law, or the principle 
 whence they emanate, and with which they are congruous, sees 
 in them only the natural results, hardly the confirmation of 
 that which had previously been known. Compare this with 
 the no-results obtained from meteorology, a science so misnamed, 
 which so far from being in its infancy is not yet in its fetal 
 state. The meteorological journals are as little to be relied 
 upon, as would be the account of a ploughman, taken to an 
 experimental lecture at the institution. Ignorant of the law 
 and the principle, he would give an account of the results, so 
 different from the actual facts, that no one could conjecture a 
 law from Ms evidence. So _with the miracles. They are super- 
 erogatory. The law of God and the great principles of the 
 Christian religion would have been the same had Christ never 
 assumed humanity. It is for these things, and for such as 
 these, for telling unwelcome truths, that I have been termed 
 an atheist. It is for these opinions that William Smith assured 
 the Archbishop of Canterbury that I was (what half the clergy 
 are in their lives) an atheist. Little do these men know what 
 atheism is. Not one man in a thousand has either strength of 
 mind or goodness of heart to be an atheist. I repeat it. Not 
 one man in ten thousand has goodness of heart or strength of 
 mind to be an atheist. 
 
 which the conversation had taken a religious turn, Leigh Hunt, after 
 having walked a little distance, expressed his surprise that such a 
 man as Coleridge should, when speaking of Christ, always call him 
 our Saviour. Lamh, who had been exhilarated by one glass of that 
 gooseberry or raisin cordial which he has so often anathematised, 
 stammered out, " ne — ne — never mind what Coleridge says ; he is full 
 of fun." 
 
'fr*" 
 
 48 LETTERS, ETC. 
 
 " And, were I not a Christian, and that only in the sense in 
 which I am a Christian, I should he an atheist with Spinosa ; 
 rejecting all in which I found insuperable difficulties, and resting 
 my only hope in the gradual, and certain because gradual, pro- 
 gression of the species." 
 
 " This, it is true, is negative atheism ; and this is, next to 
 Christianity, the purest spirit of humanity !" 
 
 " Disliking the whole course and conduct of Carlile, I yet 
 hold with him as against his judges and persecutors. I hold 
 the assertion, that Christianity is part and parcel of the law of 
 the land, to he an absurdity. It might as well be said because 
 there is, or might be, a law to protect carpenters in the exercise 
 of their trade, that architecture is part and parcel of the law. 
 The government, or rather the party administering the func- 
 tions of government, have never had the courage to place the 
 question in its true light, and bring the action for a crime 
 against society, not against a creed. When a man gives up 
 the right of self-defence to a state, it is tacitly understood that 
 the state undertakes to protect him equally against* bodies of 
 
 * To explain this allusion it will be necessary to state that the 
 prosecution against Carlile was carried on by a loyal and constitu- 
 tional association ; better known, at that time, as the Bridge Street 
 Gang. I have preserved an impromptu of Coleridge's, (which I wrote 
 down at the time,) upon this hody; the allusions in, and the appli- 
 cation of, which, will be readily made by all interested. 
 j— Jack Stripe 
 
 M- >!' Eats tripe, 
 
 It is therefore credible 
 That tripe is edihle. 
 And therefore, perforce, 
 It follows, of course, 
 That the devil will gripe 
 All who do not eat tripe. 
 
 And as Nick is too slow 
 To fetch 'em below, 
 
EETTEKS, ETC. 49 
 
 men as against individuals. Carlile may be wrong ; Ms perse- 
 cutors undoubtedly are so." 
 
 " How I loathed the horrid speeches of the Attorney-General 
 and of Mr. Justice Bayley, at the trial of that wretched man 
 (Carlile). They said in so many words, ' The Unitarian who 
 differs with you in nine points out of ten is sacred, but in the 
 one point where he agrees with you, you condemn the deist.' 
 Certainly the repeal of the act against Unitarianism was entirely 
 and unequivocally an acknowledgment that those points were 
 not of moment. Carlile, if he had not been blinded by the 
 steams arising from that hell, his own mind, might have taken 
 advantage of this. Judge Abbot acted very well ; he put the 
 question on the ground of incivism, and not on the religious 
 ground. No doubt the early Christians, who in the second 
 century threw down altars, attacked with uproar, railing and 
 abuse, the existing religion, are not to be considered as martyrs, 
 but as justly punished on the ground of incivism ; their conduct 
 was contrary to the injunction of their Great Master." 
 
 " The vulgar notion that a deist neither believes in a future 
 state nor in the existence of spirits is false, according to the 
 evidence of Christ himself; who expressly says, when ques- 
 tioned on this point, ' Believe ye not this ; neither would ye 
 believe if one were to rise from the dead.' And again, ' No 
 man who believes not in this, is worthy to be received.' " 
 
 And Gifford, the attorney, 
 Won't quicken the journey ; 
 The Bridge-Street Committee 
 That colleague without pity, 
 To imprison and hang 
 Carlile and his gang, 
 Is the pride of the city : 
 And 'tis association 
 That, alone, saves the nation 
 From death and damnation. 
 
50 LETTERS, ETC. 
 
 " The paradox that the greater the truth the greater the 
 libel, has done much mischief. I had once intended to have 
 written a treatise on Phrases and their Consequences, and this 
 would have been at the head. Certainly, if extended, it has 
 some truth ; a man may state the truth in words, and yet tell 
 a lie in spirit, and as such deserve punishment for calumny." 
 
 " All men in power are jealous of the pre-eminence of men 
 of letters ; they feel, as towards them, conscious of inferior 
 power, and a sort of misgiving that they are, indirectly, and 
 against their own will, mere instruments and agents of higher 
 intellects. 
 
 Men in power, for instance Lord Castlereagh, are conscious 
 of inferiority, and are yet ashamed to own, even to themselves, 
 the fact, which is only the more evident by their neglect of men 
 of letters. So entirely was Mr. Pitt aware of this, that he 
 would never allow of any intercourse with literary men of 
 eminence ; fearing, doubtless, that the charm which spell-bound 
 his political adherents would, at least for the time, fail of its 
 effect." 
 
 " There is a great, a general want of intellect at this time, 
 so much so that when any convulsion occurs, it will tell fatally. 
 The fabric of our society resembles a house of cards built by 
 children, which so long as the squares support a roof, and that 
 roof an angle, and the inter-dependence is sufficient, all seems 
 well ; but the moment the fabric is shaken, and when the com- 
 ponent parts can no longer form an angle, it will assuredly fall 
 to the ground. See First Lay Sermon. The Second Lay 
 Sermon, and the Letters to Judge Fletcher are, in truth, won- 
 derful prophecies." 
 
 " If I should finish ' Christabel,' I shall certainly extend it 
 and give new characters, and a greater number of incidents. 
 
LETTERS, ETC. 51 
 
 This the ' reading public ' require, and this is the reason that 
 Sir Walter Scott's Poems, though so loosely written, are 
 pleasing, and interest us by their picturesqueness. 
 
 " If a genial recurrence of the ray divine should occur for a 
 few weeks, I shall certainly attempt it. I had the whole of the 
 two cantos in my mind before I began it ; certainly the first 
 canto is more perfect, has more of the true wild weird spirit 
 than the last. I laughed heartily at the continuation in 
 Blackwood, which I have been told is by Maginn : it is in 
 appearance, and in appearance only, a good imitation • I do not 
 doubt but that it gave more pleasure, and to a greater number, 
 than a continuation by myself in the spirit of the two first 
 cantos. 
 
 " The ' Ancient Mariner ' cannot be imitated, nor the poem, 
 ' Love.' They may be excelled;- they are not imitable." 
 
 " Peter's Letters to his Kinsfolk * seem to have originated 
 in a sort of familiar conversation between two clever men, who 
 have said, ' Let us write a book that will sell ; you write this, 
 and I will write that,' and in a sort of laughing humour set to 
 work. This was the way that Southey and my self wrote many 
 things together." ^H^Vvca^ *. •- T-*-^- ' r /fl^yf 
 
 " I am glad you are now to see the Wallenstein for the first 
 time, as you will then see a specimen of my happiest attempt, 
 during the prime manhood of my intellect, before I had been 
 buffetted by adversity or crossed by fatality. The ' Eemorse ' 
 is certainly a great favourite of mine, the more so as certain 
 pet abstract notions of mine are therein expounded." 
 
 * I have extracted from the above work the following tribute to the / 
 genius of Coleridge by Professor Wilson , clarum el venerabile nomen. pC/Q 
 
 "If there be any man of grand and original genius alive at this 
 moment, in Europe, it is Coleridge ; nothing can surpass the melodious 
 richness of words which he heaps around his images — images which 
 
52 LETTERS, ETC. 
 
 " Mr. Green is indeed a worthy man, at least so all my 
 friends say. Bred up from the age of twelve in a hospital, he 
 has yet not failed to shun their horrid materialism. He has 
 come to a very different conclusion to that at which most other 
 operators, most psychologists have arrived. He has been able 
 to believe in a spiritual first cause and in a presiding free will. 
 This you will see in his preface.* 
 
 " I deplore in my inmost heart the present mental degrada- 
 tion of E., who, not contented with denying the primal truths 
 of religion and the divine nature of man, holds opinions which 
 were ever considered as base, hateful, and to be abhorred ; 
 opinions which degrade man below the beast. Quoted that 
 passage of Cicero, wherein he says, — " Concerning these things 
 there are (or may be) different opinions ; but those who dis- 
 believe the existence of goodness, not only from the want of it 
 themselves but after much consideration, are to be held as out 
 of the pale of society." 
 
 are not glaring in themselves, but which are always affecting to the 
 very verge of tears, because they have all been formed and nourished 
 in the recesses of one of the most deeply musing spirits that ever 
 breathed forth its inspirations in the majestic language of England. 
 Who that ever read ' Genevieve ' can doubt this ? That poem is known 
 to all readers of poetry, although comparatively few of them are aware 
 that it is the work of Coleridge. His love-poetry is, throughout, the 
 finest that has been produced in England since the days of Shakspeare 
 and the old dramatists. The old dramatists, and Coleridge, regard 
 women with far higher reverence — far deeper insight into the true 
 grandeur of their gentleness. I do not think there is any poet in the 
 world who ever touched so truly the mystery of the passion as 
 he' has done in 'Genevieve,' and in that other exquisite poem where 
 he speaks of 
 
 Her voice — 
 Her voice, that, even in its mirthful mood, 
 Hath made me wish to steal away and weep." 
 
 * It is to be hoped that Mr. Green will favour the world with the 
 process by which he has arrived at these conclusions. 
 
LETTERS ETC. 53 
 
 " Tobin came one morning with a face of much interest to 
 inform me that Davy had made a wonderful discovery. ' I 
 doubt it not ; I think he will make many discoveries.' ' Yes, 
 yes ; but I mean in philosophy. He tells me he has discovered 
 that it is possible there may be a God ! ' " 
 
 " I once asked Tom Clarkson whether he ever thought of 
 his probable fate in the next world, to which he replied, ' How 
 can I ? I think only of the slaves in Barbadoes ! ' Does 
 Mr. Wilberforce care a farthing for the slaves in the West 
 Indies, or if they were all at the devil, so that his soul were 
 saved ? 
 
 " As there is a worldliness or the too-much of this life, so 
 there is another-worldliness, or rather other worldliness, equally 
 hateful and selfish with this worldliness." 
 
 11 Lord Erskine, speaking of animals, hesitating to call them 
 brutes, hit upon that bappy phrase — 'the mute creation.'" 
 
 " Lord Kenyon, on the trial of a bookseller, for publishing 
 Paine's ' Age of Eeason,' in his charge to the jury, enumerated 
 many celebrated men who had been sincere Christians ; and, 
 after having enforced the example of Locke and Newton, — 
 both of whom were Unitarians, and therefore not Christians, — 
 proceeded : — ' Nor, gentlemen, is this belief confined to men 
 of comparative seclusion, since men, the greatest and most 
 distinguished both as philosophers and as monarchs, have 
 enforced this belief, and shown its influence by their conduct. 
 Above all, gentlemen, need I name to you the Emperor Julian, 
 who was so celebrated for the practice of every Christian 
 virtue that he was called Julian the Apostle.'"* 
 
 * This most extraordinary blunder must have arisen from the judge's 
 reading having been more select than various. It is probable that 
 all the knowledge he had of Julian was picked out of Fielding's 
 " Journey to the Next World," which, however, he seems not to have 
 understood. 
 
54 LETTERS, ETC. 
 
 " It is indisputable that nervous excitation is contagious. 
 The greater part of ghost stories may be traced to this source." 
 
 " Forms exist before the substance out of which they are 
 shaped." 
 
 " One thought includes all thought, in the sense that a grain 
 of sand includes the universe. 
 
 " I hold with St. Paul that charity is the greatest of the 
 virtues. Original sin is best explained by depravation of the 
 will. Calvinism, or the belief in election, is not simply blas- 
 phemy, but superfetation of blasphemy." 
 
 " For one person who has remarked or praised a beautiful 
 passage in Walter Scott's works, a hundred have said, ' How 
 many volumes he has written ! ' So of Matbews : it is not 
 ' How admirable such and such parts are ! ' but, ' It is wonder- 
 ful that one man can do all this ! ' " 
 
 LETTEE X. 
 My very Dear Friend, August 8th, 1820. 
 
 Neither indolence nor procrastination have had any place 
 among the causes of my silence, least of all either yourself, or 
 the subject of your letter, or the purpose of answering it, having 
 been absent from my thoughts. You may with almost literal 
 truth attribute it to want of time, from the number, quantity, 
 and quality of my engagements, the necessity of several jour- 
 neys to and (still worse) in town being the largest waster of 
 time and spirits. At length I have settled J. for the next six 
 or eight weeks with Mr. Montague, Avhere he is engaged on an 
 Essay on the Principles of Taste in relation to Metre and 
 Ehythm, containing, first, a new scheme of prosody, as applied 
 to the choral and lyrical stanzas of the Greek drama ; secondly, 
 the possibility of improving and enriching our English versi- 
 
LETTERS, ETC. 55 
 
 fication "by digging in the original mines, viz. — the tunes of 
 nature and impassioned conversation, both of which may be 
 illustrated from Mr. Frere's* Aristophanic Poems. I have 
 
 * As these poems, the precursors of " Beppo " and " Don Juan," 
 are not now in general circulation, I subjoin two short extracts — one a 
 sketch of a gallant knight; the second showing the advantage of 
 being well victualled. 
 
 On every point, in earnest and in jest, 
 
 His judgment, and his prudence, and his wit 
 
 Were deemed the very touchstone and the text 
 
 Of what was proper, graceful, just, and fit. 
 
 A word from him set everything at rest, 
 
 His short decisions never failed to hit ; 
 
 His silence, his reserve, his inattention, 
 
 Were felt as the severest reprehension. 
 
 His memory was the magazine and hoard 
 
 Where claims and grievances, from year to year, 
 
 And confidences and complaints were stored, 
 
 From dame and knight, from damsel, boor and peer ; 
 
 Loved by his friends, and trusted by his lord, 
 
 A generous courtier, secret and sincere, 
 
 Adviser-general to the whole community, 
 
 He served his friend, but watched his opportunity. 
 
 For, in the garrison where he presided, 
 Neither distress, nor famine, nor disease 
 Were felt, nor accident nor harm betided 
 The happy monk ; but plenteous, and with ease, 
 All needful monkish viands were provided ; 
 Bacon and pickled herring, pork and peas ; 
 And, when the table-beer began to fail, 
 They found resources in the bottled ale. 
 
 Dinner and supper kept their usual hours, 
 Breakfast and luncheon never were delayed, 
 While to the sentries on the walls and towers, 
 Between two hot plates, messes were conveyed. 
 At the departure of the invading power, 
 It was a boast the noble abbot made, 
 None of his monks were weaker, paler, thinner, 
 Or, during all the siege, had lost a dinner. 
 
56 LETTERS, ETC. 
 
 been working hard to bring together for him the notes, &c, 
 that I had prepared on this subject. E. has been ill, and even 
 now is far from well. There are some persons — I have known 
 several — who, when they find themselves uncomfortable, take 
 up the pen and transfer as much discomfort as they can to their 
 absent friends. But I know only one of this sort, who, as soon 
 as they take up the pen, instantly become dolorous, however 
 smug, snug, and cheerful the minute before and the minute after. 
 
 Now just such is Mrs. D., God bles3 her ! and she has been 
 writing letter after letter to E. about J., and every discomfort- 
 able recollection and anticipation that she could conjure up, 
 that she has completely overset him. This must not be. Mr. 
 Gillman, too, has been out of sorts, but at this present we are 
 all better. I at least am as well as I ever am, and my regular 
 employment, in which Mr. Green is weekly my amanuensis, 
 the work on the books of the Old and New Testaments, intro- 
 duced by the assumptions and postulates required as the pre- 
 conditions of a fair examination of Christianity as a scheme of 
 doctrines, precepts, and histories, drawn or at least deducible 
 from these books. And now, in the narrative line, I have only 
 to add that Mrs. Gillman desires to be affectionately remem- 
 bered to you, and bids me entreat you to stay away as long 
 as you possibly can, provided it be from London as well as 
 from Higbgate. 
 
 "Would to heaven I were with you ! In a few days you 
 should see that the spirit of the mountaineer is not yet utterly 
 extinct in me. Wordsworth has remarked (in the Brothers, 
 I believe), 
 
 " The thought of death sits light upon the man 
 That has been hred, and dies among the mountains." 
 
 But I fear that this, like some other few of Wordsworth's 
 many striking passages, means less than it seems, or rather 
 promises, to mean. Poets (especially if philosophers too) are 
 apt to represent the effect made upon themselves as general ; 
 
LETTERS, ETC. 57 
 
 the geese of Phoebus are all swans ; and Wordsworth's shep- 
 herds and estates men are Wordsworth's, even (as in old 
 Michael) in the unpoetic traits of character. Whether moun- 
 tains have any particular effect on the native inhabitants by 
 virtue of being mountains exclusively, and what that effect is, 
 would be a difficult problem. If independent tribes, moun- 
 taineers are robbers of the lowlanders ; brave, active, and with 
 all the usual warlike good and bad qualities that result from 
 habits of adventurous robbery. Add clanship and the super- 
 stitions that are the surviving precipitate of an established 
 religion, both which are common to the uncivilised Celtic 
 tribes, in plain no less than in mountain, and you have the 
 Scottish Highlanders. But where the inhabitants exist as 
 states, or civilised parts of civilised states, they appear to 
 be in mind and character just what their condition and 
 employments would render them in level plain, the same 
 as amid Alpine heights. At least the influence acts in- 
 directly only, as far as the mountains are the causa causae 
 or occasion of a pastoral life instead of an agricultural; 
 thus combining a lax and common property, possessed by a 
 whole district, with small hereditary estates sacred to each, 
 while the properties in sheep seem to partake of both characters. 
 And truly, to this circumstance, aided by the favourable action 
 of a necessarily scanty population (for man is an oak that 
 wants room, not a plantation tree), we must attribute whatever 
 superiority the mountaineers of Cumberland and Westmore- 
 land and of the Swiss and Tyrolese Alps possess, as the 
 shocking contrast of the Welsh mountaineers too clearly 
 evinces. But this subject I have discussed, and (if I do not 
 flatter myself) satisfactorily, in the Literary Life, and I will 
 not conceal from you that this inferred dependency of the 
 human soul on accidents of birth-place and abode, together 
 with the vague, misty, rather than mystic, confusion of God 
 with the world, and the accompanying nature-worship, of 
 which the asserted dependence forms a part, is the trait in 
 
 
 & huMt^ 
 
58 
 
 LETTERS, ETC. 
 
 Wordsworth's poetic works that I most dislike as unhealthful, 
 and denounce as contagious ; while the odd introduction of the 
 popular, almost the vulgar, religion in his later publications 
 (the popping in, as Hartley says, of the old man with a beard), 
 suggests the painful suspicion of worldly prudence — at best a 
 justification of masking truth (which, in fact, is a falsehood 
 substituted for a truth withheld) on plea of expediency — car- 
 ried into religion. At least it conjures up to my fancy a sort 
 of Janus head of Spinosa and Dr. Watts, or " I and my 
 brother the dean." 
 
 Permit me, then, in the place of the two lines, 
 " The thought of death sits easy on the man, 
 
 Who hath been bred, and dies among the mountains," 
 to say, 
 
 " The thought of death sits easy on the man, 
 
 Whose earnest will hath lived among the deathless." 
 
 And I can perhaps build upon this foundation an answer to the 
 question, which would deeply interest me, by whomever put, 
 and pained me only because it was put by you ; i. e. because 
 I feared it might be the inspiration of ill health, and am 
 jealous of any consenting of that inward will which, with some 
 mysterious germination, moves in the Bethesda pool of our 
 animal life, to withdraw its resistance. For the soul, among 
 its other regalia, has an energetic veto against all undermining 
 of the constitution, and among these, as not the least insidious, 
 I consider the thoughts and hauntings that tamper with the 
 love of life. 
 
 Do not so ! you would not, if I could transfer into you, in 
 all its depth and liveliness, the sense what a hope, promise, 
 impulse, you are to me in my present efforts to realise my past 
 labours ; and by building up the temple, — the shaped stones, 
 beams, pillars, yea, the graven ornaments and the connecting 
 clamps of which have been piled up by me, only in too great 
 abundance, — to enable you and my two (may I not say other) 
 sons to affirm, — Vivit, quia non frustra vixit. 
 
LETTERS, ETC. 59 
 
 In reading an extract in the German Encyclopoedia from 
 Dobrizhoffer's most interesting account of the Abiponenses, a 
 savage tribe in Paraguay, houseless, yet in person and in 
 morals the noblest of savage tribes ; who, when first known 
 by Europeans, amounted to 100,000 warriors, yet have a 
 tradition that they were but the relic of a far more numerous 
 community, and who by wars with other savage tribes, and by 
 intestine feuds among themselves, are now dwindled to a 
 thousand (men, women, and children do not exceed five 
 thousand), it struck me with distinct remembrance — first, that 
 this is the history of all savage tribes ; and, second, that all 
 tribes are savage that have not a positive religion defecated 
 from witchcraft, and an established priesthood contra-distin- 
 guished from individual conjurers. Nay, the islands of the 
 Pacific (the Polynesia, which sooner or later the swift and 
 silent masonry of the coral worms will compact into a rival 
 continent, into & fifth quarter of the world), blest with all the 
 plenties of nature, and enjoying an immunity from all the 
 ordinary dangers of savage life, were many of them utterly 
 dispeopled since their first discovery, and wholly by their own 
 feuds and vices ; nay, that their bread-fruit tree and their 
 dehcious and healthful climate had only made the process of 
 mutual destruction and self-destruction more hateful, more 
 basely sensual. This, therefore, I assume as an undoubted 
 fact of history ; and from this, as a portion of the history of 
 men, I draw a new (to my knowledge, at least, a new) series 
 of proofs of several, I might say of all, the positions of pre- 
 eminent importance and interest more than vital ; a series 
 which, taken in harmonious countei'part to a prior series drawn 
 from interior history (the history of man), the documents of 
 which are to be found only in the archives of each individual's 
 own consciousness, will form a complete whole — a system of 
 evidence, consisting of two correspondent worlds, as it were, 
 correlative and mutually potentiating, yet each integral and 
 self-subsistent — having the same correlation, as the geometry 
 
60 LETTERS, ETC. 
 
 and the observations, or the metaphysics and the physics, of 
 astronomy. If I can thus demonstrate the truth of the 
 doctrine of existence after the present life, it is not improbable 
 that some rays of light may fall on the question, what state of 
 existence it may be reasonably supposed to be ? At all events, 
 we shall, I trust, be enabled to determine negatively, what it 
 can not be for any ; and for whom this or that, which does not 
 appear universally precluded, is yet for them precluded. In 
 plainer words, what can not be, universally speaking; second, 
 what may be ; third, what the differences may be for different 
 individuals, within the limits prescribed in ISTo. 2 ; fourth, what 
 scheme of embodied representation of the future state (our 
 reason not forbidding the same) is recommended by the truest 
 analogies ; and, fifth, what scheme it is best to combine with 
 our belief of a hereafter, as most conducive to the growth and 
 cultivation of our collective faculties in this life, or of each in 
 the order of its comparative worth, value, and permanence. 
 This I must defer to another letter, for I cannot let another 
 post pass by, without your knowing that we are all thinking 
 of and loving you. 
 T. Allsop, Esq. S. T. Coleridge. 
 
 To the preceding letter, pregnant as it is with materials for 
 thinking, your attention will be attracted, both by the great 
 variety of subjects brought forward and illustrated, and by the 
 expressions of earnest and affectionate attachment which it 
 contains. 
 
 Certainly no man that I ever knew united in so great a 
 degree, so entirely, "fondeur" with the most extreme sim- 
 plicity, and the most artless and confiding affection. The whole 
 craving of his moral being was for love. Who is not affected, 
 what man does not grieve, when he hears him exclaim — 
 
 " To be beloved is all I need, 
 " To be beloved is /love indeed." 
 
 " Why was I made for love, and love denied tome?" 
 
LETTERS, ETC. 61 
 
 Alas! my dear children, how can I hope to convey to 
 you (except your own minds are consenting) all that this 
 glorious heing was to me in the days when his vast intellect 
 was in its most gorgeous manhood, and I was yet in the first 
 singleness, and, I will add, purity, of mind. 
 
 " Few, and far between," are the moments when I can recall 
 that other self, which, in days past, sat at the feet of the 
 greatest of moderns — that seemed to unite energy, variety, a 
 mind eminently suggestive, with an affection and a reverence, 
 without any assignable limits, for whatever was beautiful and 
 loveable in man or in external nature, 
 
 " Who was retired as noon-tide dew 
 Or fountain in a noon-day grove ; 
 And you must love him, ere to you 
 He will seem worthy of your love. 
 
 " The outward shows of sky and earth, 
 Of hill and valley he has viewed ; 
 And impulses of deeper birth 
 Have come to him in solitude. 
 
 " In common things that round us lie, 
 Some random truths he can impart, 
 The harvest of a quiet eye, 
 That broods and sleeps on his own heart. 
 
 " But he is shy, both man and hoy 
 Hath been an idler in the land ; 
 Contented, if he might enjoy 
 
 The things that others understand.''' 
 
 The next letter which contained the farther development 
 of the very interesting matters opened in the preceding letter, 
 I have mislaid, or, I much fear, lost. 
 
62 LETTERS, ETC. 
 
 LETTER XL 
 
 My dear Friend, Highgate, Oct. 11th, 1820. 
 
 You will think it childish in me, and more savouring 
 of a jealous boarding-school miss than a friend and a philoso- 
 pher, when I confess that the " with great respect, your obliged 
 and grateful...," gave me pain. But I did not return from 
 Mr. Cooper's, at whose house we all dined, till near midnight, 
 and did not open the packet till this morning after getting out 
 of bed ; and this you know is the hour in which the cat-organ 
 of an irritable viscerage is substituted for the brain as the 
 mind's instrument. 
 
 The Cobbett is assuredly a strong and battering production 
 throughout, and in the best bad style of this political 
 rhinoceros, with his coat armour of dry and wet mud, and his 
 one horn of brutal strength on the nose of scorn and hate ; 
 not to forget the flaying rasp of his tongue ! There is one 
 article of his invective, however, from which I cannot with- 
 hold my vote of consent : that I mean which respects Mr. 
 Brougham's hollow complimentary phrases to the ministry 
 and the House of Lords. On expressing my regret that his 
 poor hoaxed and hunted client had been lured or terrified into 
 the nets of the revolutionists, and had taken the topmost perch, 
 as the flaring, screaming maccaw, in the clamorous aviary of 
 faction, Sheriff Williams, who dined with us, premising that 
 his wishes accorded with mine, declared himself, however, fully 
 and deeply convinced, that, without this alliance, the Queen 
 must have been overwhelmed, not wholly or even chiefly from 
 the strength of the party itself, but because, without the ac- 
 tivity, enthusiasm, and combination, peculiar to the reformists, 
 her case, in all its detail and with all its appendages, would 
 never have had that notoriety so beyond example universal ; 
 which (to translate Sheriff Williams into Poet Coleridge), 
 with kettle-drum reveillee, had echoed through the mine and 
 the coal-pit, which had lifted the latch of every cottage, and 
 
LETTERS, ETC. 63 
 
 thundered with no run-away knock at Carlton Palace. I 
 could only reply, that I had never yet seen, heard, or read of 
 any advantage in the long run, occurring to a good cause from 
 an unholy alliance with evil passions and incongruous or alien 
 purposes. It was ever heavy on my heart, that the people, 
 alike high and low, do perish fur lack of knowledge ; that both 
 sheep and shepherd, the Flocks and the Pastors, go astray 
 among swamps and in desolate places, for want of the Truth, 
 the whole Truth, and nothing but the Truth ; and that the 
 sacred motto, which I had adopted for my first political publica- 
 tion (" The Watchman "), would be the aspiration of my death- 
 bed — That all may know the truth ; and that the 
 
 TRUTH MAY MAKE US FREE. 
 
 I observed farther, that in bodies of men, not accidentally 
 collected nor promiscuously, but such as our House of Lords, 
 the usual effect of terror was, first, self-justification as to the 
 worst of their past violent and unconstitutional measures ; and, 
 next, a desperate belief that their safety would be still more 
 endangered by giving way than by plunging onward ; that, if 
 they must fall, they would fall in that way in which they might 
 take vengeance on the occasion of the mischief. If the propo- 
 sition be either ... or ... , and the latter blank is to be 
 filled up by a Civil War, what shall we put for the former, to 
 make our duty to submit to it deniable or even doubtful ? A 
 Legislature permitted by us to stand in the eye of the whole 
 civilised World as the representative of our country, corruptly 
 and ruthlessly pandering to an Individual's Lust and Hate ! 
 Open Hostility to Innocence, and the subversion of justice, a 
 shameless trampling under foot of the Laws of God and the 
 Principles of the Constitution, in the name and against the 
 known will of the Nation ! Well ! if anything, it must be 
 this ! It is a decision, compared with which the sentence of 
 the elder Brutus were a grief for which an onion might supply 
 the tears. A dreadful decision ! But be it so ! — How much 
 more then are we bound to be careful, that no conduct of our 
 
64 LETTERS, ETC. 
 
 own, no assent or countenance given by us to the violence of 
 others, no want of courage and alertness in denouncing the same, 
 should have the least tendency to bring about an act or event, 
 dire enough to justify a civil war for its preventive ? I pro- 
 duced, as you may suppose, but small effect; and yet your 
 very note enforces the truth of my reply — for these very- 
 answers of the Queen's conjointly with her plebicolar (or 
 plebicolous) Clap-Trapperies in the live puppet-show of wicked 
 Punch and his wife, that has come back again, and the devil 
 on all sides, make it impossible for me to ask you, as I other- 
 wise should have done, — What proof, proveably independent 
 of the calumny plot, have we of any want of delicacy in the 
 Queen ? What act or form of demeanour can be adduced on 
 competent testimony, from which we are forced or entitled to 
 infer innate Coarseness, if not Grossness ? The dire disclosure 
 of the extent and extremes to which Calumny may be earned — 
 
 and perhaps the recent persecution of poor dear mixes 
 
 its workings — makes me credulous in incredulity ; so that I 
 am almost prepared to reverse the proverb, and think that 
 " what every one says must be a lie ! " They put a body up 
 to the nostrils in the dunghill of reeking slander, and then 
 exclaim : There is no smoke without some fire ! 
 
 It is my purpose, God willing ! to leave this place on 
 Friday, so as to take an afternoon coach, if any such there be, 
 or the Oxford mail, as the dernier resource — and so to be in 
 Oxford by Saturday morning, while my letter, which is unfor- 
 tunately a very long one (and I could not make it otherwise), 
 will reach Dr. Copplestone, if arrived, on Friday morning ; 
 thus giving him a day's preparation for the personal interview. 
 How long my absence from Highgate may be, I cannot of 
 course predetermine ; certainly not an hour beyond what 
 
 's interest requires. 
 
 God bless you, my dear friend, and your truly affectionate, 
 and — if it did not look like a retort, how truly might I not 
 add — - Your obliged and grateful friend, 
 
 T. Allsop, Esq. S. T. Coleridge. 
 
LETTEKS, ETC. 65 
 
 P.S. — Sheriff Williams is apparently a very worthy, and 
 assuredly a very entertaining man. He gave us accounts, on 
 his own evidence, of wonderful things respecting Miss M'Evoy 
 and a Mr. De Vains of Liverpool ; so wonderful as to threaten 
 the stoppage even of my Bank of Faith. 
 
 I have just heard from Derwent, who is well ; hut I have 
 not had time to decipher his villainous scrawl. 
 
 I wish it was possible for me to give even a faint notion of 
 the splendid eloquence of my friend on this topic. The interest 
 he took in this great question on all occasions, induced me to 
 entreat repeatedly that he would embody his views and 
 opinions in a pamphlet, to be called " Thoughts on the Present 
 Persecution;" but better, certainly more prudent, counsels 
 prevailed. 
 
 On the conduct of Mr. Brougham in this case, he was accus- 
 tomed to animadvert with great severity. His great and 
 constant indiscretions, and, above all, an insincerity, which 
 then seemed to have an object, but which greater experience 
 has shown to arise from want of Ballast, in short (why should 
 I not say it ?) from mental unsoundness, were at that time 
 matters of deep regret to all right-minded men. 
 
 It is painful thus to speak of a man variously gifted, and 
 possessed unquestionably of great talents ; but it is needful to 
 bear in mind, that though men of restless natures and irritable 
 temperaments have frequently been the instruments of func- 
 tional improvements, they are totally unsuited to times which 
 require organic changes. If this be the case with regard to 
 men who are restless from enthusiasm, or whose fermentation 
 arises from the crude state of their minds, and respecting whom 
 there is yet hope when experience shall have mellowed their 
 convictions, what shall we say of those, to whom time brings 
 no improvement — age, no mental repose ? It is the duty of 
 all men, who have calmly observed, meditated, and reflected, 
 who are sufficiently near to be interested, and remote enough 
 
 5 
 
66 LETTERS, ETC. 
 
 for quiet contemplation, to put their testimony on record ; 
 which, though it may not avail in the present times, will yet 
 serve as a time-mark for the future. 
 
 Yet I can never helieve but that a man so variously gifted 
 must, at some time or other, have had aspirations of a higher 
 and purer nature than should seem possible, judging of the 
 turmoil and turbulence of his latter career. Hear what is 
 thought of this man by an accomplished foreigner. In a letter 
 of Jacquemont's, written from the Himalaya, are the following 
 reflections, which are but too just : — " I have just read the 
 sixteen immense columns of Lord Brougham's speech on 7th 
 Oct., 1831. What talents ! but what a perverted use of talent. 
 What a disagreeable kind of talent is that, which disgusts the 
 hearer instead of conciliating him. If I were a public man, I 
 would study Brougham, not to resemble him. What is the 
 use of that cutting irony, that bitter sarcasm, that super- 
 cilious pride ? What is the use of those Greek and Latin 
 verses?" 
 
 I must also protest against the terms employed, in speaking 
 of the very extraordinary man lately lost to that country he so 
 dearly loved, and for the welfare of which country, and those 
 who lived upon it and by it, his last words were uttered. 
 
 A man more kind-hearted, more kindly, I never knew. That 
 he was intolerant, turbulent, and domineering, I admit freely, 
 but towards whom? To those only who were self-seekers, 
 proud, narrow in their views, and, above all, to those who 
 sought to oppress and degrade that great class from which 
 he sprung, and with which he gloried to identify himself. 
 
 To the concluding portion of this letter it will be needless 
 to point attention. Like every thing my friend wrote, it is 
 for all time, and would be equally applicable in its spirit under 
 any conceivable form of society. 
 
 The American coachman, who, to the great surprise of Mr. 
 Stewart, told him more of the practice and mode of teaching 
 at the High School of Edinburgh than he knew himself, 
 
LETTERS, ETC. 67 
 
 although educated* at that school, justly observed that the 
 two great principles which have divided and still divide 
 mankind, are eternal, and not dependent upon the names 
 with which they are associated. Substituting only the words 
 " true Eeformer" for "Whig" (for here the Whigs are not 
 true Beformers), I know not a more just observation. " In 
 truth, the parties of Whig and Tory are those of Nature. 
 They exist in all countries, whether called by those names or by 
 those of aristocrats and democrats, cote droite and cote gauche, 
 ultras and radicals, serviles and liberals. The sickly, weakly, 
 timid man fears the people, and is a Tory by nature ; the 
 healthy, strong, and bold man cherishes them, and is a Whig 
 by nature." It is well that the people of England are not 
 educated to any knowledge of their political rights, or the 
 scandalous frauds of the past year would have met their fitting 
 punishments. How long will the manly and mature intellect 
 of this great mother, this great hive, of nations submit to the 
 guidance of litterateurs and lordlings, who, by virtue of pre- 
 tension and prescription alone, are held to be fit to govern 
 nations, though there are few men in the present cabinet to 
 whom a merchant would intrust a ship, a farmer employ as a 
 bailiff, or a draper engage as an assistant, even were their 
 services offered gratuitously. 
 
 * When Lord Stanley was in America, it was necessary to speak 
 of the General Post Office : he did not know where it was ; whilst a 
 judge who was at the table pointed out its exact situation in Lombard- 
 street, and evinced so much local knowledge, that Lord Stanley said — 
 
 " You must have been a long time in London, ?" " I was 
 
 never there in my life," was the reply. 
 
 See here the difference. The American had informed himself of 
 that which he was not expected to know, which it was excusable in 
 him not to know ; whilst the aristocrat was ignorant of that which it 
 was incumbent upon him to have known. 
 
68 LETTERS, ETC. 
 
 LETTEE XII. 
 
 My dear Friend, Oct. 20th, 1820. 
 
 Doubtless nothing can be more delightful to me, inde- 
 pendent of Mrs. Gillman's kind but unnecessary anxieties, 
 than to go to Oxford with you. Nay, though it will be but a 
 flight to and fro, with a sojourn but of two days, if so much, 
 yet I should even ask it of you if I were quite sure, abso- 
 lutely sure, that it would not inconvenience you. 
 
 But in the fear of this, I could not ask or receive your com- 
 panionship without some selfishness which would completely 
 baffle itself. 
 
 I have not yet received an answer from Oxford respecting 
 Dr. Coplestone's return to Oriel. 
 
 God bless you, my ever dear friend, 
 T. Allsop, Esq. S. T. Coleridge. 
 
 Of this journey to Oxford I have a very painful recollec- 
 tion ; perhaps the most painful recollection (one excepted) 
 connected with the memory of Coleridge. Still I think that 
 the journey was beneficial to his health, and that he was better 
 for some weeks after his return. 
 
 " A single thought is that which it is from other thoughts, 
 as a wave of the sea takes its form and shape from the waves 
 which precede and follow it." 
 
 " In the system of gravity, Newton only developed the 
 idea of Kepler. He advanced a step, and there he fixed his 
 followers. Kepler would have progressed, or have been 
 stationary in act at least." 
 
LETTERS, ETC. 69 
 
 LETTER XIII. 
 
 My deaeest Friend, Oct. 25th, 1820. 
 
 It will please you, though I scarcely know whether the 
 pleasure is worth the carriage, to know that my own feelings 
 and convictions were, from the very commencement of this 
 unhappy affair, viz. — the terms proposed to the Queen by 
 Lord Hutchinson, in coincidence with your present suggestion, 
 and that I actually began an essay, and proposed a sort of 
 diary, i. e. remarks moral and political, according as the events 
 of the day suggested them. But Mr. Gillman dissuaded me. 
 Again, about five weeks ago I had written a letter to Conder, 
 the editor of the " Eclectic Review" and ci-devant bookseller, 
 offering, and offering to execute, a scheme of publication, " the 
 Queen's case stated morally ; 2, judicially ; 3, politically." 
 But again Mr. G. earnestly persuaded me to suppress it. His 
 reasons were, first, that my mind was not sufficiently tranquil, 
 in consequence of I.'s affair, to enable me to rely upon going 
 through with the publication ; secondly, that it would probably 
 involve me with certain of my connexions in high fife, and be 
 injurious to Hartley and Derwent, especially the latter ; with 
 thirdly, the small chance of doing any good, people are so 
 guided by their first notions. To tell you the truth, Mr. G-.'s 
 own dislike to it was of more weight than all his three 
 reasons. 
 
 However, we will talk of the publication, if it be not too late, 
 and at all events I will compose the statement. 
 
 I pray you make no apologies for doing that which cannot 
 but add to the esteem and affection with which I am most 
 truly your friend, fraternally and paternally, 
 
 We shall soon see you ? S. T. Coleridge. 
 
 T. Allsop, Esq. 
 
 Shortly after this I find the following heads of conversation : — 
 " I recollect meeting Mr. Brougham well. I met him at 
 
70 LETTERS, ETC. 
 
 Mr. Sharp's with Mr. Horner. They were then aspirants for 
 political adventures. Mr. Horner bore in his conversation and 
 demeanour evidence of that straight- forward and generous 
 frankness which characterised him through life. You saw, or 
 rather you felt, that you could rely upon his integrity. His 
 mind was better fitted to reconcile discrepancies than to dis- 
 cover analogies. He had fine, nay, even high, talent rather 
 than genius. Mr. Brougham, on the contrary, had an apparent 
 restlessness, a consciousness, not of superior powers, but of 
 superior activity, a man whose heart was placed in what 
 should have been his head : you were never sure of him — you 
 always doubted his sincerity. He was at that time a hanger-on 
 upon Lord Holland, Mr. Horner being under the auspices of 
 Lord Lansdowne. 
 
 " From that time I lost sight of Mr. Brougham for some 
 time. When we next met, the subject of the parliamentary 
 debates was alluded to, previously to which Mr. Brougham 
 had expressed opinions which were in unison with my own 
 upon a matter at that time of great public interest. 
 
 "I said 'I could never rely upon what was given for the 
 future in the newspapers, as they had made him say directly 
 the contrary ; I was glad to be undeceived.' 
 
 " ' Oh,' said Brougham, in a tone of voice half confidential 
 and half jocular, ' Oh, it was very true I said so in Parliament, 
 where there is a party, but we know better.' 
 
 " I said nothing ; but I did not forget it." 
 
 " The question of the atonement and of the sacrament being 
 introduced, he insisted on the divine origin of the sacrament, 
 and that it was to be understood in a mystical sense, not, how- 
 ever, as a real presence. It has very clearly relation to the 
 sixth chapter of John; nay, Clement expressly affirms it to 
 be a solemn mysterious ceremony, in which he is sustained by 
 Justin Martyr. With respect to free will, in the ordinary 
 
LETTEKS, ETC. 71 
 
 acceptation, tie affirmed it to be incompatible with omnipotence, 
 with the attributes of that God who is omniscient and omni- 
 present, who is in all things, and in whom all things are, to 
 whom time past and time to come ever is. Man is not to be 
 saved without his saving grace." 
 
 " Speaking of the term ' Son of Man,' taken literally by the 
 Socinians, he said, — ' The Son of Man ! What is it but 
 mockery if he were really a man, the man Jesus Christ. He 
 was incarnate in Trinity or tri- unity ; first, he was incarnate 
 as the Logos, or Word ; next, he was incarnate with the Holy 
 Spirit unto all things, that he might remain in the spirit ; and, 
 lastly, he was incarnate in his humanity.' " 
 
 " Compared to the Jewish law, given as it was in thunders 
 and in terrible convulsions of the elements, the miracles of the 
 Christian dispensation were devoid of interest. 
 
 " There can be no doubt that a religion like that of the Jews, 
 a religion of punishments and threatenings only, was incom- 
 plete ; it must, therefore, be false, or it required to be perfected." 
 
 " Speaking of Baxter, he affirmed that he was a century 
 before his time, that he was a logician, and first applied the 
 tri-fold or tri-une demonstration. Heretofore, the two-fold 
 method only was known as the arguing from a positive to a 
 negative, the reality ergo the visionary. He also first intro- 
 duced the method of argument, that the thing or reason 
 given contains a positive and its opposite; e. g., reality 
 contains the actual and the potential, as, I sit, the actual, but 
 I have the power, the potentiality, of walking. Baxter tried 
 to reconcile the almost irreconcilable tenets of Calvinism and 
 Arminianism. He more than any other man was the cause of 
 the restoration, and more than any other sectarian was he per- 
 secuted by Charles II. 
 
 " He is borne out in all his statements by Mrs. Lucy 
 
72 LETTERS, ETC 
 
 Hutchinson, that most delightful of women and of regicidesses. 
 No doubt the Commons had a right to punish the weak and 
 perfidious king, inasmuch as he first appealed to the God of 
 Battles." 
 
 " The present ministry (the Liverpool-Castlereagh cabinet), 
 although it contains some men of ability, is supported chiefly 
 by its own weakness, which in every instance leads or rather 
 compels it to a mean and abject prostration of the prerogative 
 to the House of Commons, and by the unpopularity of the oppo- 
 sition, arising from their having opposed themselves to the 
 French war and to the grant of assistance to Spain. The 
 grand mistake of Mr. Fox was, that he did not separate the 
 causes of the war from the consequences, but acted as though, 
 having espoused the cause of the French revolution, he must 
 in every instance advocate its measures. This lost him his 
 party, and swelled the ranks of Mr. Pitt, a man utterly unfitted 
 for the conduct of a war, all his plans being based upon, so 
 called, expediency, and pernicious short-sightedness, which 
 would never allow him to take into his calculation the future." 
 
 " Even the very successes of our naval power contributed, 
 and that in a most influential degree, to form and render 
 extreme the military spirit in France; for, utterly and 
 entirely weaning men from commerce and maritime concerns, 
 they necessarily gave exclusive attention to military affairs, 
 for on the sea, hope, even, did not exist for France." 
 
 " It is not uncommon for 100,000 operatives (mark this 
 word, for words in this sense are things) to be out of employment 
 at once in the cotton districts (this was in 1820), and, thrown 
 upon parochial relief, are dependent upon hard-hearted task- 
 masters for food. The Malthusian doctrine would indeed afford 
 a eertain means of relief if this were not a two-fold question. 
 
LETTERS, ETC. 73 
 
 If, when you say to a man, — ' You have no claim upon me ; 
 you have your allotted part to perform in the world, so have I. 
 In a state of nature, indeed, had I food, I should offer you a 
 share from sympathy, from humanity ; but in this advanced and 
 artificial state of society, I cannot afford you relief; you must 
 starve. You came into the world when it could not sustain you.' 
 What would be this man's answer ? He would say, — ' You 
 disclaim all connexion with me ; I have no claims upon you ? 
 I can then have no duties towards you, and this pistol shall 
 put me in possession of your wealth. You may leave a law 
 behind you which shall hang me, but what man who saw 
 assured starvation before him, ever feared hanging.' It is 
 this accursed practice of ever considering only what seems 
 expedient for the occasion, disjoined from all principle or 
 enlarged systems of action, of never listening to the true and 
 unerring impulses of our better nature, which has led the 
 colder-hearted men to the study of political economy, which 
 has turned our Parliament into a real committee of public 
 safety. In it is all power vested ; and in a few years we 
 shall either be governed by an aristocracy, or, what is still 
 more likely, by a contemptible democratical oligarchy of 
 glib economists, compared to which the worst form of aristo- 
 cracy would be a blessing." 
 
 " Commerce has enriched thousands, it has been the cause of 
 the spread of knowledge and of science, but has it added one 
 particle of happiness or of moral improvement ? Has it given 
 us a truer insight into our duties, or tended to revive and 
 sustain in us the better feelings of our nature ? No ! no ! 
 when I consider what the consequences have been, when I 
 consider that whole districts of men, who would otherwise have 
 slumbered on in comparatively happy ignorance, are now little 
 less than brutes in their lives, and something worse than brutes 
 in their instincts, I could almost wish that the manufacturing 
 districts were swallowed up as Sodom and Gomorrah." 
 
74 LETTERS, ETC. 
 
 " Some men — Jeffrey is one — refer taste to palate." 
 
 a Absurd terms, when compared, as l conclusion of a war,' 
 1 conclusion of a peace.' In the one case it means the end, in 
 the other the beginning." 
 
 " I am unable to account for Mr. Locke's popularity ; in 
 some degree it may be owing to his having exposed and con- 
 futed the absurdities, or rather the absurd part, of the schoolmen. 
 Hume has carried his premises to their natural and inevitable 
 conclusion." 
 
 " The idea of the mind forming images of itself, is as absurd 
 as the belief of Descartes with respect to the external world. 
 There is nothing in the mind which was not previously in the 
 senses, except the mind itself. Philosophy, properly so called, 
 began with Pythagoras. He saw that the mind, in the common 
 sense of the word, was itself a fact, that there was something 
 in the mind not individual ; this was the pure reason, something 
 in which we are, not which is in us." 
 
 " Socrates seems to have been continually oscillating between 
 the good and the useful." 
 
 " To most men, experience is like the stern lights of a ship, 
 which illumine only the track it has passed." 
 
 " On William Smith, of Norwich, asking me what I thought 
 /jff of the Monthly Eeview or Magazine, and of Dr. Aikin, its 
 editor, I was provoked, by his evident wish that I should say 
 something in its favour, to reply ,-r— ' That all men of science or 
 literature could attest that the one was a void Aikin, and the 
 other an aching void.' " 
 
LETTERS, ETC- 75 
 
 LETTER XIV. 
 
 My very dear Friend, Nov. 27, 1820. 
 
 I have been more than usually unwell, with great depres- 
 sion of spirits, loss of appetite, frequent sickness, and a harassing 
 pain in my left knee ; and at the same time anxious to preclude, 
 as much as I can, the ill effects of poor J.'s procrastination — 
 indolence it is not, for he is busy enough in his own way, and 
 rapidly bringing together materials for his future credit as a 
 man of letters and a poet, but shrinking from all things con- 
 nected with painful associations, and of that morbid tempera- 
 ment, which I too well understand, that renders what would 
 be motives for men in general, narcotics for him, in exact 
 proportion to their strength; and this I could only do by 
 taking on myself as much of the document writing as was 
 contrivable. Besides this, I have latterly felt increasingly 
 anxious to avail myself of every moment that ill health left me, 
 to get forward with my Logic and with my " Assertion of 
 Religion." 
 
 Nay, foolish though it be, I cannot prevent my mind from 
 being affected by the alarming state of public affairs, and, as it 
 appears to me, the want of stable principle even in the chiefs of 
 the party that seem to feel aright, yet chirrup like crickets in 
 warmth without light. 
 
 The consequence of all this is, that I not only have deferred 
 writing to you, but have played the procrastinator with myself, 
 even in giving attention to your very interesting letter. For 
 minor things your kindness and kind remembrances are so 
 habitual, that my acknowledgments you cannot but take for 
 granted. Mr. Gillman has been ill ; Mrs. Gillman — and this 
 leads me to the particular object of this letter — expresses aloud 
 and earnestly what I feel no less, her uneasiness that three 
 weeks have passed, and we have not had the comfort of seeing 
 you. Do come up when you can, with justice to yourself and 
 other connections, for it is a great comfort to me ; something, I 
 
76 LETTERS, ETC. 
 
 trust, I shall have to show you. A note of warning from one 
 who has been a true but unheard prophet to my countrymen 
 for five-and-twenty years. 
 
 May God bless you, my dear friend, 
 T. Allsop, Esq. S. T. Coleridge. 
 
 As I do not intend that these brief notices shall form any 
 consecutive narrative of the events in the life of the writer, 
 any farther than the letters may contain allusions to them, the 
 life itself being, I hope, soon to make its appearance from the 
 pen of his best friend, I shall content myself with the insertion of 
 the following sonnet ; it is well worthy a place in future editions. 
 The second sonnet I have found on a detached piece of paper, 
 without note or observation. How it came into my possession 
 I have now forgotten, though I have some faint impression that 
 I wrote it down from dictation, and that it was the transcript of 
 an early, a very early sonnet, written probably at the time 
 when the author's heart, as well as his head, was with Spinosa. 
 
 FAREWELL TO LOVE. 
 Farewell, sweet Love ! yet blame you not my truth ; 
 
 More fondly ne'er did mother eye her child 
 Than I your form : yours were my hopes of yonth 
 
 And as you shaped my thoughts I sighed or smiled. 
 While most were wooing wealth, or gaily swerving 
 
 To pleasure's secret haunt, and some apart 
 Stood strong in pride, self-conscious of deserving, 
 
 To you I gave my whole weak wishing heart. 
 And when I met the maid that realised 
 
 Your fair creations, and had won her kindness, 
 Say, but for her if aught in earth I prized ! 
 
 Tour dreams alone I dreamt, and caught your blindness. 
 O grief! — but farewell, Love ! I will go play me 
 
 With thoughts that please me less, and less betray me. 
 
 TO NATUEE. 
 It may indeed be phantasy, when I 
 Essay to draw from all created things 
 Deep, heartfelt, inward joy that closely clings ; 
 And trace, in leaves and flowers that round me lie, 
 
LETTERS, ETC. 77 
 
 Lessons of love and earnest piety. 
 
 So let it be ; and if the wide world rings 
 
 In mock of this belief, it brings 
 
 Nor fear, nor grief, nor vain perplexity. 
 
 So will I build my altar in the fields, 
 
 And the blue sky my fretted dome shall be, 
 
 And the sweet fragrance that the wild flower yields, 
 
 Shall be the incense I will yield to Thee, 
 
 Thee only God ! and thou shalt not despise 
 
 Even me, the priest of this poor sacrifice. 
 
 LET TEE XV. 
 
 My dear young Friend, January, 1821. 
 
 The only impression left by you on my mind is an 
 increased desire to see you again, and at shorter intervals. 
 Were you my son by nature, I could not hold you dearer, or 
 more earnestly desire to retain you the adopted of whatever 
 within me will remain, when the dross and alloy of infirmity 
 shall have been purged away. I feel the most entire confidence 
 that no prosperous change of my outward circumstances would 
 add to jour faith in the sincerity of this assurance; still, however, 
 the average of men being what it is, and it being neither possible 
 nor desirable to be fully conscious in our understanding of the 
 habits of thinking and judging in the world around us, and yet 
 to be wholly impassive and unaffected by them in our feelings, 
 it would endear and give a new value to an honourable compe- 
 tence, that I should be able to evince the true nature and degree 
 of my esteem and attachment beyond the suspicion even of the 
 sordid, and separate from all that is accidental or adventitious. 
 But yet the friendship I feel for you is so genial a warmth, and 
 blends so undistinguishably with my affections, is so perfectly 
 one of the family in the household of love, that I would not be 
 otherwise than obliged to you : and Grod is my witness, that 
 my wish for an easier and less embarrassed lot is chiefly 
 
78 LETTEKS, ETC. 
 
 (I thing I might have said exclusively) grounded on the deep 
 conviction, that exposed to a less hleak aspect I should hring 
 forth flowers and fruits both more abundant and more worthy 
 of the unexampled kindness of your faith in me. Interpreting 
 the " wine" and the " ivy garland" as figures of poetry signi- 
 fying competence, and the removal of the petty needs of the 
 body that plug up the pipes of the playing fountain (and 
 such it is too well known was the intent and meaning of the 
 hardly used poet), and oh ! how often, when my heart has 
 begun to swell from the genial warmth of thought, as our 
 northern lakes from the (so called) bottom winds, when all 
 above and around is stillness and sunshine — how often have 
 I repeated in my own name the sweet stanza of Edmund 
 Spenser : — 
 
 " Thou kenst not, Percie, how the rhyme should rage, 
 
 O ! if my temples were bedewed with wine, 
 
 And girt in garlands of wild ivy twine ; 
 
 How I could rear the muse on stately stage, 
 
 And teach her tread aloft in buskin fine 
 
 With queint Bellona in her equipage.'' 
 
 Eead what follows as you would a note at the bottom of a 
 page. 
 
 " But ah ! Mecsenas is ywrapt in clay, and great Augustus long 
 ago is dead.'' 
 
 (This is a natural sigh, and natural too is the reflection that 
 follows.) 
 
 " And if that any buds of poesy 
 Yet of the old stock 'gin to shoot again, 
 'Tis or self-lost the worldling's meed to gain, 
 And with the rest to breathe its ribauldry, 
 Or as it sprung it wither must again ; 
 Tom Piper makes them better melody.'' 
 
 But, though natural, the complaint is not equally philoso- 
 phical, were it only on this account, — that I know of no age 
 in which the same has not been advanced, and with the 
 
LETTERS, ETC. 79 
 
 same grounds. Nay, I retract ; there never was a time, in 
 which the complaint would be so little wise, though perhaps 
 none in which the fact is more prominent. Neither philo- 
 sophy nor poetry ever did, nor as long as they are terms 
 of comparative excellence and contradistinction, ever can be 
 popular, nor honoured with the praise and favour of contem- 
 poraries. But, on the other hand, there never was a time in 
 which either books, that were held for excellent as poetic or 
 philosophic, had so extensive and rapid a sale, or men reputed 
 poets and philosophers of a high rank were so much looked up 
 to in society, or so munificently, almost profusely, rewarded. 
 Walter Scott's poems and novels (except only the two wretched 
 abortions, Ivanhoe and the Bride of Eavensmuir, or whatever 
 its name may be) supply both instance and solution of the 
 present conditions and components of popularity, viz. to amuse 
 without requiring any effort of thought, and without exciting 
 any deep emotion. The age seems sore from excess of stimu- 
 lation, just as, a day or two after a thorough debauch and long 
 sustained drinking match, a man feels all over like a bruise. 
 Even to admire otherwise than on the whole, and where " I ad- 
 mire" is but a synonym for " I remember I liked it very much 
 when I was reading it," is too much an effort, would be too 
 disquieting an emotion. Compare Waverley, Guy Mannering, 
 and Co., with works that had an immediate run in the last 
 generation, Tristram Shandy, Boderick Bandom, Sir Charles 
 Grandison, Clarissa Harlowe, and Tom Jones (all which became 
 popular as soon as published, and therefore instances fairly in 
 point), and you will be convinced that the difference of taste is 
 real, and not any fancy or croaking of my own. 
 
 But enough of these generals. It was my purpose to open 
 myself out to you in detail. My health, I have reason to 
 believe, is so intimately connected with the state of my spirits, 
 and these again so dependent on my thoughts, prospective and 
 retrospective, that I should not doubt the being favoured with 
 a sufficiency for my noblest undertaking, had I the ease of heart 
 
80 LETTERS, ETC. 
 
 requisite for the necessary abstraction of the thoughts, and 
 such a reprieve from the goading of the immediate exigencies 
 as might make tranquillity possible. But, alas ! I know by 
 experience (and the knowledge is not the less because the 
 regret is not unmixed with self-blame, and the consciousness of 
 want of exertion and fortitude), that my health will continue to 
 decline, as long as the pain from reviewing the barrenness of 
 the past is great in an inverse proportion to any rational anti- 
 cipations of the future. As I now am, however, from five to 
 six hours devoted to actual writing and composition in the day 
 is the utmost that my strength, not to speak of my nervous 
 system, will permit ; and the invasions on this portion of my 
 time from applications, often of the most senseless kind, are 
 such and so many as to be almost as ludicrous even to myself 
 as they are vexatious. In less than a week I have not seldom 
 received half-a-dozen packets or parcels, of works printed or 
 manuscript, urgently requesting my candid judgment, or my 
 correcting hand. Add to these, letters from lords and ladies, 
 urging me to write reviews or puffs of heaven-born geniuses, 
 whose whole merit consists in being ploughmen or shoemakers. 
 Ditto from actors ; entreaties for money, or recommendations 
 to publishers, from ushers out of place, &c. &c. ; and to me, 
 who have neither interest, influence, nor money, and, what is 
 still more cipropos, can neither bring myself to tell smooth 
 falsehoods nor harsh truths, and, in the struggle, too often do 
 both in the anxiety to do neither. — I have already the written 
 materials and contents, requiring only to be put together, from 
 the loose papers and commonplace or memorandum books, and 
 needing no other change, whether of omission, addition, or cor- 
 rection, than the mere act of arranging, and the opportunity of 
 seeing the whole collectively bring with them of course, — I. 
 Characteristics of Shakspeare's Dramatic Works, with a Critical 
 Keview of each Play ; together with a relative and compara- 
 tive Critique on the kind and degree of the Merits and Demerits 
 of the Dramatic Works of Ben Jonson, Beaumont and Fletcher, 
 
LETTERS, ETC. 81 
 
 and Massinger. The History of the English Drama; the 
 accidental advantages it afforded to Shakspeare, without in the 
 least detracting from the perfect originality or proper creation 
 of the Shakspearian Drama ; the contradistinction of the latter 
 from the Greek Drama, and its still remaining uniqueness, with 
 the causes of this, from the combined influences of Shakspeare 
 himself, as man, poet, philosopher, and finally, by conjunction of 
 all these, dramatic poet ; and of the age, events, manners, and 
 state of the English language. This work, with every art of 
 compression, amounts to three volumes of about five hundred 
 pages each. — II. Philosophical Analysis of the Genius and 
 Works of Dante, Spenser, Milton, Cervantes, and Calderon, 
 with similar, but more compressed Criticisms on Chaucer, 
 Ariosto, Donne, Eabelais, and others, during the predominance 
 of the Eomantic Poetry. In one large volume. — These two 
 works will, I flatter myself, form a complete code of the prin- 
 ciples of judgment and feeling applied to Works of Taste ; and 
 not of Poetry only, but of Poesy in all its forms, Painting, 
 Statuary, Music, &c. &c. — III. The History of Philosophy 
 considered as a Tendency of the Human Mind to exhibit the 
 Powers of the Human Eeason, to discover by its own Strength 
 the Origin and Laws of Man and the World from Pytha- 
 goras to Locke and Condillac. Two volumes. — IV. Letters 
 on the Old and New Testament, and on the Doctrine and 
 Principles held in common by the Fathers and Founders of 
 the Eeformation, addressed to a Candidate for Holy Orders ; 
 including Advice on the Plan and Subjects of Preaching, 
 proper to a Minister of the Established Church. 
 
 To the completion of these four works I have literally 
 nothing more to do than to transcribe ; but, as I before hinted, 
 from so many scraps and Sibylline leaves, including margins of 
 books and blank pages, that, unfortunately, I must be my own 
 scribe, and not done by myself, they will be all but lost ; or 
 perhaps (as has been too often the case already) furnish feathers 
 for the caps of others ; some for this purpose, and some to plume 
 
 6 
 
82 LETTERS, ETC 
 
 the arrows of detraction, to be let fly against the luckless bird 
 from whom they had been plucked or moulted. 
 
 In addition to these — of my great work, to the preparation 
 of which more than twenty years of my life have been devoted, 
 and on which my hopes of extensive and permanent utility, of 
 fame, in the noblest * sense of the word, mainly rest — that, by 
 which I might, 
 
 " As now by thee, by all the good be known, 
 
 When this weak frame lies moulder'd in the grave, 
 Which self-surviving I might call my own, 
 Which Folly cannot mar, nor Hate deprave — 
 The incense of those powers, which, risen in flame, 
 Might make me dear to Him from whom they came." 
 
 * Turn to Milton's Lycidas, sixth stanza — 
 
 " Alas ! what boots it with incessant care 
 To tend the homely slighted shepherd's trade, 
 And strictly meditate the thankless Muse ? 
 Were it not better done as others use, 
 To sport with Amaryllis in the shade, 
 Or with the tangles of Nesera's hair ? 
 Fame is the spur that the clear spirit doth raise 
 (That last infirmity of noble mind) 
 To scorn delights and live laborious days ; 
 But the fair guerdon when we hope to find, 
 And think to burst out into sudden blaze, 
 Comes the blind Fury with the abhorred shears, 
 And slits the thin-spun life. But not the praise, 
 Phoebus replied, and touched my trembling ears ; 
 Fame is no plant that grows on mortal soil, 
 Nor on the glistering foil 
 Set off to the world, nor in broad Rumour lies, 
 But lives and spreads aloft by those pure eyes, 
 And perfect witness of all-judging Jove ; 
 As he pronounces lastly in each deed, 
 Of so much fame in heav'n expect thy meed." 
 
 The sweetest music does not fall sweeter on my ear than this stanza 
 on both mind and ear, as often as I repeat it aloud. 
 
LETTERS, ETC. 83 
 
 Of this work, to which all my other writings (unless I except 
 my Poems, and these I can exclude in part only) are intro- 
 ductory and preparative ; and the result of which (if the pre- 
 mises be, as I with the most tranquil assurance, am convinced 
 they are — insubvertible, the deductions legitimate, and the 
 conclusions commensurate, and only commensurate, with both), 
 must finally be a revolution of all that has been, called Philosophy 
 or Metaphysics in England and France since the era of the com- 
 mencing predominance of the mechanical system at the resto- 
 ration of our second Charles, and with this the present fashion- 
 able views, not only of religion, morals, and politics, but even 
 of the modern physics and physiology. You will not blame 
 the earnestness of my expressions, nor the high importance 
 which I attach to this work ; for how, with less noble objects, 
 and less faith in their attainment, could I stand acquitted of 
 folly, and abuse of time, talents, and learning, in a labour of 
 three-fourths of my intellectual life ? Of this work, something 
 more than a volume has been dictated by me, so as to exist fit 
 for the press, to my friend and enlightened pupil, Mr. Green ; 
 and more than as much again would have been evolved and 
 delivered to paper, but that, for the last six or eight months, I 
 have been compelled to break off our weekly meeting, from the 
 necessity of writing (alas 1 alas ! of attempting to write) for 
 purposes, and on the subjects of the passing day. — Of my 
 poetic works, I^would fain finish the Christabel. Alas ! for 
 the proud time when I planned, when I had present to my 
 mind, the materials, as well as the scheme, of the Hymns 
 entitled Spirit, Sun, Earth, Air, Water, Fire, and Man : and 
 the Epic Poem on — what still appears to me the one only fit 
 subject remaining for an Epic Poem — Jerusalem besieged and 
 destroyed by Titus. 
 
 And here comes, my dear friend — here comes my sorrow and 
 my weakness, my grievance and my confession. Anxious to 
 perform the duties of the day arising out of the wants of the 
 day, these wants, too, presenting themselves in the most 
 
84 LETTERS, ETC. 
 
 painful of all forms, — that of a debt owing to those who will not 
 exact it, and yet need its payment, and the delay, the long 
 (not live-long but death-long) behind-hand of my accounts to 
 friends, whose utmost care and frugality on the one side, and 
 industry on the other, the wife's management and the husband's 
 assiduity are put in requisition to make both ends meet, I am 
 at once forbidden to attempt, and too perplexed earnestly to 
 pursue, the accomplishment of the works worthy of me, those 
 I mean above enumerated, — even if, savagely as I have been 
 injured by one of the two influensive Eeviews, and with more 
 effective enmity undermined by the utter silence or occasional 
 detractive compliments of the other,* I had the probable 
 chance of disposing of them to the booksellers, so as even to 
 liquidate my mere boarding accounts during the time expended 
 in the transcription, arrangement, and proof correction. And 
 yet, on the other hand, my heart and mind are for ever recur- 
 ring to them. Yes, my conscience forces me to plead guilty, 
 I have only by fits and starts even prayed. I have not 
 prevailed on myself to pray to God in sincerity and entireness 
 for the fortitude that might enable me to resign myself to the 
 abandonment of all my life's best hopes, to say boldly to 
 myself, — " Gifted with powers confessedly above mediocrity, 
 aided by an education, of which, no less from almost un- 
 exampled hardships and sufferings than from manifold and 
 peculiar advantages, I have never yet found a parallel, I have 
 devoted myself to a life of unintermitted reading, thinking, 
 meditating, and observing. I have not only sacrificed all 
 worldly prospects of wealth and advancement, but have in my 
 inmost soul stood aloof from temporary reputation. In con- 
 sequence of these toils and this self-dedication, I possess a 
 
 * Neither my Literary Life (2 vols.), nor Sibylline Leaves (1 vol.), 
 nor Friend (3 vols.), nor Lay Sermons, nor Zapolya , nor Christabel, 
 have ever been noticed by the Quarterly Keview, of which Southey 
 is yet the main support. 
 
LETTERS, ETC. 85 
 
 calm and clear consciousness, that in many and most important 
 departments of truth and beauty I have outstrode my con- 
 temporaries — those at least of highest name ; that the number 
 of my printed works bears witness that I have not been idle, 
 and the seldom acknowledged, but strictly proveable, effects 
 of my labours appropriated to the immediate welfare of my 
 age in the Morning Post before and during the peace of Amiens, 
 in the Courier afterwards, and in the series and various subjects 
 of my lectures at Bristol and at the Eoyal and Surrey Institu- 
 tions, in Fetter-lane, at Willis's Rooms, and at the Crown and 
 Anchor (add to which the unlimited freedom of my communi- 
 cations in colloquial life), may surely be allowed as evidence 
 that I have not been useless in my generation. But, from 
 circumstances, the main portion of my harvest is still on the 
 ground, ripe indeed, and only waiting, a few for the sickle, 
 but a large part only for the sheaving, and carting, and hous- 
 ing ; but from all this I must turn away, must let them rot as 
 they lie, and be as though they never had been, for I must go 
 and gather blackberries and earth-nuts, or pick mushrooms 
 and gild oak-apples for the palates and fancies of chance 
 customers. I must abrogate the name of philosopher and 
 poet, and scribble as fast as I can, and with as little thought 
 as I can, for Blackwood's Magazine, or as I have been em- 
 ployed for the last days, in writing MS. sermons for lazy 
 clergymen, who stipulate that the composition must not be 
 more than respectable, for fear they should be desired to publish 
 the visitation sermon !" This I have not yet had courage to 
 do. My soul sickens and my heart sinks ; and thus, oscillating 
 between both, I do neither, neither as it ought to be done, or 
 to any profitable end. If I were to detail only the various, 
 I might say capricious, interruptions that have prevented the 
 finishing of this very scrawl, begun on the very day I received 
 your last kind letter, you would need no other illustrations, 
 
 Now I see but one possible plan of rescuing my permanent 
 utility. It is briefly this and plainly. For what we struggle 
 
86 LETTERS, ETC. 
 
 with inwardly, we find at least easiest to holt out, namely — 
 that of engaging from the circle of those who think respectfully 
 and hope highly of my powers and attainments a yearly sum, 
 for three or four years, adequate to my actual support, with 
 such comforts and decencies of appearance as my health and 
 habits have made necessaries, so that my mind maybe unanxious 
 as far as the present time is concerned ; that thus I should 
 stand both enabled and pledged to begin with some one work 
 of these above mentioned, and for two-thirds of my whole time 
 to devote myself to this exclusively till finished, to take the 
 chance of its success by the best mode of publication that 
 would involve me in no risk, then to proceed with the next, 
 and so on till the works above mentioned as already in full 
 material existence should be reduced into formal and actual 
 being ; while in the remaining third of my time I might go on 
 maturing and completing my great work, and (for if but easy 
 in mind, I have no doubt either of the re-awakening power or of 
 the kindling inclination), and my Christabel, and what else the 
 happier hour might inspire — and without inspiration a barrel- 
 organ may be played right deftly ; but 
 
 " All otherwise the state of poet stands ; 
 For lordly want is such a tyrant fell, 
 That where he rules all power he doth expel. 
 The vaunted verse a vacant head demands, 
 Ne wont with crabbed Care the muses dwell : 
 Unwisely weaves who takes two webs in hand ! '' 
 
 Now Mr. Green has offered to contribute from £30 to £40 
 yearly, for three or four years ; my young "friend and pupil, 
 the son of one of my dearest old friends, j£50 ,' and I think that 
 from £10 to £20 I could rely upon fronr-another. The sum 
 required would be about £200, to be repaid, of course, should 
 the disposal or sale, and as far as the disposal and sale, of my 
 writings produce the means. 
 
 I have thus placed before you at large, wanderingly, as well 
 as diffusely, the statement which I am/ inclined to send inay; 
 
 /<■ 
 
 f j °t 
 
 Vr/j 
 
 J 1 «t">p 
 
 vi 
 
LETTERS, ETC. 87 
 
 compressed form to a few of those of whose kind dispositions 
 towards me I have received assurances, — and to their interest 
 and influence I must leave it — anxious, however, before I do this, 
 to learn from you your very, very inmost feeling and judgment 
 as to the previous questions. Am I entitled, have I earned 
 a right to do this ? Can I do it without moral degradation ? 
 and, lastly, can it he done without loss of character in the eyes 
 of my acquaintance, and of my friends' acquaintance, who may 
 have been informed of the circumstances ? That, if attempted 
 at all, it will be attempted in such a way, and that such persons 
 only will be spoken to, as will not expose me to indelicate 
 rebuffs to be afterwards matter of gossip, I know those, to 
 whom I shall entrust the statement, too well to be much 
 alarmed about. 
 
 Pray let me either see or hear from you as soon as possible ; 
 for, indeed and indeed, it is no inconsiderable accession to the 
 pleasure I anticipate from disembarrassment, that you would 
 have to contemplate in a more gracious form, and in a more 
 ebullient play of the inward fountain, the mind and manners of, 
 My dear friend, 
 Your obliged and very affectionate friend, 
 
 S. T. Coleridge. 
 T. Allsop, Esq. 
 
 This is one of the most beautiful, the most interesting and, in 
 many respects, the most affecting letter I have preserved ; it 
 is a letter which no one but my lamented friend could have 
 written.- 
 
 I am precluded by the determination with which I set out 
 (not to attach blame to persons farther than blame is attributed 
 by the writer, or to be clearly inferred from the letters or 
 conversations themselves,) from sundry explanations and 
 strictures which constantly occur to me as often as I peruse 
 and re-peruse this letter. The condition here so fully laid open 
 has been in all ages that of the seekers after truth for its own 
 
88 LETTERS, ETC. 
 
 sake ; and exclusively and necessarily arises from those con- 
 ditions of mind which render such a course possible. Viewing 
 man, as far as the facts established as truths, and the truths which 
 result from antecedent truth, enable us to speak on this matter, 
 as subject in all his actions, or rather in the will in which they 
 originate, to external and internal influences which exist 
 antecedent to, and independent of, his will, I cannot hesitate 
 to declare my calm and settled opinion that it is unjust to blame 
 or to praise, or if it could be just, only so as applied to the 
 cause, not to the necessary effect. Acting upon these views, it 
 would ill accord with my fixed purpose, if I should blame 
 individuals or systems, or waste time in seeking for proximate 
 or remote causes. All that I have permitted myself is, to 
 narrate, and sometimes to regret results ; regrets which to me, 
 and for me, are as necessary as the results themselves. 
 
 No blame, therefore, do I attach to the parties who per- 
 mitted such an appeal, from such a man, to strangers. Un- 
 worthy as the motives have been termed, by which sundry 
 persons were considered to be influenced, I am conscious that 
 for them no other course was possible. I cannot call either 
 their motives or their actions evil ; it would be untrue if I, 
 with the settled convictions at which I have arrived, were so 
 to characterise them. It will be sufficient for the future that 
 we see what physical suffering and what mental pain were the 
 results. It is only when we apply the experience of the past 
 to the similar or like events of the present, that we add to the 
 sum and amount of permanent pleasurable existence. If a 
 thousandth part of the time consumed in regulating actions 
 had been devoted to creating good motives, if but a millionth 
 part of the time devoted to the punishment of crime had been 
 bestowed in a right direction, crime, in the form at least in 
 which it now exists, would have been impossible. If the less 
 ccupied, instead of busying themselves with spiritual respon- 
 sibility, respecting which nothing is or can certainly be known, 
 had applied themselves to the question of moral and physical 
 
LETTERS, ETC. 89 
 
 responsibility, the lamentable ignorance now prevailing, an 
 ignorance which is synonymous with moral and physical 
 degradation, could not have continued to this hour. If, instead 
 of blaming men for what they are, and are made to be, we 
 occupied and interested ourselves with earnest inquiries into 
 the causes of the evils we deplore, with a view to their removal, 
 it cannot be doubted that this real labour of love, if carried on 
 with and through the spirit of love, would in its very endeavour 
 include much of the good sought to be obtained. To me it 
 seems that the greatest amount of benefit will result from the 
 labours or the exertions of those, who unite the good to others 
 with that which is — has been made — pleasurable to themselves ; 
 from those who seek to make what is genial and joyous to 
 themselves more genial and more joyous to others. This is a 
 labour in which not merely some favourite crochet, some 
 abstract opinion, or even sincere and honest convictions are 
 engaged ; it is one in which the best, the purest, the highest 
 sympathies of our nature are enlisted in the service, and in the 
 promotion of those enjoyments, and of those practical occupa- 
 tions from which our own well-being has resulted, or with 
 which it has been associated.* 
 
 * As examples of the success attending the removal of the exciting 
 causes of vice or crime, instead of seeking a cure by punishment, I 
 should wish to direct all unprejudiced minds to the results of the sys- 
 tem successfully practised by the celebrated Robert Owen, at New 
 Lanark, founded upon the eternal truth, that men, and, much more, 
 children take their character from the surrounding influences. The 
 result of Mr. Owen's benevolent exertions has proved what can be 
 done with a vicious population. The quotation which follows, though 
 not so well known as it deserves, will show what can be effected by a 
 benevolent and decided man with a vicious adult population. 
 
 To M. Victor de Teact. 
 
 "Malwa, 29th March, 1832. 
 
 " During a short stay in Adjmeer, I contrived to visit the Mhair- 
 
 wanah, the former Abruzzi of Rajpootana. It was well worth riding 
 
 eighty -four miles. I saw a country whose inhabitants, since an im - 
 
90 LETTERS, ETC. 
 
 Much that is now sought to be attained is very pleasant, 
 nay, very desirable, but the means by which it is sought are 
 not practicable, the harmonious combinations, to any adequate 
 extent, are not yet possible ; and all endeavours to force the 
 
 memorial time, had never had any other means of existence but 
 plunder in the adjacent plains, a people of murderers ; now changed 
 into a quiet, industrious, and happy people of shepherds and cultivators. 
 No 'Rajpoot chiefs, no Mogul emperors, had ever been able to subdue 
 them ; fourteen years ago everything was to be done with them, and 
 in seven years the change was effected. I will add, that Major Hall 
 has accomplished this admirable social experiment without taking a 
 single life. 
 
 " The very worst characters were secured, confined, or put in irons 
 to work on the roads. Those who had lived long by the sword, 
 without however becoming notorious for their cruelty, were made 
 soldiers ; in that capacity they became the keepers of their former 
 associates, and often of their chiefs ; and the rest of the population 
 was gained to the plough. Female infanticide was a prevalent prac- 
 tice with the Mhairs, and generally throughout Rajpootana ; and now 
 female casualties do not exceed male casualties ; a proof that the 
 bloody practice has been abandoned ; and scarcely has a man been 
 punished. Major Hall did not punish the offenders ; he removed the 
 cause of the crime, and made the crime useless, even injurious to the 
 offender, and it was never more committed. 
 
 " Major Hall has shown me the corps he raised from these former 
 savages, and I have seen none in India in a higher state of discipline. 
 He was justly proud of his good work, and spared no trouble that I 
 might see it thoroughly. Upwards of a hundred villagers were sum- 
 moned from the neighbouring hamlets ; I conversed with them on 
 their former mode of life, and of their present avocations. Most of 
 these men had shed blood. They told me they knew not any other 
 mode of life : it was a most miserable one by their account ; they were 
 naked and starving. 
 
 " Now, poor as is the soil of their small valleys, and barren their 
 hills, every hand being set at work, there is plenty of clothes, of food; 
 and so sensible are they of the immense benefit conferred by the 
 British government, that willingly they pay to it already 500,000 
 francs, which they increase every year as the national wealth admits 
 of it. 
 
 " Often I had thought that gentle means would prove inadequate 
 
LETTERS, ETC. 91 
 
 time of action have hitherto failed, owing to the time being 
 unpropitious, or to the means being unsuitable ; or, still more, 
 from the great, the fatal mistake, a mistake to which benevo- 
 lent natures are too liable, that of mistaking the changed con- 
 victions of the mind for an equally decided and simultaneous 
 change in the habits or actions. From those men the highest 
 good is to be hoped " who have encouraged the sympathetic 
 passions until they have become irresistible habits, and made 
 their duty a necessary part of their self-interest ; who derive 
 their most exquisite pleasures from the contemplation of pos- 
 sible perfection, and proportionate pain from the perception of 
 existing depravation. Accustomed to regard all the affairs of 
 man as a process, they never hurry and they never pause. 
 Theirs is not that twilight of political knowledge which gives 
 us just light enough to place one foot before the other ; as they 
 advance, the scene still opens upon them, and they press right 
 onward with a vast and various landscape of existence around 
 them. Internal calmness and energy mark all their actions. 
 Convinced that vice originates not in the man, but in the sur- 
 rounding circumstances; not in the heart, but in the under- 
 standing, they are hopeless concerning no one — to correct a 
 vice or generate a virtuous conduct they pollute not their hands 
 with the scourge of coercion ; but by endeavouring to alter the 
 circumstances would remove, or by strengthening the intellect 
 disarm, temptation. These soul-ennobling views bestow the 
 virtues they anticipate. 
 
 " That general illumination should precede revolution is a 
 
 to the task of breaking -in populations addicted for ages to a most 
 savage life, such as the Greeks, for instance. Yet the Klephts were 
 but lambs compared to the Mhairs, and the Mhairs in a few years 
 have become an industrious, a laborious, and well-behaved people. 
 
 " I see M. Capo d'Istria has been murdered. I wish Major Hall 
 were his successor, for now I have the greatest confidence in the 
 efficacy of gentle means." 
 
 Jaquemonfs Letters. 
 
92 LETTERS, ETC. 
 
 truth as obvious as that the vessel should be cleansed before 
 we fill it with a pure liquor. But the mode of diffusing it is 
 not discoverable with equal facility. We certainly should 
 never attempt to make proselytes by appeals to the selfish 
 feeling, and consequently should plead for the oppressed, not* 
 to them. Godwin considers private societies as the sphere of 
 real utility ; that (each one illuminating those immediately 
 below him) truth by a gradual descent may at last reach the 
 lowest order. But this is rather plausible than just or practi- 
 cable. Society, as at present constituted, does not resemble a 
 chain that ascends in a continuity of links ; alas ! between the 
 parlour and the kitchen, the tap and the coffee-room, there is a 
 gulf that may not be passed. He would appear to me to have 
 adopted the best as well as the most benevolent mode of dif- 
 fusing truth, who, uniting the zeal of the methodist with the 
 views of the philosopher, should be personally among the 
 poor, and teach them their duties in order that he may render 
 them susceptible of their rights." 
 
 The present tendencies are, I believe, adverse to the attain- 
 ment of any high, pure, or lasting advantage, unless it be 
 from the necessary re-action or recoil. I can conceive of no 
 blasphemy more vile or self-degrading, than that which con- 
 templates the degradation of the moral being into a political 
 or social subjection to combinations, which, if they were as 
 perfect and as practical as they are crude and impossible, would 
 end in solving, by proving, the depravity of human nature. 
 
 What is to be said of a science (so called), which tends to 
 the destruction of all that has hitherto been associated with 
 the pure in thought and act, and which has declared, through 
 
 * I consider hoth necessary, nay, desirable. Would pleading for 
 rights withheld have procured their restoration, if also the people had 
 not been aroused by direct appeals to their sense of wrong ? Pleading 
 to the oppressed alone wonld be of terrific danger, did not a sense of 
 justice aided by personal fears create advocates, who end in becoming 
 mediators. 
 
LETTERS, ETC. 93 
 
 one of the most favoured and influential of its organs, that it 
 would be of the highest possible advantage to Great Britain, if 
 its country were wholly destroyed by a volcano, so that its 
 factories and towns might be compelled to have recourse to 
 other lands for food, and thus sell sundry additional bales of 
 cotton or pigs of iron ?* 
 
 Well might Frederic of Prussia say, if it were wished 
 effectually to ruin a province or a kingdom, the surest and 
 swiftest way would be to appoint an economist the adminis- 
 trator. To believe that this most pernicious of all systems 
 can long exist ; to think that this faith in mechanics, mental 
 and distributive, could long continue, except as a preparative 
 to something higher or better, or as a condition of a quick and 
 complete re -action, would for me sadden the earth around, and 
 wither the very grass in the fields. 
 
 " Toy-bewitched, 
 Made blind by lusts, disherited of soul, 
 No common centre Man, no common sire 
 Knoweth ! A sordid solitary thing, 
 'Mid countless brethren with a lonely heart 
 Through courts and cities the smooth savage roams 
 Feeling himself, his own low Self, the whole ; 
 When he by sacred sympathy might make 
 
 * This writer has, in the very article referred to, strangely verified 
 the passage in the preceding letter, in which my excellent friend 
 states that his MS. suggestions have been made, some to furnish 
 feathers for the caps of others, and same for the purpose of defaming 
 him from whom they were stolen. This writer has done both. He 
 has most grossly defamed the admirable man whom he was incapable 
 of estimating or appreciating, and in the last number of his work 
 has appropriated some of the most striking of Coleridge's views, even 
 to his very illustrations. This writer, formerly a butcher, a man- 
 butcher (I say this illustratively, not disparagingly), would be more 
 innocently employed in destroying life than in attempting to mutilate 
 the reputation of the great dead. 
 
94 • LETTERS, ETC. 
 
 The whole one self ! Self, that no alien knows ! 
 Self, far diffused as Fancy's wing can travel ! 
 Self, spreading still! Oblivious of its own, 
 Yet all of all possessing ! " 
 
 Religious Musings, p. 90-1. 
 
 To you, my dearest children, and to those not less dear, because 
 equally docile and ingenuous, whom only, or chiefly, I desire 
 as readers, I would as the result of my experience say, — 
 cultivate all the social relations, all the recognised modes of 
 kindly intercourse and intercommunication ; yet always pre- 
 serving, even in moments of the most entire interfusion of mind 
 and the affections, a consciousness and presence of identity, 
 which alone gives value to this sympathy and sympathetic 
 union. So also I would have you to consider this self as 
 cultivable, as deriving its chiefest and highest value from its 
 relation to and dependence upon congenial natures, which by a 
 natural attraction and harmony are drawn together, and respond 
 to each other. 
 
 To be conscious of existence only, as its sorrows are shared 
 or its pleasures enhanced by affection and love in its nobler 
 sense, appears the highest condition of humanity, and this I 
 hold to be attainable. To this I seek to approximate ; and 
 this, my dearest friends, every one may to some considerable 
 extent arrive at, who, yearning after the pure and unearthly, 
 
 " Shall, when brought 
 Among the tasks of real life, have wrought 
 Upon the plan that pleased his child-like thought ; 
 Abides by this resolve, and stops not there, 
 But makes his moral being his prime care, i 
 
 And therefore does not stoop, nor lie in wait 
 For wealth or honours, or for worldly state ; 
 Whom they must follow, on whose head must fall, 
 Like showers of manna, if they come at all. 
 His is a soul, whose master-bias leans 
 To home-felt pleasures and to gentle scenes ; 
 Sweet images! which, wheresi e'er he be, 
 Are at his heart ; and such fidelity 
 
LETTERS, ETC. 
 
 It is his darling passion to approve, 
 More braye for this — that he has much to love. 
 Tis, finally, the man who, lifted high, 
 Conspicuous o' ject in a nation's eye, 
 Or left unthought on in obscurity, 
 "Who with a toward or untoward lot, 
 Prosperous or adverse, to his wish or not, 
 Plays in the many games of life that one 
 Where what he most doth value must be won.'' 
 
 LETTEE X] 
 
 My dearest Friend, (Blandford-plach) March 1st, 1821. 
 God bless you, and all who are dear arid near to you ! but as 
 to your pens, tbey seem to have been plucked from the devil's 
 pinions, and slit and shaped by the blunt edge of the broad 
 sprays of his antlers. Of the ink {i.e. your inkstand), it would 
 be base to complain. I hate abusing folks in their absence. Do 
 you know, my dear friend, that having sundry little snug 
 superstitions of my own, I shrewdly suspect that whimsical 
 ware of that sort is connected with the state and garniture of 
 your paper-staining machinery. — Is it so ? Well, I have seen 
 Murray, and he has been civil, I may say kind, in his manners. 
 Is this your knock ? — Is it you on the stairs ? — No. I 
 explained my full purpose to him, namely, — that he should 
 take me and my concerns, past and future, for print and 
 reprint, under his umbrageous foliage, though the original 
 name of his great predecessor in the patronage of genius, who 
 gave the name of Augustan to all happy epochs — Octavius 
 would be more appropriate — and he promises, — cwtera desunt. 
 
 It was about this time that I met with an odd volume of 
 the Tatler, during a forced stay at a remote and obscure inn* 
 in the wilds of Kinder Scout. 
 
 * Those who have been kept at a cheerless inn in a dreary country 
 by continued rain in late autumn, without external resource or the 
 
96 LETTEKS, ETC. 
 
 The book opened at a paper (one of Steele's) giving an 
 account of the writer's meeting with an old friend, recalling to 
 his memory their early intimacy, and the services he had 
 rendered him in his courtship, the delightful pictures which 
 he calls up of the youthful, animated, and happy lovers, which, 
 with a felicity peculiar to Steele, such was the fineness, the pure 
 gold of his nature, he associates, rather than contrasts, with the 
 quiet happiness, the full content and the still devotion (the 
 heart-love), which makes an Elysium of a home in other respects 
 only home-ly. 
 
 This picture, yet I think one of the most pure and most 
 delightful of that age, for it belongs in its manners and some 
 of its accessories to the past century, I mentioned to Coleridge 
 on my return, and had, as I expected, my pleasure repeated, 
 deepened, and extended. It was a joy and ever new delight 
 to listen to him on any congenial theme, on one congenial to 
 you as well as to him. I was especially pleased to find that he 
 
 means of communication, without books, and even without writing 
 materials, — that is, without paper upon which to write, — need 
 not he told how delightful, what an event, it is to meet with a book, 
 such as by a special providence is always discovered in these places 
 when the powers are propitious, such as a stray volume of Sir Charles 
 Grandison, which you will find at the Swan at Brecon ; an odd volume 
 of the Tatler at the inn on Kinder Scout ; the fifth volume of Clarissa 
 Harlowe at the inn at Lyndhurst ; the Abelard and Heloise, an undo- 
 mestic translation (which I hasten to recommend to my excellent 
 friend, Charles Cowden Clark, to be immediately expurgated and 
 made decent, and fit for introduction into seminaries, and into demure 
 and orderly families), at the Crab and Lobster, Bonchurch ; to Bell's 
 Luther's Table Talk, full of odd things, at Camps Inn, Ilfracombe ; 
 the Athenian Oracle, containing many unnoticed contributions by 
 Swift, at the Pelican, Speenhamland ; and last, because the most 
 ungenial and most unseemly, Pamela, in one large volume, at the little 
 inn at Bembridge Ledge or Point. To enjoy these you must be without 
 any other resource, and the book, discovered after a long, and, as you 
 begin to think, hopeless, search, must be one that you have read very 
 early in youth, and of which you only retain very faint recollections. 
 
LETTERS, ETC. 97 
 
 valued Steele, always my prime favourite, so much above 
 Addison and the other essayists of that day ; he denied that 
 Steele "was, as he himself said in a pleasantly, " like a distressed 
 prince who calls in a powerful neighbour to his aid, and who, 
 once in possession, became sovereign." Addison was necessary 
 to give variety to the papers, but in no other sense did he give 
 value. Steele's papers are easily distinguished to this day by 
 their pure humanity springing from the gentleness, the kind- 
 ness of his heart. He dwelt with much unction on the curious 
 and instructive letters of Steele to his wife ; and with much 
 approval on the manliness with which, in the first letters, he 
 addressed the lady to whom he was afterwards united. He 
 quoted the following as models of their kind, and worthy of 
 especial admiration : — 
 
 "As I know no reason why difference of sex should make our 
 language to each other differ from the ordinary rules of light reason, 
 I shall use plainness and sincerity in my discourse to you, as much 
 as other lovers do perplexity and rapture. Instead of saying, ' I 
 shall die for you,' I profess I should be glad to lead my life with you. 
 You are as beautiful, as witty, as prudent, and as good-humoured as 
 any woman breathing ; but I regard all these excellences as you will 
 please to direct them for my happiness or misery. With me, Madam, 
 the only lasting motive to love is the hope of its becoming mutual. . . 
 All great passion makes us dumb ; and the highest happiness, as well 
 as the greatest grief, seizes us too violently to be expressed by words. 
 
 ... To know so much pleasure with so much innocence is, methinks, 
 a satisfaction beyond the present condition of human life ; but the 
 union of minds in pine affection is renewing the first state of man. 
 
 . . . This is an unusual language to ladies ; but you have a mind 
 above the giddy notions of a sex ensnared by flattery, and misled by 
 a false and short adoration, into a solid and long contempt. Beauty 
 palls in the possession ; but I love also your mind ; your soul is as 
 dear to me as my own ; and if the advantage of a liberal education, 
 some knowledge, and as much contempt of the world, joined with 
 endeavours towards a life of strict virtue and religion, can qualify me 
 to raise new ideas in a breast so well disposed as yours is, our days 
 will pass away with joy, and instead of introducing melancholy 
 prospects of decay, give us hope of eternal youth in a better life. . . . 
 Let us go on to make our regards to each other mutual and un- 
 
 7 
 
98 LETTERS, ETC. 
 
 changeable ; that while the world around us is enchanted with the 
 false satisfactions of vagrant desire, our persons may be shrines to 
 each other, sacred to conjugal faith, unreserved confidence, and 
 heavenly society.'' 
 
 Even when the extreme thrift of his wife — the necessary- 
 result or reaction from the husband's improvidence — caused 
 him uneasiness, his replies show the true gentleness of his 
 nature : — ( 
 
 " I assure you, any disturbance between us is the greatest affliction 
 to me imaginable. You talk of the judgment of the world ; I shall 
 never govern my actions by it, but by the rules of morality and right 
 reason. I love you better than the light of my eyes or the life-blood 
 in my heart ; but you are also to understand, that neither my sight 
 shall be so far enchanted, nor my affection so much master of me, as 
 to make me forget our common interest. To attend my business as 
 I ought, and improve my fortune, it is necessary that my time and 
 my will should be under no direction but my own. . . . We must take 
 our portion of life as it runs without repining. I consider that good 
 nature, added to that beautiful form God has given you, would make 
 a happiness too great for human life. . . . You may think what you 
 please, but I know you have the best husband in the world in your 
 affectionate 
 
 " Richakd Steele." 
 
 This letter, written about a year after their marriage, seems 
 to me calculated to appease any woman who was not both a 
 shrew and a niggard. Careful attention to fortune, even if it 
 exceeds its fit and just proportion, may, perhaps, he excusable 
 in a man ; in a woman, this most unfeminine and ungentle 
 property of niggardliness is most unseemly, even when 
 redeemed, as it was not in this case, by an upheaped love and 
 devotion to her admirable husband. 
 
 " There are not words to express the tenderness I have for you. 
 Love is too harsh a term for it ; but if you knew how my heart aches 
 when you speak an unkind word to me, and springs with joy when 
 you smile upon me, I am sure you would place your glory rather in 
 preserving my happiness, like a good wife, than tormenting me, like 
 a peevish beauty. Good Prue, write me word you shall be overjoyed 
 
LETTERS, ETC. 99 
 
 at my return to you, and pity the figure I make when I pretend to 
 resist you, by complying with my reasonable demands. . . . It is in 
 no one's power but Prue's to make me constant in a regular course ; 
 therefore will not doubt but you will be very good-humoured and A 
 constant feast to your affectionate husband. ... I send you seven 
 pennyworths of walnuts at five a penny, which is the greatest proof 
 I can give you at present of my being, with my whole heart, yours, 
 
 " Richard Steele. 
 " P.S. — There are but twenty-nine walnuts." 
 
 " Dear, dear Prde, 
 
 " Your pretty letter, and so much good nature and kindness, 
 which I received yesterday, is a perfect pleasure to me. ... I am, 
 dear Prue, a little in drink, but at all times 
 
 " Your faithful husband, 
 
 " Eichaed Steele." 
 
 " Dear Prue, 
 
 " If you do not hear from me before three to-morrow afternoon, 
 believe I am too fuddled to observe your orders ; but, however, know 
 me to be 
 
 " Your most faithful and affectionate 
 
 " Richaed Steele. 
 " I am very sick with too much wine last night." 
 
 The last passage would, at the present time, be considered 
 evidence of a vicious, degraded course of life, and therefore not 
 confessed to a wife of whom the writer was somewhat in awe. 
 At that time drinking was held a mark of good fellowship, and 
 was considered, as indeed it is, far more venial than the vices 
 which at present have usurped its place ; vices which partake 
 of the intense selfishness of this age of mechanical activity. 
 
 With how sweet a grace does he address Lady Steele, after 
 seven years' intimate communion ; and with how much true 
 delicacy does he dwell upon her homely virtues : virtues which, 
 when they attain the great and highest aim of every right- 
 minded woman, to make home cheerful and happy to her 
 
100 LETTERS, ETC. 
 
 husband, are, beyond all others, pure and ennobling ; but in 
 this case, that result was neither sought nor obtained. 
 " Madam, 
 
 " To have either wealth, wit or beauty, is generally a temptation 
 to a woman to put an unreasonable value upon herself ; but with all 
 these, in a degree which drew upon you the addresses of men of the 
 amplest fortunes, you bestowed your person where you could have no 
 expectations but from the gratitude of the receiver, though you knew 
 he could exert that gratitude in no other returns but esteem and love. 
 For which must I first thank you? for what you have denied yourself, 
 or for what you have bestowed on me ? 
 
 " I owe to you, that for my sake you have overlooked the prospect 
 of living in pomp and plenty, and I have not been circumspect enough 
 to preserve you from care and sorrow. I will not dwell upon this 
 particular ; you are so good a wife, that I know you think I rob you 
 of more than I can give, when I say anything in your favour to my 
 own disadvantage. 
 
 " Whoever should see or hear you, would think it were worth 
 leaving all the world for you ; while I, habitually possessed of that 
 happiness, have been throwing away impotent endeavours for the rest 
 of mankind, to the neglect of her for whom any other man, in his 
 senses, would be apt to sacrifice everything else. 
 
 " I know not by what unreasonable prepossession it is, but methinks 
 there must be something austere to give authority to wisdom ; and T 
 cannot account for having rallied many seasonable sentiments of 
 yours, but that you are too beautiful to appear judicious. 
 
 " One may grow fond, but not wise, from what is said by so lovely 
 a counsellor. Hard fate ! that you have been lessened by your per- 
 fections, and lost power by your charms ! 
 
 " That ingenuous spirit in all your behaviour, that familiar grace 
 in your words and actions, has for this seven years only inspired 
 admiration and love ; but experience has taught me, the best counsel 
 I ever have received has been pronounced by the fairest and softest 
 lips, and convinced me that I am in you blest with a wise friend, as 
 well as a charming mistress. 
 
 " Your mind shall no longer suffer by your person ; nor shall your 
 eyes, for the future, dazzle me into a blindness towards your under- 
 standing. I rejoice to show my esteem for you ; and must.do you the 
 justice to say, that there can be no virtue represented in the female 
 world, which I have not known you exert, as far as the opportunities 
 of your fortune have given you leave. Forgive me, that my heart 
 
LETTERS, ETC. 101 
 
 overflows with love and gratitude for daily instances of your prudent 
 economy, the just disposition you make of your little affairs, your 
 cheerfulness in dispatch of them, your prudent forbearance of any 
 reflections, that they might have needed less vigilance had you 
 disposed of your fortune suitably ; in short, for all the arguments you 
 every day give me of a generous and sincere affection. 
 
 " It is impossible for me to look back on many evils and pains 
 which I have suffered since we came together, without a pleasure 
 which is not to be expressed, from the proofs I have had, in those 
 circumstances, of your unwearied goodness. How often has your 
 tenderness removed pain from my sick head ! how often anguish from 
 my afflicted heart ! With how skilful patience have I known you 
 comply with the vain projects which pain has suggested, to have an 
 aching limb removed by journeying from one side of a room to another! 
 how often, the next instant, travelled the same ground again, without 
 telling your patient it was to no purpose to change his situation I If 
 there are such beings as guardian angels, thus are they employed. I 
 will no more believe one of them more good in its inclinations, than I 
 can conceive it more charming in its form, than my wife. 
 
 " I will end this without so much as mentioning your little flock, 
 or your own amiable figure at the head of it. That I think them 
 preferable to all other children, I know is the effect of passion and 
 instinct ; that I believe you the best of wives, I know proceeds from 
 experience and reason. 
 
 " I am, Madam, your most obliged husband, and most obedient 
 humble servant, 
 
 " Eichakd Steele.'' 
 
 u I sometimes compare my own life with that of Steele (yet 
 oh ! how unlike !) led to this from having myself also for a 
 brief time borne arms, and written ' private ; after my name, 
 or rather another name ; for being at a loss when suddenly 
 asked my name, I answered Cumberback, and verily my habits 
 were so little equestrian, that my horse, I doubt not, was of 
 that opinion. Of Steele, also, it might in one sense, at least, 
 have been said, 
 
 ' Lingering he raised his latch at eve, 
 
 Though tired in heart and limb ! 
 Me loved no other place, and yet 
 Home was no home to him.' 
 
102 LETTERS, ETC. 
 
 Oh ! the sorrow, the bitterness of that grief which springs 
 from lore not participated, or not returned in the spirit in 
 which it is bestowed. Fearful and enduring is that canker- 
 worm of the soul, that 
 
 ' Grief without a pang, void, dark, and drear, 
 A stifled, drowsy, unimpassioned grief, 
 Which finds no natural outlet, no relief 
 In word, or sigh, or tear.' 
 
 "I sometimes think I shall write a book on the duties of 
 women, more especially to their husbands. If such a book 
 were well written, I cannot doubt but that its results would be 
 most salutary. I am inclined to think that both men and 
 women err in their conduct and demeanour towards each other, 
 quite as much from ignorance and unconsciousness of what is 
 displeasing, as from selfishness or disregard. But to the 
 execution of such a work, or rather such works (for 'A New 
 Duty of Man ' is quite as much required, and this must be 
 written by an affectionate and right-minded woman), the 
 present sickly delicacy, the over-delicacy (and therefore essen- 
 tial indelicacy) of the present taste would be opposed. To be 
 of any use it should be a plain treatise, the results of experience, 
 and should be given to all newly married couples by their 
 parents, not in the form of admonition, but rather as containing 
 much important information which they can no where else 
 obtain." 
 
 LETTEK XVII. 
 
 My dear Friend, May ith, 1821. 
 
 Mr. and Mrs. Gillman's kind love, and we beg that the 
 good lady's late remembering that (as often the very fullness 
 and vividness of the purpose and intention to do a thing im- 
 poses on the mind a sort of counterfeit feeling of quiet, similar 
 to the satisfaction which the having done it would produce) you 
 
LETTERS, ETC. 103 
 
 had not been written to, will not prejudice the present attempt 
 at " better late than never." We have a party to-morrow, in 
 which, because we believed it would interest you, you stood 
 included. In addition to a neighbour, Eobert Sutton, and our- 
 selves, and Mrs. Gillman's most un-Mrs. Gillmanly sister (but 
 n. b. this is a secret to all who are both blind and deaf), there 
 will be the Mathews (Mr. and Mrs.) at home, Mathews I mean, 
 and Charles and Mary Lamb. 
 
 Of myself the best thing that I can say is that, in the belief 
 of those well qualified to judge, I am not so ill as I fancy 
 myself. Be this as it may, 
 
 I am always, my dearest friend, 
 
 With highest esteem and regard, 
 
 Your affectionate friend, 
 T. Allsop, Esq. S. T. Coleridge. 
 
 Of this day and the one following I have a few notes, which 
 appear to me of interest. It must be borne constantly in mind, 
 that much of what is preserved has relation to positions 
 enforced by others, and which Coleridge held to be untenable 
 on the particular grounds urged, not as being untrue in them- 
 
 " Had Lord Byron possessed perseverance enough to undergo 
 the drudgery of research, and had his theological studies and 
 attainments been at all like mine, he would have been able to 
 unsettle all the evidences of Christianity, upheld as it is at 
 present by simple confutation. Is it possible to assent to the 
 doctrine of redemption as at present promulgated, that the 
 moral death of an unoffending being should be a consequence 
 of the transgression of humanity* and its atonement f " 
 
 * Let it always be borne in mind, that this and other expressions 
 in these pages were the opinions which he ever expressed to me, and 
 are not to be taken as evidences of doubt generally, but of disbelief in 
 the corruptions of the vulgar Christianity in vogue. 
 
104 LETTERS, ETC. 
 
 " Walter Scott's novels are chargeable with the same faults 
 as Bertram, et id omne genus, viz., that of ministering to the 
 depraved appetite for excitement, and, though in a far less 
 degree, creating sympathy for the vicious and infamous, solely 
 because the fiend is daring. Not twenty lines of Scott's poetiy 
 will ever reach posterity ; it has relation to nothing." 
 
 " When I wrote a letter upon the scarcity, it was generally 
 said that it was the production of an immense cornfactor, and 
 a letter was addressed to me under that persuasion, beginning 
 ' Crafty Monopolist.' " 
 
 " It is very singular that no true poet should have arisen 
 from the lower classes, when it is considered that every peasant 
 who can read knows more of boohs now than did .^Gschylus, 
 Sophocles, or Homer ; yet if we except Burns, none* such have 
 been." 
 
 " Crashaw seems in his poems to have given the first ebul- 
 lience of his imagination, unshapen into form, or much of, what 
 we now term, sweetness. In the poem, Hope, by way of 
 question and answer, his superiority to Cowley is self-evident. 
 In that on the name of Jesus equally so; but his lines on 
 St. Theresa are the finest. 
 
 " Where he does combine richness of thought and diction 
 nothing can excel, as in the fines you so much admire — 
 
 ' Since 'tis not to he had at home, 
 She'l travel to a matyrdome. 
 No home for her confesses she, 
 But where she may a martyr be. 
 She'l to the Moores, and trade with them 
 For this mvalued diadem, 
 
 rso nome ic 
 
 \ But where 
 
 \ She'l to the 
 
 » ^ For this In 
 
 * In after years he excepted Elliot, the smith, though he held his 
 judgment in very slight estimation. 
 
LETTERS, ETC. 105 
 
 She offers them her dearest breath 
 
 With Christ's name in't, in change for death. 
 
 She'l bargain with them, and will give 
 
 Them God, and teach them how to live 
 
 In Him, or if they this deny, 
 
 For Him she'l teach them how to die. 
 
 So shall she leave amongst them sown, 
 
 The Lord's blood, or, at least, her own. 
 
 Farewell then, all the world — adieu, 
 
 Teresa is no more for you : 
 
 Farewell all pleasures, sports and joys, 
 
 Never till now esteemed toys — 
 
 Farewell whatever deafNrt may be, 
 
 Mother's arms or father's Knee ; 
 
 Farewell house, and farewell home, 
 
 She's for the Moores and martyrdom.' 
 
 " These verses were ever present to my mind whilst writing 
 the second part of Christabel ; if, indeed, by some subtle pro- 
 cess of the mind they did not suggest the first thought of the 
 whole poem. — Poetry, as regards small poets, may be said to 
 be, in a certain sense, conventional in its accidents and in its 
 illustrations ; thus Crashaw uses an image : — 
 
 ' As sugar melts in tea away,' 
 
 which, although proper then, and true now, was in bad taste at 
 that time equally with the present. In Shakspeare, in Chaucer 
 there was nothing of this. 
 
 " The wonderful faculty which Shakspeare above all other 
 men possessed, or rather the power which possessed him in the 
 highest degree, of anticipating everything, evidently is the 
 result — at least partakes — of meditation, or that mental process 
 which consists in the submitting to the operation of thought 
 every object of feeling, or impulse, or passion observed out of 
 it. I would be willing to five only as long as Shakspeare were 
 the mirror to nature." 
 
106 LETTERS, ETC. 
 
 " What can be finer in any poet than that beautiful passage 
 in Milton— 
 
 ' Onward he moved 
 
 And thousands of his saints around.' 
 This is grandeur, but it is grandeur without completeness : but 
 he adds — 
 
 ' Far off their coming slwne; ' 
 
 which is the highest sublime. There is total completeness. 
 
 " So I would say that the Saviour praying on the Mountain, 
 the Desert on one hand, the Sea on the other, the city at an 
 immense distance below, was sublime. But I should say of the 
 Saviour looking towards the City, his countenance full of pity, 
 that he was majestic, and of the situation that it was grand. 
 
 " When the whole and the parts are seen at once, as mutually 
 producing and explaining each other, as unity in multiety, 
 there results shapeliness — -forma formosa. Where the per- 
 fection of form is combined with pleasurableness in the sensa- 
 tions, excited by the matters or substances so formed, there 
 results the beautiful. 
 
 " Corollary. — Hence colour is eminently subservient to 
 beauty, because it is susceptible of forms, i. e. outline, and yet 
 is a sensation. But a rich mass of scarlet clouds, seen without 
 any attention to the form of the mass or of the parts, may be 
 a delightful but not a beautiful object or colour. 
 
 " When there is a deficiency of unity in the line forming the 
 whole (as angularity, for instance), and of number in the 
 plurality or the parts, there arises the formal. 
 
 " When the parts are numerous, and impressive, and pre- 
 dominate, so as to prevent or greatly lessen the attention to the 
 whole, there results the grand. 
 
 " Where the impression of the whole, i. e. the sense of unity 
 pi'edominates, so as to abstract the mind from the parts — the 
 majestic. 
 
 " Where the parts by their harmony produce an effect of a 
 
LETTEKSj ETC. 107 
 
 whole, but there is no seen form of a whole producing or 
 explaining the parts, i.e. when the parts only are seen and 
 distinguished, but the whole is felt — the picturesque. 
 
 " Where neither whole nor parts, but unity, as boundless or 
 endless allness — the sublime." 
 
 " It often amuses me to hear men impute all their misfortunes 
 to fate, luck, or destiny, whilst their successes or good fortune 
 they ascribe to their own sagacity, cleverness, or penetration. 
 It never occurs to such minds that light and darkness are one 
 and the same, emanating from, and being part of, the same 
 nature." 
 
 " The word Nature, from its extreme familiarity, and in some 
 instances, fitness, as well as from the want of a term, or other 
 name for God, has caused very much confusion in the thoughts 
 and language of men. Hence a Nature-God, or God-Nature, 
 not God in Nature ; just as others, with as little reason, have 
 constructed a natural and sole religion." 
 
 " Is it then true, that reason to man is the ultimate faculty 
 and that, to convince a reasonable man, it is sufficient to adduce 
 adequate reasons or arguments ? How, if this be so, does it 
 happen that we reject as insufficient the reasoning of a friend 
 in our affliction for this or that cause or reason, yet are comforted, 
 soothed, and reassured, by similar or far less sufficient reasons, 
 when urged by a friendly and affectionate woman ? It is no 
 answer to say that women were made comforters ; that it is 
 the tone, and, in the instance of man's chief, best comforter, the 
 wife of his youth, the mother of his children, the oneness with 
 himself, which gives value to the consolation ; the reasons are the 
 same, whether urged by man, woman, or child. It must be, there- 
 fore, that there is something in the will itself, above and beyond, 
 if not higher than, reason. Besides, is reason or the reasoning 
 
108 LETTERS, ETC. 
 
 always the same, even when free from passion, film, or fever ? 
 I speak of the same person. Does he hold the doctrine of 
 temperance in equal reverence when hungry as after he is 
 sated ? Does he at forty retain the same reason, only extended 
 and developed, as he possessed at four and twenty ? Does he 
 not love the meat in his youth which he cannot endure in his 
 old age? But these are appetites, and therefore no part of him. 
 Is not a man one to-day and another to-morrow ? Do not the 
 very ablest and wisest of men attach greater weight at one 
 moment to an argument or a reason than they do at another ? 
 Is this a want of sound and stable judgment? If so, what 
 then is this perfect reason ? for we have shown what it is not/' 
 
 " It is prettily feigned, that when Plutus is sent from 
 Jupiter, he limps and gets on very slowly at first ; but when 
 he comes from Pluto, he runs and is swift of foot. This, 
 rightly taken, is a great sweetener of slow gains. Bacon 
 (alas ! the day) seems to have had this in mind when he 
 says, * seek not proud gains, but such as thou mayst get justly, 
 use soberly, distribute cheerfully, and leave contentedly.' He 
 that is covetous makes too much haste ; and the wise man 
 saith of him, ' he cannot be innocent.'" 
 
 " I have often been pained by observing in others, and was 
 fully conscious in myself, of a sympathy with those of rank 
 and condition in preference to their inferiors, and never dis- 
 covered the source of this sympathy until one day at Keswick 
 I heard a thatcher's wife crying her heart out for the death of 
 her little child. It was given me all at once to feel, that I 
 sympathised equally with the poor and the rich in all that 
 related to the best part of humanity — the affections ; but that, 
 in what relates to fortune, to mental misery, struggles, and 
 conflicts, we reserve consolation and sympathy for those who 
 can appreciate its force and value." 
 
LETTERS, ETC. 109 
 
 " There are many men, especially at the outset of life, who, 
 in their too eager desire for the end, overlook the difficulties 
 in the way ; there is another class, who see nothing else. The 
 first class may sometimes fail ; the latter rarely succeed." 
 
 Having been for nearly sixteen years a constant guest, and, 
 for part of that time, the housemate of Charles Lamb — the 
 gentle, the pensive Elia — and his admirable, his every Avay 
 delightful sister — it becomes a duty, sacred though painful, to 
 place on record all that I can convey in a brief space of the 
 dearest, best loved, and earliest associate of Coleridge. — Is it 
 too much to hope that the friend whom he so loved and 
 cherished when young, of whose splendid talents and their fit 
 application he always augured so highly, may yet be induced 
 to furnish what recollections he retains of those days when 
 Lamb was in the height and vigour of his genius, relished, 
 and appreciated by troops of friends, by whom he was loved 
 even more than he was admired? What names, and what 
 recollections are there not in those names I Mrs. Inchbald, 
 Mrs, Barbauld (the two Bald women, as he used to call them), 
 Lloyd, Hazlitt, Coleridge, Irving, Colonel Phillips, Admiral 
 Burney, William Godwin, Monkhouse — all dead: Wordsworth, 
 Southey, Sergeant Talfourd, Basil Montagu, Martin Burney, 
 Mr. Carey, Barry Cornwall, Kobert Jameson, Leigh Hunt, 
 Manning, Crabb, Bobinson, Charles Cowden Clark, Hood, 
 Novello, Liston, Miss Kelly, Mr. Moxon, William Godwin, 
 Mrs. Shelley, Ned Phillips, &c. &c. &c. 
 
 I am quite aware that I can convey no notion of what 
 Charles Lamb was, hardly even of what he said, as far the 
 gi'eatest part of its value depended upon the manner in which 
 it was said. Even the best of his jokes — and how good they 
 were you can never know — depended upon the circumstances, 
 which to narrate would be to overlay and weary the attention. 
 
 The following lines of Lloyd will convey some idea, though 
 very imperfect, of this model-man : — 
 
f 
 ,< 
 
 / 
 
 110 ^-V-^ LETTERS, ETC. 
 
 LAMB. 
 
 " The child of impulse ever to appear, 
 And yet through duty's path strictly to steer I 
 
 " Oh Lamb, thou art a mystery to me ! 
 Thou art so prudent and so mad with wildness, 
 Thou art a source of everlasting glee ! 
 Yet desolation of the very childless 
 Has been thy lot ! Never in one like thee 
 Did I see worth majestic from its wildness ; 
 So far in thee from being an annoyance, 
 E'en to the vicious 'tis a source of joyance." 
 
 The first night I ever spent with Lamb was after a day 
 with Coleridge, when we returned by the same stage ; and 
 from something I had said or done of an unusual kind, I was 
 asked to pass the night with him and his sister. Thus com- 
 menced an intimacy which never knew an hour's interruption 
 to the day of his death. 
 
 He asked me what I thought of Coleridge. I spoke as I 
 thought. " You should have seen him twenty years ago," 
 said he, with one of his sweet smiles, " when he was with 
 me at the Cat and Salutation in Newgate Market. Those 
 were days (or nights), but they were marked with a white 
 stone. Such were his extraordinary powers, that when it was 
 time for him to go and be married, the landlord entreated his 
 stay, and offered him free quarters if he would only talk." 
 
 " I once wrote to Wordsworth to inquire if he was really a 
 Christian. He replied, ' When I am a good man, then I am a 
 Christian.' " 
 
 " I advised Coleridge to alter the lines in Christabel- 
 
 " Sir Leoline, the Baron rich, 
 Had a toothless mastiff bitch,'' 
 into — 
 
 " Sir Leoline, the Baron round, 
 Had a toothless mastiff hound ; '' 
 

 LETTEKS, ETC. Ill 
 
 but Coleridge, who has no alacrity in altering, changed this 
 first termination to which, but still left in the other, bitch." 
 
 " Irving once came back to ask me if I could ever get in a 
 word with Coleridge. ' No ! ' said I, ' I never want.' 
 
 " i Why, perhaps it is better not,' said the parson, and went 
 away, determined how to behave in future." 
 
 " I made that joke first (the Scotch corner in he\l,Jire with- 
 out brimstone), though Coleridge somewhat licked it into 
 shape." 
 
 " Wordsworth, the greatest poet of these times. Still he is 
 not, nor yet is any man, an Ancient Mariner." 
 
 " Proctor is Jealous of his own fame, which he cannot now 
 claim. 
 
 " Somerset House, Whitehall Chapel (the old Banqueting 
 Hall), the church at Limehouse and the new church at Chelsea, 
 with the Bell house at Chelsea College, which always reminded 
 him of Trinity College, Cambridge, were the objects most 
 interesting to him in London. He did not altogether agree 
 with Wordsworth, who thought the view from Harewood- 
 place one of the finest in old London ; admired more the houses 
 at the Bond-street corner of George -street, which Manning 
 said were built of bricks resembling in colour the great wall of 
 China." 
 
 Martin Burney, whilst earnestly explaining the three kinds 
 of acid, was stopped by Lamb's saying, — " The best of all 
 kinds of acid, however, as you know, Martin, is uity — assid- 
 uity." 
 
\)MA*Ar'''\-JLM* 
 
 112 LETTEBS, ETC. 
 
 Lamb then told us a story of that very dirty person, Tom 
 Bish, which I give here for its felicity. 
 
 Some one, I think it was Martin, asserted Bish was a name 
 which would not afford a pun. Lamb at once said, I went this 
 morning to see him, and upon coming out of his room, I was 
 asked by a jobber if he was alive ? " Yes," said I, " he is 
 B— B— Bish-yet." 
 
 Martin denned poetry ' as the highest truth, which Lamb 
 denied, and, amongst other instances, quoted the song of 
 Deborah. 
 
 The conversation turned one night on the evidence against 
 the Queen, especially Majocchi. Lamb said he should like to 
 see them; he would ask them to supper. Mr. Talfourd 
 observed, — 
 
 " You would not sit with them ?" 
 
 " Yes," said Lamb, " I would sit with anything but a hen 
 or a tailor." 
 
 A few days before, he had been with Jameson to the Tower, 
 and, in passing by Billingsgate, was witness to a quarrel and 
 fight between two fish-women, one of whom, taking up a knife, 
 cut off her antagonist's thumb. Ha !" said Lamb, looking 
 about him as if he only just recognised the place, " this is 
 Fair-lop-Fair." 
 
 One evening, when Liston was present, and, if I recollect 
 aright, Leigh Hunt and Hazditt, the conversation turned chiefly 
 on theatres and actors. I have preserved the following 
 recollections : — 
 
 Hansard, the printer to the House of Commons, aping the 
 patron, invited Porson to dinner in Lincoln's-Inn-Fields. 
 Everything passed off very well until about eleven o'clock, 
 
LETTEES, ETC. 113 
 
 wlien the rest of the company departed. Porson alone re- 
 mained, and proposed to Hansard to furnish two more bottles 
 of wine. One was brought and despatched, when Hansard, 
 having the fear of drunkenness before his eyes, thinking it a 
 sure plan, said his wine was now out, but if Mr. Porson would 
 honour him with his company to-morrow, he should have as 
 much as he liked. This did not suit the Professor, who in- 
 quired if there was no brandy ? — No ! No rum ? No 
 Hollands? — No! Nothing but small beer. "Well, then, "cried 
 the Professor, " we will have a bottle of lightning." 
 
 " Indeed, Professor, we have no gin, and it is really too 
 late to get it : it is past one o'clock." 
 
 "Past one! only one o'clock! Why then I say small 
 beer." 
 
 Small beer was brought, and Porson sat till six o'clock 
 drinking small beer out of a wine-glass, taking care to fill 
 Hansard's glass each time, and singing — 
 
 " When wine and gin are gone and spent, 
 Then is small heer most excellent." 
 
 Liston told us that in crossing Bow-street he saw an old 
 man before him, whom he took for M. Mercier. He tapped 
 him on the shoulder with — 
 
 " Good morning ; how are you?" 
 
 " What's that to you, you great goose?" said a gruff strange 
 voice. 
 
 " I beg your pardon ; indeed I took you for a Frenchman." 
 
 " Did you, by God ? Then take that for your mis-take." 
 And he knocked the poor droll into the kennel. 
 
 George Frederick Cooke was once invited by a builder or 
 architect of one of the theatres, Elmerton, as I think. He 
 went, and Elmerton being at a loss whom to invite, pitched 
 upon Brandon, the boxkeeper, to meet him. All went on pretty 
 
 8 
 
114 LETTERS, ETC 
 
 well until midnight, when George Frederick, getting very- 
 drunk, his host began to be tired of his company, George 
 took the hint, and his host lighted him down stairs into the 
 hall, when Cooke, laying hold of both his ears, shouted — 
 "Have I, George Frederick Cooke, degraded myself by 
 dining with bricklayers to meet boxkeepers ?" — tripped up his 
 heels and left him sprawling in darkness. 
 
 I retain a very vivid recollection of Manning, though so 
 imperfect in my memory of persons that I should not recollect 
 him at this time. I think few persons had so great a share of 
 Lamb's admiration, for to few did he vouchsafe manifestations 
 of his very extraordinary powers. Once, and once only, did I 
 witness an outburst of his unembodied spirit, when such was 
 the effect of his more than magnetic, his magic power (learnt 
 was it in Chaldea, or in that sealed continent to which the 
 superhuman knowledge of Zoroaster was conveyed by Confucius, 
 into which he was the first to penetrate with impunity), that 
 we were all rapt and carried aloft into the seventh heaven. He 
 seemed to see and to convey to us clearly (I had almost said 
 adequately), what was passing in the presence of the Great 
 Disembodied One, rather by an intuition or the creation of a 
 new sense than by words. Verily there are more things on 
 earth than are dreamt of in our philosophy. I am unwilling 
 to admit the influence this wonderful man had over his auditors, 
 as I cannot at all convey an adequate notion or even image of 
 his extraordinary and very peculiar powers. Passing from a 
 state which was only not of the highest excitement, because 
 the power w&s felt, not shown, he, by an easy, a graceful, and, 
 as it seemed at the time, a natural transition, entered upon the 
 discussion, or, as it rather seemed, the solution of some of the 
 most interesting questions connected with the early pursuits of 
 men. Amongst other matters, the origin of cooking, which it 
 seems was deemed of sufficient importance by older, and 
 
"T 
 
 LETTEKS ETC. 115 
 
 therefore wiser, nations to form part of their archives. How 
 this transcript was obtained, whether from that intuitive know- 
 ledge to which allusion has been made, or whether application 
 was had to the keeper of the state paper office of the Celestial 
 Empire, I cannot now say. I can only vouch for the truth of 
 what follows, which, with the reply to a letter of acknow- 
 ledgment from Coleridge, who, having received a roast pig, and 
 not knowing whence it came, fixed upon Lamb as the donor, 
 were afterwards fused into an essay, perhaps the most 
 delightful in our language. 
 
 " A child, in the early ages, was left alone by its mother in a house 
 in which was a pig. A fire took place ; the child escaped, the pig 
 was burned. The child scratched and pottered amongst the ashes for 
 its pig, which at last it found. All the provisions being burnt, the 
 child was very hungry, and not yet having any artificial aids, such as 
 golden ewers and damask napkins, began to lick or suck its fingers to 
 free them from the ashes. A piece of fat adhered to one of his 
 thumbs, which, being very savoury alike in taste and odour, he 
 rightly judged to belong to the pig. Liking it much, he took it to his 
 mother, just then appearing, who also tasted it, and both agreed that 
 it was better than fruit or vegetables. 
 
 " They rebuilt the house, and the woman, after the fashion of good 
 wives, who, says the chronicle, are how very scarce, put a pig into it, 
 and was about to set it on fire, when an old man, one whom obser- 
 vation and reflection had made a philosopher, suggested that a pile of 
 wood would do as well. (This must have been the father of econo- 
 mists.) The next pig was killed before it was roasted, and thus 
 
 "■ From low beginnings, 
 We date our winnings." 
 
 Met T. at Lamb's. He seemed to tend towards the negative 
 sensualism. Mentioned Coleridge as one possessed of trans- 
 cendental benevolence and most exquisite eloquence, as one to 
 whom nations might listen and be proud. He spoke of him- 
 self as seared and hopeless, and of Austin, who had, by the 
 force, the clearness, and the originality of his views and argu- 
 ments, won him over to the creed of the veritable sceptics, the 
 
v \^ 
 
 116 LETTERS, ETC. 
 
 sneerers, as " the cold-blooded ruffian." Spoke of Macauley, 
 of Moultrie, of Praed. Of Macauley as the most eloquent, of 
 Moultrie as the most pure and highminded, and of Praed as 
 the most insincere. 
 
 Spent a very delightful day at Highgate with Lamb and 
 one or two other congenial spirits. Anster, I think, was one. 
 Had a long stroll over Hampstead Heath ; Lamb, with his fine 
 face, taking all the reflective, and the vast volume of the other 
 all the younger and older of the passers-by. It seemed to 
 me — then in my youth and spring of hope and joyance — to 
 realise the olden time ; the deep attention with which we all 
 listened, each striving to get nearest to our great teacher, 
 fearing to lose a word, attracted all eyes ; many followed us, 
 and still more looked earnestly, as wishing to partake of the 
 intellectual banquet thus open as it were to all comers. 
 
 Never will that particular evening be effaced from my recol- 
 lection. The talk was on duelling, on Kenilworth, and on 
 Peveril of the Peak (which I knew assuredly to have been 
 written by Scott, having myself furnished the first suggestion 
 in a rambling and somewhat excited letter, written amidst the 
 ruins of Castleton, the stronghold of the Peverils), of Sir 
 Thomas Brown, and of old Mandeville. We read old poetry 
 and new ; but it was worthy to have been old. — Lamb observed 
 when we got home, — " He sets his mark upon whatever he 
 reads ; it is henceforth sacred. His spirit seems to have 
 breathed upon it ; and, if not for its author, yet for his sake we 
 admire it." Coleridge accused Lamb of having caused the 
 Sonnet to Lord Stanhope to be re-inserted in the joint volume 
 published at Bristol. He declared it was written in ridicule 
 of the exaggerated praises then bestowed upon the French 
 revolution. 
 
 ' ' Not, Stanhope ! with the patriot's doubtful name 
 I mock thy worth — friend of the human race ! 
 Since scorning faction's low and partial aim, 
 Aloof thou wendest in thy stately pace, 
 
 ')£., 
 
/• / 
 
 LETTERS, ETC. 117 
 
 Thyself redeeming from that leprous stain, 
 
 Nobility ; and aye unterrified, 
 
 Pourest thy Abdiel warnings on the train, 
 
 That sit complotting with rebellious pride 
 
 'Gainst* her, who from the Almighty's bosom leapt 
 
 With whirlwind arm, fierce minister of love ! 
 
 Wherefore, ere virtue o'er thy tomb hath wept, 
 
 Angels shall lead thee to the throne above, 
 
 And thou from forth its clouds shalt hear the voice, 
 
 Champion of freedom and her God ! rejoice ! '' 
 
 Sunday. — Dined with Lamb alone. A most delightful 
 day of reminiscences. Spoke of Mrs. Inchbald as the only- 
 endurable clever woman he bad ever known ; called them 
 impudent, forward, unfeminine, and unhealthy in their minds. 
 Instanced, amongst many others, Mrs. Barbauld, who was a 
 torment and curse to her husband. "Yet," said Lamb, 
 " Letitia was only just tinted ; she was not what the she-dogs 
 now call an intellectual woman." Spoke of Southey most 
 handsomely ; indeed he never would allow any one but 
 himself to speak disparagingly of either Coleridge, Words- 
 worth, or Southey, and with a sort of misgiving of Hazlitt as 
 a wild, mad being. Attributed his secession, to pique that he 
 had not been asked to meet Wordsworth. He had also 
 accused Lamb of not seeing him when with Wordsworth in 
 Holborn. Lamb was much pleased with Wordsworth's 
 attentions, saying, " He gave me more than hah the time he 
 was in London, when he is supposed to be with the Lowthers; " 
 and after supper spoke with great feeling of Coleridge, and 
 with a grateful sense of what he had been to him, adding 
 after a recapitulation of the friends he admired or loved, " But 
 Coleridge is a glorious person," and, with a smile of that 
 peculiar sweetness so entirely his own, " He teaches what is 
 best." 
 
 Gallic liberty. 
 
118 LETTERS, ETC. 
 
 " Miss Lamb, in her very pleasant manner, said, ' Charles, 
 who is Mr. Pitman ? ' 
 
 " ' Why, he is a clerk in our office.' 
 
 " < But why do you not ask Mr. White and Mr. Field? I 
 do not like to give up old friends for new ones.' 
 
 " ' Pitman has been very civil to me, always asking me to 
 go and see him ; and when the smoking club at Don Saltero's 
 was broken up, he offered me all the ornaments and apparatus, 
 which I declined, and therefore I asked him here this night. 
 I could never bear to give pain; have I not been called 
 th'-th'-th'-the gentle-hearted Charles when I was young, and 
 shall I now derogate ? ' " 
 
 A-w^**-* " Lamb one night wanted to demonstrate, after the manner 
 
 of Swift, that the Man-t-chou Tartars were cannibals, and that 
 /» A£%* ^e Chinese were identical with the Celtes (Sell Teas)." 
 
 " He said that he could never impress a Scotchman with any 
 new truth ; that they all required it to be spelled and explained 
 away in old equivalent and familiar words or images. Had 
 spoken to a Scotchman, who sat next to him at a dinner the 
 day before, of a healthy book. 
 
 " ' Healthy, sir, healthy did you say ? ' 
 
 " < Yes.' 
 
 " ' I dinna comprehend. I have heard of a healthy man 
 and of a healthy morning, but never of a healthy book." 
 
 " Told a story of John Ballantyne, who going in a chair, the 
 two caddies jostled him a good deal, upon which John remon- 
 strated. The two caddies set him down, and told him that he 
 being very little and light, was very wrong to choose that mode 
 of conveyance, and argued the matter with him at great length, 
 he being in the chair and unable to release himself." 
 
 " One night, when Mathews was going to the theatre at 
 
/ 
 
 A. ' 
 
 LETTERS, ETC. 119 
 
 Edinburgh, and was almost too late, he took a coach and 
 ordered the coachman to drive to the theatre. In going up 
 the hill, the horses being tired, the coach made no progress, 
 upon which Mathews remonstrated, saying that he should be 
 too late — he should lose his time. The coachman very coolly 
 said, 'Your honour should reflact that I am losing time as 
 weel's yerseL'" 
 
 "On another occasion, when Mathews was returning very 
 late, or, by'r lady, it might be early in the morning, to Edin- 
 burgh, his friend, who was somewhat fou, refused to pay the 
 toll, stating that he had paid it before that day. The little 
 girl locked the toll, and he loaded her with abuse, to which she 
 made little reply. After much altercation her mother opened 
 a casement above, and in a sleepy, feeble tone, inquired what 
 the gentleman said. " Na, mither," said the child, " it's no 
 the gentleman, it's the wine speaking." 
 
 " The best pun ever made is that of Swift, who called after 
 a man carrying a hare over his shoulders, " Is that your own 
 hare or a wig ?" 
 
 Met Mr. and Mrs. Wordsworth, with Mr. Talfourd, Monk- 
 house, and Eobinson. A very delightful evening. Wordsworth 
 almost as good a reader as Coleridge ; to a stranger I 
 think he would seem to carry even more authority both in 
 what he read and said. He spoke of Southey and Coleridge 
 with measured respect, and, as I thought, just appreciation. 
 Pointed out some passages in the Curse of Kehama which he 
 admired, and repeated some portions of the Ancient Mariner ; 
 also from the Eiver Duddon and the Excursion. Repeated 
 the Highland Girl. He seemed to me to present the idea of 
 a poet in whom the repressive faculty was predominant. Taken 
 altogether, he impressed me very favourably, and I regret 
 
120 LETTERS, ETC. 
 
 deeply that I did not avail myself of subsequent opportunities, 
 not seldom proffered by Lamb and Coleridge, of meeting him 
 more frequently. But I then laboured under the impression 
 that he bad not acted kindly to that dear and loved being, 
 whom I loved living, and honour dead. Even now, when 
 myself almost indifferent to new associations, I regret this 
 enforced denial of what at that period would have enhanced 
 the value of existence, — communion with tbat glorious and 
 effulgent mind ; but I do not regret the impulses which led to 
 this self-denial. 
 
 Met Mrs Shelley and Mrs. Williams at Lamb's cottage, in 
 Colebrook Eow. Was much interested by these two young 
 and lovely women. Interesting in every view. Knew Mrs. 
 Shelley from her likeness to a picture by Titian in the Louvre, 
 which is a far greater resemblance to Mrs. Shelley in the 
 beautiful and very peculiar expression of her countenance than 
 would be any portrait taken now. Hers seemed a face, as 
 Hazlitt remarked when he pointed it out to me, that should 
 be kept to acquire likeness. Mrs. Shelley at first sight ap- 
 peared deficient in feeling ; but this cannot be real. She spoke 
 of Shelley without apparent emotion, without regard or a 
 feeling approaching to regret, without pain as without interest, 
 and seemed to contemplate him, as everything else, through 
 the same passionless medium. 
 
 Mrs. Shelley expressed much admiration of the personal 
 manner and conversation of Lord Byron, but at the same time 
 admitted that the account in the London Magazine for Sep- 
 tember was faithful. She censured his conduct towards Leigh 
 Hunt as paltry and unfeeling ; spoke very slightly of his 
 studies or reading ; thought him very superficial in his 
 opinions ; owed everything to his memory, which was almost 
 preternatural. Said that he felt a supreme contempt for all 
 his contemporaries, with the exception of Wordsworth and 
 Coleridge, and he ridiculed and derided even them, and was 
 
(J J '-' 
 
 LETTERS, ETC. 121 
 
 altogether proud, selfish, and frequently puerile. Mrs. Williams, 
 I think, gave the account of his determining to have a plum 
 pudding on his birth-day, and after giving minute directions 
 so as to prevent the chance of mishap, it was, to the eternal 
 dishonour of the Italian cucina, brought up in a tureen of the 
 substance of soup. Upon this failure in the production he was 
 frequently quizzed, and betrayed all the petulance of a child, 
 and more than a child's curiosity to learn who had reported the 
 circumstance. 
 
 -. 
 
 " Wordsworth one day said to ^ae^ when I had been speaking 
 of Coleridge, praising him in my way, ' Yes, the Coleridges 
 are a clever family.' I replied, ' I know* one that is.' " 
 
 LETTER XVIII. 
 
 My dearest Friend, June 23, 1821. 
 
 Be assured that nothing bearing a nearer resemblance to 
 
 offence, whether felt or perceived, than a syllogism bears to the 
 
 * My amiable and kind-hearted friend said here less than the truth» 
 at least as I understand it. Cleverness was not at all a characteristic 
 of Coleridge, whilst it happily suits those to whom Wordsworth alluded, 
 who are or have been clever enough to appropriate their uncle's 
 great reputation to their own advancement, and then to allow him to 
 need assistance from strangers. No one who knows the character or 
 calibre of mind, whether of the Bishop or the Judge, can doubt, cazteris 
 paribus, that the one would still have been a curate and the other a 
 barrister, with but little practice, had they borne the name of Smith 
 — had they wanted the passport of his name. It is not always wise 
 to scan too deeply the source of human actions, but I am irresistibly 
 led to the conclusion, that a sort of half-consciousness of " that same " 
 entered into this almost (in one sense more than) parricidal neglect. 
 i" blame them not. I but narrate this as a curious and painful instance 
 how fearfully we are made ; how often we prefer our self-will (so 
 termed), nay, even the most sordid injustice, to our duties. 
 
122 LETTERS, ETC. 
 
 colour of the man in the moon's whiskers, ever crossed my 
 brain : not even with that brisk diagonal traverse which Ghosts 
 and apparitions always choose to surprise us in. I have indeed 
 observed or fancied, that, for some time past, you have been 
 anxious about something, have had something pressing upon your 
 mind, which I wished out of you, though not particularly to have 
 it out of you. I must explain myself. Say that X. were my 
 dearest Friend, to whom I would be as it were transparent, and 
 have him so to me in all respects that concerned our perma- 
 nent Being, and likewise in all circumstantial accidents in which 
 we could be of service to each other. Yet there are many 
 things that will press upon us which are our individualities, 
 which one man does not feel any tendency in himself to speak 
 of to a man, however dear or valued. X. does not think or 
 wish to think of it when with Y., nor Y. in his turn when with 
 X., and yet still the great law holds good — whatever vexes or 
 depresses ought if possible to be out of us. Now I say that I 
 should rejoice if you had a female Friend — a Sister, an Aunt, 
 or a Beloved to whom you could lay yourself open. I should 
 further exult if your confidante were my Friend too, my Sister 
 or my Wife. 
 
 God bless you. 
 T. Allsop, Esq. S. T. Coleridge. 
 
 This letter relates to a domestic, not to say family perplexity, 
 peculiarly and sacredly my own ; one to which no counsel could 
 apply, no consolation mitigate or assuage. Under the circum- 
 stances in which I was at that time placed, I could not, I felt it 
 would be premature, to avail myself of the invitation contained 
 in the above letter : and this will, to a great extent, explain 
 much that is contained in the following letters. I had a still 
 farther reason. The individual to whom allusion is made 
 above, was at that time the ne plus ultra of my friend's love 
 and fraternal admiration ; yet with qualities of head and heart 
 worthy of all acceptance, was partly (almost I had nearly said) 
 
LETTERS, ETC. 123 
 
 on that very account disqualified in my innermost convictions, 
 certainly according to the judgment of my then feelings, for the 
 office indicated. 
 
 /•/?/* ' LETTEE XIX - %^JZ7££^>*> 
 
 My dear Friend, ^747%**$*} A 'f& 
 
 We are quite sure that you would not allow yourself to 
 fancy any rightful ground, cause, or occasion for not coming 
 here, but the wish, the duty, or thfi propriety of going else- /frt/1 {n't- 
 where or staying at home. When the Needle of your Thoughts *■ "* / 
 begins to be magnetic, you may be certain that my Pole is at //i^ A ,_**J„ 
 that moment attracting you by the spiritual magic of strong ^*»*^J 
 wishing for your arrival. N.B. My Pole includes in this 
 instance loth the Poles of Mr. and eke of Mrs. Gillman, i.e., 
 the head and the heart. 
 
 But seriously — I am a little anxious — so give my blest 
 sisterly Friend a few lines by return of post — just to let us 
 know that you are and have been well, and that nothing of a 
 painful nature has deprived us of the expected pleasure; a 
 pleasure which, believe me, stands a good many degrees above 
 moderate in the cordi or hedonometer of, y^^^ Jf /^-77/ JJ 
 
 Vnnrs irinst r.nrdist]]-v.i " 
 
 /> 
 
 Yours most cordiaRj/ 
 
 S. T. Coleridge. 
 
 It must always be borne in mind, that the fragments, letters, 
 and conversations which are here perused at one time, were 
 written or spoken at different times, and under the influence of 
 varied feelings and convictions, and the apparent discrepancies, 
 or even contradictions, are such as you must be conscious of 
 yourselves as reflective, and therefore progressive, beings. 
 
 " In the sense in which I then spoke and thought, I would 
 again repeat the note to the word priest, originally prefixed -, - 
 
124 
 
 LETTERS, ETC. 
 
 to my Juvenile Poems, though perhaps I should somewhat 
 extend it. 
 
 " I deem that the teaching the Gospel for hire is wrong, 
 because it gives the teacher an improper bias in favour of par- 
 ticular opinions, on a subject where it is of the last importance 
 that the mind should be perfectly unbiassed. Such is my 
 private opinion : — but I mean not to censure all hired teachers, 
 many among whom I know, and venerate as the best and 
 wisest of men. God forbid that I should think of these when 
 I use the word priest ; a name after which any other term of 
 abhorrence would appear an anti-climax. By a priest I mean 
 a man, who, holding the scourge of power in his right hand, 
 and a Bible translated by authority in his left, doth necessarily 
 cause the Bible and the scourge to be associated ideas, and so 
 produces that temper of mind that leads to infidelity ; infidelity 
 which, judging of Bevelation by the doctrines and practices of 
 }0" Established Churches, honours God by rejecting Christ." 
 
 " I have been reading Judge Barrington's Sketches, 
 the most pleasant book about Ireland I ever read. I 
 especially amused by the following : — 
 
 DIALOGUE BETWEEN TOM PLINTER AND HIS 
 " Tom Flinter. Dick ! said he ; 
 What ? said he. 
 Fetch me my hat, says he, 
 For I will go, says he, 
 To Timahoe, says he ; 
 To the fair, says he; 
 And buy all that's there, says he, 
 Pay what you owe, says he ; 
 And then you may go, says he 
 To Timahoe, says he; 
 To the fair, says he; 
 
 And buy all that's there, says he; ,-w^ 
 Well, by this and by that, said he, ''tNlN 
 Dick ! hang up my hat ! says he 
 
 Dick. 
 
 Tom Flinter. 
 
 Dick 
 
 " Tom Flinter. 
 
LETTERS, ETC. 125 
 
 " Whenever philosophy has taken into its plan religion, it 
 has ended in scepticism ; and whenever religion excludes phi- 
 losophy, or the spirit of free inquiry, it leads to wilful blind- 
 ness and superstition. Scotus, the first of the schoolmen, held 
 that religion might be above, but could not be adverse to, true 
 philosophy." 
 
 " To say that life is the result of organisation, is to say that 
 the builders of a house are its results." 
 
 "The 'Friend' is a secret which I have entrusted to the 
 public; and, unlike most secrets, it hath been well kept." 
 
 " Interestingness, the best test and characteristic of love- 
 liness." 
 
 " Humour is consistent with pathos, whilst wit is not." 
 
 " All that is good is in the reason, not in the understanding ; 
 which is proved by the malignity of those who lose their reason. 
 When a man is said to be out of his wits, we do not mean that 
 he has lost his reason, but only his understanding, or the power 
 of choosing his means or perceiving their fitness to the end. 
 Don Quixote (and in a less degree, the Pilgrim's Progress) is 
 an excellent example of a man who had lost his wits or under- 
 standing, but not his reason." 
 
 LETTER XX. 
 
 My dear Friend, Sept 15th, 1821. 
 
 I cannot rest until I have answered your last letter. I 
 have contemplated your character, affectionately indeed, but 
 through a clear medium. No film of passion, no glittering 
 mist of outward advantages, has arisen between the sight and 
 
126 LETTERS, ETC. 
 
 the object : I had no other prepossession than the esteem which 
 my knowledge of your sentiments and conduct could not but 
 secure for you. I soon learnt to esteem you ; and in esteeming, 
 became attached to you. I began by loving the man on account 
 of his conduct, but I ended in valuing the actions chiefly as so 
 many looks and attitudes of the same person, " Hast thou any 
 thing ? Share it with me, and I will pay thee an equivalent. 
 Art thou any thing ? O then we will exchange souls." 
 
 We can none of us, not the wisest of us, brood over any 
 source of affliction inwardly, keeping it back, and as it were 
 pressing it in on ourselves ; but we must magnify it. We cannot 
 see it clearly, much less distinctly ; and as the object enlarges 
 beyond its real proportions, so it becomes vivid ; and the feelings 
 that blend with it assume a proportionate undue intensity. So 
 the one acts on the other, and what at first was effect, in its 
 turn becomes a cause ; and when at length we have taken heart, 
 and given the whole thing, with all its several parts, the proper 
 distance from our mind's eye, by confiding it to a true friend, 
 we are ourselves surprised to find what a dwarf the giant 
 shrinks into, as soon as it steps out of the mist into clear 
 sunlight. 
 
 I am aware that these are truths of which you do not need to 
 be informed ; but they will not be the less impressive on this 
 account in your judgment, knowing, as you must know, that 
 nothing short of my deep and anxious convictions of their im- 
 portance in all cases of hidden distress, and of their unspeakable 
 importance in yours, could impel me to seek and entreat your 
 entire confidence, to beg you, so fervently as I here am doing, 
 to open out to me the cause of your anxiety, that I may offer 
 you the best advice in my power, — advice that will not be the 
 less dispassionate from its being dictated by zealous friendship, 
 and blended with the truest love. 
 
 I fear that in any decision to which you may come in any 
 matter affecting yourself alone, you may, from a culpable delicacy 
 of honour, which, forbidden by wisdom and the universal expe- 
 
LETTERS, ETC. 127 
 
 rience of others, cannot but be in contradiction to the genuine 
 dictates of duty, want fortitude to choose the lesser evil, at 
 whatever cost to your immediate feelings, and to put that choice 
 into immediate and peremptory act. But I must finish. I 
 trust that the warmth and earnestness of my language are not 
 warranted by the occasion ; but they are barely proportionate 
 to the present solicitude of, 
 
 Your faithful and affectionate friend, 
 T. Allsop, Esq. S. T. Coleridge. 
 
 " The German writers have acquired a style and an elegance 
 of thought and of mind, just as we have attained a style and 
 smartness of composition (thus in my notes), so that if you 
 were to read an ordinary German author as an English one, 
 you would say, — ' This man has something in him, this man 
 thinks ; ' whereas it is merely a method acquired by them, as 
 we have acquired a style." 
 
 a Dr. Young one day was speaking of John Hunter as being 
 greatly over-rated, upon which I replied, — 'Yes, to minds 
 which, like birds entangled in the lime, scoff and sneer at those 
 pinions of power that have emancipated themselves from the 
 thrall which bound them, but are nevertheless impeded in 
 their upward progress by the shackles they have broken, but 
 from the slime of which they are not freed.' 
 
 " The Doctor noticed my assimilating weight and gravity, 
 civilly informing me that those who understood these matters 
 considered them as different as fire and heat. 
 
 " I said, ' Yes, in that philosophy which, together with a 
 great quantity of old clothes, I discarded thirty years ago, and 
 which, by identifying cause and effect, destroys both.' " 
 
 A copy of the Lyrical Ballads was sent to Mr. Fox, who 
 
128 LETTERS, ETC. 
 
 dissented from the conclusions of Mr. Wordsworth as to Ruth 
 and the Brothers, but expressed his admiration of " We are 
 Seven," and " The Linnet," and conveyed his regret that he 
 knew not to whom he was to refer the^ most b eautiful poem 
 in the language, "Love," adding, — "I learn we are indebted 
 to Mr. Coleridge for that exquisite poem, " The Nightingale." 
 
 It is right that I should here observe, that the conversations, 
 of which this is a very small part, possessed little that could 
 be abstracted, and that, in preserving these personal traits, I 
 was gratifying myself by retaining more vivid and distinct 
 knowlege of the most prominent of my contemporaries. This 
 will apply equally to many other recollections and memo- 
 randums, both before and after. 
 
 " Longmans offered me the copyright of the Lyrical Ballads, 
 at the same time saying that, if I would write a few more, 
 they would publish my contributions. When I expressed a 
 hope that 3,000 might be circulated, Wordsworth spurned at 
 the idea, and said that twenty times that number must be sold. 
 I was told by Longmans that the greater part of the Lyrical 
 Ballads had been sold to seafaring men, who having heard of 
 the Ancient Mariner, concluded that it was a naval song- 
 book, or, at all events, that it had some relation to nautical 
 matters."* 
 
 * It is somewhat singular that the name of another and larger hook 
 of Mr. Wordsworth's should also owe its circulation to a misconcep- 
 tion of the title. It has been my fortune to have met with the 
 Excursion at a great number of inns and boarding-houses in pictu- 
 resque scenes — in places where parties go for excursions; and upon 
 inquiring how it happened that so expensive a book was purchased 
 when an old Universal Magazine, an Athenian Oracle, or, at best, one 
 of the Bridgewater Treatises, would do as well to send the guest to 
 sleep, I was given to understand in three several places that they 
 were left by parties who had finished their material excursion, but, 
 alas ! for their taste, had left their poetic excursion untouched ; uncut, 
 even, beyond the story of Margaret. 
 
LETTERS, ETC. 129 
 
 Spoke with interest of Irving. Eegretted that he should 
 have expressed his inability to preserve his original simplicity 
 when addressing an audience of the highest classes. Thought 
 this the feeling of a third or fourth-rate mind ; that he might 
 have been perplexed would not have derogated from his cha- 
 racter, but to allow an audience to influence him further than 
 the fitness of his discourse to his hearers was not to his ad- 
 vantage. 
 
 11 The most happy marriage I can picture or image to myself 
 would be the union of a deaf man to a blind* woman." 
 
 LETTEK XXI. 
 
 My dearest Friend, Sept. 2Uh, 1821. 
 
 I will begin with the beginning of your (to me most af- 
 fecting) letter. Not exactly obligation, my entirely beloved 
 and relied-on friend ! The soiling hand of the world has 
 dyed and sunk into the sense and import of the term too in- 
 separably, for it to convey the kind and degree of what I feel 
 towards you, on the one scale. I love you so truly, that in 
 the first glance, as it were, and welcome of your anxious affec- 
 tion, it delights me for the very act's sake. I think only of it 
 and you, or rather both are one and the same, and I live in 
 you. Nor does the complacency suffer any abatement, but 
 becomes more intense and lively. As a mother would talk of 
 the soothing attentions, the sacrifices and devotion of a son, 
 eager to supply every want and anticipate every wish, so I 
 talk to myself concerning you ; and I am proud of you, and 
 proud to be the object of what cannot but appear lovely to my 
 judgment, and which the hard contrast in so many heart- 
 
 * Whilst these pages are passing through the press, this most ex- 
 traordinary conjunction has taken place at Barming, near Maidstone. 
 
 9 
 
130 
 
 LETTERS, ETC. 
 
 J 
 
 withering instances forced on me by the experience of my last 
 twenty years, compels me to feel and value with an additional 
 glow. Lastly, it is a source of strength and comfort to know, 
 that the labours and aspirations and sympathies of the genuine 
 and invisible Humanity exist in a social world of their own ; 
 that its attractions and assimilations are no Platonic fable, no 
 dancing flames or luminous bubbles on the magic cauldron 
 of my wishes ; but that there are, even in this unkind life, 
 spiritual parentages and filiations of the soul. Can there be a 
 counterpoise to these ? Not a counterpoise — but as weights 
 in the counter- scale there will come the self-reproach, that 
 spite of all inauspicious obstacles, not in my power to remove 
 without loss of self-respect, 1 have not done all I could and 
 .might have done to prevent my present state of dependence. 
 I am now able to hope that I shall be capable of setting apart 
 such a portion of my useable time to my greater work (in 
 assertion of the ideal truths and d priori probability, and a 
 posteriori internal and external evidence of the historic truth 
 of the Christian religion), as to leave a sufficient portion for a 
 not unprofitable series of articles for pecuniary supply. I 
 entertain some hope, too, that my Logic, which I could begin 
 printing immediately if I could find a publisher willing to un- 
 dertake it on equitable terms, might prove an exception to the 
 general fate of my publications. It is a long lane that has no 
 turning, and while my own heart bears witness to the genial 
 delight you would feel in assisting me, I know that you would 
 have a more satisfactory gladness in my not needing it. 
 
 And now a few, a very few, words on the latter portion of 
 your letter. You know, my dearest Friend, how I acted 
 myself, and that my example cannot be urged in confirmation 
 of my judgment. I certainly strive hard to divest my mind of 
 every prejudice, to look at the question sternly through the 
 principle of Eight separated from all mere Expedience, nay, 
 from the question of earthly happiness for its own sake. But 
 1 cannot answer to myself that the image of any serious 
 
LETTERS, ETC. 131 
 
 obstacle to your peace of heart, that the Thought of your full 
 development of soul being put a stop to, of a secret anxiety 
 blighting your utility by cankering your happiness, I cannot 
 be sure — I cannot be sure that this may not have made me 
 weigh with a trembling and unsteady hand, and less than half 
 the presumption of error, afforded by the shrinking and recoil 
 of your moral sense or even feeling, would render it my duty 
 and my impulse to bring my conclusion anew to the ordeal 
 of my Reason and Conscience. But on your side, my dear 
 Friend ! try with me to contemplate the question as a problem 
 in the science of Morals, in the first instance, and to recollect 
 that there are false or intrusive weights possible in the other 
 scale ; that our very virtues may become, or be transformed 
 into temptations to, or occasions of, partial judgment ; that 
 we may judge partially against ourselves from the very fear, 
 perhaps contempt, of the contrary ; that self may be moodily 
 gratified by seZ/^-sacrifice, and that the Heart itself, in its per- 
 plexity, may acquiesce for a time in the decision as a more 
 safe way ; and, lastly, that the question can only be fully 
 
 answered, when Self and Neighbour, as equi-distant £ 
 
 from the conscience or God, are blended in the common term, a 
 Human Being : that we are commanded to love ourselves as 
 our Neighbour in the Law that requires a Christian to love his 
 Neighbour as himself. 
 
 But indeed I persuade myself that this dissonance is not real 
 between us, and that it would not have seemed to exist, had I 
 continued the subject into the possible particular cases ; e. g., 
 suppose a case in which the misery, and so far the moral 
 incapacitation, of both parties were certainly foreseen as the 
 immediate consequence. A morality of Consequences I, you 
 well know, reprobate ; but to exclude the necessary effect of an 
 action is to take away all meaning from the word action — to 
 strike Duty with blindness. I repeat it, that I do not, cannot 
 find it in myself to believe, that on any one case, made out in 
 
13 2 LETTERS, ETC. 
 
 all its limbs, features, and circumstances, your heart and mine 
 would prompt different verdicts. 
 
 But the thought of you personally and individually is at 
 present too strong and stirring to permit me to reason on any 
 points. If the weather is at all plausible, we propose to set off 
 on Saturday. I do most earnestly wish that you could accom- 
 pany us ; a steam-vessel would give us three-fourths of the 
 whole day to tete-a-tete conversation. God bless you, 
 
 And your affectionate and faithful friend, 
 T. Allsop, Esq. S. T. Coleridge. 
 
 The affectionate interest expressed in this and the preceding 
 letters was at the time to me a solace and support, placed as I 
 was with relation to my immediate worldly prospects in a 
 position of much perplexity. There were many circumstances 
 wbich, as they affected others, I could not communicate so 
 fully, — convey so entirely as I desired to my respected friend ; 
 hence he altogether misapprehended the particular cause of my 
 anxiety, or, as I doubt not, considered it irresolution and mis- 
 giving. In pursuance of the determination with which I set 
 out, I have not hesitated thus to place on record, opinions, 
 views, and suggestions, which, had I considered myself at 
 liberty to make a selection, I might have omitted, for a two- 
 fold reason; one, that they concerned myself alone; the other, 
 that I do not imagine they will interest general readers. I 
 have adopted the plan of saying just what occurs to me at the 
 time of writing and of giving the memorandums exactly as I 
 find them, when I have no recollection of the circumstances ; 
 and the letters exactly as they are written (unless they contain 
 repetitions or expressions of attachment common to all) with 
 few omissions, and those of no importance. 
 
 I should consider it a misfortune for any one to have sug- 
 gested alterations or omissions in this work, as such suggestions 
 would have disturbed or have interfered with my original 
 determination ; a determination to let my dear friend be known 
 
LETTERS, ETC. 133 
 
 in all his strength and all his weakness, as far as these letters 
 and recollections convey any clear idea of either. I might 
 have made this work better with some aids and with longer 
 preparation, but then it would not so well have expressed what 
 I sought to convey. It would not have so entirely expressed 
 my own or my late friend's opinions and convictions ; and in 
 this sense, though another might have made it better, no one 
 but myself could have done it so well. In this view Charles 
 Lamb coincided, though he, it seems, from the force of an early 
 impression, never kept any letters, and therefore did not attach 
 the importance which appears to me to belong to this depart- 
 ment of autobiography. 
 
 When asked to accompany a recent deputation to remon- 
 strate with the present ministers, I assented, stating to my 
 friends that I should go to read their faces, for that nature 
 never lies. So it proved in this case ; their conduct being in 
 harmony with the conclusions I drew and expressed at the 
 time, but in strange discrepancy with what they said. So I 
 hold that letters, which are the transcript of the writer's mind, 
 give more of interest and more insight into character than 
 volumes of disquisition or surmises. 
 
 " Bead the Troilus and Cressida ; dwelt much upon the 
 fine distinction made by Shakspeare between the affection of 
 Troilus and the passion of Cressida. This does not escape the 
 notice of Ulysses, who thus depicts her on her first arrival in 
 the Trojan camp : — 
 
 Fie ! fie upon her ! 
 
 There's language in her eye, her cheek, her lip, 
 Nay, her foot speaks. Her wanton spirits look out 
 At every joint of her body. Set such down 
 For sluttish spoils of opportunity 
 And daughters of the game.' 
 
 " The profound affection of Troilus alone deserves the name 
 of love." 
 
134 LETTERS, ETC. 
 
 " Certainly the highest good is to live happily, and not 
 through a life of mortification to expect a happy death. 
 Should we attain felicity in life, death will he easy, as it will 
 be natural and in due season. Whereas by the present system 
 of religious teaching, men are enjoined to "value chiefly happi- 
 ness at the end of life ; which, if they were implicitly to 
 follow, they would, by neglecting the first great duty, that of 
 innocent enjoyment during existence, effectually preclude them- 
 selves from attaining. 
 
 " There is no condition (evil as it may be in the eye of 
 reason), which does not include, or seem to include when it has 
 become familiar, some good, some redeeming or reconciling 
 qualities. I agree, however, that marriage is not one of these. 
 Marriage has, as you say, no natural relation to love. Mar- 
 riage belongs to society ; it is a social contract. It should not 
 merely include the conditions of esteem and friendship, it 
 should be the ratification of their manifestation. Still I do not 
 know how it can be replaced ; that belongs to the future, and it 
 is a question which the future only can solve. I however quite 
 agree that we can now, better than at any former time, say 
 what will not, what cannot be." 
 
 " Truly, when I think of what has entered into ethics, what 
 has been considered moral in the early ages of the world, and 
 even now by civilised nations in the east, I incline to believe 
 that morality is conventional ; but when I see the doctrines 
 propounded under the name of political economy, I earnestly 
 hope that it is so. — As illustrations of the opinions held by 
 philosophers, which to us appear abominable or indecent, I 
 refer to some of the rules of Zeno, some parts of the philosophy 
 of Plato, the whole conduct of Phsedon, and the practice of 
 Cato the Censor." 
 
LETTERS, ETC. 135 
 
 " The Essenians for several ages subsisted by adoption : we 
 stall see if the Shakers continue so long." 
 
 " We shun a birth, and make a public exhibition of an exe- 
 cution. The mystery observed at birth is a type of other 
 mysteries. It is a matter of silence and secrecy, and wholly 
 withheld from all but the customary officials. 
 
 " Pythagoras first asserted that the earth was a globe, and 
 that there were antipodes. He also seems to have been 
 acquainted with the properties of the atmosphere, at least its 
 weight and pressure. He was the most wonderful of those 
 men whom Greece, that treasure-house of intellect, produced 
 to show her treasures, and to be the ornament and gaze of our 
 nature during all time. In his doctrines, the Copernican 
 system may clearly be traced. 
 
 " Pythagoras used the mysteries as one of the means to 
 retain the doctrine of an unity while the multitude sunk into 
 Polytheism. 
 
 " It is quite certain most of the ancient philosophers were 
 adverse to the popular worship, as tending to degrade the idea 
 of the Divine Being, and to defile the national manners. Idol 
 worship always demoralises a people who adopt it. 
 
 " Witness the Jews, whose idolatry was followed by 
 universal chastisement. Witness Eome, Greece, and Egypt 
 where idol worship led to immorality and vice of the most 
 frightful kind." 
 
 The following I find on the back of a letter. 
 " is one of those clergymen who find it more easy to 
 
 hide their thoughts than to suppress thinking, and who treat 
 the Thirty Nine Articles as the whale did Jonah, i. e. 
 swallowed, but could not digest him." 
 
136 LETTERS, ETC. 
 
 " Quarrels of anger ending in tears are favourable to love in 
 its spring tide, as plants are found to grow very rapidly after 
 a thunderstorm with rain." 
 
 • " The heart in its physical sense is not sufficient for a kite's 
 dinner ; yet the whole world is not sufficient for it." 
 
 " God hath from the beginning promised forgiveness to the 
 penitent, but hath nowhere promised penitence to the sinner." 
 
 " So Mr. Baker heart did pluck, 
 And did a courting go ! 
 And Mr. Baker is a buck ; 
 For why ? — he needs the doe." 
 
 u Oh ! there are some natures which, under the most cheer- 
 less, all-threatening, nothing-promising circumstances, can 
 draw hope from the invisible 5 as the tropical trees, that in the 
 sandy desolation produce their own lidded vessels full of water 
 from air and dew. Alas ! to my root not a drop trickles down 
 but from the water-pot of immediate friends ; and even so it 
 seems much more a sympathy with their feeling rather than 
 hope of my own, even as I should feel sorrow if Allsop's 
 mother, whom I have never seen, were to die." 
 
 LETTEE XXII. 
 
 . \ 
 
 My dear Friend, \ ?.-.,. '» Oct. 20, 1821. 
 
 Not a day has passed since we left Highgate in which I 
 
 have not been tracing you in spirit up and down the Glens and 
 
 Dells of Derbyshire, while my feet only have been in commune 
 
 with the sandy beach here at Eamsgate. Once when I had 
 
 stopped and stood stone still for some minutes, Mrs. Gillman's 
 
LETTERS, ETC. 137 
 
 call snatched me away from a spot opposite to a house, to the 
 second-floor window of which I had been gazing, as if I had 
 feared, yet expected, to see you passing to and fro by it. 
 These, however, were visions to which I had myself given the 
 commencing act — fabrics of which the " I wonder where Allsop 
 is now" had laid the foundation stone. But for the last three 
 days your image, alone or lonely in an unconcerning crowd of 
 human figures, has forced itself on my sleep in dreams of the 
 rememberable kind, accompanied with the feeling of being 
 afraid to go up to you — and now of letting you pass by 
 unnoticed, from want of courage to ask you, what was most on 
 my mind — respecting the one awful to me because so awfully 
 dear to you — (for there is a religion in all deep love, but the 
 love of a Mother is, at your age, the veil of softer light 
 between the Heart and the Heavenly Father !) Mrs. Gillman 
 likewise has been thinking of you both asleep and awake : 
 and so, though I know not how to direct my letter, yet a letter 
 I am resolved to write. 
 
 I am sure, my dear Friend ! that if aught can be a com- 
 fort to you in affliction or an addition to your joy in the hour 
 of Thanksgiving, it will be to know, and to be reminded of 
 your knowledge, that I feel as your own heart in all that con^_ 
 cerns you. Next to this I have to tell you, that the Sea Air 
 and the Sea Plunges, and the leisure of mind, with regular 
 devotion of the Daylight to exercise ( for I write , 
 tea), have been auspicious, beyond my best hopes, to my 
 health and spirits. The change in my looks is beyond thei 
 present reality, but may be veracious as prophecy, though; 
 somewhat exaggerating as history. The same in all essentials 
 holds good of Mrs. Gillman ; and I am most pleased that the 
 improvement in her looks and strength has been gradual 
 though rapid. First she got rid, in the course of four or five 
 days, of the Positives of the wrong sort — e. g. the blackness 
 under the eyes and the thinness of the cheeks — and now she is 
 acquiring the Positives of the right kind, her eyes brightening, 
 
138 LETTERS, ETC. 
 
 her face becoming plump, and a delicate, yet cool and steady- 
 colour, stealing upon her cheeks. Mr. Gilhnan too is uncom- 
 monly well since his second arrival here. The first week his 
 arm, the absorbents of which had been perilously poisoned by 
 opening a body, was a sad drawback, - and prevented his 
 bathing. In short, we are all better than we could have 
 anticipated ; and the better we are, the more I long, and we all 
 wish you to be with us. If you can come, though but for a 
 few days, I pray you come to us. In grief or gladness, we 
 shall grieve less, and (I need not say) be more glad, by seeing 
 you, by having you with us. I will not say write, for I would a 
 thousand times rather have you plump in on me, unannounced ; 
 but yet write, unless this be possible. We have an excellent 
 house, with beds enough for half a dozen AJlsops, if so many 
 there were or could be. The situation the very best in all 
 Eamsgate (Wellington Cresc ent, East Cliff , Eamsgate); and 
 \ we, or ratherMrsTTHlTman s voice and manner, procured it 
 
 r , shameful cheap for the size and accommodations. 
 A_x^" 3 w| I am called to dinner ; so God bless you, and receive all 
 our loves, my very dear friend. 
 
 T. Allsop, Esq. S. T. Coleridge. 
 
 ,4 My birth-day, 51 ; or, as all my collegiates and Mrs. 
 
 - - Coleridge swear, 50. , /. , y ' 
 
 In reading these letters — so full of love and kindness — my 
 first wish had been to keep them sacred to my own perusal, 
 and to my own bitter and most painful regrets ; but they 
 contain so lively a portraiture of the writer's mind, express so 
 clearly what he so entirely felt, that I have judged it meet and 
 fitting, as well as an act of justice to the memory of the dead, to 
 give them place. I am reminded whilst I write this of an 
 opinion — I fear not altogether a heresy — of Lamb's, that all 
 strong affection, whether it be love of man, to woman, or pure 
 , and abiding friendship between men, is not merely of no interest, 
 but that it is, to a certain degree, positively distasteful to all 
 
 Jpfi U 
 
LETTERS, ETC. 139 
 
 others. As I write for men as they are, not as they may be, 
 or as I think they should, and yet will he, I should not have 
 published these personal and individual communications during 
 the life of their author under any conceivable circumstances, 
 even if such publications were usual or conceivable. Adher- 
 ing, therefore, to the rule I have laid down for myself — to 
 publish exactly that which I myself should like most to know 
 of any man, in whom I felt sufficient interest to wish to know 
 anything — I have given every letter, not in itself a repetition 
 in words or tone of feeling of some preceding communication ; 
 being determined not to incur justly the regret expressed in 
 the Biographia Literaria, at Spratt's refusing to allow Cowley 
 to appear in " his dressing gown and slippers." 
 
 Of the Conversations about this period I possess the follow- 
 ing :— 
 
 " We are none of us tolerant in what concerns us deeply and 
 entirely." 
 
 " A man who admits himself to be deceived, must be conscious 
 that there is something upon, or respecting which, he cannot be 
 deceived." 
 
 " A man who wishes for an end, the means of which are 
 criminal, is chargeable with all the guilt." 
 
 " I was told by one who was with Shelley shortly before his 
 death, that he had in those moments, when his spirit was left 
 to prey inwards, expressed a wish, amounting to anxiety, to 
 commune with me, as the one only being who could resolve or 
 allay the doubts and anxieties that pressed upon his mind." 
 
 " Leigh Hunt (I think he said) having stated that it was my 
 opinion that Byron only made believe when he painted himself 
 in his poems, Shelley expressed his fears, his belief that there 
 
140 LETTERS, ETC. 
 
 was no counterfeiting, that it was too real ; that he was a heing 
 incapable of true sympathy, that he was selfish and sensual 
 beyond his own portraiture." 
 
 The enclosed extract of a letter written about this time, I 
 give for the sake of the conclusion. 
 
 " I am glad to learn that the dwellers at Eydal perceived an 
 amendment in me. In self-management, in the power of 
 keeping my eyes more, and my heart less open, in aversion to 
 baseness, intrigue, in detestation of apostacy, to * 
 
 and silent or suggestive detraction it would be well for me if I 
 were as I was at twenty-five. Amendment ! improvement in 
 outward appearance, in health and in manners, I owe to my 
 friends here ; who as they would not admit any improvement 
 in innocence or blamelessness of life, so they would indignantly 
 reject and repel any alteration for the worse." 
 
 " I am much delighted with Lamb's letter to Southey, I have 
 read it many times ; Lamb feels firm and has taken sure 
 ground." 
 
 " I used to be much amused with Tobin and Godwin. 
 Tobin would pester me with stories of Godwin's dullness ; and 
 upon his departure Godwin would drop in just to say that 
 Tobin was more dull than ever." 
 
 " Mentioned many things of, and concerning, Godwin ; 
 which, to me, at that time not yet familiar with the ignorance 
 of the learned, with the contradictions, which I have since seen, 
 between the knowledge so called and the practices of men, 
 surprised me much." 
 
 * I have now no means of supplying this hiatus. 
 
LETTERS, ETC. 141 
 
 " Spoke in the highest terms of affection and consideration 
 of Lamb. Related the circumstance which gave occasion to 
 the ' Old Familiar Faces.' Charles Lloyd, in one of his fits, 
 had shown to Lamb a letter, in which Coleridge had illustrated 
 the cases of vast genius in proportion to talent and predomi- 
 nance of talent in conjunction with genius, in the persons of 
 Lamb and himself. Hence a temporary coolness, at the termi- 
 nation of which, or during its continuance, these beautiful 
 verses were written." 
 
 " Jeffery, speaking of Campbell, said ' He is one of the best 
 fellows in the world. If, however, he has a fault, it is that he 
 is envious, and to that degree that he wishes the walls may 
 fall and crush any one who may excel him. He is one of my 
 most intimate friends, and with that little drawback, one of the 
 best fellows in the world.' " 
 
 " Spoke of the cold and calculating character of the Scotch; 
 agreed that they were in this the same drunk or sober : their 
 heads seemed always so full that they could not hold more, 
 adding, ' We value the Scotch without however liking them ; 
 and we like the Irish without however oyer-valuing them. 
 Instanced Dr. Stoddart as having most of the unamiable traits 
 of the Scotch character without the personally useful ones — 
 doing dirty work for little pay.' " 
 
 " Came to me very much heated and fatigued, stayed to 
 refresh before proceeding to Sir George Beaumont's. Had 
 received a letter from Colin Mackenzie, stating that he was 
 occupied in attending the Privy Council, and that he feared 
 he should not be able to dine with him at Sir George Beau- 
 mont's. Coleridge not being able to decipher the letter, said, 
 ' It is an excellently contrived kind of hand for the purpose of 
 disguising false orthography. I had before this conceived 
 
142 LETTERS, ETC 
 
 strong suspicions, that my good friend Colin Mackenzie could 
 not spell, and they are now confirmed.'" 
 
 u Met WilMe at this dinner, who expressed his opinion that 
 patronage did no good but much injury. Said also, that he 
 should never think painting properly estimated until a painter 
 should make his fifteen, twenty, or thirty thousand a year like 
 a man at the bar ; — an opinion which did him no service with 
 Sir George Beaumont. — Speaking of the Queen's trial, I said, 
 
 ' It was a most atrocious affair.' 
 
 1 1 am delighted to hear you sanction my use of that opinion,' 
 said Lady Sarah Bathurst, ' indeed it was a most l atrocious " 
 business ; and if any iniquity could withdraw the sun's light, 
 that would surely have occasioned a physical, as well as moral, 
 eclipse.' A general outcry ; an earnest entreaty on the part 
 of Lady Sarah, put an end to this extraordinary scene." 
 
 " Quoted with great glee, as one of the best practical jokes 
 extant, if indeed a thing so good must not be true, a story 
 from an old Spanish humourist which had, by some strange 
 oversight or lapsus, escaped the shears of the Inquisition. 
 
 " At the sacrament, a Priest gave, without perceiving it, a 
 counter instead of a wafer. The communicant thinking it 
 would melt, very patiently waited, but without effect. The 
 Priest seeing him hesitate, inquired what was the matter ? 
 ' Matter,' said he, ' I hope you have not made a mistake and 
 given me God the Father, he is so hard and tough there is no 
 swallowing him.' These stories abound in all Catholic coun- 
 tries, especially in Italy. Indeed the religious of all countries 
 are, in the eye of Eeason, the greatest blasphemers, seeing 
 that though all affirm God made man in his own image, they 
 make God after their own imaginations." 
 
LETTERS, ETC. 143 
 
 LETTER XXIII 
 
 My dear Friend, Ramsgate, Nov. 2nd, 1821. 
 
 First, let me utter the fervent, God be praised ! for the 
 glad tidings respecting your dear Mother, which would have 
 given an abounding interest to a far less interesting letter. 
 May she be long preserved both to enjoy and reward your love 
 and piety ! And now I will try to answer the other contents 
 of your letter, as satisfactorily I hope, as I am sure it will be 
 sincerely and affectionately. Conscious how needfully, how 
 watchfully I cross-examined myself whether or no my anxiety 
 for your earthly happiness and free exercise of head and heart 
 had not warped the attention which it was my purpose to give 
 whole and undivided to the one Question — What is the Eight, 
 I can repeat (with as much confidence as the slippery and Pro- 
 tean nature of all self-inquisition and the great a priori like- 
 lihood of my reason being tampered with by my affections, 
 will sanction me in expressing) what I have already more than 
 once said, viz., that I hold it incredible, at least improbable to 
 the utmost extent, that you and I should decide differently in 
 any one definite instance. Let a case be stated with all its 
 particulars, personal and circumstantial, with its antecedents 
 and involved (n. b. — not its contingent or apprehended) conse- 
 quents — and my faith in the voice within, whenever the heart 
 desiringly listens thereto, will not allow me to fear that our 
 verdict should be diverse. If this be true, as true it is, it 
 follows — that we have attached a different import to the same 
 terms in some general proposition ; — and that, in attempting 
 to generalise my convictions briefly, and yet comprehensively, 
 I have worded it either incorrectly or obscurely. On the other 
 hand, your communications likewise, my dear friend ! were 
 indefinite — " taught light to counterfeit a gloom ;" and love 
 left in the dusk of twilight is apt to fear the worst, or rather, 
 to think of worse than it fears, and the momentary transforma- 
 tions of posts and bushes into apparitions and foot-pads must 
 
144 LETTERS, ETC. 
 
 not be interpreted as symptoms of brain fever or depraved 
 vision. 
 
 And now, my dearest Allsop ! why should it be "a melancholy 
 reflection, that the three most affectionate, gentle, and estimable 
 women in your world are the three from whom you bave learnt 
 almost to undervalue their sex?" In other words those who 
 in their reasonings have supposed as possible, not even im- 
 probable, that women can be unworthy and insincere in their 
 expressions of attachment to men, the frequency of which it is 
 as impossible, living open-eyed, not to have ascertained, as it 
 is with a heart awake to what a woman ought to be, and those 
 of whom you speak substantially * are. Why should this be a 
 melancholy reflection? (Thursday, Nov. 1st. A fatality seems 
 to hang over this letter; I will not, however, defer the con- 
 tinuation for the purpose of explaining its suspension.) Why, 
 dearest friend, a melancholy • reflection ? Must not those 
 women who have the highest sense of womanhood, who know 
 what their sex may be, and who feel the rightfulness of their 
 own claim to be loved with honour, and honoured with love, 
 have likewise the keenest sense of the contrary ? Understand 
 a few foibles as incident to humanity ; take as matters of course 
 that need not be mentioned, because we know that in the least 
 imperfect a glance of the womanish will shoot across the 
 womanly, and there are Mirandas and Imogens, a Una, a 
 Desdemona, out of fairy land ; rare, no doubt, yet less rare than 
 their counterparts among men in real life. Now can such a 
 woman not be conscious, must she not feel how great the 
 happiness is that a woman is capable of communicating, say 
 rather of being to a man of sense and sensibility, pure of heart, ' 
 and capable of appreciating, cherishing, and repaying her 
 virtues ? Can she feel this, and not shrink from the contem- 
 plation of a contrary lot ? Can she know this, and not know 
 what a soi'e evil, fearful in its heart- withering affliction in 
 
 * Thus in original letter. 
 
LETTERS, ETC. 145 
 
 proportion to the capacity of being blessed, a weak, artful, or 
 worthless woman is — perhaps in her own experience has been ? 
 And if she happen to know a young Man, know him as the 
 good, and only the good, know each other — if he were precious 
 to her, as a younger brother to a matron sister — and so that 
 she could not dwell on his principles, dispositions, manners, 
 without the thought — " If I had an only daughter, and she all 
 a mother ever prayed for, one other prayer should I offer — that, 
 freely chosen and choosing, she should enable me to call this 
 man my son! " would you not more than pardon even an excess 
 of anxiety, even an error of judgment, proceeding from a disin- 
 terested dread of his taking a step irrevocable, and, if unhappy, 
 miserable beyond all other misery, that of guilt alone excepted? 
 Especially if there were no known particulars to guide her 
 judgment — if that judgment were given avowedly, on the mere 
 unbelieved possibility, on an unsupposed supposition of the 
 worst. 
 
 In Mrs. Grillman I have always admired, what indeed I 
 have found more or less an accompaniment of womanly 
 excellence wherever found, a high opinion of her own sex 
 comparatively, and a partiality for female society. I know 
 that her strongest prejudices against individual men have 
 originated in their professed disbelief of such a thing as 
 female friendship, or in some similar brutish forgetfulness that 
 woman is an immortal soul ; and as to all parts of the female 
 character, so chiefly and especially to the best, noblest, and 
 highest — to the germs and yearnings of immortality in the 
 man. I have much to say on this, and shall now say it with 
 "comfort, because I can think of it as a pure Question of 
 Thought. But I will not now keep this letter any longer. 
 
 God bless you, and your friend, 
 T. Allsop, Esq. S. T. Coleridge. 
 
 P.S. The morning after our arrival, a card with our address 
 and all our several names was delivered in at the post office 
 
 10 
 
146 LETTERS, ETC. 
 
 and to the Postmaster ; and this morning, Monday, Oct. 29, 
 I received your letter dated 16th, which ought to have been 
 delivered on Wednesday last — lying at the Post-office while I 
 was hour by hour fretting or dreaming about you. And you, 
 too, must have been puzzled with mine, written on my birth- 
 day. A neglect of this kind may be forgivable, but it is 
 utterly inexcusable ; a Blind-worm sting that has sensibly 
 quickened my circulation, and I have half a mind to write to 
 Mr. Freeling, if my wrath does not subside with my pulse, 
 and I should have nothing better to do. 
 
 Earnest, affectionate, and impressive as this letter was to me, 
 and must be to others, I find in it a proof, if such were not up- 
 heaped and overflowing in the preceding letters, of the love and 
 abounding sympathy of this wonderful being ; the more admi- 
 rable as his own experience and trials had been of a nature rather 
 to sear and to embitter, than to cherish and extend hope and 
 the sympathetic affections. I may yet undertake a full expo- 
 sition of this particular question, which, though unsuited to 
 this work, would be of the highest possible value, not merely 
 or chiefly for those to whom it would be addressed, but by 
 reflex to parents and young children. The vice of the present 
 day, a spurious delicacy, which exceeding all propriety is 
 essentially indelicate, prevents the communication of many of 
 the most valuable truths to the gentler sex, and thus tends to 
 perpetuate those evils which are admitted to exist, and of 
 which the removal is felt — known — to be co-existent with the 
 public or open denunciation. Do I regret this delicacy ? No ; 
 or if so, only as a pseudo-economist, from its rendering neces- 
 sary a fresh translation of all the treasures of our ancient 
 literature, not one volume of which is in accord with the 
 finical expressions, with the sickly sentimentality of our modern 
 reading public. To what end is this ? Are our morals more 
 pure, our conduct more manly, than that of our ancestors? 
 
LETTEKS, ETC. 147 
 
 I fear much, that judged by any fixed standard, it will be 
 found to be the reverse, and that the greater the fastidiousness 
 the greater the real immorality. But this subject I will not 
 farther pursue ; it will be more fully discussed in the expo- 
 sition I contemplate, should it be necessary to prepare it. 
 
 The subjoined fragment of an essay printed more than 
 twenty years ago, and given to me with several others about 
 this time, I subjoin, as being, in my opinion, and, what is of 
 more worth, in the opinion of its author, of much value. 
 
 " The least reflection convinces us that our sensations, whether of 
 pleasure or of pain, are the incommunicable parts of our nature, such 
 as can be reduced to no universal rule, and in which, therefore, we 
 have no right to expect that others should agree with us, or to blame 
 them for disagreement. That the Greenlander prefers train oil to 
 olive oil, and even to wine, we explain at once by our knowledge of 
 the climate and productions to which he has been habituated. Were 
 the man as enlightened as Plato, his palate would still find that most 
 agreeable to which he had been most accustomed. But when the 
 Iroquois Sachem, after having been led to the most perfect specimens 
 of architecture in Paris, said that he saw nothing so beautiful as the 
 cooks' shops, we attribute this without hesitation to the savagery of 
 intellect, and infer with certainty that the sense of the beautiful was 
 either altogether dormant in his mind, or at best very imperfect. The 
 beautiful, therefore, not originating in the sensations, must belong to 
 the intellect, and therefore we declare an object beautiful and feel an 
 inward right to expect that others should coincide with us. But we 
 feel no right to demand it ; and this leads us to that which hitherto 
 we have barely touched upon, and which we shall now attempt to 
 illustrate more fully, namely, to the distinction of the beautiful from 
 the good. 
 
 " Let us suppose Milton in company with some stern and prejudiced 
 puritan, contemplating the front of York Cathedral, and at length 
 expressing his admiration of its beauty. "We will suppose it too, at 
 that time of his life when his religious opinions, feelings and pre- 
 judices more nearly coincided with those of the rigid anti-prelatists. 
 
 " Puritan. Beauty ! I am sure it is not the beauty of holiness. 
 
 " Milton. True : but yet it is beautiful. 
 
148 LETTEES, ETC. 
 
 " Puritan. It delights not me. What is it good for ? Is it of any 
 use but to be stared at ? 
 
 " Milton. Perhaps not : but still it is beautiful. 
 
 81 Puritan. But call to mind the pride and wanton vanity of those 
 cruel shaveKngs that wasted the labour and substance of so many 
 thousand poor creatures in the erection of this haughty pile. 
 
 " Milton. I do. But still it is very beautiful. 
 
 "Puritan. Think how many score of places of worship incom- 
 parably better suited both for prayer and preaching, and how many 
 faithful ministers might have been maintained, to the blessing of tens 
 of thousands, to them and their children's children, with the treasures 
 lavished on this worthless mass of stone and cement. 
 
 " Milton. Too true! but nevertheless it is very beautiful. 
 
 "Puritan. And it is not merely useless, but it feeds the pride of 
 the prelates, and keeps alive the popish and carnal spirit amongst the 
 people. 
 
 " Milton. Even so : and I presume not to question the wisdom nor 
 detract from the pious zeal of the first Reformers of Scotland, who for 
 these reasons destroyed so many fabrics, scarce inferior in beauty to 
 this now before our eyes. But I did not call it good, nor have I told 
 thee, brother, that if this were levelled with the ground, and existed 
 only in the works of the modeller or engraver, that I should desire to 
 reconstruct it. The Good consists in the congruity of a thing with 
 the laws of the reason and the nature of the will, and in its fitness to 
 determine the latter to actualise the former, and it is always discursive. 
 The Beautiful arises from the preconceived harmony of an object, 
 whether sight or sound, with the inborn and constitutional rules of 
 the judgment and imagination ; and it is always intuitive. As light 
 to the eye, even such is beauty to the mind, which cannot but have 
 complacency in whatever is perceived, as pre-configured to its living 
 faculties. 
 
 " Hence the Greeks called a beautiful object ko\ov, quasi kclXow, 
 i.e., calling on the soul, which receives instantly and welcomes it as 
 something con-natural." 
 
LETTERS, ETC. 149 
 
 LETTER XXIV. 
 
 Saturday Afternoon, Nov. 17 th. 
 At length, my dear friend ! we are safe and (I hope) sound 
 at Highgate. We would fain have returned, as we went, by the 
 Steam-vessel, but for two reasons ; one that there was none to 
 go by, the other, that Mr. Gillman thought it hazardous from 
 the chance of November fogs on the river. Likewise, my dear 
 Allsop, I have two especial reasons for wishing that it may be 
 in your power to dine with us to morrow ; first, it will give you 
 so much real pleasure to see my improved looks, and how very 
 well Mrs. Gillman has come back. I need not tell you, that 
 your sister cannot be dearer to you — and you are no ordinary 
 brother — than Mrs. Gillman is to me ; and you will therefore 
 readily understand me when I say, that I look at the manifest 
 and (as it was gradual), I hope permanent change in her 
 countenance, expression, and motion, with a sort of pride of 
 comfort; second (and in one respect more urgent), my 
 anxiety to considt you on the subject of a proposal made to 
 
 me by Anster, before I return an answerpwhlch I must #* ^ 
 "dcT speedily. I cannot conclude without assuring you how | 
 important a part your love and esteem constitute of the hap- 
 piness, and through that (I will yet venture to hope) of the 
 utility, of your affectionate friend, 
 T. Allsop, Esq. S. T. Coleridge. 
 
 u I have somewhere read a story of a Turk, who, when in 
 Paris, was prevailed upon to turn Christian, having been 
 promised plenty of wine in this life, and a Paradise of eternal 
 delights in the next. He was regularly instructed in the 
 doctrine of the Church of Rome, and after a time had the 
 sacrament administered to him. The next day, when his 
 instructor was interrogating him, he asked how many gods 
 there were ? 
 
 " ' None at all/ said Mustapha. 
 
150 LETTERS, ETC. 
 
 " ' How ! none at all ?' said the priest. 
 
 " ' No,' replied the sincere believer ; ' you have always 
 taught that there was only one God, and yesterday I eat him.' 
 
 *' Verily there is no absurdity, how glaring soever in the- 
 ology, that has not had at one time or other believers and 
 supporters amongst men of the greatest powers and most culti- 
 vated minds." 
 
 " In one respect, and in one only, are books better than con- 
 versation. In a book, the mind of the writer is before you, 
 and you can read and re- peruse it in case of doubt, whilst in 
 conversation a link once lost is irrecoverable. Thus in all 
 reported conversations, unless we are intimate with the mind 
 of the person speaking, we often draw a wrong conclusion, and 
 attribute that to discontent, to envy, or some other unworthy 
 feeling, which, if we were in possession of the author's reasons 
 and feelings, we should sympathise with, if indeed we did not 
 in every case acquiesce in, his conclusions." 
 
 " In order to escape the government regulations, and with a 
 view to contribute as little as possible to a war against freedom, 
 it was decided that I should publish the ' Watchman' every 
 eighth day, by which the stamp duty became unnecessary — 
 was, in fact, evaded." 
 
 When my friend was with me, I one day, about this time, 
 placed in his hands a volume of Letters from Swift, Boling- 
 broke, Pope ; and it was indeed delightful to hear him read 
 and comment upon these very interesting records of the 
 thoughts, feelings, and principles which actuated and impelled 
 the distinguished men of a hundred years ago. 
 
 Bolingbroke, always my favourite, was, in his letters at 
 least, the first in my friend's estimation. He dwelt with 
 affectionate and almost reverential interest upon the few manly, 
 
LETTERS, ETC. 151 
 
 philosophical, yet easy and graceful, letters and half letters in 
 this collection. Entirely agreeing as I do with Lamb in the 
 opinion, that Coleridge gave value to what he read, and that, 
 if not for the writer's, yet for his sake, you admired it, — I will 
 gratify myself by giving a few of the passages upon which my 
 friend dwelt with most onction. 
 
 POPE TO SWIFT. 
 
 " Dawley. 
 
 " I now hold the pen for my Lord Bolingbroke, who is reading your 
 letter between two hay-cocks ; but his attention is somewhat diverted 
 by casting his eyes to the clouds, not in admiration of what you say, 
 but for fear of a shower. He is pleased with your placing him in the 
 triumvirate between yourself and me, though he says that be doubts 
 he shall fare like Lepidus, while one of us runs away with all the 
 power like Augustus, and another with all the pleasures like Antony. 
 IDs great temperance and economy are so signal, that the first is fit 
 for my constitution, and the latter would enable you to lay up so 
 much money as to buy a bishopric in England. As to the return of 
 his health and vigour, you might inquire of his hay-makers ; but as 
 to his temperance, I can answer that, for one whole day, we have had 
 nothing for dinner but mutton broth, beans and bacon, and a barn- 
 door fowl. 
 
 " Now his lordship is run after his cart, &c." 
 
 SWIFT TO POPE. 
 
 " Dublin. 
 " You give a most melancholy account of yourself, and which I do 
 not approve. I reckon that a man, subject like us to bodily infirmi- 
 ties, should only occasionally converse with great people, notwith- 
 standing all their good qualities, easinesses, and kindnesses. There is 
 another race which I prefer before them, as beef and mutton for 
 constant diet before partridges ; I mean a middle kind both for under- 
 standing and fortune, who are perfectly easy, never impertinent, 
 complying in every thing, ready to do a hundred little offices that you 
 and I may often want ; who dine and sit with me Jive times for once that 
 I go to them, and whom I can tell, without offence, that I am otherwise 
 engaged at present." 
 
152 LETTEKS, ETC. 
 
 POPE TO SWIFT. 
 
 " London. 
 " At all events, your name and mine shall stand linked as friends to 
 posterity, both in prose and verse ; and (as Tully calls it) in consuelu- 
 dine studiorum. Would to God our persons could but as well, and as 
 surely, be inseparable ! I find my other ties dropping from me ; some 
 worn off, some torn off, and others relaxing daily : my greatest, both 
 by duty, gratitude, and humanity, Time is shaking every moment, 
 and it now hangs but by a thread I / am many years the older for living 
 with one so old; much the more helpless for having been so long helped 
 and tended by her ; and much the more considerate and tender, for a 
 daily commerce with one who required me justly to be both to her ; 
 and consequently the more melancholy and thoughtful, and the less 
 fit for others, who want only in a friend or companion to be amused 
 or entertained. 
 
 * * * * 
 
 " As the obtaining the love of valuable men is the happiest end 
 I know of in this life, so the next felicity is to get rid of fools and 
 scoundrels." 
 
 bolingbeoke to swift. 
 " Deae Swift, 
 
 " Take care of your health : I'll give you a receipt for it, a la 
 Montaigne; or, which is better, a la Bruyere. 
 
 " ' Nourisser bien votre corps ; ne le fatiguer jamais : laisser rouiller 
 1' esprit, meuble inutil, votre outil dangereux: laisser souper nos' 
 cloches le matin pour eveiller les chanoines, et pour faire dormir le 
 doyen d'un sommeil doux et profond, qui lui procure de beaux songes ; 
 levez vous tard,' &c. &c. I am in my farm, and here I shoot strong 
 and tenacious roots ; I have caught hold of the earth (to use a gar- 
 dener's phrase), and neither my friends nor my enemies will find it an 
 easy matter to transplant me again. 
 
 SWIFT TO POPE. 
 
 " I have conversed with some freedom with more ministers of state 
 of all parties than usually happens to men of my level ; and I confess, 
 in their capacity of ministers, I looli upon them as a race of people 
 whose acquaintance no man would court, otherwise than upon the score of 
 vanity or ambition. 
 
 " As to what is called a revolution of principle, my opinion was this, 
 
LETTERS, ETC. 153 
 
 — that whenever those evils which usually attend and follow a violent 
 change of government, were not in probability so pernicious as the griev- 
 ance we suffer under a present power, then the public good will justify 
 such a revolution. 
 
 " I had likewise in those days a mortal antipathy against standing 
 armies in times of peace ; because I always took standing armies to 
 be only servants hired by the master of the family for keeping his own 
 children in slavery, and because I conceived that a prince, who could 
 not think himself secure without mercenary troops, must needs have 
 a separate interest from that of his subjects ; although I am not 
 ignorant of those artificial necessities which a corrupted ministry can 
 create, for keeping up forces to support a faction against the public 
 interest. 
 
 " As to Parliament, I adored the wisdom of that Gothic institution 
 which made them annual ; * and I was confident our liberty could 
 never be placed upon a firm foundation until that ancient law were 
 restored among us : for who sees not that, while such assemblies are 
 permitted to have a longer duration, tliere grows up a commerce of cor- 
 ruption between the ministers and the deputies, wherein they both find 
 their accounts, to the manifest danger of liberty"? — which traffic would 
 neitlier answer the design nor expense if Parliament met once a year. 
 
 " I ever abominated that scheme of politics (now about thirty years 
 old) of setting up a monied interest in opposition to the landed : for 
 I conceived there could not be a truer maxim in our government than 
 this, — that the possessors of the soil are the best judges of what is for 
 the advantage of the kingdom. 
 
 * * * * * * 
 
 " I have ever hated all nations, professions, and communities, and 
 all my love is towards individuals : for instance, I hate the tribe of 
 lawyers, but I love Counsellor Such-a-one and Judge Such-a-one. 
 But principally I hate and detest that animal man, although I love 
 Peter, John, Thomas, and so forth. I have got materials towards a 
 treatise, proving the falsity of that definition, ' animal ratione,' and 
 to show it should be only ' rationis capax.' Upon this great foundation 
 of misanthropy (though not in Timon's manner) the whole building of 
 my travels is erected. The matter is so clear that it will admit of no 
 dispute. 
 
 " Dr. Arbuthnot likes the Projectors (in Gulliver's Travels) least ; 
 others you tell me the Flying Island ; some think it wrong to be so 
 
 * This from Swift— the Arch Tory I 
 
154 LETTERS, ETC. 
 
 hard upon whole bodies or corporations ; yet the general opinion is, 
 that reflections on particular persons are most to be blamed : in these 
 cases, I think the best method is to let censure and opinion take their 
 Course. A Bishop here said that book was full of improbable lies ; and 
 for his part, he hardly believed a word of it. So much for Gulliver. 
 
 " I hope my Whitehall landlord is nearer to a place than when I 
 left him : as the preacher said " the day of judgment was nearer than 
 ever it had been before. 1 ' 
 
 POPE TO SWIFT. 
 
 " I often imagine, if we all meet again after so many varieties and 
 changes, after so much of the old world and the old man in each of us 
 has been altered, that scarce a single thought of the one any more 
 than a single atom of the other remains the same. I have fancied, I 
 say, that we shall meet like the righteous in the Millenium, quite in 
 peace, divested of all our former passions, smiling at our past follies, 
 and content to enjoy the kingdom of the just in tranquillity ; but I 
 find you would rather be employed as an avenging angel of wrath, to 
 break your vial of indignation over the heads of the wretched 
 creatures of this world. 
 
 " I enter as fully as you can desire into the principle of your love 
 of individuals ; and I think the way to have a public spirit is first to 
 have a private one ; for who can believe that any man can care for a 
 hundred thousand men who never cared for one ? No ill-humoured 
 man can ever be a patriot any more than a friend. 
 
 " I take all opportunities of justifying you against these friends, 
 especially those who know all you think or write, and repeat your 
 slighter verses. It is generally on such little scraps that witlings 
 feed ; and it is hard that the world should judge of our housekeeping 
 from what we fling to the dogs." 
 
 " My lord, in the first part of the letter, has spoken justly of his 
 lady ; why not I of my mother ? Yesterday was her birthday, now 
 ente ing on the ninety-first year of her age, her memory much 
 diminished, but her senses very little hurt, her sight and hearing 
 good ; she sleeps not ill, eats moderately, drinks water, says her 
 prayers ; this is all she does. I have reason to thank God for con- 
 tinuing so long to me a very good and tender parent, and for allowing 
 
LETTERS, ETC. 155 
 
 me to exercise for some years those cares which are now as necessary 
 to her as hers have been to me. 
 
 " An object of this sort daily before one's eyes very much softens 
 the mind, but, perhaps, may hinder it from the willingness of con- 
 tracting other ties of the like domestic nature, when one finds how 
 painful it is even to enjoy the tender pleasures. I have formerly 
 made some strong efforts to get and deserve a friend ; perhaps it were 
 wiser never to attempt it, but live extempore, and look upon the world 
 only as a place to pass through, just pay your hosts their due, disperse a 
 little charity, and hurry on. 
 
 s ■ s e e 
 
 " While we do live we must make the best of life. 
 " ' Cantantes licet usque (minus via lsedet) eamus,' as the shepherd 
 said in Virgil when the road was long and heavy. 
 
 • ;••*« 
 
 " Can you possibly think he can neglect you ? If you catch your- 
 self thinking such nonsense, your parts are decayed ; for, believe me, 
 great geniuses must and do esteem one another, and I question if any 
 others can esteem or comprehend uncommon merit. Others only guess at 
 that merit, or see glimmerings of their minds ; a genius lias the intuitive 
 faculty ; therefore, imagine what you will, you cannot be so sure of 
 any man's esteem as of his. If I can think that neither he nor you 
 despise me, it is a greater honour to me by far, and will be thought 
 so by posterity, than if all the House of Lords writ commendatory 
 verses upon me, the Commons ordered me to print my works, the 
 Universities gave me public thanks, and the King, Queen, and Prince 
 crowned me with laurel. You are a very ignorant man ; you do not 
 know the figure his name and yours will make hereafter. I do, and 
 will preserve all the materials I can that I was of your intimacy. 
 Longo, sed proximus, intervallo. 
 
 * * * * 
 
 " The world will certainly be the better for his (Lord Bolingbroke's) 
 change of life. He seems, in the whole turn of his letters, to be a 
 settled and principled philosopher, thanking Fortune for the tran- 
 quillity he has been forced into by her aversion, like a man driven by a 
 violent wind, into a calm harbour. The most melancholy effect of years 
 is that you mention, the catalogue of those we loved, and have lost, 
 perpetually increasing. You ask me if I have got a supply of new 
 friends to make up for those who are gone ? I think that impossible ; 
 for not our friends only, but so much of ourselves is gone by the mere 
 flux and course of years, that, were the same friends restored to us, we 
 
156 LETTERS, ETC. 
 
 could not be restored to ourselves to enjoy them. But as, when the con- 
 tinual washing of a river takes away our flowers and plants, it throws 
 weeds and sedges in their room, so the course of time brings us some- 
 thing as it deprives us of a great deal, and instead of leaving us what 
 we cultivated, and expected to flourish and adorn us, gives us only 
 what is of some little use by accident. Thus, I have acquired a few 
 chance acquaintance of young men who look rather to the past age 
 thttn the present, and therefore the future may have some hopes of 
 them. I find my heart hardened and Hunted to new impressions; it will 
 scarce receive or retain affections of yesterday, and those friends wJio have 
 been dead these twenty years are more present to me now than those I 
 see daily. 
 
 * • * * * 
 
 " I am rich enough, and can afford to give away £100 a year. I 
 would not crawl upon the earth without doing a little good. I will 
 enjoy the pleasure of what I give, by giving it alive, and seeing another 
 enjoy it. When I die, I should be ashamed to leave enough for a 
 monument, if there were a wanting friend above ground.'' 
 
 SWIFT TO BOLINGBROKE. 
 
 " My Lord, — I have no other notion of economy than that it is the 
 parent of liberty and ease, and I am not the only friend you have who 
 have chid you in his heart for the neglect of it, though not with his 
 mouth as I have done. And, my lord, I have made a maxim that 
 should be writ in letters of diamonds, — That a wise man ought to have 
 money in his head, but not in his heart. I am sorry for Lady Boling - 
 broke's ill-health ; but I protest I never knew a very deserving person 
 of that sex who had not too much reason to complain of ill health.* 
 I never wake without finding life a more insignificant thing than it 
 was the day before ; but my greatest misery is recollecting the scene 
 of twenty years past, and then all of a sudden dropping into the present. 
 I remember, when I was a little boy, I felt a great fish at the end of my 
 line, which I drew up almost on the ground, but it dropt in, and the 
 disappointment vexes me to this very day, and I believe it was the type 
 of all my future disappointments. 
 
 * Is not this an additional ground, if any more were needed, in 
 support of the conclusion that all men, and indeed all women, who 
 have been very remarkable or very loveable, owe the original tendency 
 of their characters to physical structure. 
 
LETTERS, ETC. 157 
 
 " I tell you it is almost incredible how opinions change by the 
 
 decline or decay of spirits. 
 
 ***** 
 
 " I was forty-seven years old when I began to think of death, and 
 the reflections upon it now begin when I wake in the morning, and 
 end when I am going to sleep. 
 
 " My Lord, what I would have said of fame is meant of fame which 
 a man enjoys in this life, because I cannot be a great lord I would 
 Tequire a kind of subsidium. I would endeavour that my betters 
 should seek me, by being in something distinguishable, instead of my 
 seeking them. The desire of enjoying it in aftertime is owing to the 
 spirit and folly of youth ; but with age we learn to know that the 
 house is so full that there is no room for above one or two at most in 
 an age through the whole world. 
 
 BOLISTGBROKE TO SWIFT. 
 
 " I am under no apprehension that a glut of study and retirement 
 should cast me back into the hurry of the world ; on the contrary, 
 the single regret which I ever feel, is, that I fell so late into this 
 course of life ; my philosophy grows confirmed by habit, and if you 
 and I meet again, I will extort this approbation from you ; ' Jam non 
 consilio bonus, sed more eo perductus, ut non tantum recte facere 
 possim, sed nisi recte facere non possim.' The incivilities I meet with 
 from opposite parties have been so far from rendering me violent or 
 sour to any, that I think myself obliged to them all ; some have 
 cured me of my fears by showing me how impotent the world is ; 
 others have cured me of my hopes by showing how precarious popular 
 friendships are ; all have cured me of surprise. In driving me out of 
 party they have driven me out of cursed company ; and in stripping me 
 of titles, and rank, and estate, and such trinkets, which every man that 
 will, may spare, they have given me that which no man can be happy without. 
 
 " Perfect tranquillity is the general tenor of my life : good diges- 
 tion, serene weather, wind me above it now and then, but I never fall 
 below it ; lam sometimes gay, but I am never sad. As soon as I leave 
 this town I shall fall back into that course of life which keeps knaves 
 and fools at a great distance from me : I have an aversion to them 
 both, but in the ordinary course of life I think I can bear the sensible 
 knave better than the fool. One must, indeed, with the former, be in 
 some or other of the attitudes of those wooden men whom I have seen 
 before a sword-cutler's shop in Germany : but even in those con- 
 
158 LETTEKS, ETC. 
 
 strained postures the witty rascal will divert me, and he that diverts 
 me does me good, and lays me under an obligation to him, which I 
 am not obliged to pay in any other coin ; the fool obliges me to be 
 almost as much upon my guard as the knave, and he makes me no 
 amends ; he numbs me like the torpor or teases me like a fly. 
 ****** 
 
 " I used to think sometimes formerly of old age and of death enough 
 to prepare my mind, not enough to anticipate sorrow, to dash the joys 
 of youth, and be all my life a dying. I find the benefit of this prac- 
 tice now, and find it more as I proceed on my journey ; little regret 
 when I look backwards, little apprehension when I look forward. 
 ***** * 
 
 " You know that I am too expensive, and all mankind knows that 
 I have been cruelly plundered ; and yet I feel in my mind the power 
 of descending without anxiety two or three stages more. In short, 
 Mr. Dean, if you will come to a certain farm in Middlesex, you shall find 
 that I can live frugally without growling at the world or being peevish 
 with those whom fortune has appointed to eat my bread, instead of appoint- 
 ing me to eat theirs ; and yet I have naturally as little disposition to 
 frugality as any man alive. — I am sure you like to follow reason, not 
 custom ; through this medium you will see few things to be vexed at, 
 few persons to be angry at ; and yet tbere will frequently be things 
 which we ought to wish altered, and persons whom we ought to wish 
 
 " In your letter to Pope, you agree that a regard for fame becomes 
 a man more towards his exit than at his entrance into life, and yet 
 you confess that the longer you live the more you are indifferent 
 about it. Your sentiment is true and natural ; your reasoning, I am 
 afraid, is not so on this occasion. Prudence will make us desire fame, 
 because it gives us many real and great advantages in all the affairs 
 of life. Fame is the wise ?nan's means ; his ends are his own good, and the 
 good of Society. Your poets and orators have inverted this order ; you 
 propose fame as the end, and good, or at least great actions as the means. 
 You go farther ; you teach our self-love to anticipate the applause 
 which we suppose will be paid by posterity to our names, and with 
 idle notions of immortality you turn other heads besides your own. 
 
 Fame is an object which men pursue successfully by various and 
 even contrary courses. Your doctrine leads them to look on this end 
 as essential, and on the means as indifferent ; so that Fabricius and 
 Crassus, Cato and Caesar, pressed forward to the same goal. After all, 
 perhaps it may appear from the depravity of mankind, that you could 
 do no better, nor keep up virtue in the world, without calling up this 
 
LETTERS, ETC. 159 
 
 passion or this direction of self-love to your aid. Tacitus has crowned 
 this excuse for you, according to his manner, into a maxim, con- 
 temptufamaz, contemni virtutes. 
 
 ***** * 
 
 " I know not whether the love of fame increases as we advance in 
 age ; sure I am that the force of friendship does. I loved you almost 
 twenty years ago ; I thought of you as well as I do now, better was 
 beyond the power of conception, or, to avoid an equivoque, beyond 
 the extent of my ideas. Whether you are more obliged tome for loving 
 you as well when I knew you less, or for loving you as well after loving 
 you so many years, I shall not determine. What I would say is this : 
 whilst my mind grows daily more independent of the world, and feels 
 less need of leaning on external objects, the ideas of friendship return 
 oftener ; they busy me, they warm me more. 7s it that we grow mora 
 tender as the moment of our great separation approaches ? or is it that 
 they who are to live together in another state (for vera amicitia non 
 nisi inter bonos) begin to feel more strongly that divine sympathy 
 which is to be the great band of their future society ? There is no 
 one thought which soothes my mind like this j I encourage my ima- 
 gination to pursue it, and am heartily afflicted when another faculty* 
 of the intellect comes boisterously in, and wakes me from so pleasing 
 a dream, if it be a dream. 
 
 " I will dwell no more on economics than I have done in my former 
 letter ; thus much only will I say, that otium cum dignitate is to be 
 had with £500 as well as with £5,000 a year ; the difference will be 
 found in the value of the man, not of the estate. 
 
 # , * * * * 
 
 " I have sometimes thought that if preachers, hangmen, and moral 
 writers, keep vice at a stand, or so much as retard its progress, they 
 do as much as human nature admits. A real reformation is not to be 
 brought about by ordinary means ; it requires those extraordinary 
 means which become punishments as well as lessons. National cor- 
 ruption must be purged by national calamities. 
 
 ***** 
 
 " I was ill in the beginning of the winter for near a week, but in 
 no danger either from the distemper or from the attendance of three 
 physicians. Since that I have had better health than the regard I 
 have paid to health deserves. We are both in the decline of life, my 
 dear Dean, and have been some years going down the hill ; let us make 
 
 * Reason. 
 
160 LETTERS, ETC. 
 
 the passage as smooth as we can ; let us fence against physical evil 
 by care, and the use of those means which experience must have 
 pointed out to us ; let us fence against moral evil by philosophy. The 
 decay of passion strengthens philosophy ; for passion may decay and 
 stupidity not succeed. What hurt does age do us in subduing what we 
 toil to subdue all our lives ? It is now six o'clock in the morning; I recall 
 the time (I am glad it is over) when about this hour I used to be 
 going to bed, surfeited with pleasure or jaded with business; my head 
 often full of schemes, and my heart as often full of anxieties. 
 
 " Is it a misfortune, think you, that I rise at this hour refreshed, 
 serene, calm? that the past and even the present affairs of life stand 
 like objects at a distance from me, where I can keep off the disagree- 
 able so as not to be strongly affected by them, and from whence I can 
 draw the others nearer to me ? Passions in their force would bring 
 all these, nay even future contingencies, about my ears at once, and 
 reason would but ill defend me in the scuffle. 
 
 ***** 
 
 " My wife says she would find strength to nurse you if you was 
 here ; and yet, God knows she is extremely weak. The slow fever 
 works under, and mines the constitution. We keep it off sometimes, 
 but still it returns and makes new breaches before nature can repair 
 the old ones. I am not ashamed to say to you, that I admire her 
 more every hour of my life. Death is not to her the King of Terrors ; 
 she beholds him without the least fear. When she suffers much, she 
 wishes for him as a deliverer from pain ; when life is tolerable, she 
 looks on him with dislike, because he is to separate her from those 
 friends to whom she is more attached than to life itself. — You shall 
 not stay for my next as long as you have done for this letter ; and in 
 every one Pope shall write something better than the scraps of old 
 philosophers, which were the presents, munuscula, that stoical fop, 
 Seneca, used to send in every epistle to his friend Lucilius. 
 ***** 
 
 " As to retirement and exercise, your notions are true ; the first 
 should not be indulged in so much as to render us savages, nor the last neg- 
 lected so much as to impair health; but I know men who, for fear of 
 being savage, live with all who will live with them ; and who, to pre- 
 serve their health, saunter away half their time." 
 
LETTERS, ETC. 
 
 161 
 
 LETTER XXV. 
 
 My dear Friend, Monday Morning. 
 
 Ab Hydromania, Hydrophobia : from Water-lust comes 
 Water-dread. But this is a violent metaphor, and disagree- 
 able to boot. Suppose then, by some caprice or colic of nature, 
 an Aqueduct split on this side of the slider or Sluice-gate, the 
 two parts removed some thirty feet from each other, and the 
 communication kept up only by a hollow reed split lengthways, 
 of just enough width and depth to lay one's finger in ; the 
 likeness would be fantastic to be sure, but still it would be no 
 inapt likeness or emblem of the state of mind in which I feel 
 myself as often as I have just received a letter from you! — 
 and when, after the first flush of interest and rush of thoughts 
 stirred up by it, I sit down, or am about to sit down, to write 
 in answer, a poor fraction, or finger-breadth of the intended 
 reply fills up three-fourths of my paper ; so, sinking under the 
 impracticability of saying what seemed of use to say, I 
 substitute what there is no need to say at all — the expression 
 of my wishes, and the Love, Regard, and Affection, in which 
 they originate. 
 
 For the future, therefore, I am determined, whenever I have 
 any time, however short, to write whatever is first in mind, 
 and to send it off in the self-same hour. 
 
 I do not know whether I was most affected or delighted 
 with your last letter. It will endear Flower de Luce Court 
 to me above all other remembrances of past efforts ; and the 
 pain, the restless aching, that comes instantly with the thought 
 of giving out my soul and spirit where you cannot be present, 
 where I could not see your beloved countenance glistening 
 with the genial spray of the outpouring; this, in conjunction 
 with your anxiety and that of Mr. and Mrs. Gillman concern- 
 ing my health, is the most efficient, I may say, imperious of 
 the retracting influences as to the Dublin scheme.______ 
 
 Basil Montagu called on me yesterday. Icould not but be 
 
 11 
 
162 LETTERS, ETC. 
 
 amused to hear from him, as well as from Mrs. Chisholm and 
 two other visitors, the instantaneous expression of surprise at 
 the apparent change in my health, and the certain improve- 
 ment of my looks. One lady said, " Well ! Mr. Coleridge 
 really is very handsome." 
 
 Highgate is in high feud with the factious stir against the 
 governors of the chapel, one of whom I was advising against 
 a reply addressed to the inhabitants as an inconsistency. " But, 
 sir, we would not carry any thing to an extreme ! " This is 
 
 THE DARLING WATCH-WORD OP WEAK MEN, when they sit 
 
 down on the edges of two stools. Press them to act on fixed 
 principles, and they talk of extremes ; as if there were or could 
 be any way of avoiding them but by keeping close to a fixed 
 principle, which is a principle only because it is the one medium 
 between two extremes. 
 
 God bless you, my ever dear friend, and 
 
 Your affectionately attached 
 T. Allsop, Esq. S. T. Coleridge. 
 
 P.S. Our friend Gillman sees the factious nature and origin 
 of the proceedings in so strong a light, and feels so indignantly, 
 that I am constantly afraid of his honesty spirting out to his 
 injury. If I had the craft of a Draughtsman, I would paint 
 Gillman in the character of Honesty, levelling a pistol (with 
 " Truth " on the barrel) at Sutton, in the character of Modern 
 Eeform, and myself as a Dutch Mercury,* with rod in hand, 
 
 hovering aloft, and pouring water into the touchhole. 
 
 The superscription might be " Pacification," a little finely pro- 
 nounced on the first syllable. 
 
 The passage in italics, at the close of the last letter, may 
 now fitly be applied to the present unsorted or wn's-sorted 
 
 * Mercury, the god of lucre and selfish ends, patron god of thieves, 
 tradesmen, stock-jobbers, diplomatists,pirnps, harlots and go-betweens: 
 the soothing, pacifying god. 
 
LETTERS, ETC. 163 
 
 ministry ; though the possibility of such men being, by any 
 conjunction of circumstances, placed in a situation to influence 
 the destinies of a mighty nation in its struggles for self- 
 government, never, in the most extravagant mood of the Poet's 
 mind, occurred to kim. If the old Chancellor Oxenstiern 
 chided his son's under-estimation of himself and over-estimate 
 of others, by telling him " to go and see with how little wisdom 
 the world is governed," what words would he have used had 
 he wished to express a correct notion of our rulers f Either 
 we have no choice, or not the wisdom to choose aright. At 
 the moment that a modification or the abolition of the Peerage 
 is sought, we have a Government consisting of Peers, or sons 
 of Peers ; a Government, the necessity of whose existence pre- 
 cludes their carrying reform beyond the point to which they 
 are pledged, if indeed they have any intention to go even that 
 length. This is the parent defect in our present social con- 
 dition ; and until we shall have virtue and self-reliance enough 
 to place power in the middle classes at first, and in all classes 
 almost immediately after, the onward progress will be slow, and 
 exposed to the greatest danger, by the occurrence of any 
 adverse circumstances. 
 
 I am well aware that the " greatest and wisest minds are 
 those of whom the world hears least ;" still, when it is our 
 interest to be well governed, we shall seek and choose for our- 
 selves, and distrust those who seek us. i" speak advisedly : in 
 the district in which I reside, self-government has been 
 obtained ; and I speak from observation, and a thorough know- 
 ledge of its results, when I say, that imperfect as it is at 
 present (and chiefly so from the inferior circumstances by 
 which it is environed), yet that its superiority in practice is in 
 the highest degree satisfactory to those who have watched its 
 progress and seen its results. When the basis upon which 
 representation is founded is extended to all, then all will have 
 an interest in good Government ; and this so far from being to 
 be feared, is of all things the most to be desired. In propor- 
 
164 LETTERS, ETC. 
 
 tion as power is diffused, the rewards of public service lessened 
 and its labours increased, will the public be served well ; and 
 the public functionary will become the mere organ for the 
 expression of the universal public will. 
 
 If this were an untried scheme, it' would be well to urge 
 caution ; but when we know that it is in existence, and that 
 practically it acts well, it is discreditable to our public spirit, 
 and to the character of our age, that self-government has not 
 been adopted, or that approximation to this desirable state has 
 not taken place to a much greater extent. 
 
 t "- On one oooacion Godwin 4oek me to Purley, whoro wc 
 /^t*-*2£. ,-4»e* Sir Francis Burdett. Altogether, during the whole day, 
 ^2 r ~%tJ'C£ " ,fr/ ' The feast of reason and the flow of soul ' 
 
 /*yV^* / * was without drawback. It was -i ndeed an Attic-Feast.^"^ ^^Sjl^j 
 " I was pressed to go again. I went : but how changed ! 
 Li A ^C^° longer did I see^ gentleman er scholar s, I only saw 
 ._*• / drunkards, who tc^obscenity, scurrility, and malignity-added 
 "**^ / /,&Yerj species of grossness and impurity, y^ had been in the 
 J * / ** 4 * * ^company of sceptics, of Pyrrhonists , but never before - had - I 9aJ 
 seesf wickedness exhibited do oomplotoly without disguise, and 
 in all its naked deformity. 
 
 " The only emulation was, which could utter the most sense- 
 less, the most horrid impurities, uttered in all the uproarious 
 
 mirth and recklessness of lost souls. I J^came_sick ; I left the 
 room and got into a hackney coach, which ■ happonmTt fr-ke at 
 the door, ^fc" was followed by Sir Francis Burdett, who 
 earnestly entreated me to visit him at Wimbledon. I made 
 no promise, nor did I ever go, and I now blame myself that 
 political predilections should have hindered me from visiting 
 him, as it is possible I might have assisted, if not to reclaim, 
 to recall at least the truant energies of one who, in spite of my 
 disgust at the orgies in which he participated, so respectfully 
 entreated me." £ f*W+* A'$ J ^f^'/* t ^^*^ J 
 
 , £L4-A+*-* Jits ^j^/*^t^^/^J2r~yZir~-£* . &f-&-^~-~ f~^-+r~*^ m ~^f7*£s^ 
 
 
LETTERS, ETC. 
 
 165 
 
 I find the following lines amongst my papers, in my own 
 writing, but whether an unfinished fragment, or a contribution 
 to some friend's production, I know not. 
 
 " What boots to tell how o'er his grave 
 She wept, that would have died to save ; 
 Little they know the heart, who deem 
 Her sorrow but an infant's dream 
 
 Of transient love begotten ; 
 A passing gale, that as it blows 
 Just shakes the ripe drop from the rose — 
 That dies, and is forgotten. 
 
 Oh woman ! nurse of hopes and fears, 
 All lovely in thy spring of years, 
 
 Thy soul in blameless mirth possessing ; 
 Most lovely in affliction's tears, 
 
 More lovely still those tears suppressing." 
 
 LETTER XXVI. 
 
 Dearest Friend, January 25th, 1822. 
 
 My main reason for wishing that Mrs. Gillman should have 
 made her call on Mrs. Allsop, or that Mrs. Allsop would waive 
 the ceremony, and taking the willingness for the act, and the 
 prsesens in rus (if Highgate deserves that name) for the future 
 in urbe, would accompany you hither, on the earliest day con- 
 venient to you both, is, that I cannot help feeling the old 
 inkling to press you to spend the Sunday with me, and yet feel 
 a something like impropriety in so doing. Speaking confi- 
 dentially, et inter nosmet, if it were prognosticate that dear 
 Charles would be half as delightful as when we were last with 
 him, and as pleasant relatively to the probable impressions on 
 a stranger to him as Mary always is, I should still ask you to 
 fulfil our first expectation. As it is, I must be content to wish 
 it ; and leave the rest to your knowledge of the circumstantial 
 pro's and con's. Only remember, that what is dear to you 
 
166 LETTERS, ETC. 
 
 becomes dear to me, and that whatever can in the least add to 
 happiness in which yon are interested, is a dnty which I cannot 
 neglect without injury to my own. I am convinced that your 
 happiness is in your own possession. 
 
 One part of your letter gave me exceeding comfort — that in 
 which you spoke of the peculiar sentiment awakened or inspired 
 at first sight. This is an article of my philosophic creed. 
 
 And now for my pupil schemes. Need I say that the verdict 
 of your judgment, after a sufficient hearing, would determine 
 me to abandon a plan of the expediency and probable result of 
 which I was less sceptical than I am of the present ? But first 
 let me learn from you whether you had before your mind, at 
 the moment that you formed your opinion, the circumstance of 
 my being already in some sort engaged to one pupil already : 
 that with Mr. Stutfield and Mr. Watson I have already pro- 
 ceeded on two successive Thursdays, and completed the 
 introduction and the first chapter, amounting to somewhat 
 more than a closely-printed octavo sheet, requiring no such 
 revision as would render transcription necessary ; and that 
 three or four more young men at the table will make no 
 addition, or rather no change. Mr. Gillman thought my 
 agreeing to receive Stutfield advisable. Mrs. Gr. did not 
 indeed influence me by any express wish, but thought that this 
 was the most likely way in which my work would proceed with 
 regularity and constancy ; in short, it was, or seemed to be, a 
 bird in the hand, that, in conjunction with other reliable 
 resources, would remove my anxiety with regard to the 
 increasing any positive pressure on their finances of former 
 years ; so that if I could not lessen, I should prevent the deficit 
 from growing. On all these grounds I did — I need not sav 
 down right — engage myself, but I certainly permitted Mr. 
 Stutfield to make the ti'ial in such a form that I scarcely know 
 whether I can, in the spirit of the expectation I excited, be the 
 first to cry of, he appearing fully satisfied and in good earnest. 
 Now, supposing this to be the state of the case, how would my 
 
LETTERS, ETC. 167 
 
 work fare the better by dictating it to two amanuenses instead 
 of five or six, if I get so many ? For the occasional explana- 
 tions, and the necessity of removing difficulties and misappre- 
 hensions, are a real advantage in a work which I am peculiarly 
 solicitous to have " level with the plainest capacities." To be 
 sure, on the other hand, I might go on three days in the week 
 instead of one, and let the work outrun the lectures, but just so 
 I might on the plan of an increased number of auditors ; and 
 secondly, so many little obstacles start up when it is not /ore- 
 known that on such a day I must do so and so. I need not 
 explain myself further. You can understand the " I would not 
 ask you, but it is only — " " and but that- — " " I pray do not 
 take any time about it," &c, &c, added to my startings off. 
 
 If I do not see you on Sunday, do not fail to write to me, 
 for of course I shall take no step till I am quite certain that 
 your judgment is satisfied one way or other, for I am with 
 unwrinkled confidence and inmost reclination, 
 
 Your affectionate friend, 
 
 S. T. Coleridge. 
 T. AUsop, Esq. 
 
 I have preserved the prospectus of a course of Lectures 
 which were delivered in Flower de Luce Court in 18 18, and 
 were constantly thronged by the most attentive and intelligent 
 auditory I have ever seen. This prospectus I insert. I wish 
 the same care had been taken of the notes made at the time. 
 I still cling to the hope that I shall recover them, or that the 
 notes said to have been taken by a reporter will be made 
 available in the forthcoming biography. 
 
 " Prospectus of a Course of Lectures by S. T. Coleridge. 
 
 " There are few families at present in the higher and middle classes 
 of English society, in which literary topics and the productions of the 
 Fine Arts, in some one or other of their various forms, do not occa- 
 sionally take their turn in contributing to the entertainment of the 
 
168 LETTERS, ETC. 
 
 social board, and the amusement of the circle at the fire-side. The 
 acquisitions and attainments of the intellect ought, indeed, to hold a 
 very inferior rank in our estimation, opposed to moral worth, or even 
 to professional and specific skill, prudence, and industry. But why 
 should they be opposed, when they may he made subservient merely 
 by being subordinated ? It can rarely happen that a man of social 
 disposition, altogether a stranger to subjects of taste (almost the only 
 ones on which persons of both sexes can converse with a common 
 interest), should pass through the world without at times feeling 
 dissatisfied with himself. The best proof of this is to be found in the 
 marked anxiety which men who have succeeded in life without the 
 aid of these accomplishments show in securing them to their children. 
 A young man of ingenuous mind will not wilfully deprive himself of 
 any species of respect. He will wish to feel himself on a level with 
 the average of the society in which he lives, though he may be 
 ambitious of distinguishing himself only in his own immediate pursuit 
 or occupation. 
 
 "Under this conviction, the following Course of Lectures was 
 planned. The several titles will best explain the particular subjects 
 and purposes of each ; but the main objects proposed, as the result of 
 all, are the two following : — 
 
 "I. To convey, in a form best fitted to render them impressive at 
 the time, and remembered afterwards, rules and principles of sound 
 judgment, with a kind and degree of connected information, such as 
 the hearers, generally speaking, cannot be supposed likely to form, 
 collect, and arrange for themselves, by their own unassisted studies. 
 It might be presumption to say that any important part of these 
 Lectures could not be derived from books ; but none, I trust, in sup- 
 posing, that the same information could not be so surely or conve- 
 niently acquired from such books as are of commonest occurrence, or 
 with that quantity of time and attention which can be reasonably 
 expected, or even wisely desired, of men engaged in business and the 
 active duties of the world. 
 
 " II. Under a strong persuasion that little of real value is derived 
 by persons in general from a wide and various reading ; but still more 
 deeply convinced as to the actual mischief of unconnected and pro- 
 miscuous reading, and that it is sure, in a greater or less degree, to 
 enervate even where it does not likewise inflate, I hope to satisfy 
 many an ingenuous mind, seriously interested in its own development 
 and cultivation, how moderate a number of volumes, if only they be 
 judiciously chosen, will suffice for the attainment of every wise and 
 desirable purpose ; that is, in addition to those which he studies for 
 
LETTERS, ETC. 169 
 
 specific and professional purposes. It is saying less than the truth to 
 affirm, that an excellent book (and the remark holds almost equally- 
 good of a Raphael as of a Milton) is like a well-chosen and 'well- tended 
 fruit tree. Its fruits are not of one season only. With the due and 
 natural intervals, we may recur to it year after year, and it will supply 
 the same nourishment and the same gratification, if only we ourselves 
 return with the same healthful appetite. 
 
 " The subjects of the lectures are indeed very different, but not, in 
 the strict sense of the term, diverse : they are various rather than 
 miscellaneous. There is this bond of connection common to them all, 
 that the mental pleasure which they are calculated to excite is not 
 dependent on accidents of fashion, place, or age, or the events or 
 the customs of the day, but commensurate with the good sense, taste, 
 and feeling, to the cultivation of which they themselves so largely 
 contribute, as being all in hind, though not all in the same dcyree, 
 productions of Genius. 
 
 " What it would be arrogant to promise, I may yet be permitted to 
 hope, — that the execution will prove correspondent and adequate to 
 the plan. Assuredly, my best efforts have not been wanting so to 
 select and prepare the materials, that, at the conclusion of the lectures, 
 an attentive auditor, who should consent to aid his future recollection 
 by a few notes, taken either during each lecture or soon after, would 
 rarely feel himself, for the time to come, excluded from taking an 
 intelligent interest in any general conversation likely to occur in 
 mixed society. 
 
 " S. T. Coleridge." 
 
 LETTER XXVII. 
 
 My dearest Friend, March 4th, 1822. 
 
 I have been much more than ordinarily unwell for more 
 than a week past— my sleeps worse than my vigils, my nights 
 than my days ; 
 
 " The night's dismay 
 
 Sadden'd and stunned the intervening day ;'" 
 
 but last night I had not only a calmer night, without roaming 
 in my dreams through any of Swedenborg's Hells modere ; 
 but arose this morning lighter and with a sense of relief. 
 
170 LETTERS, ETC. 
 
 I scarce know whether the enclosed Detenu is worth enclo- 
 sing or reading. I fancy that I send it because I cannot write 
 at any length that which is even tolerably adequate to what I 
 wish to say. Mrs. Gillman returned from town — very much 
 pleased with her reception by Mrs. Allsop, and with the 
 impression that it would be her husband's fault if she did not 
 make him a happy home. 
 
 I shall make you smile, as I did dear Mary Lamb, when I 
 say that you sometimes mistake my position. As individual 
 to individual, from my childhood, I do not remember feeling 
 myself either superior or inferior to any human being; except 
 by an act of my own will in cases of real or imagined moral or 
 intellectual superiority. In regard to worldly rank, from eight 
 years old to nineteen, I was habituated, nay, naturalised, to 
 look up to men circumstanced as you are, as my superiors — a 
 large number of our governors, and almost all of those whom 
 we regarded as greater men still, and whom we saw most of, 
 viz. our committee governors, were such — and as neither awake 
 nor asleep have I any other feelings than what I had at 
 Christ's Hospital, I distinctly remember that I felt a little 
 flush of pride and consequence — just like what we used to feel 
 at school when the boys came running to us — "Coleridge! 
 here's your friends want you — they are quite grand," or " It 
 is quite a lady" — when I first heard who you were, and 
 laughed at myself for it with that pleasurable sensation that, 
 spite of my sufferings at that school, still accompanies any 
 sudden re-awakening of our school-boy feelings and notions. 
 And oh, from sixteen to nineteen what hours of Paradise had 
 Allen and I in escorting the Miss Evanses home on a Saturday, 
 who were then at a milliners whom we used to think, and 
 who I believe really was, such a nice lady ; — and we used to 
 carry thither, of a summer morning, the pillage of the flower 
 gardens within six miles of town, with Sonnet or Love Ehynie 
 wrapped round the nose-gay. To be feminine, kind, and 
 genteelly (what I should now call neatly) dressed, these were 
 
LETTERS, ETC. 171 
 
 the only things to which my head, heart, or imagination had 
 any polarity, and what I was then, I still am. 
 
 God hless you and yours, 
 T. AUsop, Esq. S. T. Coleridge. 
 
 Letter to a Young Lady. 
 
 If there he any one subject which it especially concerns a 
 young woman to understand, both in itself generally, and in 
 its application to her own particular habits and circumstances, 
 it is that op marriage ; and if there be any one subject of 
 more perplexing delicacy than any other to advise a young 
 woman about, above all for one of a different sex, and of no 
 marked inequality in respect of age, however the attempt may 
 seem authorised by intimacy and nearness of kindred ; if there 
 be one that at once attracts by its importance and repels by its 
 difficulty, it is that op marriage. To both sexes, indeed, 
 it is a state of deep and awful interest, and to enter into it 
 without proportionate Forethought is in both alike an act of 
 Folly and Self-degradation. But in a Woman, if she have **^*~*^r~i 
 sense and sensibility enough to deserve the name, it is an act / 
 
 tantamount to Suicide — for it is a state which, once entered ' 
 
 into, fills the ivlwle sphere of a Woman's moral and personal 
 Being, her Enjoyments and her Duties, dismissing none, 
 adding many, and modifying all. Even those Duties (ifsuch c«,-«~~*/ 
 there be) which it may seem to* leave behind, it does but / 
 
 transfer ; say rather, it re-imposes and re-consecrates them 
 under yet dearer names (though names more dear than those 
 of Daughter and Sister it is not easy to imagine) ; at all 
 events, with obligations, additionally binding on her con- 
 science, because undertaken by an act of her own free will. A 
 woman' — mark me ! in using that term I still have before my 
 
 * Too often, I fear, on the supposed sanction of the mistranslated, 
 and still worse interpreted, text, Genesis ii. -29r "2- S_l 
 
172 LETTERS, ETC. 
 
 mind the idea of Womanhood, and suppose the individual to 
 possess its characteristic constituents — a woman in a single 
 state may be happy and may be miserable ; but most happy, 
 most miserable — these are epithets which, with rare exceptions, 
 belong exclusively to a Wife. The tree of full life, and 
 that " whose mortal taste brings death" into the heart, these, 
 
 my dear , grow in the probationary Eden of courtship 
 
 alone. To the Many of both sexes I am well aware this 
 Eden of matrimony is but a Kitchen-garden, a thing of 
 Profit and convenience, in an even temperature between 
 indifference and liking ; where the beds, bordered with Thrift, 
 reject all higher attractions than the homely charms of Mary- 
 gold and Penny-royal, or whatever else is good to boil in the 
 Pot, or to make the Pot boil ; or if there be aught of richer frag- 
 rance and more delicate hues, it is put or suffered there not for 
 
 the Blossom but for the Pod. But this, my dear , is neither 
 
 the soil, climate, nor aspect, in which your u Heart' s-ease " or 
 your " Herbs of grace " would bloom or burgeon. To be 
 happy in Marriage Life, nay (unless you marry with the pros- 
 pect of sinking into a lower state of moral feeling, and of 
 gradually quenching in yourself all hope and all aspiration that 
 looks beyond animal comforts and the outside shows of worldly 
 respectability), in order not to be miserable, you must have a 
 Soul-m&te as well as a House or a To&e-mate ; you must have 
 a Husband whom before the Altar, making yourself at that 
 moment distinctly conscious of the presence of the Almighty 
 God to whom you appeal, you can safely, that is, according to 
 your confident belief, grounded on sufficient opportunities of 
 observation, conscientiously vow to love, honour, and respect. 
 With what disgust would you not turn from a sordid, with what 
 horror would you not recoil from a contagious or infectious 
 garment offered to you ? you would not suffer it to come near 
 your skin. And would you surrender your person, would you 
 blend your whole personality, as far as God has put it in your 
 power to do so, all that you call " I " — soul, body, and estate — 
 
a r *JU'2r>~y^SiUy+~) c^x^rijtA^ {Z*~*n-^fu*^ rf^t^^t^, 
 
 LETTEKS, ETC. 173 
 
 with one, the contagion of whose Principles, the infection or 
 sordidness of whose habits and conversation you would have 
 to guard against in behalf of your own soul ; and the insidious 
 influence of which on the tone and spirit of your thoughts, 
 feelings, objects, and unconscious tendencies and manners, 
 would be as the atmosphere in which you lived ! Or were the 
 Man's character merely negative in these respects, were he 
 only incapable of understanding the development of your moral «£> 
 Being, including all those minor duties and objects of quiet 
 pursuit and enjoyment which constitute the moral Taste; 
 were he only indifferent to the interest you felt for his and 
 your own salvation, and for the conditions of your re-union 
 in the world to come — still it would be a benumbing influence, 
 and the heart may be starved where it is neither stabbed nor 
 poisoned. God said that it was not well for the human Being 
 to be alone ; to be what we ought to be, we need support, 
 help, communion in good. What, then, if instead of a Help- 
 mate we take an Obstacle, a daily counteraction? But the mere 
 want of what God has rendered necessary or most desirable 
 for us is itself an obstacle. Virtue sickens in the air of the 
 Marshes, loaded with poisonous Effluvia ; but even where the 
 air is merely deficient in the due quantity of its vital Element, 
 and where there is too little, though what there is may be 
 faultless, human virtue lives but a panting and anxious life. 
 For as to a young woman's marrying in the hope of reforming 
 the man's principles, you will join with me in smiling at the 
 presumption, or more probably the pretext ; as if the Man was 
 likely to appreciate as of very serious importance a danger 
 which the Wife had not feared to risk on so slender a chance, 
 or be persuaded by her to feel as hateful the very qualities 
 which she had taken to her Bosom, as a few weeds in a Nose- 
 gay that she might pick out at leisure. 
 
 Well (you will perhaps reply), you would have convinced 
 me, if I had not been convinced before, of the misery atten- 
 dant on an unfit choice, and the criminal folly of a rash and 
 
174 LETTERS, ETC. 
 
 careless one. But by what marks am I to distinguish the 
 suitable from the unsuitable ? What are the criteria, or at 
 least the most promising signs of a man likely to prove a good 
 husband to a good wife ? And as far as you can judge from 
 your knowledge of my character, principles, and temper, likely 
 to find his happiness in me, and to make me happy and 
 deserving to be so ? For perfection can be expected on neither 
 side. 
 
 Most true ; and whilst the Defects are both in their kind and 
 their degree within the bounds of that Imperfection which is 
 common to all in our present state, the best and wisest way 
 that a Wife can adopt, is to regard even faulty trifles as serious 
 faults in herself, and yet to bear with the same or equivalent 
 faults as trifles in her Husband. If the Fault is removable, 
 well and good ; if not, it is a speck in a Diamond — set the 
 jewel in the Marriage Ring with the speck downmost. But it 
 is one thing to choose for the companion of our life a man 
 troubled with occasional Headaches or Indigestions, and another 
 to run into the arms of inveterate Gout, or consumption (even 
 though the consequent Hectic should render the countenance 
 still more winning and beautiful), or of Hemiplegia, that is, 
 of Palsy on one side. For, as you will see that I am speaking 
 figuratively, and under the names of bodily complaints am 
 really thinking, and meaning you to think, of moral and in- 
 tellectual Defects and Diseases, I have hazarded the hard word 
 " Hemiplegia ;" as I can conceive no more striking and ap- 
 propriate Image or Symbol of an Individual with one-half of 
 his Being, that is, his person, manners, and circumstances, 
 well and as it should be, while the other and inestimably more 
 precious Half is but half alive, blighted and insensate. Now 
 for the prevention of the perilous mistake, into which a personal 
 prepossession is too apt to seduce the young and marriageable, 
 and females more often, perhaps, than males, from the very 
 gentleness of their sex, the mistake of looking through the 
 diminishing end of the Glass and confounding vices with 
 
LETTERS, ETC. 175 
 
 foibles, — I know no better way tban by attempting to answer 
 the questions, which I have supposed you to put, overleaf; 
 viz. — What are the marks, &c., first, generally, and, secondly, 
 in particular application to yourself ? In . the latter I can of 
 course only speak conjecturally, except as your outward cir- 
 cumstances and relative Duties are concerning ; in all else you 
 must be both Querist and Eespondent. But the former, the 
 knowledge of which will be no mean assistance to you in solving 
 the latter for your own satisfaction, I think I can answer 
 distinctly and clearly ; and with this, therefore, we will begin. 
 
 You would have reason to regard your sex affronted, if I 
 supposed it necessary to warn any good Woman against open 
 viciousness in a Lover, or avowed indifference to the great 
 principles of moral obligation, religious, social, or domestic. 
 [_By " religious" I do not here mean matters of opinion or cc 3 ^In- 
 differences of belief in points where good and wise men have <h^^n./L^ 
 agreed to differ. Beligious (in my present use of the word), is ^- ^^ 
 twit morality in reference to all that is permanent and im- 
 perishable, God and our souls, for instance ; and Morality is 
 Beligion in its application to individuals, circumstances, the 
 various relations and spheres in which we happen to be placed ; 
 in short, to all that is contingent and transitory, and passes 
 away, leaving no abiding trace but the conscience of having or 
 not having done our duty in each._j 
 
 I would fain, if the experience of Life would permit me, 
 think it no less superfluous to dissuade a Woman of common 
 foresight and information, from encouraging the addresses of 
 one, however unobjectionable or even desirable in all other 
 respects, who, she knew, or had good reason to believe, was by 
 acquired or hereditary constitution affected by those mournful 
 complaints, which, it is well known, are ordinarily transmitted 
 to the offspring, to one or more, or all. But, alas ! it often 
 happens, that afflictions of this nature are united with the 
 highest worth and the most winning attractions of Head, 
 Heart, and Person ; nay, that they often add to the native 
 
176 LETTERS, ETC. 
 
 good Qualities of the Individual a tenderness, a sensibility, 
 a quickness of perception, and a vivacity of Principle, that 
 cannot but conciliate an interest in behalf of the Possessor in 
 the affections of a Woman, strong in proportion to the degree 
 in which she is herself characterised by the same excellences. 
 Manly virtues and manly sense with feminine manners without 
 effeminacy, form such an assemblage, a tout ensemble bo 
 delightful to the Womanly Heart, that it demands a hard, a 
 cruel struggle to find in any ground of objection an effective 
 counterpoise, a decisive negative. Yet the struggle must be 
 made, and must end in the decisive and, if possible, the pre- 
 ventive " no ;" or all claims to Eeason and Conscience, and to 
 that distinctive seal and impress of divinity on Womanhood, 
 the Maternal Soul, must be abandoned. The probable misfor- 
 tunes attendant on the early death of the Head of the Family 
 are the least fearful of the consequences that may rationally, 
 and therefore ought, morally, to be expected from such a choice. 
 The Mother's anguish, the Father's heart-wasting self-reproach, 
 the recollection of that Innocent lost, the sight of this Darling 
 suffering, the Dread of the future, — in fine, the conversion of 
 Heaven's choicest Blessings into sources of anguish and subjects 
 of Kemorse. I have seen all this in more than one miserable, 
 and most miserable because amiable and affectionate couple, 
 and have seen that the sound constitution of one parent haa 
 not availed against the Taint on the other. Would to God 
 the picture I have here exhibited were as imaginary in itself 
 as its exhibition is unnecessary and the reality of improbable 
 occurrence for you. 
 
 Dismissing, therefore, as taken for granted or altogether 
 inapplicable, all objections grounded on gross and palpable unfit- 
 ness for a state of moral and personal union and life-long 
 interdependence, — and less than this is not Marriage, whether 
 the unfitness result from constitutional or from moral defect or 
 derangement ; and with these, and only not quite so bad, dis- 
 missing too the objections from want of competence, on both 
 
LETTERS, ETC. 177 
 
 sides, in worldly means, proportional to their former rank and 
 habits ; and yet what worse or more degradingly selfish (yea, 
 the very Dregs and Sediment of Selfishness, after the more 
 refined and human Portion of it, the sense of ^{-interest, has 
 been drawn off), what worse, I repeat, can be said of the Beasts 
 of the Field, without reflection, without forethought, of whom 
 and for whose Offspring, Nature has taken the responsibility 
 upon herself? — Putting all these aside, as too obvious to 
 require argument or exposition, I will now pass to those 
 marks which too frequently are overlooked, however obvious 
 in themselves they may be ; but which ought to be looked for, 
 and looked after, by every woman who has ever reflected on 
 the words, " my future Husband " with more than girlish 
 Feelings and Fancies. And if the Absence of these Marks in 
 an Individual furnishes a decisive reason for the rejection of 
 his addresses, there are others the presence of which forms a 
 sufficient ground for hesitation, and I will begin with an 
 instance. 
 
 When you hear a Man making exceptions to any funda- 
 mental Law of Duty in favour of some particular pursuit or 
 passion, and considering the dictates of Honour as neither "y 
 more nor less than motives of selfish Prudence in respect of 
 character ; in other words, as conventional and ever-changing 
 regulations, the breach of which will, if detected, blackball the 
 offender, and send him to Coventry in that particular Rank and 
 Class of Society of which he was born or has become a 
 member ; when, instead of giving instantaneous and uncon- 
 ditional obedience to the original Voice from within, a man 
 substitutes for this, and listens after, the mere echo of the 
 Voice from without ; his knowledge, I mean, of what is com- 
 manded by Fashion and enforced by the foreseen consequences 
 of non-compliance on his Worldly reputation (thus I myself 
 heard a buckish Clergyman, a clerical Nimrod, at Salisbury 
 avow, that he would cheat his own Father in a HoeseJ, then I 
 say, that to smile, or show yourselves smiling angry, as if a 
 
 12 
 
178 LETTERS, ETC. 
 
 Tap with your Fan was a sufficient punishment, and a " for 
 shame ! you don't think so, I am sure," or " you should not 
 say so," a sufficient reproof, would be an ominous symptom 
 either of your own laxity of moral Principle and deadness to 
 true honour, and the unspeakable Contemptibleness of this 
 gentlemanly Counterfeit of it, or of your abandonment to a 
 blind passion, kindled by superficial Advantages and outside 
 Agreeables, and blown and fuelled by that most base and yet 
 frequent thought, " one must not be over nice, or a woman may 
 say No till no one asks her to say Yes." And what does this 
 amount to (with all the other pretty common places, as, " What 
 right have I to expect an angel in the shape of a man ?" &c, 
 &c.) but the plain confession, " I want to be married, the better 
 the man the luckier for me ; I have made up my mind to be 
 the Mistress of a Family ; in short, I want to be married ! " 
 
 Under this head you may safely place all the knowing Prin- 
 ciples of action, so often and so boastingly confessed by your 
 clever fellows — " I take care of Number One ; hey, Neighbour : 
 what say you ?" — -f Each for himself, and God for us all: that's 
 my maxim." And likewise, as the very same essentially, 
 though in a more dignified and seemly Form, the principle of 
 determining whether a thing is right or wrong, by its supposed 
 Consequences. 
 
 There are men who let their life pass away without a single 
 effort to do good, either to Friend or Neighbour, to their 
 country or their religion, on the strength of the question — 
 " What good will it do ?" But woe to the man who is inca- 
 pable of feeling, that the greatest possible good he can do for 
 himself or for others, is to do his duty and to leave the conse- 
 quences to God. But it will be answered, " How can we 
 ascertain that it is our duty but by weighing the probable 
 consequences ? Besides, no one can act without Motives ; and 
 all motives must at last have respect to the agent's own self- 
 interest ; and that is the reason why Religion is so useful, 
 lecause it carries on our Self-interest beyond the grave !" 
 
LETTERS, ETC, 179 
 
 my dear ! so many worthy persons, who 
 
 really, though unconsciously, both act from, and are actuated 
 by, far nobler impulses, are educated to talk in this language, 
 that I dare not expose the folly, turpitude, immorality, and 
 irreligion of this system, without premising the necessity of 
 trying to discover, previous to your forming a fixe«t opinion 
 respecting the true character of the Individuals from whom 
 you may have heard declarations of this kind, whether the sen- 
 timents proceed from the Tongue only, or at worst, from a 
 misinstructed Understanding, or are the native growth of his 
 Heart." f}L</ tu* ^-tC^t_*. — %U ' &~ <y<*-<w ^ JC*^£ ^ 
 
 - 8. T. - . - 
 
 The following verses were pointed out to me by my friend 
 about this time. They are worthy of the age to which they 
 belong. 
 
 i. 
 
 And what is love, I praie thee tell ? 
 
 It is that fountain and that well 
 
 Where pleasure and repentance dwell ; 
 
 It is, perhaps, that passing bell 
 
 Which tolls all into heaven or hell : 
 
 And this is love, as I heare tell. 
 
 n. 
 
 Yet what is love, I praie thee say ? 
 It is a work — a holiday, 
 It is December matched with May ; 
 When lusty Blood's in fresh arraie 
 Heare ten months after of the plaie, 
 And this is love, as I heare saie. 
 
 It is a game where none doth gaine ; 
 The lasse saithe no, and would full faine ; 
 And this is love, as I heare saine.. 
 
LETTERS, ETC. 
 
 IV. 
 Yet what is love, I pray thee say ? 
 It is a yea, it is a nay, 
 A pretie kind of sporting fray ; 
 It is a thing will soon away, 
 Then take advantage while you may ; 
 And this is love, as I heare say. 
 
 v. 
 
 Yet what is love, I pray thee shoe ? 
 A thing that creeps, it cannot goe, 
 A prize, that passeth to and fro ; 
 A thing for one, a thing for two, 
 And they that prove must find it so ; 
 And this is love (sweet friend) I tro. 
 
 LETTEE XXVIII. 
 
 My dear Friend, March 22nd, 1822. 
 
 Mr. Watson is but now returned. I was about to set off 
 to your house and take turns with Mrs. Allsop in watching you. 
 It is a comfort to hear from Watson that he thinks you look 
 not only better than when he saw you before, but more 
 promisingly. 
 
 Si tibi deficiant medici, medici tibi fiant 
 
 Hsec tria : mens hilaris, requies, moderata dieta. 
 
 is the adage of the old Schola Salernitana, and his belief and 
 judgment. Would to God that there were any druggist or 
 apothecary within the king's dominions where I could procure 
 for you the first ingredient of the recipe, fresh and genuine. I 
 would soon make up the prescription, have the credit of curing 
 you, and then make my fortune by advertising the nostrum 
 under the name of Dr. Samsartorius, Carbonifugius's Panacea 
 
 Salernitana iensis. 
 
 \ You will have thought, I fear, that I had forgotten my 
 
 ^-> promise of sending you Charles Lamb's epistola porcinw. 
 
 But it was not so. I now enclose it, and when you return it 
 
LETTERS, ETC. 181 
 
 I will make a copy for you if you wish it, for I think that 
 writing in your present state will he most injurious to you. 
 
 I am interrupted — " a poor lad, very ragged, he says Mr. 
 Dowling has sent him to you to show you his poetry." — 
 " Well ! desire him to step up, Maria !" 
 
 As soon as Mr. Green left me, Mrs. Gillman delivered 
 your letter. I am not sorry, therefore, that the " Wild Irish 
 Boy" made it too late to finish the above for that day's post. 
 His name, poor lad! is Esmond Wilton; his mother, I guess, 
 was poetical. But I will reserve him for a dish on our table 
 of chat when we meet. — In reply to your affectionate letter 
 what can I say, but that from all that you say, write or do, I 
 receive but two impressions ; first, a full, cordial, and unquali- 
 fied assurance of your love towards me, a genial, unclouded 
 faith in the entireness and steadfastness of your more than 
 friendship, sustained and renewed by the consciousness of a 
 responsive attachment in myself, that blends the affections of 
 parent, brother and friend, — 
 
 " A love of thee that seems, yet cannot greater be ;" 
 
 and secondly, impressions of grief or joy, according, and in 
 proportion to, the information I receive, or the infei*ences that 
 I draw, respecting your health, ease of heart and mind, and all 
 the events, incidents, and circumstances, that affect, or are 
 calculated to affect, both or either. Only this in addition — 
 whatever else may pass through your mind, never, from any 
 motive, or with any view, withhold from me your thoughts, 
 your feelings, and your sorrows. What if they be momentary, 
 winged thoughts, not native, that blowing weather has driven 
 out of their course, and to which your mind has allowed 
 thorough flight, but neither nest, perch, nor halting room ? 
 Send them onward to pass through mine ; and between us both, 
 we shall be better able to give a good account of them ! What 
 if they are the offspring of low or perturbed spirits — the 
 changelings of ill health or disquietude ? So much the rather 
 
182 LETTEKS, ETC. 
 
 communicate them. When on the white paper, they are 
 already out of us ; and when the letter is gone, they will not 
 Stay long hehind ; the very anticipation of the answer will have 
 answered them, and superseded the need, though not the wish, 
 of its arrival. And shall I not, think you, take them for 
 what they are? With what comfort, with what security, 
 could I receive or read your letters, or you mine, if we either 
 of us had reason to believe, that whatever affliction had befallen, 
 or discomfort was harassing, or anxiety was weighing on the 
 heart, the other would say no word of or about it, under the 
 plea of not transplanting thorns, or whatever other excuse a 
 depressed fancy might invent, in order to transmute unfriendly 
 withholding into a self-sacrifice of tenderness. If you had 
 come to stay with me while I lay on a bed of pain, it would 
 grieve you indeed, if, from an imagined duty of not grieving 
 you, I should suppress every expression of suffering, and not 
 tell you where my pain was, or whether it was greater or less. 
 Grant that I was rendered anxious or heavy at heart, or keenly 
 sorrowful, by any tidings you had communicated respecting 
 yourself ! Should it not be so ? Ought it not to be so ? Will 
 not the Joy be greater when the Cloud is passed off — greater 
 in kind, nobler, better — because I should feel it was my right ? 
 And is there not a dignity and a hidden Healing in the suffering 
 itself — which is soothed in the wish and tempered in the 
 endeavour of removing, or lessening, or supporting it, in the 
 Soul of a dear Friend ? However trifling my vexations are, 
 yet if they vex me, and I am writing to you, to you I will 
 
 unbosom them, my dear and my serious sorrows and 
 
 hindrances I will still less keep back from you. General 
 Truths, Discussions, Poems, Queries — all these are parts of 
 my nature, often uppermost ; and when they are so, you have 
 them — and I like well to write to, and to hear from you on 
 them — but these I might write to the Public : and, with all 
 Christian respect for that gentleman, I love your little finger 
 better than his whole multitudinous Body, 
 
LETTERS, ETC. 183 
 
 Give my love to Mrs. Allsop, and tell her I will try to 
 deserve hers. 
 
 Ever and ever God bless you, my dearest friend. 
 T. Allsop, Esq. S. T. Coleridge. 
 
 IF- 
 
 The letter here alluded to is a most delightful communica- 
 tion from Charles Lamb ; which, with the hints thrown out by a 
 Manning, as to the probable origin of roast meat, were after- J 
 wards interwoven into that paper on Eoast Pig, one of the 
 most, if not the most, delightful Essay in our Language. 
 
 A collection of Lamb's very curious letters — more especially 
 those written during the last twenty years — would be inva- 
 luable. Indeed, if I judge aright from the numberless Letter- 
 lets in my possession, and from those longer letters now I fear 
 lost, a selection, if made from various sources, would be one of 
 the most interesting in our Literature. 
 
 "Dear C, 
 
 " It gives me great satisfaction to hear that the Pig turned out 
 so well — they are interesting creatures at a certain age. What a pity 
 such buds should blow out into the maturity of rank bacon ! You had 
 all some of the crackling — and brain sauce — did you remember to rub 
 it with butter, and gently dredge it a little, just before the crisis ? 
 Did the eyes come away kindly with no (Edipean avulsion ? — was the 
 crackling the colour of the ripe pomegranate ? — had you no damned 
 complement of boiled neck of mutton before it to blunt the edge of 
 delicate desire? — did you flesh maiden teeth in it? 
 
 " Not that I sent the Pig, or can form the remotest guess what part 
 Owen (our landlord) could play in the business. I never knew him 
 give any thing away in his life — he would not begin with strangers. 
 I suspect the Pig after all was meant for me — but at the unlucky 
 juncture of time being absent, the present, somehow, went round to 
 Highgate. 
 
 " To confess an honest truth, a Pig is one of those things I could 
 never think of sending away. Teals, widgeons, snipes, barn-door 
 fowls, ducks, geese, your tame villatic things — Welsh mutton — collars 
 of brawn — sturgeon, fresh and pickled — your potted char — Swiss 
 cheeses — French pies — early grapes — muscadines, — I impart as freely 
 to my friends as to myself, — they are but seZ/"-extended ; but pardon 
 
184 LETTERS, ETC. 
 
 me if I stop somewhere — where the fine feeling of benevolence giveth a 
 higher smack than the sensual rarity; there my friends (or any good 
 man) may command me; but pigs are pigs ; and I myself am therein 
 nearest to myself; nay, I should think it an affront, an undervaluing 
 done to Nature, who bestowed such a boon upon me, if, in a churlish 
 mood, I parted with the precious gift. One of the bitterest pangs I 
 ever felt of remorse was when a child — my kind old aunt had strained 
 her pocket-strings to bestow a sixpenny whole plum-cake upon me. 
 In my way home through the Borough, I met a venerable old man — 
 not a mendicant — but thereabouts; a look-beggar — not a verbal 
 petitionist — and, in the coxcombry of taught charity, I gave away 
 the cake to him. I walked on a little in all the pride of an evangelical 
 peacock, when of a sudden my old aunt's kindness crossed me— the 
 sum it was to her— the pleasure that she had a right to expect that I, not 
 the old impostor, should take in eating her cake— the damned ingratitude 
 by which, under the colour of a Christian virtue, I had frustrated her 
 cherished purpose. I sobbed, wept, and took it to heart so grievously, 
 that I think I never suffered the like. And I was right ; it was a 
 piece of unfeeling hypocrisy, and proved a lesson to me ever after. 
 The cake has long been masticated, consigned to the dunghill, with 
 the ashes of that unseasonable pauper. 
 
 " But when Providence, who is better to us all than our aunts, 
 gives me a Pig, remembering my temptation and my fall, I shall 
 endeavour to act towards it more in the spirit of the donor's purpose. 
 
 " Yours (short of Pig) to command in everything, 
 
 "C. L." 
 
 " When I first heard from Stewart of the Courier that 
 Buonaparte had declared that the interests of small states must 
 always succumb to great ones, I said, ' Thank God ! he has 
 sealed his fate : from this moment his fall is certain.' " 
 
 " Clarkson (the moral steam engine, or Giant with one 
 idea) had recently published his book, and being in a very 
 irritable state of mind, his wife expressed great fears of the 
 effect of any severe review in the then state of his feelings. I 
 wrote to Jeffrey, and expressed to him my opinion of the 
 cruelty of any censure being passed upon the work as a com- 
 position. In return I had a very polite letter, expressing a 
 
LETTERS, ETC. ] 85 
 
 wish that I should review it. I did so : but when the Review I 
 was published, in the place of some jus t eulogiums^due to j 
 Mr. Pitt, and which I stated were upon the best authority (in j 
 fact, they were from Tom Clarkson himself), was substituted 
 some abuse and detraction.* Yet Clarkson expressed himself 
 gratified and satisfied with the effect of the review, and would 
 not allow me to expose the transaction. Again, Jeffrey had 
 said to me that it was hopeless to persuade men to prefer 
 Hooker and Jeremy Taylor to Johnson and Gibbon. I wrote 
 him two letters, or two sheets, detailing, at great length, my 
 opinions. This he never acknowledged ; but in an early num- 
 ber of the Review he inserted the whole of my communication 
 in an article of the Review, and added at the conclusion words 
 -to this effect : ' We have been anxious to be clear on this sub- 
 ject, as much has been said on this matter by men who 
 evidently do not understand it. Such are Wordsworth, 
 Southey, Coleridge, and Miss Baillie.' " 
 
 "One day, when I had not a shilling which I could spare, 
 I was passing by a cottage not far from Keswick, where a 
 carter was demanding a shilling for a letter, which the woman 
 of the house appeared unwilling to pay, and at last declined to 
 take. I paid the postage ; and when the man was out of sight, 
 she told me that the letter was from her son, who took that means 
 of letting her know that he was well : the letter was not to be 
 paid for. It was then opened, and found to be blank ! " 
 
 " On my return I found a double letter, for which two shil- 
 lings had been paid. I tore it open, and found it to contain a 
 long communication from Haydon the Artist, which, in allusion 
 to my Poem on Mont Blanc, ended thus : ' From this moment 
 you are immortal.' I was ungrateful enough to consider 
 Mr. Haydon's immortality dear at two shillings ! And though 
 
 * Was not this a fraud, a moral forgery ? And this man, who 
 attained notoriety and influence by conduct and practices like these, 
 is he not a Judge, whose office it is to punish such acts in another ? 
 
186 
 
 LETTERS, ETC. 
 
 I can now smile at the infliction, my judgment remains the 
 same ; and to this day my thanks have not been given to 
 Mr. Hay don for his apotheosis." 
 
 " Darwin was so egregiously vain, that, after having given 
 to his son a thesis upon Ocular Spectra, in itself an entire 
 plagiarism from a German book published at Leipsig, he 
 became jealous of the praise it received, and caused it to be 
 given out that he was the real author. Nay, he even wrote 
 letters and verses to himself, which he affixed to his own Poems 
 as being addressed to him, by (I think) Billsborough, a young 
 admirer of his. He asked his friends whether they had not 
 frequently heard him express opinions like these twenty years 
 ago?" 
 
 LETTEE XXIX. 
 
 My dearest Friend, April ltith 1822. 
 
 There was neither self nor unself in the flash or jet of 
 
 JTp~|_ 
 pall mall 
 
 3 
 
 pleasurable sensation with which I saw the old 
 
 tea canister top surmounting my own name, but a mere unre- 
 flecting gladness, a sally of inward welcoming, on finding you 
 near to me again. I am indebted to it, however, for this, and 
 the dear and affectionate letter that sustained and substantiated 
 it, like a gleam of sunshine ushering in a genial south-west, 
 and setting all the birds a singing ; while the joy at the recall 
 of the old, dry, scathy, viceroy of the discouraged spring, the 
 Tartar laird from the north-east, augments yet loses itself in 
 the delight at the arrival of the long wished-for successor to 
 his native realm, gave a sudden spur and kindly sting to my 
 spirits, the restorative effects of which I felt on rising this 
 morning, as soon after, at least, as the pain which always 
 
LETTERS, ETC. 187 
 
 greets me on awaking, and never fails to be my Valentine for 
 every day in the year, had taken its leave. 
 
 Charles and Mary Lamb are to dine with us on Sunday 
 next, and I hope it will be both pleasant and possible for you 
 and Mrs. Allsop to complete the party ; and if so, I will take 
 care to be quite free to enjoy your society from the moment 
 of your arrival, and I hope that Mrs. Allsop will not be too 
 much tired for me to show her some of our best views and 
 walks ; and perhaps the nightingales may commence their 
 ditties on or by that day, for I have daily expected them. 
 
 Need I say what thoughts rush into my mind when I read 
 a letter from you, or think of your love towards me. 
 
 God bless you, my dear, dear friend, 
 T. Allsop, Esq. S. T. Coleridge. 
 
 The following observations preface a chronological and his- 
 toric assistant to a course of lectures, delivered in 1818. SU^^y* 
 
 " The history of philosophy commences with the hirth of Thales. ' 
 Of the three different dates given by three several chronologists — 4** 
 namely, 640, 629, and 594th, year before Christ — I have chosen the *");./- "i 
 second, not only as a mean, but as best agreeing with his manhood 
 being contemporary with Solon's, and with the recorded fact of his 
 having foretold an eclipse of the sun in the fourth year of the 45th 
 Olympiad, or 597 B.C. : thus making an interval of 322 years between 
 the birth of Thales and the era in which Hesiod and Homer are gene- 
 rally supposed to have flourished ; that is, about the year B.C. 907. In 
 the great poems of this era we find a language already formed, beyond 
 all example adapted to social intercourse, to description, narration, 
 and the expression of the passions. It possesses pre-eminently the per- 
 fections which our Milton demands of the language of poetry. It is 
 simple, sensuous and impassioned. And, if in the word ' sensuous ' 
 we include, as Milton doubtless intended that we should, the gratifica- 
 tion of the sense of hearing as well as that of sight, sweetness as well 
 as beauty, these few pregnant words will be found a full and discri- 
 minative character of the Greek language, as it appears in the Iliad 
 and Odyssey ; and expressing with no less felicity the desideratum or 
 ideal of poetic diction in all languages. But our admiration must not 
 seduce us to extend its perfections beyond the objective into the sub- 
 
188 LETTERS, ETC. 
 
 jective "ends of language. It is the language of poetry, not of specu- 
 lation ; an exponent of the senses and sensations, not of reflection, 
 abstraction, generalisation, or the mind's own notice of its own acts. 
 It was, in short, what the state of society was — the best and loveliest 
 of its hind, but of an imperfect kind ; an heroic youth, but still a youth, 
 and with the deficiencies and immaturity of youth. 
 
 " In all countries, the language of intellect has been posterior to, 
 and the consequence of, settled law and an established religion. 
 But in the Homeric times laws appear to have been extemporaneous, 
 made for the occasion by tumultuary assemblage, with or without 
 the consent of their king, whose sovereignty (or effective power) 
 depended chiefly on his superior wealth,* though the royal title 
 resulted from birth and ancestry, as is always the case in countries 
 the aborigines of which have been conquered by new settlers who 
 regarding themselves, of course, as a superior race, constitute and 
 leave an order of nobility. 
 
 " Concerning the state of religion, it would be as di/ficult, as for the 
 purpose in hand it is unnecessary, to speak otherwise than negatively. 
 It is sufficient to see, that it neither had nor could have any bearing 
 on philosophy ; inasmuch as all the problems, which it is the peculiar 
 
 * Thus Ulysses (Od. 1. xi.) tells Alcinous that kings must be rich, 
 if they would be respected by their people, and the larger the estate 
 the more the obedience. And of himself we are told (1. xiv.) — 
 
 Ulysses his estate and wealth were such, 
 No prince in Greece, nor Argos, nor Epire, 
 In Ithica no twenty, had so much : 
 And, if to have it reckoned you desire, 
 Upon the continent twelve herds of kine, 
 Twelve herds of goats, as many flocks of sheep, 
 As many swine-houses replete with swine ; 
 And here, upon the island's farthest end, 
 There be eleven herds of goats. 
 
 Hobbes' Odyssey; 
 
 which, homely as it is throughout and too often vulgar, scarcely falls 
 below the point more than the other translators strain above it. In 
 easy flow of narration Hobbes has few rivals; and his metre in 
 alternate rhyme is so smooth (negatively smooth, I mean), so lithe, 
 without bone or muscle, that you soon forget that it is metre, and 
 read on with the same kind and degree of interest as if it were a 
 volume of the " Arabian Nights." 
 
LETTEKS, ETC. 189 
 
 object of philosophy to solve, the Hesiodic theology, or rather 
 theogony, precludes, by resolving the absolute origin and ground of 
 all things into night and chaos. The gods differed from animals only 
 by a right of primogeniture. Will, Intelligence, and Love, are an 
 equivocal generation of Death, Darkness, and Passive Necessity. 
 The scheme, therefore, as delivered by Hesiod, is an anti-philosophic 
 Atheism, of which a sensual Polytheism was but the painted veil. 
 
 " During the long interval from Homer to Solon all the necessary 
 conditions and antecedents of Philosophy had been gradually evolved ; 
 the governments had ripened into constitutions ; legislation had 
 become a science, in which the disposition of the parts was predeter- 
 mined by some one predominant object, to which they were to be all 
 alike subservient and instrumental. Thus, in Spaita, the country as 
 the efficient object self of each citizen ; self-sufficing fortitude in the 
 individuals, and self-sufficing strength in the state ; and, as the means 
 to those ends, war and the exclusion of trade : in Athens, political equi- 
 librium by the balance of artificial and physical force, so as to prevent 
 revolution and faction, without checking progressiveness and public 
 spirit. In this manner, the minds of men were acctistomed to 
 principles, and ideal ends : and the faculties, more especially intellectual 
 — Abstraction, Comparison, and Generalisation, the contemplation of 
 unity in the balance of differences and the resolution of differences into 
 unity by the establishment of a common object ; all the powers, in short, 
 by which the mind is raised from the things to the relations of things, — 
 were called forth and exercised. In the meantime, the Phoenicians and 
 Egyptians were successively the masters of the Mediterranean : and 
 to the former, and their close connection with Palestine, it is more 
 than merely probable, we must ascribe the institution of the Cabiric 
 Mysteries* in Samothrace, for the influence of which, as the foster- 
 mother of Philosophy, we refer to our first lecture. We have only to 
 add the appearance* of individuality in conception and style, as mani- 
 fested in the rise of the Lyric Poets, Thales, the immediate prede- 
 cessors or contemporaries, the connection of which with the awakening 
 of the speculative impulse, will be likewise shown, in the first lecture, 
 to explain and justify our choice in the point from which we have 
 made the Chronology of Philosophy commence, and conducted it to 
 the final extinction of Philosophy (or, at least, its long trance of 
 
 * " That Orpheus and Jason were initiated, or that Ulysses was 
 the founder, must be regarded as mere poetic fictions, contradictory in 
 themselves and inconsistent with the earliest genuine poems of 
 Greece." 
 
190 LETTERS, ETC. 
 
 suspended animation) in the reign of Justinian. The chronology of 
 its resuscitation, with the requisite historical illustrations, includes a 
 far larger number of names and events than could be contained within 
 the prescribed limits ; and, in addition to this, it would belong rather 
 to the claims of individuals than to the rise, progress, and (as it were) 
 completed cycle of philosophy itself, which will occupy the first and 
 larger division of the course. Should such a work, however, be 
 desired, it will more profitably appear at the conclusion, so formed as 
 to assist in the recollection of the several lectures." 
 
 " Vivid impressions are too frequently mistaken by the young 
 and ardent, for clear conceptions." 
 
 " The argument that the mind is a result of the body, sup- 
 ported by the apparent coincidence of their growth and decay, 
 is a non sequitur. The mind, when acquired or possessed 
 (though subject to progression and retrogression) can never be 
 lost or enfeebled by old age or bodily debility. It is the decay 
 of the bodily powers which enervates or enfeebles the will, by 
 refusing to obey its promptings." 
 
 " Teachers of youth are, by a necessity of their present 
 condition, either unsound or uncongenial. If they possess that 
 buoyancy of spirit, which best fits them for communicating to 
 those under their charge, the knowledge it is held useful for 
 them to acquire, they are deemed unsound. If they possess 
 a subdued sobriety of disposition, the result of a process com- 
 pared to which the course of a horse in a mill is positive 
 enjoyment, they of necessity become ungenial. Is this a fitting 
 condition, a meet and just return for the class, Instructors ? 
 And yet have I not truly described them ? Has any one 
 known a teacher of youth who, having attained any repute as 
 such, has also retained any place in society as an individual ? 
 Are not all such men ' Dominie Sampsons ' in what relates to 
 their duties, interests, and feelings as citizens ; and, with 
 
LETTERS, ETC. 191 
 
 respect to females, do they not all possess a sort of mental 
 odour ? Are not all masters, all those who are held in estima- 
 tion, not scholars, hut always masters, even in their sports ; and 
 are not the female teachers always teaching and setting right ? 
 whilst hoth not only lose the freshness of youth, both of mind 
 and body, but seem as though they never had been young. 
 They who have to teach, can never afford to learn ; hence 
 their improgression. 
 
 To the above remarks, true as they are in themselves, I am 
 desirous to draw your particular attention. Those who have 
 to teach, a duty which if ably discharged is the highest and 
 most important which society imposes, are placed in a position 
 in which they necessarily acquire a general or generic character, 
 and this, for the most part, unfits them for mixing in society 
 with ease to themselves or to others. Is this just, is it for the 
 advantage of the community that those to whom the highest 
 and most responsible trusts are confided, should be rendered 
 unfit to associate with their fellow men, by something which 
 is imposed upon them, or which they are made to acquire, as 
 teachers ? Does not Society owe it to this meritorious class, to 
 examine into the causes of these peculiarities with a view to 
 remove ascertained evils, or by developing them to bring 
 constantly before our eyes the necessity, in their case, of results 
 which at present have such evil influences upon the more 
 genial feelings of so large, and every way estimable and 
 intelligent, a portion of our fellow men. It is requisite that 
 the conviction now become so self-evident, " that vice is the 
 effect of error and the offspring of surrounding circumstances, 
 the object of condolence and not of anger," should become a 
 habit of the mind in the daily and hourly occurrences of social 
 life. This consummation, so devoutly to be wished, is now 
 for the first time possible ; and, when it shall be fully realised, 
 will lead most assuredly to the amelioration of the human 
 race, and whatever has life or is capable of improvement. 
 
192 LETTERS, ETC. 
 
 LETTER XXX. 
 
 My very dear Friend, May 30th, 1822. 
 
 On my arrival at Highgate after our last parting, I ought 
 to have written, if it were only that I had fully resolved to do 
 so, and when I feel that I have not done what I ought, and what 
 you would done in my place, I will, as indeed too safely to 
 make a merit of it I may do, leave the palliative and extenua- 
 ting circumstance to your kindness to think of. This only let 
 
 me say, that mournful as my experience of Messrs. 
 
 and * in my own immediate concerns had heen, of the 
 
 latter especially, I was not prepared for their late behaviour, 
 or, to use Anster's words on the occasion, for " so piteous a 
 lowering of human nature," as the contents of Mr. W.'s letters 
 were calculated to produce. 
 
 I have at length — for I really tore it out of my brain, as it 
 were piecemeal, a bit one day and a bit the day after — finished 
 and sent off a letter of two folio large and close-written sheets 
 — nine sides equal to twelve of this size paper — to Mr. Dawes, 
 of Ambleside, the rough copy of which I will show you when 
 we meet. 
 
 The exceeding kindness and uncalculating instantaneous 
 and decisive generous Friendship of the Gillmans, and the 
 presence of you to my Thoughts, prevent all approach to 
 misanthropy in my Feelings, but for that reason render those 
 feelings more acutely painful. If I did not know that Genius, 
 like Eeason, though not perhaps so entirely, is rather a presence 
 vouchsafed, like a guardian spirit, to an Individual, which 
 departs whenever the Evil Self becomes decisively predominant, 
 and not like Talents or the Powers of the Understanding, a 
 
 personal property — the contemplation of 's late and 
 
 present state of Head and Heart wotdd overwhelm me. But 
 
 * Great as was the shock my friend sustained from the unkind 
 conduct of the gentlemen here alluded to, it is to me a great solace 
 to be assured that he forgave them fully and entirely. 
 
LETTERS, ETC. 193 
 
 I must not represent my neglect as worse than I myself hold it 
 to be ; for I feel that I could not have omitted it had I not 
 known that you were so busily engaged. 
 
 Charles and Mary Lamb and Mr. Green dine with us on 
 Sunday next, when we are to see Mathews' Picture Gallery. 
 Can you and Mrs. Allsop join the party ? or, if Mrs. Allsop's 
 health should make this hazardous or too great an exertion, 
 can you come yourself? I am sure she will forgive me for 
 putting the question. 
 
 God bless you and your affectionate 
 
 S. T. Coleridge. 
 
 " The most extraordinary and the best attested instance of 
 enthusiasm existing in conjunction with perseverance is related 
 of the founder of the Foley family. This man, who was a 
 fiddler living near Stourbridge, was often witness of the 
 immense labour and loss of time, caused by dividing the rods 
 of iron, necessary in the process of making nails. The dis- 
 covery of the process called splitting, in works called splitting 
 mills, was first made in Sweden, and the consequences of this 
 advance in art were most disastrous to the manufacturers of 
 iron about Stourbridge. Foley the fiddler was shortly missed 
 from his accustomed rounds, and was not again seen for many 
 years. He had mentally resolved to ascertain by what means 
 the process of splitting of bars of iron was accomplished ; and, 
 without communicating his intention to a single human being, 
 he proceeded to Hull, and thence, without funds, worked his 
 passage to the Swedish iron port. Arrived in Sweden, he 
 begged and fiddled his way to the iron foundries, where, after 
 a time, he became a universal favourite with the workmen ; 
 and, from the apparent entire absence of intelligence or any- 
 thing like ultimate object, he was received into the works, to 
 every part of which he had access. He took the advantage 
 thus offered, and having stored his memory with observations 
 and all the combinations, he disappeared from amongst his 
 
 13 
 
194 LETTERS, ETC. 
 
 kind friends as he had appeared, no one knew whence or 
 whither. 
 
 On his return to England he communicated his voyage and 
 its results to Mr. Knight and another person in the neighbour- 
 hood, with whom he was associated, and by whom the necessary 
 buildings were erected and machinery provided. — When at 
 length every thing was prepared, it was found that the 
 machinery would not act, at all events it did not answer the 
 sole end of its erection — it would not split the bar of iron. 
 
 Foley disappeared again, and it was concluded that shame 
 and mortification at his failure had driven him away for ever. 
 Not so : again, though somewhat more speedily, he found his 
 way to the Swedish iron works, where he was received most 
 joyfully, and to make sure of their fiddler, he was lodged in the 
 splitting mill itself. Here was the very aim and end of his 
 life attained beyond his utmost hope. He examined the works 
 and very soon discovered the cause of his failure. He now 
 made drawings or rude tracings, and, having abided an ample 
 time to verify his observations and to impress them clearly 
 and vividly on his mind, he made his way to the port, and once 
 more returned to England. This time he was completely 
 successful, and by the results of his experience enriched himself 
 and greatly benefited his countrymen. This I hold to be the 
 most extraordinary instance of credible devotion in modern . 
 
 times." ^^— if- **rrr M 
 
 m7W'M"^'P 8 l e ft Nottingham ^ horo he had fix si established - 
 
 - himaclf, at an early agot « He, afterwards kept a hosiery shop 
 
 in St. Paul's, and sold the Magazine at the back. He used t o 
 
 /%**& jb oaot that ■ h e could do more by puffing than all the other 
 
 booksellers. ?It io oortain that he was a great amjuvance lu > 
 
 ftv*^ fai*)lfaem at one time. B^had a host of writers in4»s pay, whom 
 
 ^however, h e never- retained . A grooe flatterer. - I - rec o llect * . ^ 
 K&ktfr~&£**~ hearing him addresssome fulsome compliments to Dr. Beddoes, «^^ 
 
 tMl'ty 
 
 to which Ihe P utluf appeared to listen with patience. He was, 
 
LETTERS, ETC. 195 
 
 after a peroration of ten minutes' > durati o a, told by the Doctor 
 
 that he was-wrong in his chronology. afir&^jy £*~*~^i£*.4 rm _ </ . 
 
 " ' Not right in my chronology !" said, the surprised hook-fy^^' -, 
 
 seller ; " what has chronology to do with the matter ? " 
 
 " ' Only thic^ that so far back as the year 1540, this kind 
 of complimentary insult had become obsolete.' 
 
 a The Knight said no more,- but decamped at once . 
 
 " Once, when in an abstruse argument with Mrs. Barbauld y Af-ti-,// 
 on the Berkleian controversy, she exclaimed, — ' Mr. Coleridge ! / 
 
 Mr. Coleridge ! ' ^.Sl^^^^^^gf^I^r" 
 
 " The Knight was present. No sooner did he hear my 
 name mentioned than he came up to my chair, and after making 
 fatS**. several obsequious e boioancoo, ■ expressed his regret that he 
 •^ should have been half-an-hour in the company of so great a 
 man without being aware of his good fortune, adding shortly 
 afterwards, f I would have given nine guineas a sheet for his 
 conversation during the last hour and half? ' This too at a 
 time when I had not been at all publicly known more than a 
 month. 
 
 " He avowed^ indcod, afterwar ds, that he never feared offend- 
 
 * \HA**f i n gJ>y flattery, being convinced that for one man who was 
 
 offended ninety-nine were pleased with that, which, if presented 
 
 to others, they would have deemed nauseating and dis- 
 
 gusting." flta.!^ ^H4*. j4 > y&t^L. L^tZ^j^X 
 
 LETTER XXXI. 
 
 My dear Friend, June 29th, 1822. 
 
 As fervent a prayer, as glow-trembling a joy, thanksgiving 
 that seeks to steady itself by prayer, and prayer that dissolves 
 itself into thanks and gladness, as ever eddied in or streamed 
 onward from of love and friendship for pain and dread, for 
 travail of body and spirit passed over, and a mother smiling 
 over the first-born at her bosom, have sped toward you from 
 
196 LETTERS, ETC. 
 
 the moment I opened your Letter. For as if there had been 
 a light suffused along the paper at that part, " birth of a 
 Daughter after a very short illness," were the first words I 
 saw. " Well pleased ! " To be sure you are. It was scarcely 
 a week ago that — during the only hour free from visits, visitors) 
 and visitations that we have had to ourselves for" I do not 
 know how long — Mrs. Gillman and I had settled the point ; 
 and, after a strict, patient, and impartial poll of the pro's and 
 con's on both sides, a Girl it was to be, and a Girl was returned 
 by a very large majority of wishes. But as wishes, like straw- 
 berries, do not bear carriage well, or at least require to be 
 poised on the head, I will send a scanty specimen of the 
 Eeasons by way of Hansel. Imprimis, A Girl takes five times 
 as much spoiling to spoil her. Item. — It is a great advantage 
 both in respect of Temper, Manners, and the Quickening of the 
 Faculties, for a Boy to have a Sister or Sisters a year or two 
 older than himself. — But I devote this brief scroll to Feeling : 
 so no more of disquisition, except it be to declare the entire 
 coincidence of my experience with yours as to the very rare 
 occurrence of strong and deep Feeling in conjunction with free 
 power and vivacity in the expression of it. The most eminent 
 Tragedians, Garrick for instance, are known to have had their 
 emotions as much at command, and almost as much on the 
 surface, as the muscles of their countenances ; and the French, 
 who are all Actors, are proverbially heartless. Is it that it is 
 a false and feverous state for the Centre to live in the Circum- 
 ference ? The vital warmth seldom rises to the surface in the 
 form of sensible Heat, without becoming hectic and inimical to 
 the Life within, the only source of real sensibility. Eloquence 
 itself — I speak of it as habitual and at call — too often is, and 
 is always like to engender, a species of histrionism. 
 
 In one of my juvenile poems (on a Friend who died in a 
 Frenzy Fever), you will find* that I was jealous of this in 
 
 * To me hath Heaven with bounteous hand assigned 
 Energic Eeason and a shaping mind, 
 
LETTERS, ETC. 197 
 
 myself ; and that it is (as I trust it is), otherwise, I attribute 
 mainly to the following causes : — A naturally, at once searching 
 and communicative disposition, the necessity of reconciling the 
 restlessness of an ever-working Fancy with an intense craving 
 after a resting-place for my Thoughts in some principle that 
 was derived from experience, but of which all other knowledge 
 should be but so many repetitions under various limitations, 
 even as circles, squares, triangles, &c, &c, are but so many 
 positions of space. And, lastly, that my eloquence was most 
 commonly excited by the desire of running away and hiding 
 myself from my personal and inward feelings, and not for the 
 expression of them, while doubtless this very effort of feeling 
 gave a passion and glow to my thoughts and language on 
 subjects of a general nature, that they otherwise would not have 
 had. I fled in a Circle, still overtaken by the Feelings, from 
 which I was ever more fleeing, with my back turned towards 
 them ; but above all, my growing deepening conviction of the 
 transcendency of the moral to the intellectual, and the inexpres- 
 sible comfort and inward strength which I experience myself 
 to derive as often as I contemplate truth realised into Being by 
 a human Will ; so that, as I cannot love without esteem, neither 
 can I esteem without loving. Hence I love but few, but those 
 I love as my own Soul ; for I feel that without them I should — 
 not indeed cease to be kind and effluent, but by little and little 
 become a soul-less fixed Star, receiving no rays nor influences 
 
 The daring ken of Truth, the Patriot's part, 
 And Pity's sigh, that breathes the gentle heart. 
 
 Sloth jaundiced all ! and from my graspless hand 
 Drop Friendship's precious pearls, like hour-glass sand. 
 I weep, yet stoop not ! the faint anguish flows, 
 A dreamy pang in Morning's feverish dose. 
 
 Is this piled earth our Being's passless mound f 
 Tell me, cold grave! is Death with poppies crowned f 
 Tired sentinel ! 'mid fitful starts I nod, 
 And fain would sleep, though pillowed on a clod. 
 
198 LETTERS, ETC. 
 
 into my Being, a Solitude which I so tremble at, that I cannot 
 attribute it even to the Divine Nature. 
 
 Godfather or not (have not Girls Godfathers?), the little 
 lady shall be to me a dear Daughter, and I will make her love 
 me by loving her own Papa and Mamma. God bless you. 
 T. AUsojw^W. , ^//iW^ - S - T - Coleridge. 
 
 £,' ' * " Once, whp,n in the B.onnfe Jgiatc3, - I entered a house of 
 
 entertainment^ ^na i^rida yy accompanied by a G erman^rtisiT^ 
 
 and, being hungry, asked for some ham or meat. The woman 
 
 to whom I addressed myself said I could not have it ; it was 
 
 ja / fast day. I repliecL^e were heretics. She still hesitated, when 
 
 *"£■** / her husband gi*owled out, — ' Let them have it, let them have 
 
 ' it ; they are damned already.' Thus satisfying himself that, 
 
 as we were heretie fl, or what, oingular enough, is here const - — 
 
 - dcrcd oynonymous, philosupheis, and thcrcforo aheady damned, 
 
 / he could not injur e, us * farthor, but might benefit himself by 
 
 *** /V ^ ministering to our guilty appetites." ^y *. Aus-t^^y^A^ 
 
 " I have been reading Antony and Cleopatra. It is with 
 me a prime favourite. It is one of the most gorgeous and 
 sustained of all Shakspeare's dramas. In particular do I dote 
 upon the last half of the fifth act." 
 
 " An American, by his boasting of the superiority of the 
 Americans generally, but more especially in their language, 
 once provoked me to tell him that ' on that head the least said 
 the better, as the Americans presented the extraordinary 
 anomaly of a people without a language. That they had 
 mistaken the English language for baggage (which is called 
 plunder in America), and had stolen it.' Speaking of America, 
 it is I believe a fact verified beyond doubt, that, some years 
 ago it was impossible to obtain a copy of the Newgate Calendar, 
 as they had all been bought up by the Americans, whether to 
 
LETTERS, ETC. 
 
 199 
 
 suppress this blazon of their forefathers, or to assist in their 
 genealogical researches, I could never learn satisfactorily." 
 
 LETTEE XXXII. 
 
 My dearest Friend, Mamsgate, Oct. 8th, 1822. 
 
 In the course of my past life I count four griping and 
 grasping sorrows, each of which seemed to have my very heart 
 in its hands, compressing or wringing. TMs first, when the 
 Vision of a Happy Home sunk for ever, and it became impos- 
 sible for me any longer even to hope for domestic happiness 
 under the name of Husband, when I was doomed to know 
 
 That names but seldom meet with Love, 
 And Lore wants courage without a name ! 
 
 The second commenced on the night of my arrival (from 
 Grasmere) in town with Mr. and Mrs. Montagu, when all the 
 superstructure raised by my idolatrous Fancy during an 
 enthusiastic and self-sacrificing Friendship of fifteen years — 
 the fifteen bright and ripe years, the strong summer of my 
 Life — burst like a Bubble ! But the Grief did not vanish 
 with it, nor the love which was the stuff and vitality of the 
 grief, though they pined away up to the moment of . . .- . . 's 
 last total Transfiguration into Baseness ; when, with £1,200 
 a year, and just at the moment that the extraordinary Bank- 
 ruptcy of Fenner and Curtis had robbed me of every penny I 
 had been so many years working for, every penny I pos- 
 sessed in the world, and involved me in a debt of £150 to 
 boot, hejirst regretted that he was not able to pay a certain 
 
 bill of mine to his 's wife's brother, himself, ' never 
 
 wanted money so much in his life,' &c. &c. ; and an hour after 
 attempted to extort from me a transfer to himself of all that I 
 could call my own in the world — my books — as the condition 
 of his paying a debt which in equity was as much, but in 
 honour and gratitude was far more, his debt than mine ! 
 
 CftvV*-*V 
 
 
 
 UflM 
 
 fc 
 fc 
 
 P> 
 
 
200 
 
 LETTERS, ETC. 
 
 IW 
 
 I 
 
 My third sorrow was in some sort included in the second ; 
 what the former was to Friendship the latter was to a yet more 
 inward bond. The former spread a wider gloom over the 
 world around me, the latter left a darkness deeper within 
 myself ; the former is more akin to indignation, and moody 
 scorn at my own folly in my weaker moments, and to contem- 
 plative melancholy and alienation from the Past in my ordinary 
 state ; the latter had more of self in its character, but of a Self, 
 emptied — a gourd of Jonas : and is this it under which I hoped 
 to have prophesied ? 
 
 My fourth commenced with the tidings of the charge against 
 ^, . . — remitted with the belief and confidence of the Falsehood 
 of the charge — relapsed again — and again — and again — blended 
 
 a with the sad convictions, that neither E. nor j\. thought of or felt 
 towards me as they ought, or attributed any thing done for 
 
 I - 1 - them to me ; and lastly, reached its height on the nineteenth 
 
 
 
 day of E>'s fever by J^'s desertion of him, when it trembled in 
 Mthe scales whether he should live or die, and the cause of 
 Mjb»-ilv this desertion first awakening the suspicion that I had been 
 deliberately deceived and made an accomplice in deceiving 
 others. 
 
 And yet, in all these four griefs, my recollection, as often 
 as they were recalled to my mind, turned not to what I 
 suffered, but on what account — at worst, I never thought of 
 the sufferings apart from the causes and occasions of them ; but 
 the latter were ever uppermost. It was reserved for the interval 
 between six o'clock and twelve on that Saturday evening to 
 bring a suffering which, do what I will, I cannot help thinking 
 of and being affrighted by, as a terror of itself — a self-subsist- 
 ing, separate something, detached from the cause. I cannot 
 help hearing the sound of my voice at the moment when Iv» • 
 took me by surprise, and asked me for the money to pay a debt 
 to, and take leave of, Mr. Williams, promising to overtake me 
 if possible before I had reached his aunt Martha's, but at latest 
 before five. " Nay, say six. Be, if you can, by five, but say 
 
 •jt 
 
 
 
LETTERS, ETC. 
 
 201 
 
 six." Then, when he had passed a few steps — "J. . . six; " 
 my God! think of the agony, the sore agony, of every 
 moment after six ! " And though he was not three yards from 
 me, I only saw the colour of his Face through my Tears ! — No 
 more of this ! I will finish this scrawl after my return from 
 the Beach. 
 
 When I had left behind me what I had no power to make 
 better or worse, and arrived at the sea side, I had soon reason 
 to remember that I was not at home, or at Muddiford, or at 
 Little Hampton, or at Eamsgate, but under the conjunct signs 
 of Virgo and the Crab ; the one in the wane, the other in 
 advance, yet in excellent agreement with the former, by virtue 
 of its rare privilege of advancing backward. In sober prose, I 
 verily believe we should have found as genial a birth in a nest flfy^ 
 hillock of Termites or Bugaboos as with this single A nt-con- ' 
 sanguineous. As soon therefore as dear Mr. Gillman returned to 
 us, you will not hold it either strange or unwise that, in agreeing 
 to accompany him to Dover, the kingdom of France west of 
 Paris, Eamsgate, Sandwich, and foreign parts in general, I 
 determined to give myself up to each moment as it came, with 
 no anticipations and with no recollections, save as far as is 
 involved in the wish every now and then, that you had been 
 with me ; and in this resolve it was that I destroyed the kit- 
 cat or bust at least of the letter I had meant to have sent you. 
 But oh ! how often have I wished, and do I wish, that you and 
 Mrs. AIlsop could form a household in common at Eamsgate 
 with us next year. 
 
 And now for your second Letter. What shall I say ? When 
 our Griefs and Fears and agitations are strongly roused 
 towards one object, we almost want some fresh memento to 
 remind us that we have other Loves, other Interests. Forgive 
 me if I tell you that your last letter did, in something of this 
 way, make me feel afresh, that there was that in my very heart 
 that called you Son as well as Friend, and reminded me that a 
 Father's affection could not exist exempt from a Father's 
 
202 LETTERS, ETC. 
 
 anxiety, I am fully aware that every syllable in the latter 
 half of your letter proceeded from the strong two-fold desire at 
 once to comfort and to conciliate, and that I ought to regard 
 your remarks as the mere straining of the Soul towards an 
 End felt and known to be pure and lovely ; and even so I do 
 regard them, yet I cannot read them without anxiety : not 
 indeed anxious Thoughts, but anxious Feeling. Sane or 
 insane, fearful thing it is, when I can be comforted by an 
 assurance of the latter ; but I neither know nor dare hear of 
 any mid state, of no vague necessities dare I hear. Our own 
 wandering thoughts may be suffered to become Tyrants over 
 the mind, of which they are the Offspring and the most 
 effective Viceroys, or substitutes of that dark and dim spiritual 
 Personeity, whose whispers and fiery darts holy men have 
 supposed them to be, and that these may end in the loss, or 
 rather Forfeiture of Free agency, I doubt not. But, my 
 dearest friend, I have both the Faith of Reason and the Voice 
 of Conscience and the assurance of Scripture, that, " resist the 
 evil one, and he will flee from you." But for self-condemna- 
 tion, ^. . . . would never have tampered with Fatalism ; and 
 but for Fatalism, he would never have had such cause to con- 
 demn himself. With truest love, 
 
 Yours, 
 T. Allsop, Esq. S. T. Coleridge. 
 
 P.S. Affectionate remembrances to Mrs. Allsop, in short, to 
 you and yours 1 . While I write the two last words, my lips 
 felt an appetite to kiss the baby. 
 
 This and the preceding letters are painful, very painful, to 
 me. I know not whether they have not given birth to 
 sensations more afflicting in the re-perusal, than they caused 
 me to feel even at the time. Then, I could hope that the 
 clouds which darkened the life of hope would pass away, and 
 
LETTERS, ETC. 
 
 203 
 
 that the genial sunshine of my friend's mind would again 
 shine, inward at least, with unobscured brilliancy. Now, I 
 can but garner in my heart the experience of the past, to be 
 conveyed, as all personal experience must be, to unwilling or 
 inattentive ears : to be part of that experience which he 
 himself so beautifully and so truly describes, as like the stern- 
 lights of a vessel, illuminating only the past. In the instance 
 alluded to, the extreme sensitiveness of my young friend 
 caused him, to avoid a little present pain, so to act, as to give 
 a far greater amount of pain to Mr. Coleridge than he could 
 ever compensate, and to store up for himself the most acute 
 and protracted regrets. Moral courage, my dear children, the 
 daring to suffer the present evil, be it an expiation for the past, 
 or as an offering or a testimony to convictions, not lightly 
 attained, is always its own great reward. 
 
 To say nothing, or to say all you think, and at all times, 
 provided no personal offence is intended or sought to be given, 
 is the course for an honest man, for a lover of truth, invariably 
 to pursue. It may be said that the course of affairs is so 
 complicated and so tortuous, that conduct to harmonise with it 
 must be tortuous also, and that in the necessity that exists for 
 numerous and skilful combinations, simplicity must altogether 
 be cast aside as unsuited to the present state and necessities of 
 the social condition. I have come to a wholly different 
 conclusion. I deem it most important, even on these very 
 grounds, and for these (to me, at least) always secondary 
 objects, to preserve sincerity in the means, and simplicity in 
 the end, however extensive may be the combinations by which 
 that end is sought to be obtained. For if, in addition to the 
 complications of society, and to the combinations necessary to 
 our individual success, we superadd suppressions and those 
 moral falsehoods which are worse and every way more injurious 
 than direct lies, we render success far less probable, and even 
 in its attainment, less valuable, from the recollection of the 
 very unworthy means by which it has been achieved. 
 
204 LETTERS, ETC. 
 
 I well know the process by which men are led on to this 
 fearful state of constant insincerity in matters of worldly 
 interest, whether of fame, riches, or power, all of which might 
 and yet will, I hope, be estimated at their proper value (whilst 
 they are permitted to have any value at all), as means and 
 not as ends. 
 
 v*7 
 
 LETTEK^SXXIIL^ 
 A Vv^ 
 
 My very dear Friend, \ Dec. 26th, 1822. 
 
 I might with strict truth assign the not only day after 
 day, but hour after hour employment, if not through the whole 
 period of my waking time, yet through the whole of my 
 writing power, as the cause of my not having written to you 
 with my own hand ; but then I ought to add that it was 
 enforced and kept up by the expectation of seeing you. There 
 are two ways of giving you pleasure and comfort ; would to 
 God I could have made the one compossible with the other 
 and done both ! The first, the having finished the Logic in its 
 three main divisions, — as the Canon, or that which prescribes 
 the rule and form of all conclusion or conclusive reasoning ; 
 second, as the Criterion, or that which teaches to distinguish 
 truth from falsehood, containing all the sorts, forms, and 
 sources of error, and means of deceiving or being deceived ; 
 third, as the Organ, or positive instrument for discovering 
 truth, together with the general introduction to the whole. 
 
 The second was to come to town, and pass a week with you 
 and Mrs. Allsop. The latter I could not have done, and yet 
 have been able to send you the present good tidings that with 
 regard to the former we are in sight of land ; that Mr. Stut- 
 field will give three days in the week for the next fortnight ; 
 and that I have no doubt, notwithstanding Mrs. Coleridge and 
 «? my little Sarah's expected arrival on Friday next, that by the 
 v (C end of January the whole book will not only have been 
 
 /MA 
 
LETTERS, ETC. 205 
 
 finished, for that I expect will be the case next Sunday fort- 
 night, but ready for the press. In reality, I have now little 
 else but to transcribe, and even this would in part only be 
 necessary, but that I must of course dictate the sentences to 
 Mr. Stutfield and Mr. Watson, and shall therefore avail myself 
 of the opportunity for occasional correction and improvement. 
 When this is done, and can be offered as a whole to Murray or 
 other Publisher, I shall have the Logical Exercises, or the 
 Logic exemplified and applied in a critique on — 1. Condillac ; 
 2. Paley ; 3. The French Chemistry and Philosophy, with 
 other miscellaneous matters from the present Fashions of the 
 age, moral and political, ready to go to the Press with by the 
 time the other is printed off ; and this without interrupting the 
 greater work on Keligion, of which the first Half, containing 
 the Philosophy or ideal Truth, possibility, and a priori 
 probability of the articles of Christian Faith, was completed 
 on Sunday last. 
 
 Let but these works be once done, and the responsibility off 
 my conscience, and I have no doubt or dread of afterwards 
 obtaining an honourable sufficiency, were it only by school 
 books, and compilations from my own memorandum volumes. 
 The publication of my Shakspeare and other similar lectures, 
 sheet per sheet, in Blackwood, with the aid of Mr. Frere's 
 short-hand copies, and those on the History of Philosophy in 
 one volume, would nearly suffice. 
 
 I was unspeakably delighted to see Mrs. Allsop look so 
 charmingly well. My affectionate regards to her, and a heart- 
 uttered Happy, Happy, Happy Christmas to you both, one for 
 each, and the third for the little girl, who (Mr. Watson assures 
 me) has now the ground work and necessary pre-condition of 
 thriving, though it may be some time before a notable change 
 in the appearances may take place for the general eye. 
 God bless you, and your friend, 
 T. Allsop, Esq. S. T. Coleridge 
 
206 LETTERS, ETC. 
 
 " It is good to get and good to spend ; but it is not well or 
 seemly to carry the spirit of thrift into kind acts, nor a profuse 
 spirit into thrift." 
 
 " Men are not more generous than women. Men desire the 
 happiness of women apart from themselves, chiefly, if not only, 
 when and where it would be an imputation upon a woman's 
 affections for her to be happy ; and women, on their part, 
 seldom cordially carry their wish for their husband's happiness 
 and enjoyment beyond the threshold. Whether it is that 
 women have a passion for nursing, or from whatever cause, 
 they invariably discourage all attempts to seek for health 
 itself, beyond their own abode. When balloons, or these new 
 roads upon which they say it will be possible to travel fifteen 
 miles an hour, for a day together, shall become the common 
 mode of travelling, women will become more locomotive ; — the 
 health of all classes will be materially benefited. Women will 
 then spend less time in attiring themselves — will invent some 
 more simple head gear, or dispense with it altogether. 
 
 " Thousands of women, attached to their husbands by the 
 most endearing ties, and who would deplore their death for 
 months, would oppose a separation for a few weeks in search of 
 health, or assent so reluctantly, and with so much dissatisfaction 
 as to deprive the remedy of all value — rather make it an eviL 
 I speak of affectionate natures and of the various, but always 
 selfish, guises of self-will. 
 
 " Caresses and endearment on this side of sickening fondness, 
 and affectionate interest in all that concerns himself, from a 
 wife freely chosen, are what every man loves, whether he be 
 communicative or reserved, staid or sanguine. But affection, 
 where it exists, will always prompt or discover its own most 
 appropriate manifestation. All men, even the most surly, are 
 influenced by affection, even when little fitted to excite it. I 
 could have been happy with a servant girl had she only in 
 sincerity of heart responded to my affection." 
 
LETTERS, ETC. 207 
 
 On this matter I could enlarge, but shall defer it for the 
 present, seeing that all the materials are not yet collected upon 
 which to form a correct judgment. 
 
 LETTER XXXIV' 
 
 My dear Allsop, Grove, Highgate, Dec. \0ih, 1823. 
 
 I shall be alone on Sunday, and shall be happy to spend 
 it with you. Ever since the disappearance of a most unsightly 
 eruption on my Face I have been, with but short intermission, 
 annoyed with the noise as of a distant Forge hammer inces- 
 santly sounding, so that for some time I actually supposed it 
 to be an outward sound. To me, who never before knew by 
 any sensation that I had a head upon my shoulders, this you 
 may suppose is extremely harrassing to the spirits and dis- 
 tractive of my attention. Mrs. Gillman, on stepping from my 
 attic, slipt on the first step of a steep flight of nine high stairs, 
 precipitated herself and fell head foremost on the fifth stair ; 
 and when at the piercing scream I rushed out, I found her 
 lying on the landing place, her head at the wall. Even now 
 the Image, and the Terror of the Image, blends with the 
 recollection of the Past a strange expectancy, a fearful sense 
 of a something still to come ; and breaks in, and makes stop- 
 pages, as it were, in my Thanks to God for her providential 
 escape. For an escape we all must think it, though the small 
 bone of her left arm was broken, and her wrist sprained. She 
 went without a light, though (Oh ! the vanity of Prophecies, 
 the truth of which can be established only by the proof of 
 their uselessness) two nights before I had expostulated with her 
 on this account with some warmth, having previously more 
 than once remonstrated against it, on stairs not familiar and 
 without carpeting. 
 
 As I shall rely on your spending Sunday here, and with me 
 
208 LETTERS, ETC. 
 
 alone, i shall defer to that time all but my tenderest regards to 
 Mrs. Allsop, and the superfluous assurance that I am evermore, 
 my dearest Allsop, 
 
 Your most cordial, attached, and 
 
 Affectionate friend, 
 T. Allsop, Esq. S. T. Coleridge. 
 
 P. S. — You will he delighted with my new room. 
 
 I X^lti Ll» " ^ ne n otion, that affections are of less importance than & 
 
 I • advantages, or that the latter dare even be weighed in the same 
 
 L^jjic I , scales, is less truly described as opposite to »ji^opinion than as A**- 
 
 / ^4 1 -^jalien from say very nature. r*As to accomplishments. 1 do nofr - 
 A; / .JJ linow whothci ' it io right to ohorioh a positive ^tpiuiuiiofan^L/.*//^ 
 
 fid. fi***Y*'' f JT indifferent thing, that -KKneither good nor eviL^ M we loave ^^ 
 fpr^rlu *{£*'f'' all moral relations outof view, such as vanity, or the disposi- tyT^ **** 
 W **** j, tion to underrate the solidities of the soul, male or female, &c, 
 
 ****** j>-s i &c, the question of accomplishments -fo ythey are absurdly ^.-''c- 
 
 * "~ j-t^t. -called) seems to me to depend. onm e mrayidual womamin me j~*— 
 
 7,, fr*. oamo way that^ress doesyj^)f two equally amiable and # -^%.- 
 
 /s£* au^^i /equally beloved women , one looks better in an evening, the jt'^f^ 
 
 A A 1 •S/fr°ti i ev in a morning dress. It is just as it suits, and so with j^— /" 
 
 ! accomplishments. There are two women, to whom, though in-^^t^ 
 
 i^rf / j* different ways, I have been deeply attached in the course of my _s ^^f 
 
 **^^ x , i , .life. The one had no so-called accomplishments, and not only *^ 
 
 Mrfjfi H y/ & t the time when I had faith in the return, did I say, " And I ^^J 3 
 
 ' love her all the better," but I am still convinced that such z3 §£y^ 
 gt*^4^y *jSj£"would be my - opinion - of any such woman. Accomplishments ^ 
 Jnig*iM+^ / ( m which nothing good; useful, nr estimable, is or can bo ^u 
 fm+t+It** / « aooompliohcd) - w ould not suit her. Just as I should say to a "3£\ ^ 
 
 * Lff/ijfC I daughter, or- ehould have said to the lassy in question, had she £* 
 ^/ / been my wife, " My dear/ 1 like to see you with bracelets ; but "^' 
 
 your hand and fingers are prettiest without any ornament, 
 they don't suit rings" The other lady, on the contrary, became 
 them ; they were indeed so natural for her that they never 
 
 
/ strike me as accomplishments. And, to do her justice, 1 must /? , ^> 
 say that I am persuaded that the consciousness of them occu- y^e s*' 
 pies as little room in her own thoughts. /£>, f*%%* 4 ?' ***' "*- 
 
 " A rrnmplinhm"ntr i ; whrtt nr? tbeyj irhy ten^fehe Y n vy < ~ £ <± 1 ™*~^ ~~ 
 wnnt of thr French, Italian, ^9^^alt ^ :li^g uf terms wilhu cri r *~s 
 
 relation to things or pi ' oportioa of any kind , and piano-fortery, 
 *u t^ which meets one now with Jack-o'-lantern ubiquity, in every ^_ 
 
 first and second story, in every street, J\ become a presumptive /*<** , , **j 
 accomplishment as the being free from debt is a negative stocky ^- / 
 
 Mrs. C, $//(£ had no. mopotricioao accomplishments. Did you J^^^-u^ 
 ever suspect, from anything I ever said, that this lay in the ^+*<4/ - 
 
 Afift^ way of my domestic happiness ? And she, too, had no accom- 
 K *^ plishments, to whom the man in the poet sighed forth the S JJ i 
 
 ttt*Ct*'£ t/ t t s 1 1 VDear maid ! no prattler at a mother's knee 
 
 Jtjj ^ 4 ^y Was e'er so deeply prized as I prize thee, 
 
 J- — ,y tlJM Why was I made for love, and love denied to me ?' " 
 
 The following letter addressed to me, arrived on Christmas- 
 Eve, and was opened by Mrs ; who replied that 
 
 I was spending my Christmas with my parents, but that had 
 I been at home this was a season of family re-unions. 
 
 This will serve to explain the letter which follows ; which I 
 give to show the pain caused by a slight misapprehension, and 
 the great anxiety of the writer to remove an erroneous 
 impression. 
 
 LETTER XXXV. 
 
 My dearest Allsop, Dee. 24th, 1823. 
 
 I forgot to ask you, and so did Mr. and Mrs. Gr. . . , 
 whether you could dine with us on Christmas-day — or on 
 New Year's-day — or on both ! If you can, need I say that I 
 shall be glad. 
 
 14 
 
210 LETTERS, ETC. 
 
 My noisy forge-hammer is still busy ; quick, thick, and 
 fervent. 
 
 With kindest regards to Mrs. Allsop, 
 
 Your ever faithful and affectionate, 
 T. Allsop, Esq. S. T. Coleridge. 
 
 LETTER XXXVI. 
 
 My dear Mrs. Allsop, 
 
 Indeed, indeed you have sadly misunderstood my last- 
 hurried note. So over and over again has Mr. Allsop been 
 assured that every invitation to him included you, so often has 
 he been asked to consider one meant for both, that in a few 
 lines scrawled in the dark, with a distracting, quick, thick, 
 and noisy beating as of a distant forge-hammer in my head, 
 and, lastly, written, not so much under any expectation of 
 seeing him (in fact for Christmas-day I had none), as from a 
 nervous jealousy of any customary mark of respect and affection 
 being omitted, the ceremony of expressing your name did not 
 occur to me. But the blame, whatever it be, lies with me, 
 wholly, exclusively on me ; for on asking Mr. Gillman whether 
 an invitation had been sent to you, he replied by asking 
 me if I had not spoken, and on my saying it was now too 
 late, he still desired me to write, his words being, — " For 
 though Allsop must know how glad we always are to see him, 
 yet still, as far as it is a mark of respect, it is his due." 
 Accordingly I wrote. But after the letter had been sent to the 
 post, on going to Mrs. Gillman to learn how she was, and 
 saying that I had just scrawled a note in the dark in order not 
 to miss the post, she expressed her disapprobation as nearly as 
 I can remember in these words : — '' I do not think a mere 
 ceremony any mark of respect to intimate friends. How, in 
 such weather as this, and short days, can it be supposed that 
 Mrs. Allsop could either leave the children or take them? 
 
LETTERS, ETC. 211 
 
 But to expect Mr. Allsop to dine away from his family at this 
 time is what I would not even appear to do, for I should think , 
 it very wrong if he did." I was vexed, and could only reply, 
 — " This comes of doing things of a hurry. However, Allsop 
 knows me too well to attribute to me any other feeling or pur- 
 pose than the real ones." I give you my word and honour, 
 my dear madame, that these were, to the best of my recollec- 
 tion, the very words ; but I am quite certain that they contain 
 the same substance. And for this reason, knowing how it 
 would vex and fret on her spirits that you had been offended, 
 and (if the letter of itself without any interpretation derived 
 from the character or known sentiments of the writer were to 
 decide it), justly offended, I have not shown her your note, nor 
 mentioned the circumstance to her ; for this sad accident has 
 pulled her down sadly, coming too in conjunction with the 
 distressful state of my health and spirits ; for such is my state 
 at present, that though I would myself have run any hazard 
 to have spent to-morrow with Miss Southey, my own Sarah's 
 friend and twin- sister, and with Miss Wordsworth at Monk- 
 house's, in Gloster-place j yet Mr. Gillman has both dissuaded 
 and forbidden me as my medical adviser. I trust, therefore, 
 that, finding Mrs. Gillman more than blameless, and that in me 
 the blame was in the judgment and not in the intention, you 
 will think no more of it, but do me the justice to believe that 
 any intentions or feelings of which I have been conscious have 
 ever been of a kind most contrary to any form of disrespect, 
 omisive or commissive ; to which, let me add, that / should 
 be doing what Mr. Allsop (I am sure) would not do, if having 
 shown you consciously any <$srespect I continued to subscribe 
 myself his friend, not to speak of any profession of being what 
 in very truth I am, my dear Mrs. Allsop, 
 
 Sincerely and affectionately yours, 
 
 S. T. Coleridge. 
 
 This letter is written in a very hurried and irregular 
 
212 LETTERS, ETC. 
 
 manner, showing the exceeding pain the writer suffered from 
 , the thought of having hurt or offended another. Truly did he 
 exemplify his own position, that great minds are ever gentle 
 and affectionate. 
 
 ^ . ^ rcy c^^ LETTEE XXXVII. 
 
 Dear Mrs. Allsop, -jfe" Grove, Highgute, April 8th, 1824. 
 There are three rolls of paper, Mr. Wordsworth's trans- 
 lation of the first, second, and third books, two in letter-paper, 
 one in a little writing-hook, in the drawer under the side-board 
 in your dining-room. Be so good as to put them up and give 
 them to the bearer should Mr. Allsop not be at home. 
 
 My dear Allsop, 
 
 You I know will have approved of my instant compliance 
 with Mr. Gillman's request of returning with him ; and I 
 know, too, that both Mrs. Allsop and yourself will think it 
 superfluous in me to tell you what you must be sure I cannot 
 but feel. I trust that when I next return from you, I shall 
 have — not to thank you less — but with less painful recollections 
 of the trouble and anxiety I have occasioned you. 
 
 In the agitation of leaving Mrs. Allsop, I forgot to take with 
 me the translation of Virgil. Could I, that is, dared I, wait 
 till Sunday, I might make it one way of inducing you to spend 
 the day with me. Upon the whole, however, I had better 
 send than increase my anxieties, so I will send Riley with 
 this note. 
 
 My Grandfatherly love and kisses to the Fairy Prattler 
 and the meek boy. I did heave a long-drawn wish this morn- 
 ing, as the sun and the air too were so genial, that the latter 
 had been in the good woman's house at Highgate well wrapped 
 up. A fortnight would do wonders for the dear little fellow. 
 
LETTERS, ETC. 213 
 
 You and Mrs. Allsop may rely on it that I would see him 
 every day during his stay here, if there were only one hour in 
 which it did not rain vehemently. 
 
 God hless you, 
 And your obliged and most 
 affectionately attached friend, 
 T. Allsop, Esq. S. T. Coleridge. 
 
 Thus early, my dear children, did you become the objects of 
 his affection and affectionate solicitude. It is pleasant to me, 
 almost as pleasant as it is painful, to recall those days, days 
 when from many causes my anxieties were great and my 
 position altogether most ungenial, and which, but for your 
 dear sakes, and for one, then as now, dearer to me than all 
 beside, would have been one of unmixed evil. From this 
 position I have now happily escaped into a state of greater 
 freedom, which, if it shall permit me to realise the objects of 
 my earliest and steadfast aspirations, objects in which you, as 
 Friends rather than as children, will have active and pleasant 
 duties allotted, will leave me little more to wish, hardly any- 
 thing to hope. 
 
 This letter was written after a sojourn of about tenjda^sjn 
 London, respecting which I have preserved the correspondence, 
 but which, as it is of interest chiefly to myself, would be out 
 of place here. It is a painful fact, if any general condition or 
 facts can with propriety be said to be painful, that those alone 
 who have been steeped in anxieties and in suffering can appre- 
 ciate the anxieties or sufferings of others. Prosperous men 
 avoid and eschew all approximation to distress or uneasiness in 
 real life, however they may indulge in mental sympathy with 
 suffering, or occasionally afford pecuniary assistance through 
 the hands of third parties. Hence those who have themselves 
 passed through mental and pecuniary distress are alone found 
 
214 LETTERS, ETC. 
 
 to make sacrifices as a tribute to, or from sympathy with, their 
 own past trials ; though it may fairly be doubted whether 
 suffering ever yet produced patient consideration for the 
 anxieties of another, or increased the real charities, though it 
 may greatly enlarge the sympathies and the sensibility which 
 pass current as charity, that greatest of all the virtues. 
 
 LETTER XXXVIII. 
 
 My dearest Friend, April lUh, 1824. 
 
 I am myself at my ordinary average of Health, and beat 
 off the blue Devils with the Ghosts of defunct hopes, chasing 
 the Jack-o'-lanterns of foolish expectation as well as I can, in 
 the which, believe me, I derive no small help from the Faith 
 that in your affection and sincerity I have at least one entire 
 counterpart of the Thoughts and Feelings with which I am 
 evermore and most sincerely 
 
 Your affectionate friend, 
 T. Allsop, Esq. S. T. Coleridge. 
 
 My kindest love and remembrance to Mrs. Allsop, and 
 assure her that I called this morning at Mrs. Constable's^ in- 
 duced by the very fine though unwarm day, to hope I might 
 find the little boy there, and was rather disappointed to see 
 her return without him. But, doubtless, we are entitled every 
 day to expect a change of the present to a more genial wind. 
 If the meek little one does not crow and clap his wings in a 
 week or so from Thursday, it shall not be for want of being 
 looked after. 
 
 LETTER XXXIX. 
 
 My dearest Friend, April 27th, 1824. 
 
 I direct this to your house, or firm should I say ? because 
 
 I should not think myself justified in exciting in Mrs. Allsop 
 
 an alarm, for which I have no more grounds than my own 
 
LETTERS, ETC. 215 
 
 apprehensions and unlearned conjectures. And yet having 
 these bodings, I cannot feel quite easy in withholding them 
 from you. On Saturday, the morning Mrs. Allsop was here, 
 I was in high hope, the little boy looking so much clearer and 
 livelier than on the Thursday ; but the weather since then being 
 on the whole genial, and the baby showing no mark of progress, 
 but rather the reverse, and it seeming to me each returning 
 day to require a stronger effort to rouse its attention, and the 
 relapse to a dulness, which it is evident the upright posture 
 alone prevented from being a doze, becoming more immediate, 
 I cannot repel the boding that tbere is either some mesenteric 
 affection, which sometimes exists in infants without betraying 
 itself by any notable change in the ingestion or the egestse, 
 yet producing on the brain an effect similar to that which 
 flatulence, or confined gas pressing on the nerves of the 
 stomach, will do ; or else that it is a case of chronic (slow) 
 hydrocephalus. Against this fear I have to say, first, that I 
 have not been able to detect any insensibility to light in the 
 pupil of its eyes, and that the little innocent has no convulsive 
 twitches, and neither starts nor screams in its sleep. For the 
 first I have no opportunity (the sun being clouded) of making 
 a decisive experiment, and requested Mrs. Constable to try 
 it with a candle, as soon as it was taken up after dark ; and 
 though the presence of this symptom is an infallible evidence 
 of the presence of effusion, or some equivalent cause of pressure, 
 its absence is no sure proof of the absence of the disease, 
 though it is a presumption in favour of the degree. The free- 
 dom from perturbation in sleep, however, is altogether a 
 favourable circumstance, and allows a hope that the continued 
 heaviness and immediate relapse into slumber on being placed 
 horizontally may be the effect of weakness. But then the 
 poor little, fellow habitually keeps its hand to its head, and 
 there is a sensible heat and throbbing at the temples. On the 
 whole, you should be prepared for the possible event, and Mrs. 
 Constable is naturally very anxious on this point, not merely 
 
216 LETTERS, ETC. 
 
 lest any neglect should be suspected on her part, but likewise 
 from an anticipation of the mother's agitation, should she at 
 any time come up just to witness the baby's last struggles, or 
 to find no more what she was expecting to see in incipient 
 recovery. 
 
 Do not misunderstand me, my dearest friend, nor let this 
 letter alarm you beyond what the facts require. I have seen 
 no decisive marks, no positive change for the worse, no measur- 
 able retro-gress'ion. I have of course repeatedly spoken to 
 Mr. Gillman, but he says it is impossible to form any con- 
 clusive opinion. There is no proof that it may not be weakness 
 at present and hitherto, but neither dare he determine what 
 the continuance of the weakness may not produce. Nothing 
 can warrantably be attempted in this uncertainty but mild 
 alteratives, watchful attention to the infant's regularity, with 
 as cordial nourishment as can be given without endangering 
 heat or inflammatory action. 
 
 I do not think that I have been able to remain undisturbed 
 an hour together for the last three days, such a tumble in of 
 persons with requests or claims on me has there been. House- 
 hunting, &c., &c. 
 
 ***** 
 * * * * 
 
 The genial glow of Friendship once deadened can never 
 be rekindled. 
 
 ^ " Idly we supplicate the Powers above — 
 
 j/IasJ~ v There is no Resurrection for a Love 
 
 
 1 hat uneclipsed, unthwarted, wanes away 
 In the chilled heart by inward self-decay. 
 Poor mimic of the Past ! the love is o'er, 
 That must resolve to do what did itself of yore.'' 
 
 God bless you, and your ever affectionate 
 T. Allsop, Esq. S. T. Coleridge. 
 
 P.S. To my great surprise and delight, Mr. Anster came in 
 on us this afternoon, and in perfect health and spirits. 
 
LETTERS, ETC. 217 
 
 3 J . 
 
 To you, my dear Eob, this letter will be a reminiscence of 
 interest in after life, should life and health be preserved to you ; 
 and I cannot choose but think that it must also find a response 
 in the heart of every parent, still more of every mother. Of 
 all the men, ordinary or extraordinary, I have ever known, 
 Coleridge was the one in whom the child-like, the almost 
 infantile, love and joyance, giving birth to or rather inter- 
 mingled with perfect sympathy and identity of feeling, most 
 predominated. His mind was at once the most masculine, 
 feminine, and yet child-like (and, in that sense, the most 
 innocent) which it is possible to image. The expressions 
 which conclude this letter I know were only forced from him 
 in a moment of imperfect sympathy, a short interval of ebb 
 in the genial current of affection and love, and a proof how 
 entirely his being yearned for sympathy ; not similarity in 
 taste, in feeling, or in judgment, but a love for the good, the 
 beautiful, and the loveable, which become more good, more 
 beautiful, and more loveable, when contemplated by minds 
 essentially individual and independent under the same aspect. 
 
 LETTER XL. 
 
 My dearest Friend, March 20th, 1825. 
 
 I should have answered your last but for three causes : 
 first, that I had proofs to correct and a passage of great nicety 
 to add, neither of which could be deferred without injustice to 
 the Publishers, and the breach of a definite promise on my 
 part ; second, that I was almost incapacitated from thinking of 
 and doing anything as it ought to be done by poor Mrs. G.'s 
 restless and interrogating anxieties, which in the first instance 
 put the whole working Hive of my Thoughts in a whirl and a 
 Bur ; and then, when I see her care-worn countenance, and 
 reflect on the state of her health (and it is difficult to say which 
 of the two, ill-health or habitual anxiety, is more cause and 
 more effect), a sharp fit of the Heart-ache follows. 
 
218 LETTERS, ETC. 
 
 But enough of this Subject. I ought to be ashamed of 
 myself for troubling you with it ; you have enough frets and 
 frictions of your own. And so I proceed to the third cause, 
 which is that (how far imputable to the mood of mind I was 
 in, I cannot say) I did not understand your letter. 
 
 Is there any definite service, or any chance of any definite 
 service, great or small, that I can do or promote, or expedite, 
 by coming to town? If there be, let me have a fine or a 
 monosyllable Yes, and mention the time. I would have set off 
 and taken the chance without asking the question, but that I 
 have so many irons in the fire at this present moment, — 1, my 
 Preface ; 2, my Essay ; 3, a Work prepared for the Press by 
 my Hebrew Friend, in which I am greatly interested, morally 
 and crumenically, though not like the Modern Descendants of 
 Heber, one of a crumenimulga Natio, i. e. a purse-milking set ; 
 and 4, Eevisal, &c, for a friend only less near than yourself. 
 
 Mr. Chance, I take it for granted, has written to you. My 
 opinion is, that he will be a valuable man, not only generally, 
 but especially to that which alone concerns me — your comfort 
 and happiness. He is a self-satisfied man, but of the very 
 kindest and best sort. Prosperous in all his concerns, and 
 with peace in his own conscience and family, I regard such 
 vainness but as the overflow of humanity. I do not like him 
 the better for it ; but I should not like him the better without it. 
 Meantime he is active, shrewd, a thorough man of business ; 
 sanguine I should think, both by constitution and habitual 
 success : and, under any sudden emergency, I think that Mr. 
 Chance, not so deeply interested, and yet (such is his nature)' 
 with equal liveliness in feeling, would be a comfort to you. 
 
 I shall miss the post if I do more than add, that whatever 
 really serves you, will (and on his death-pillow quite as much 
 as in his present garret) delight 
 
 Your sincere and affectionate friend, 
 T. Allsop, Esq. S. T. Coleridge. 
 
LETTERS, ETC. 219 
 
 It will be necessary to the better understanding of some 
 passages of this letter, to refer very briefly to matters affecting 
 myself, and my position at that time. 
 
 At the date of this letter I had been for nearly six years 
 actively engaged in an extensive business, which, owing partly 
 to want of unity of opinion and action amongst those most 
 interested, and partly to changes which were beyond control, 
 had resulted in serious loss, and still more serious deterioration 
 in the value of the property embarked ; a loss and a deterior- 
 ation which I even then saw could never be retrieved, and 
 could only be parried by a system of contrivances, with 
 anxiety and discredit attendant upon the means, and loss and 
 ruin as the assured end. 
 
 Under these circumstances, and not with any view to get rich 
 in haste, did I adventure in one of the undertakings with which 
 the time abounded. I owe it to truth to state, that it was a 
 sound, useful, practicable project,* and that it only failed from 
 the unfitness of the men who were associated in its manage- 
 ment, and from the general discredit into which all similar 
 undertakings fell at this era. 
 
 I here state as a beacon to others, that, great as my losses 
 had been, first, in the business in which I had, for six years, 
 incurred yearly pecuniary damage ; second, by the very serious 
 losses attendant upon the relinquishment of the undertaking, 
 these would have been parried, and, such is the force of custom, 
 I should probably still have clung to the business in which I 
 had been so great a loser, had I not, in the plenitude of my 
 confidence, accepted a draft for a very great amount, for the 
 use and accommodation of parties, upon whose means I had 
 the most entire confidence, and in their honour, if possible, a 
 still more implicit reliance. Will it be credited that, before 
 
 * This very project has been revived, and is now carried on with 
 advantage by a private company. It was, as I always foresaw it 
 would be, adopted by those on the spot out of the necessities of their 
 condition. 
 
220 LETTERS, ETC. 
 
 this draft reached maturity (a dissolution of partnership having 
 taken place between the drawers), that the senior and more 
 affluent partner placed this very bill in the hands of the worthy- 
 Member for Leominster, and himself, being an attorney, com- 
 menced proceedings for its recovery, although the circumstances 
 were detailed, and the undertaking of the parties, this very 
 attorney being one, were known to that representative of the 
 People : and that this very person so placing the draft in the 
 Honourable Member's hands, knew it was accepted on the faith of 
 his means, and that I held his and his partner's joint undertaking? 
 Above all, will it be believed that this very man, whom I had 
 thus assisted with my acceptance, was the attorney in the action? 
 I mention these circumstances neither in anger nor in pity. 
 Me they have not injured, unless the anxiety of those days, 
 and the anxiety they caused to one most dear to me, may in 
 some degree have impaired those buoyant and joyous hopes 
 (common to ardent temperaments) before their appointed time. 
 On the contrary, by severing a connexion I was not in a con- 
 dition to abandon of myself, I have been saved years of con- 
 tinued and hopeless anxiety, and have thus arrived at a position 
 from whence I can look forward to the realisation of the hope, 
 which has been to me an abiding source of comfort in all my 
 strivings, the prospect of which has ever soothed and supported 
 me — a country life ; to end my life in the pursuits and amid the 
 occupations of my childhood. That you, my dearest children, 
 may be free from the soiling influences of buying and selling, from 
 the frightful insincerity and heartlessness which they engender, 
 that you may find a happy home away from scenes of self- 
 seeking competition and the debasing motives which may yet 
 be said to be natural in large communities, is now almost the 
 only wish I have ungratified. I have ever made, as much as 
 possible, " the chosen employments of the years in hope, the 
 relaxations of the time present ; of the years devoted to present 
 duties, and among them to the means of realising that hope ; 
 thus have I kept my inward trains of thought, my faculties, 
 
LETTERS, ETC. 221 
 
 and my feelings, in a state of fitness, and as it were contem- 
 pered to a Life of ease, and capable of enjoying Leisure, because 
 both able and disposed to employ it." Not having been able 
 to lift my means to the extent of the wants sanctioned, almost 
 necessitated, by conventional habits, I have succeeded in 
 reducing my needs to the measure of my condition. I have 
 attained, though somewhat seared in the conflict, content and 
 mental repose, without having passed through or sought refuge 
 in that most cheerless condition, Resignation. I can yet say, 
 " Homo sum ; a me alienum nihil humani puto." 
 
 " So was it when my life hegan, 
 So is it now I am a man, 
 So let it be when I grow old, 
 
 Or let me die." 
 
 I recollect well — as it were only yesterday — a little excur- 
 sion I made into the wilder parts of the Peak with my worthy 
 friend and schoolfellow, Mr. John Bromley of Derby. It was 
 a very sultry day, when having with some difficulty led our 
 horses down the precipitous declivity, which from the summit 
 of the shivering Mountain leads into the beautiful Dale of E., 
 or E-dale, we proceeded through that most interesting and most 
 secluded spot on our return to Bakewell, and arrived, weary 
 and heated, at the village (how beautifully named) of Hope. 
 There, having refreshed and rested ourselves, we were pre- 
 paring to continue our ride, when the appearance of a man, 
 who, by an expression of meekness and benevolence, at once 
 created an interest in my heart, detained me for some time. 
 
 From this man of many sorrows, with whom I had long 
 and fervid colloquy, I first learned that Eesignation was only 
 acquiescence in that which was felt to be wrong or unjust, 
 or undeserved ; and was a very different condition from con- 
 tent. Whilst the impressions were yet vivid, or rather whilst 
 they were yet fresh in my recollection, I wrote to my revered 
 friend, expressing more clearly than I can hope to convey to 
 
222 LETTERS, ETC. 
 
 you now, my repugnance and utter dislike of Resignation. 
 Eesignation to, or acquiescence in, that which is felt to he an 
 evil, a sorrow, or a grievous injury, loss or infliction, is of 
 very douhtful value, is at hest but suffering superseded, not 
 Enjoyment superinduced ; whilst Content, whatever may be 
 the condition of mind, body, or estate with which it co-exists, 
 leaves a man to hope, that highest of human delights, whilst 
 at the same time it secures him from its opposite, fear. It 
 seems that condition in which the energies, mental and 
 physical, find their equipoise and equilibrium ; where they all 
 exist and act in hannony ; where the discords are neutralised, 
 if not entirely withdrawn ; where the atmosphere is such, that 
 they can no longer make themselves heard. 
 
 " For this the best preparative is a belief in philosophical 
 necessity." Eead again and again this passage, which I would 
 more frequently impress upon your attention did I not fear 
 that the iteration might defeat the effect I seek to produce. 
 
 " Wi. i%^S" f ^ <£&. lettee xli. 
 
 * kL // 0*77 
 
 My dearest Friend, * April 30th, 1825. 
 
 Having disburthened myself of the main loads of 
 outward obligation at least, that pressed <pon me, my Essay 
 for the E. S. L., and my Aids to Eeflection, with other matters 
 not so expressly my own, but having the same+jf not greater, 
 demands on such quantity of time, as bodily pain and dis- 
 qualification, with unprecludible interruption^ have enabled me 
 _ / to make use o£.I take the very first moment of the Furlo*igkto 
 / tell you that I have been perplexed both by your silence and 
 
 your absence. In fact, I had taken for granted you were in 
 Derbyshire^ till this afternoon, when I saw ono who had m e t 
 - you. vcstei'day . (*n€*^% J f^*^t~ fa/*- //V a^*~* g^-*^*- 
 Aje.c-A.llf Now I cannot recollect anything that can — I am sure, ought 
 
 < 
 
 g^^^-^C f-u^n^*^ 
 
 m 
 
A f?<rt**-4. v J j icfrc***-** ' 
 
 LETTERS, ETC. 223 
 
 to have given you offence, unless it were my non-performance 
 
 of the request communicated to me by Mr. Jameson. IkJiA^t "£&.• X> 
 
 I was ever in the stifle of my reflected anxieties, i. e. anxieties 
 felt by reflection from those of others, and my Tangle of 
 Things-to-be-done, solicitous to see and talk with you.* You (/**- A-35* / 
 must not feel wounded if, loving you so truly as I do, and vi 
 
 feeling more and more every week that nothing is worth living 
 for but the consciousness of living aright, I was nervous if you 
 will, with regard to the effect of this undertaking on the frame 'ThjLjJ- *£*- ~ 
 of your moral and intellectual Being. ^In the meantime-you -<****- -^wfc-» 
 never came near me, so that I might havebeen able to rectify f<*- b ,1$7- 
 my opinions, or rather to form them ; and I felt, and still feel, '^i:\ 
 
 that I would gladly go into a garret* and work from morning 
 to late night, at any work I could get money by, and more 
 than share my pittance wi^ you and yours, than see you^ <**, /}£} — 
 
 unhappy with twonty thouoajl t i at your command. ^/wA*. 
 
 Do not, my dearest Fincna, therefore let my perplexities, 
 derived in great measure from my unacquaintance with the 
 facts, and to which my ever- wakeful affection gave the origin, 
 prevent you from treating, as you were wont to do, 
 3(f Ak/uX /S^S" Your truly sincere 
 
 T. Allaop, Es q, ^t*^<- fay^^C g-. T. Colerid&e. 
 
 Whilst I write, my attention is called to a work where this , Ia/V«iA 
 
 1 . , (Lj* : 
 
 Great and Gentle Being is called bigoted, unchai'itable, and I 
 know not what harsh terms are huddled and upheaped upon t 
 his Honoured name. If I had no other object but to disabuse 
 the minds of those who are likely to be influenced by this 
 work, I should persevere ; regarding, though I may, an in- 
 justice done to another as the greatest misfortune that can 
 befall the perpetrator. Well indeed has the Departed said, 
 that the world is a great Labyrinth in which all men take 
 different ways, and abuse all who do not take the same way.. 
 Hence I hold it safe at all times to say 2" instead of it. What 
 do we really express ? our opinions. Why not then couple 
 
224 LETTERS, ETC. 
 
 the opinion with the Being who holds or propounds it ? To 
 what then does the opinion thus impersonally expressed 
 amount ? That he, the writer of this Beview, thinks wisely, 
 or it may be otherwise. Is he not, however, dishonest in 
 bringing to bear upon the character, the reputation, or the 
 conduct of another man, not facts, not merely the weight of 
 his own arguments or opinions, whatever may be their worth, 
 but the ponderous we, or the more insidious and dishonest it. 
 Let us have the opinion of Henry Brougham, of Sydney Smith, 
 of Francis Jeffery, of any one man, young or old, and he will 
 be careful in his affirmations. I am inclined to honour and 
 hope well of the attempts of Mr. Boebuck, Mr. Fox, and my 
 high purposed and honest Friend, John Bell, whq have nobly 
 set the example of writing on subjects so important to all 
 without the Stamp, and have given their opinions, under their 
 own names, in their own Journals, and for every word of 
 which they are thus morally and legally responsible. 
 
 " I think the praise of Folly is the most pleasant Book of 
 Erasmus." 
 
 " The distich which he returned to Sir Thomas More in the 
 place of the Horse he had borrowed, is as good as was any 
 Steed in the Stable of that most excellent Utopian. I cannot 
 see how a good Catholic could refuse to receive it. He ought 
 to be prepared to renounce his religion who shrinks from the 
 necessary, inevitable, and legitimate consequences to which it 
 must lead. Here it is : 
 
 " Quod mihi dixisti 
 De corpore Christi 
 Crede quod edas et edis, 
 Sic tibi rescribo 
 De tuo Palfrido 
 Crede quod habeas et habes." 
 

 
 ^ -"" LETTERS, ETC. 225 
 
 v Garrick. \ty £-^&Gif~ <-*-^J 
 
 11 The warmest admirers of histrionic -merit would not 
 willingly be supposed to overlook the difference, both in kind 
 and degree, between an excellence that in its very nature is 
 transient, or continuing, only as an echo, in the memory of a 
 single generation, while the name alone remains for posterity, 
 and a power, enduring as the Soul of Man and commensurate 
 with the human language. 
 
 But, without dreading the imputation of a wish to balance 
 weights so unequal, we may assert that if ever two great men 
 might seem to have been made for each other, we have this 
 correspondency presented to us in the instance of Garrick and 
 Shakspeara/VLt will be sufficient 4»r ma to direct attention to //\ 
 one peculiarity, the common and exclusive characteristic of 
 both, — the union of the highest Tragic and Comic Excellence 
 in the same Individual. This indeed supersedes the necessity 
 of mentioning the particular merits which it implies and com- 
 prehends, while it is eminently and in the exactest sense of the 
 word characteristic, inasmuch as this transcendent power sprung 
 from the same source in both, — from an insight into human 
 nature at its fountain headjwhich exists in those creations of [_ _j //t 
 Genius alone, in which the substance and essential forms are /cjl^*— t ~& 
 the Gifts of Meditation ' and self-research, and the individual- Xa^-*- 2**~~ 
 ising accidents, and the requisite drapery, are supplied by ^*j* r~, 
 observation and acquaintance with the world, j We may then £&*** ' 
 hope for a second Garrick or of an approach to a Shakspearar / 
 where we find a knowle/ge of Man united Vi. an equal know- i^nJii 
 le^fge of Men, and both co-existing with the power of giving 
 Life and Individuality to the products of both. For such a 
 being possesses the rudiments of every character in himself, 
 and acquires the faculty of becoming, for the moment, whatever 
 character he may choose to represent. He combines in his own 
 person at once the materials and the workman. The precious 
 proofs of this rare excellence in our Greatest Dramatic Poet 
 are in the hands of all men^"to exhibit the same excellence 
 
 1 PC 
 
226 LETTERS, ETC. 
 
 in our greatest actor, we can conceive no more lively or impres- 
 sive way than by presenting him in the two extreme Poles of 
 his Creative and almost Protean Genius — in his Kichard the 
 Third and his Abel Drugger."* bvTil ~JfU>i*> ifrt^t+^t-ficfxin-c* 
 
 tCaSc**"* & " ^" n ^ e l an g ua l? e °f prophecy, the first and prominent 
 symptom of a good or evil will, or influencing tendency, is 
 
 OiU-i^i-' &y brought forward as the condition or occasion of all that follows. 
 /t /i *3«£ The first link in the chain of effects is made the representa- 
 
 >«, ^V - tive of the common cause of them all, or the good or evil state 
 *k£ **^|j£ f tjj e mora l Being of the agents. So, for instance, a turbulent 
 A*-» t/^ / t^ ni/ ' malcontent disposition in large classes of a country, with the 
 
 — i*^, C *vcivv, assertion of Rights, unqualified by, and without any reference 
 
 ^yn.^i-i^-r (iit^ to, duties, a vague Lust for Power, mistaken for, and counter- 
 /Ny, . feiting the love of, Liberty — 
 
 y \ /. 'Licence they mean when they cry Liberty, 
 
 A *£*■ /*t O*-*-*-*-*-^^ 1 -**** For who loves that, must first be wise and good — ' 
 A^/t-*^ •— show themselves first in clubs, societies, political unions, &c, 
 6ns£~ i+^2£*. &c. And this, as the first prominent symptom, foretels and 
 . * becomes itself a powerful efficient cause of the disruption, dis- 
 jt/*"^ * t/ '*\** < TSrganisation, and anarchy that follow. Most truly, therefore 
 ^fctf > sX+^A+f — indeed what great truth and principle of State Wisdom can 
 . , i , f -T g^s- be mentioned which is not to be found in the oracle of the 
 "* _ Hebrew Prophets — most truly doth Isaiah proclaim — ch. viii. 
 
 UhS l\i%^**r ^ Y 9^ u Associate yourselves, ye people ! and ye shall be 
 ffcfarinr-*-^ broken in pieces. Give ear, all ye of far countries! Gird 
 yourselves {i.e. form yourselves into Clubs as with Girdles), and 
 ye shall be broken in pieces." 
 
 si " It at once soothes and amuses me to think; — nay, to know, 
 
 that the time will come when this little volume of my dear, 
 
 , \(ls* lJI and well nigh oldest friend, dear Mary Lamb, will be not only 
 
 / ^r <?■ enjoyed but acknowledged as a rich jewel in the treasury of 
 
 * / l f i* our permanent English Literature ; and I cannot help running 
 
 J ( s~fr* , over in my mind the long list of celebrated writers, astonish- 
 
LETTERS, ETC. 227 
 
 ing Geniuses ! Novels, Eomances, Poems, Histories, and 
 dense Political Economy quartos, which, compared with Mrs. 
 Leicester's School, will he remembered as often and prized as 
 highly as Wilkie's and Glover's Epics and Lord Bolingbroke's 
 Philosophies compared with Robinson Crusoe ! " 
 
 All my recollections of Sir James Mackintosh were mislaid, 
 or, I fear, lost, together with many letters of Charles Lamb 
 and of Coleridge, on the occasion of a removal about six years 
 ago. The only thing that I distinctly retain is a bon mot 
 which Coleridge considered very felicitous. 
 
 Speaking of Mr. Hume, who had recently distinguished 
 himself by something connected with finance — a loan for 
 Greece, I think — as an extraordinary man, — " Yes," said 
 Mackintosh, " he is : he is an extraordinary man — an extra- 
 ordinary ordinary man." 
 
 LETTER XLII. 
 
 My dear Friend, Saturday, May 2nd, 1825. ■%< ^ ^ 
 
 I am sure you did not mean that the interest I feel in «/^ 
 
 this undertaking was one which I was likely to throw off, or ^ S 
 
 one which there was any chance of my not retaining ; but I ^ - 2. 
 would fain have you not even speak or write below that line 
 of friendship and mutual implicit reliance, on which you and I 
 stand. We are in the world, and obliged to chafe and chaffer 
 with it ; but we are not of the world, nor will we use its idioms 
 or adopt its brogue. 
 
 God bless you, and your affectionate Friend, 
 T. Allsop, Esq. S. T. Coleridge. 
 
 Goldsmith makes one of his Characters say of the Magazines 
 or Reviews of his day, " They hate each other, but I like 
 them all." I have known, with less or greater intimacy, 
 many men of note and great attainments, who have hated or 
 
228 LETTERS, ETC. 
 
 mistaken (if indeed these are not convertible terms) each other, 
 and yet I have found something not only to admire, but 
 something to love, in them all. You have seen the expression 
 applied to Cobbett, and you will see what is said of Hazlitt, 
 O'Connell, and Owen, in the subsequent portion of these 
 reminiscences. Now first of the First. 
 
 With William Cobbett, I once passed three days; three 
 days of the most delightful interest throughout. He was, per- 
 haps, at the zenith of his influence (it was before he sunk into 
 Parliament), and in the meridian of his powers. It was in the 
 Five hard Parishes, as he always called them, in Hampshire, 
 in the stronghold of the Parsons — the large sheep and arable 
 Farms. 
 
 He then and there held a Court of Enquiry touching the 
 misdeeds of the millionaires, the Barings : and truly, if what 
 was there stated and confirmed and corroborated to iteration by 
 all who were likely to be cognisant of the facts, is worthy of 
 any credit, most foul wrong was done to those, who had been 
 previously only oppressed. Fear is always cruel ; and I cannot 
 doubt that the Barings considered themselves justified in their 
 shameful conduct to Mrs. Deacle, not to mention the case of 
 Farmer Boyes, or Boyce, and the atrocious execution, or, to 
 speak honestly, the legal murder, or murder under legal forms, 
 of Henry Cook, for striking Bingham Baring. I mention this 
 now, at a period of political calm, not to point indignation at 
 misdeeds long since perpetrated, but to awake compunction in 
 the breasts of rich men, who, themselves never exposed to want, 
 cannot conceive or image to themselves the sufferings of the 
 very poor. To them, the reply of the young lady, when told 
 that the poor could not get bread, " then why not eat pie- 
 crust?" is natural; how can it be otherwise? And yet from 
 this class, who are necessarily ignorant of all that it really 
 imports man, in his social condition, to know, are nearly all our 
 Legislators ; and not merely those who misrepresent Counties, 
 but the misrepresentatives of Towns. Colonel Sibthorp may 
 
LETTERS, ETC. 229 
 
 sneer at Bulwer as an author, and in his return be contemned 
 as an unreasoning soldier ; but they are both of the useless 
 class. Manchester could not find amongst its active and in- 
 telligent population a second member, but must have a rich 
 man from London : whilst Liverpool — aristocratic and refined 
 Liverpool — must have a Lord. The chosen haunts of idle- 
 ness and profligacy have rejected the idle and the worthless, 
 who are received and cherished in the hives of industry. 
 Brighton, Bath, and Mary4e-bone, are well and truly served 
 by men who belong to the people ; whilst Manchester, Liver- 
 pool, and Derby, have chosen Lords or Lord -lings to attend to 
 the interests of cotton, calico, and hosiery ! 
 
 The first day the fine and sturdy Yeoman, with his bold, 
 and, it may be, somewhat burly, bearing, feasted under an im- 
 mense Tent, more than a thousand Visitors, to whom he gave 
 Food and Drink in ample quantities, a speech after dinner, and 
 a dance in the evening. The gathering came far and near ; 
 the best proof, if any were needed of the favourable impression: 
 he had made in his own neighbourhood. 
 
 The following morning I was up about half-past three, and 
 was shortly after joined by this very noticeable Man, with 
 whom I walked across the Fields in the direction of Michel- 
 dever. It was delightful at that hour of a fine summer's 
 morning to see him quiet, calm, like the time. Nothing 
 escaped him. Not a flower — especially a honeysuckle — which 
 he did not figuratively sniff up if he could approach it ; not a 
 feature of rural beauty which he did not notice, and explain in 
 what lay its distinguishing excellence. Although living at 
 that time constantly in the country, he seemed, in the fresh- 
 ness of his joy and enjoyment, like one who had " been long 
 in dismal cities pent." My pencil recollections of that day are 
 few and scant. 
 
 On the morning following, I was one of a party which pro- 
 ceeded to the Church-yard of Micheldever, and strewed the 
 grave of Henry Cook with flowers. Ill-fated youth 1 hadst 
 
230 LETTEKS, ETC. 
 
 thou been struck even to the earth, a small gratuity would have 
 been offered to thee, and thou wouldst have been envied by 
 thy poor comrades for thy luck. In what, then, consists thy 
 crime ? Truly thou wert poor. Had a Prince struck Bingham 
 Baring, he might have been made a Baronet, as his father 
 has since been made a Baron, and the blow would have been 
 esteemed fortunate, and have been added to the Escutcheon of 
 a Loan Jobber ; but to be struck by a Ploughman or a Car- 
 penter, that is the difference. What matter whether it was in 
 self-defence or in the resistance of wrong done? Fear is 
 ever cruel, is only appeased with Blood ! 
 
 It was touching and painful, an hour after, to find the mother 
 of this ill-fated victim of the panic of property, so utterly 
 prostrated by the fear of offending the owner of Stratton, 
 employed in removing the flowers from her son's grave, fearful 
 lest the wrath of these Parvenu's should follow her and her 
 husband even unto the Parish Workhouse, in which they had 
 taken refuge, and that this touching tribute to the dead, should 
 be remembered in vengeance against the unoffending bereaved 
 Parents, driven by the death of their son, in old age, to the 
 wretched workhouse of Micheldever. Again, on the arrival 
 of Mr. Cobbett, were flowers strewed on the Grave ; again and 
 more quickly were they removed by the in soul affrighted 
 Parent. I do not know when I have been more affected. 
 
 To you, my dear children, I wish to point out what may 
 else escape your attention whilst young — that these oppressors, 
 these soul enslavers of the Poor, are either conscious of the 
 enormity of their conduct or they are not. If not conscious, 
 if totally alienated from all sympathies with their kind unless 
 it be in their own especial class, what sympathies, what sources 
 of pleasure and pure delight, are for ever closed to them ! 
 
 These are fit and appropriate punishments for them. Plea- 
 sures withheld for punishments vouchsafed. 
 
 If they are awakened to the consciousness of the Blood 
 they have shed, the Widows and the Fatherless that owe their 
 
LETTERS, ETC. 231 
 
 bereaved condition to them, think you that vengeance — ample 
 though unseen vengeance — has not been taken ? Oh ! never 
 doubt but that, in some form or other, retribution for misdeeds, 
 for talcing, or mistaking, the power for the right, will assuredly 
 arrive to every man during his life. 
 
 Pleasant was it [to see the stout Yeoman, the Country Gen- 
 tleman (for such he was in his bearing and general demeanour), 
 go over the ground which he had visited under other and 
 quieter aspects. " Here lived Mr. . . . and there Tom . . . ; 
 they were very kind to my sons whilst at school with the 
 Parson at Micheldever." And the recollection of kindness 
 from those who had passed away " from this visible diurnal 
 sphere," caused his eyes to glisten and his voice to soften. 
 The Widow of the Clergyman with whom his sons had been 
 placed, hearing that he was in Micheldever, sent most earnest 
 entreaties that he would not leave the Village without visiting 
 her. He refused, saying " it may injure her : she receives 
 assistance, countenance, or support, from Baring." Again the 
 good lady sent ; he went, abusing her in words, springing, 
 however, from, and associated with, the finest and purest feel- 
 ings of our nature ; and after a colloquy of some half hour, I 
 rejoined him as he descended the steps of the Widow's house, 
 his face streaming with tears — weeping like a child. 
 
 Kind and cordial, frank, hearty, and generous, with energies 
 and powers of mind unequalled in his day, it will indeed be a 
 deep disgrace to the national character, if those who have been 
 benefited, delighted, and instructed by his multifarious writings, 
 shall not evince their sense of his transcendent powers, in the 
 only mode now possible, by prompt contributions to the Statue 
 about to be erected to his Memory. 
 
 I am grateful for the delightful days I have passed in com- 
 munion with a mind, whose matchless energy was softened and 
 attempered by a kindness, which can only have its highest 
 value when allied to, or springing out of, great powers. It was 
 of this man, thus gifted, that Hunt, after he had become a 
 
232 LETTERS, ETC. 
 
 personal enemy, said, when asked what was his opinion of 
 Cobbett's powers, " I have seen him engage the attention of a 
 company for hours by his energy, variety, and the extent of his 
 resources ; I have seen him the life and soul of every domestic 
 o'r social circle, attracting and engaging the attention alike of 
 all — from the child of three years to the old woman of eighty." 
 I gratify myself by inserting the two following letters ; the 
 first addressed to the Daughter of an old Friend, on his return 
 from a visit of recreation, the second addressed to the Father 
 upon the death of his excellent Wife. I yet hope that we 
 shall be able to profit by a collection of Mr. Cobbett's letters 
 to private friends, though I much fear that the value he 
 attached to time, deterred him from writing many familiar and 
 friendly letters.* In this view, therefore, these letters, as well 
 as from their kindness and delicate attention, to those who had 
 been heretofore his assistants, are of great interest. 
 
 Dear Miss .... Normandy. Farm, Aug. 26$, 1834. 
 
 Your father and mother return in pretty good health; 
 and they have the great consolation to reflect that they owe 
 their recovery to the air which their just confidence in your 
 prudence and diligence have enabled them to avail them- 
 selves of. 
 
 I have to thank you also, which I do most sincerely, for 
 that very great service which has been rendered me by the 
 great care of your father, at a time when I knew not which 
 way to turn. This he could not have rendered me if he had 
 not had you to confide his business to. 
 
 I hope that your mother will come here as often as she may 
 find it necessary for her health, and I hope your health will 
 not suffer on account of your confinement. Your conduct has 
 
 * This economy of time he also carried into conversation. I recol- 
 lect his ohserving, to the clever and pretty girl who ministered to him 
 at Sutton Scotney, " Time is valuahle; never throw away your words. 
 I never do." 
 
LETTERS, ETC. 233 
 
 been so excellent, that I should have deemed it a neglect of 
 my duty had I failed thus to express my sentiments regard- 
 ing it. 
 
 I am your faithful friend, 
 
 And most obedient servant, 
 
 Wm. Cobbett. 
 
 Mr Normandy, April 9th, 1835. 
 
 Dear Sir, 
 
 I am sure I need not tell you what grief your melancholy 
 loss has occasioned me. I do not believe that a better human 
 being ever existed in the world. Nor is it much consolation 
 to know that you must have parted first or last. It is a great 
 calamity, and all I can say is that I most deeply lament it. 
 
 Pray remember me to poor little Emma. I wish you could 
 so manage as to come here for a while to withdraw your mind 
 from the scene. 
 
 I beg you to be assured that I feel for this event more than 
 I have felt for any misfortune of my own in my whole life, for 
 I never yet had a death in my family. I am, 
 
 Most sincerely your friend, 
 
 Wm. Cobbett. 
 
 It is well to bear in mind that the last words of William 
 Cobbett were for and concerning the country, and those who 
 make the food to be. 
 
 That even when his senses became dim, he still muttered, — 
 " I have ever been their* friend. They make all things to 
 come: it is right they should have their full share first." 
 
 That he never swerved ; that, contemning imposture whilst 
 living, he was consistent in his Death as in his Life. 
 
 Peace to the memory of a Great, and, if words have any 
 meaning, a Good man. 
 
 * The friend of the agricultural classes. 
 
•VJ 
 
 •v 
 
 234 LETTERS, ETC. . ' /v , 4 / tt 
 
 &t£^ LETTER XLIII. ' ^^T 
 
 My dearest Fmlitp , (flu A 1~fr*£) May 10th, 1825. 
 
 I have been reflecting earnestly and actively on the 
 subject of a Metropolitan University, now in agitation, and 
 could conveniently comprise the results in three Lectures. 
 
 On the Histories of Universities generally, the mo a t in- 
 teresting ^Features in the History of the most celebrated 
 Universities in Great Britain, Germany, France, &c. Re- 
 duction of all Universities of any name, with respect to their 
 construction and constitution, to three Classes. 2. The Mean- 
 ing of the Term, University, and the one true and only 
 adequate Scheme of a University stated and unfolded from the 
 Seed (i. e. thejdea) to the full Tree with all its Branches. 
 3. The advantages, moral, intellectual, national, developed from 
 reason and established by proofs of History; and, lastly, a 
 plan (and sketch of the means) of approximating to the Ideal, 
 adapted and applied to this Metropolis. (N.B. The Plan 
 in detail, salaries only not mentioned — the particular sums, I 
 mean). The obstacles, the favourable circumstances, the pro 
 and con regarding the question of Collegiate UniversifTes, 
 &c. &c. That I could make these subjects not only highly 
 interesting but even entertaining, I have not the least doubt. 
 But would the subject excite an interest of curiosity ? Would 
 the anticipation of what I might say attract an audience of 
 respectable smallclothes and petticoats sufficiently large to 
 produce something more than, with the same exertion^ of 
 Head and Hand, I might earn in my Garrett(to give the 
 precise Top- ography of my abode) here at Nemorosi, alias 
 Houses in the Grove. For the expense of coach-hire, the **— 
 bodily fatigue, and (to borrow a phrase from poor Charles 
 Lloyd) " the hot huddle of indefinite sensations" that hustle my 
 inward man in the m onster city and a Crown and Anchor 
 Room demand a + , and would an =, after all expenses paid, C J 
 but ragged economy, unless I were certain "of effecting more / 
 good in this than in a quieter way of industry. 
 
LETTERS, ETC. 235 
 
 I wrote to Mr. B. Montagu for his advice/ but he felt no Q^) . 
 interest himself in the subject, and naturally therefore was 
 doubtful of any number of others feeling any. But he pro- 
 mised to talk with his£aeafc: Mr. Irving about it/ On the Qy/ 
 other hand, I heard from Mr. Hughes and a Mr. Wilkes (a * 
 clever Solicitor-sort of a man who lives in Finsbury-square, 
 has a great sway with the Slangi yclept the Religious Public, 
 f and/ this I add as ajvhitewasherAiv&s a regular attendant &&my *5^ 
 jC £ Jjectures), that the subject itself is stirring up the^ud-^ool of ^„ a. 
 the Public Mind in London with the vivacity of a Bottom - 
 -wind. If you can find time, L - wioh you would talk with 
 Jameson about it, and obtain the opinion &f as many as are S^rt^rCb f 
 likely to 4hinlT aright ; and let me know your own opinion and ****.*£</ / 
 anticipation above all, and at all events, and as soon as possible. "" 
 We dine on Friday with Mr. Chance. I wish you were with 
 
 uSyipr ^ am sure ^ e wou ^ baglad to see you. Need I say V*-"y / 
 
 S**t- that my thoughts, wishes, and prayers follow you in all your ' 
 
 r**-*^ doings and strivings, for I am evermore, my dearest - friend, &^£^*-*^t 
 
 Yours, with a friendand a father's &Jt/ 
 
 affection and solicitude, 
 lUAIlaop, Esq. * S. T. Coleridge. 
 
 My kindest remembrances to Mrs. Allsop, with kisses for 
 little Titania Puckinella, 
 
 Years have passed since I heard the Nightingales sing as 
 they did this evening in Mr. Eobart's Garden^rounds; so many, 
 and in such full song, particularly that giddy voluminous whirl 
 of notes which you never hear out when the Birds feel the 
 temperature of the air voluptuous. T r^^^fu., i~>~&iJl ***3 . 
 P.S. If I undertook these Lectures, I should compose the 
 three, and write them out with as much care and polish as if 
 for the Press, though I should probably make no use of the 
 $,/ MS. in speaking, or at all attempt to recollect it. It would, 
 / relatively to my viva voce addresses, be only a way of premedi- 
 tating the subject. l**t-. 
 
236 LETTERS, ETC. 
 
 It has been charged against the writer of this letter, that he 
 had latterly secluded himself from the world, and had confined 
 his communications chiefly to inferior and subordinate minds. 
 I wish to believe that I have mistaken this writer; I would 
 fain persuade myself that he must be a very young man; one, 
 who having no settled or satisfactory opinions, neither know- 
 ledge, experience, or judgment, seeks in an eternal gabble of 
 words, disconnected from thoughts, to impose upon his readers. 
 If, however, he should prove to be a man to whom Age has 
 brought Evil alone, one, who to restlessness, which is more 
 than disease, adds treachery of the blackest nature and in all 
 its forms, I would remind him of the communications which he 
 made to the man he now slanders, at the time when the neces- 
 sities of our gracious and religious King rendered necessary 
 the resumption of the hundred guineas granted from what is 
 called the Privy Purse to the Fellows of the Society of 
 Literature. 
 
 To you, my dear Children, it will be important to know that 
 my dear Friend, with impaired health and in old age, found it 
 a more fit vocation to instruct others in that Knowledge he had 
 with so great labour and research amassed, than any longer to 
 waste time (to him most precious) in vain dispute and idle 
 colloquies. He comprehended not only the view or the 
 objection taken by the clever and restless minds with which 
 he occasionally came in contact, but the opposite and contrary 
 views or objections, and had established for himself a harmony 
 and co-unity, which it was latterly the whole business of his 
 life to convey to others — to those who sought his instructions 
 and the results of his long experience, great knowledge, and 
 most wonderful genius. 
 
 I will frankly own that I dissuaded my Friend from wasting 
 his powers upon ungenial subjects and ungenial minds, and am 
 therefore open to the charge of having in some measure with- 
 drawn him from an arena to which his health, genius, and 
 modes of thinking, were alike unsuited. To convey to you an 
 
LETTERS, ETC. 237 
 
 adequate individual notion or image of the Friend you have 
 lost is with me quite hopeless ; the next thing to this is to 
 present to you as many individual pictures or views of his 
 mind as are within my power. To hegin with the first — 
 here is the Estimate formed hy one of my earliest Friends ; 
 hear what was said of him hy T. N. T., now Sergeant Tal- 
 fourd, who, more than any man I know, himself a Poet of the 
 highest order, is hest fitted to appreciate the Poets of our 
 time. 
 
 " Not less marvellously gifted, though in a far different manner, is 
 Coleridge, who by a strange error has usually been regarded of the 
 same school. Instead, like Wordsworth, of seeking the sources of 
 sublimity and beauty in the simplest elements of humanity, he ranges 
 through all history and science, investigating all that has really 
 existed, and all that has had foundation only in the strangest and 
 wildest minds, combining, condensing, developing, and multiplying 
 the rich products of his research with marvellous facility and skill ; 
 now pondering fondly over some piece of exquisite loveliness brought 
 from an unknown recess, now tracing out the hidden germ of the 
 eldest and most barbaric theories, and now calling fantastic spirits 
 from the vasty deep, where they have slept since the dawn of reason. 
 The term ' myriad-minded,' which he has happily applied to Shak- 
 speare, is truly descriptive of himself. He is not one, but Legion, 
 ' rich with the spoils of time,' richer in his own glorious imagination 
 and sportive fantasy. There is nothing more wonderful than the 
 facile majesty of his images, or rather of his worlds of imagery, which, 
 whether in his poetry or his prose, start up before us self-raised and 
 all perfect, like the palace of Aladdin. He ascends to the sublimest 
 truths by a winding track of sparkling glory, which can only be 
 described in his own language : — 
 
 " ' The Spirit's Ladder, 
 That from this gross and visible world of dust, 
 Even to the starry world, with thousand rounds 
 Builds itself up ; on which the unseen powers 
 Move up and down on heavenly ministries — 
 The circles in the circles, that approach 
 The central sun with ever narrowing orbit.' 
 
 ^ 
 
 {^JUAyVf^U- 
 
238 LETTERS, ETC. 
 
 " In various beauty of versification he has never been exceeded. 
 Shakspeare, doubtless, in linked sweetness and exquisite continuity, 
 and Milton in pure majesty and classic grace — but this in one species 
 of verse only ; and taking all his trials of various metres, the swelling 
 harmony of his blank verse, the sweet breathing of his gentle odes 
 and the sybil-like flutter with the murmuring charm of his wizard 
 spells, we doubt if even these great masters have so fully developed 
 the music of the English Tongue. He has yet completed no adequate 
 memorials of his genius, yet it is most unjust to assert that he has 
 done little or nothing. 
 
 " To refute this assertion, there are his Wallenstein; his love poem s 
 of intensest beauty ; his Ancient Mariner, with its touches of pro- 
 foundest tenderness amidst the wildest and most bewildering terrors ; 
 his holy and sweet tale of Christabel, with its rich enchantments and 
 richer humanities ; the depths, the sublimities, and the pensive sweet- 
 ness of his Tragedy; the heart-dilating sentiments scattered through 
 his 'Friend;' and the stately imagery which breaks upon us at every 
 turn of the golden paths of his metaphysical labyrinths. And if he 
 has a power within him mightier than that which even these glorious 
 creations indicate, shall he be censured because he has deviated from 
 the ordinary course of the age in its development, and instead of 
 committing his imaginative wisdom to the press has delivered it from 
 his living lips ? He has gone about in the true spirit of an old Greek 
 bard, with a noble carelessness of self, giving fit utterance to the 
 divine spirit within him. "Who that has ever heard can forget him? 
 his mild benignity, the unbounded variety of his knowledge, the fast 
 succeeding products of his imagination, the child-like simplicity with 
 which he rises from the driest and commonest theme into the wildest 
 magnificence of thought, pouring on the soul a stream of beauty and 
 of wisdom to mellow and enrich it for ever ? The seeds of poetry, 
 the materials for thinking, which he has thus scattered will not 
 perish. The records of his fame are not in books only, but on the 
 fleshly tablets of young hearts, who will not suffer it to die even in 
 the general ear, however base and unfeeling criticism may deride 
 their gratitude.'' 
 
 Quoted the passage from Southey, in which he declares the 
 Church to be in danger from the united attacks of Infidels, 
 Papists, and Dissenters. Expressed his surprise at Southey 's 
 extreme want of Judgment. "Any Establishment ivhick could 
 
LETTERS, ETC. 239 
 
 fuse into a common opposition, into an opposition on Common 
 Grounds, such heterogeneous and conflicting materials, would 
 deserve, ought, to be destroyed. I almost wish that Southev 
 had heen one of the audience, Jit though few, who attended my 
 Lectures on Philosophy; though I fear that in his present 
 state of mind, he would have perverted, rather than have 
 profited, by them." 
 
 The prospectus of these Lectures is so full of Interest, and 
 so well worthy of attention, that I subjoin it ; trusting that 
 the Lectures themselves will soon be furnished by or under 
 the auspices of Mr. Green, the most constant, and the most 
 assiduous of his Disciples. 
 
 That gentleman will, I earnestly hope — and doubt not — 
 see, feel, the necessity of giving the whole of his Great Master's 
 views, opinions, and anticipations ; not those alone in which he 
 more entirely sympathises, or those which may have more 
 ready acceptance in the present time. He will not shrink from 
 the Great, the Sacred duty he has voluntarily undertaken, 
 from any regards of prudence, still less, from that most hope- 
 less form of fastidiousness, the wish to conciliate those who are 
 never to be conciliated, inferior minds smarting under a sense 
 of inferiority, and the imputation which they are conscious is just 
 that but for Him they never could have been ; that distorted 
 dwarfed, changed, as are all his views and opinions, by passing 
 athwart minds with which they could not assimilate, thev are 
 yet almost the only things which give such minds a status in 
 Literature. 
 
240 LETTERS, ETC. 
 
 LETTER XLIV. 
 
 Dear Sir, Nov. 26th, 1818. 
 
 I take the liberty of addressing a Prospectus to you. 
 Should it be in your power to recommend either Course among 
 your friends, you will (I need not add) oblige your sincere, &c. 
 \A . VmA^j^^ 0u ^d?^O>M^ ^ ^ ^T. Coleridge. 
 
 "'rospectus of a Course of Lectures, Historical ana Biogra- 
 phical, on the Rise and Progress, the Changes and Fortunes 
 h*X } j of Philosophy, from Thales and Pythagoras to the Present 
 ^ §S^* Times; the Lives and Succession of the distinguished Teachers 
 
 jTfw/i f "t/ in each Sect; the connexion of Philosophy with General Civi- 
 I Usation ; and, more especially ', its relations to the History of 
 Christianity, and to the Opinions, Language, and Manners 
 of Christendom, at different JEras, and in different Nations. 
 
 " By S. T. Coleridge, Esq. 
 
 "Logical subtleties and metaphysical trains of argument 
 form neither part nor object of the present Plan, which sup- 
 poses no other qualification in the auditors of either sex than 
 a due interest in questions of deepest concern to all, and which 
 every rational creature, who has arrived at the age of reflec- 
 tion, must be presumed, at some period or other, to have put 
 to his own thoughts : — What, and for what am I made? What 
 can I, and what ought I to, make of myself ? and in what rela- 
 tions do I stand to the world and to my fellow men ? Flatter- 
 ing myself with a continuance of the kind and respectful atten- 
 tion, with which my former courses have been honoured, I 
 have so little apprehension of not being intelligible throughout, 
 that were it in my power to select my auditors, the majority 
 would, perhaps, consist of persons whose acquaintance with the 
 History of Philosophy would commence with their attendance 
 on the Course of Lectures here announced. When, indeed, I 
 contemplate the many and close connexions of the subject with 
 the most interesting periods of History ; the instances and 
 
 \ 
 

 LETTERS, ETC. 24 1 
 
 illustrations which it demands and will receive from Biography, 
 from individuals of the most elevated genius, or of the most 
 singular character : I cannot hesitate to apply to it as a whole 
 what has been already said of an important part (I allude to 
 Ecclesiastical History) — that for every reflecting mind it has 
 a livelier as well as deeper interest, than that of fable or 
 romance. 
 
 " Nor can these Lectures be justly deemed superfluous even as a 
 literary work. "We have T indeed, a History of Philosophy, or rather 
 a folio volume so called, by Stanley, and Enfield's Abridgment of 
 the massive and voluminous Bruckek. But what are they ? Little 
 more, in fact, than collections of sentences and extracts, formed into 
 separate groups under the several names, and taken (at first or second 
 hand) from the several writings of individual philosophers, with no 
 Principle of arrangement, with no method, and therefore without 
 unity and without progress or completion. Hard to be understood 
 as detached passages, and impossible to be remembered as a whole, 
 they leave at last on the mind of the most sedulous student but a dizzy 
 recollection of jarring opinions and wild fancies. Whatever value 
 these works may have as books of reference, so far from superseding, 
 they might seem rather to require, a work like the present, in which 
 the accidental influences of particular periods and individual genius 
 are by no means overlooked, but which yet does in the main consider 
 Philosophy historically, as an essential part of the history of man, 
 and as if it were the striving of a single mind, under very different 
 circumstances indeed, and at different periods of its own growth and 
 development; but so that each change and every new direction 
 should have its cause and its explanation in the errors, insufficiency 
 or prematurity of the preceding, while all by reference to a common 
 object is reduced to harmony of impression and total result. Now / 
 
 this object, which is one and the same in all the forms of Philosophy, / / 
 
 and which alone constitutes a work Philosophic, is — the origin and if 
 primary laws (or efficient causes) either of the world, man included 
 (which is Natural Philosophy) — or of Human Nature exclusively, and 
 as far only as it is human (which is Moral Philosophy). If to these 
 we subjoin, as a third problem, the question concerning the sufficiency 
 of the human reason to the solution of both or either of the two for- 
 mer, we shall have a full conception of the sense in which the term, 
 Philosophy, is used in this Prospectus and the Lectures corresponding 
 to it. 
 
 16 
 
242 LETTERS, ETC. 
 
 " The main Divisions will be— 1. From Thales and P}'thagoras to 
 
 /the appearance of the Sophists. 2. And of Socrates. The character 
 and effect of Socrates' life and doctrines, illustrated in the instances 
 of Xenopnon, as his most faithful representative, and of Antisthenes, 
 or the Cynic sect, as the one partial view of his philosophy, and of 
 ' / Aristippus, or the Cyrenaic sect, as the other and opposite extreme. 
 t- tf / 3. Plato / and Platonism. 4. Aristotle and the Peripatetic school. 
 
 / 5. Zeno and Stoicism, Epicurus and Epicureans, with the effects 
 
 of these in the Roman repuh ic and empire. 6. The rise of the 
 Eclectic or Alexandrine Philosophy, the attempt to set up a pseudo- 
 Platonic Polytheism against Christianity, the degradation of Philo- 
 sophy itself into mysticism and magic, and its final disappearance, 
 as Philosophy, under Justinian. 7. The resumption of the Aris- 
 totelian philosophy in the thirteenth century, and the successive 
 re-appearance of the different sects from the restoration of literature 
 to our own times.'* A / g . J 
 
 LETTER XLV. 
 
 My dearest Friend, 
 
 The person to whom I alluded in my last is a Mr. 
 T 0?huA^ who, within the last two or three years, has held a 
 situation in the Colonial Office, hut what, I do not know. 
 From his age and compai-atively recent initiation into the office, 
 it is prohably not a very influensive one ; and, on the other 
 hand, from the rank and character of his friends, he has occa- 
 sionally brought up with him to our Thursday evening conver-, 
 or, to mint a more appropriate term, o/ze-versazione, it must he 
 a respectable one. Mr. T . . . is South ey's friend, and more 
 than a literary acquaintance to me, only in consequence of 
 my having had some friendly intercourse with his uncle during 
 my abode in the north. Of him personally I know little more 
 than that he is a remarkably handsome fashionable-looking 
 young man, a little too deep or hollow mouthed and important 
 in his enunciation, but clever and well read ; and I have no 
 reason to doubt that he would receive any one whom I had 
 introduced to him as a friend of mine in whose welfare I felt 
 
flu cu 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 ^aufpjij 
 
 <&A^*^tt 
 

 XI 
 

 £/k J *C+*a~4— J +-? . **^<~**~*^* ^ 
 
 ^*& ^(fe 
 
 fan. rA /*-^ *-^ f r c y^ju. — ^ry»^L 
 
 4 exuA±&_ 
 

 
 
 
LETTERS, ETC. 243 
 
 anxious interest, with kindness and a disposition to forward 
 his object should it be in his power. 
 
 But again, my dearest Friend, you must allow me to express 
 my regret that I am acting in the dark, without any convic- 
 tion on my mind that your present proceeding is not the 
 result of wearied and still agitated spirits, an impetus of 
 despondency, that fever which accompanies exhaustion. I can 
 too well sympathise with you ; and bitterly do I feel the 
 unluckiness of my being in such a deplorable state of health 
 just at the time when for your sake I should be most desirous 
 to have the use of all my faculties. May God bless you, and 
 your little-able but most sincere friend, 
 T. Allsop, Esq. S. T. Coleridge. 
 
 This was written just after the utter, and as then it seemed, 
 the hopeless ruin of my prospects. Need I say in that hour 
 of great perplexity what unspeakable solace and support 
 I found in the sympathy and untireable kindness of my 
 revered friend, and in his frank, honest, and every way most 
 excellent house-mate, Mr. Gillman. Charles Lamb, Charles 
 and Mary Lamb, " union in partition," were never wanting in 
 the hour of need : and I have a clear recollection of Miss 
 Lamb's addressing me in a tone acting at once as a solace and 
 support, and after as a stimulus, to which I owe more perhaps, 
 than to the more extended arguments of all others. Believe 
 me, my dear son, that in the hour of extreme affliction, of 
 extreme misfortune, there is no solace like the sympathy of an 
 affectionate and gentle woman. Then, their sympathy becomes 
 to us strength, it blends with our own sense of sorrow, and we 
 feel, rather than are convinced by any process of reason, that it 
 is good. These reminiscences become painful when I think 
 that you cannot now, as I had fondly hoped, pay back in kind 
 attention and ministrations part of the vast debt I owe. 
 
 " Hatred of superiority is not, alas ! confined to the ignorant. 
 
244 LETTERS, ETC. 
 
 The best informed are most subject to jealousy, and to unfair 
 representations of new views and doctrines." 
 
 " Quoted bis sbort Sketch of Burke from the Biographia 
 Literaria. Burke possessed and had sedulously sharpened 
 that eye which sees all things, actions, and events, in relation 
 to the laws which determine their existence and circumscribe 
 their possibility. He referred habitually to principles : he was 
 a scientific statesman, and therefore a Seer. For every 
 principle contains in itself the germs of a prophecy ; and, as 
 the prophetic power is the essential privilege of science, so the 
 fulfilment of its oracles supplies the outward, and (to men in 
 general) the only, test, of its claim to the Title. There is not 
 one word I would add or withdraw from this, scarcely one 
 which I would substitute. I can read Burke, and apply every 
 thing not merely temporary to the present most fearful condi- 
 tion of our country. I cannot conceive a time or a state of 
 things in which the writings of Burke will not have the 
 highest value." 
 
 " Observe the fine humanity of Shakspeare in that his 
 sneerers are all worthless villains. Too cunning to attach value 
 to self-praise, and unable to obtain approval from those whom 
 they are compelled to respect, they propitiate their own self- 
 love by disparaging and lowering others." 
 
 " Of all the men I ever knew, Wordsworth has the least 
 femineity in his mind. He is all man. He is a man of 
 whom it might have been said, — ' It is good for him to be 
 alone.'" 
 
 " I have shown in the Biographia Literaria the great evil of 
 too entire domestication. My after-experience would confirm, 
 nay, even extend, this. I incline to think that, unless the 
 husband is abroad the whole day, and therefore only a partaker 
 
LETTERS, ETC. 245 
 
 of his wife's social parties, that in the choice of their associates 
 they should be independent. To exclude all that a woman or 
 a man might wish to exclude from his or her help-mate's 
 society, might leave the rest of little value, and lead to mutual 
 discomfort. The Turkish method is good : they have no 
 difference of opinion in that fine country ; but, as our own 
 habits and customs are different, we should seek to make 
 arrangements in harmony with them; and this I think may 
 be accomplished. Why insist upon a married pair — paired 
 not matched — agreeing in the choice of their visitors. The 
 less the independence of married people, especially that of 
 man, is trenched upon, the better chance of happiness for both. 
 Are there any men to whom the wife has a dislike? why 
 should she be annoyed with their presence ? Are there 
 women amongst his wife's acquaintance who to him are 
 ungenial, why force them upon the husband's distaste or 
 dislike ? I have known permanent aversions, and, what 
 is the same thing, permanent alienations proceed from this 
 cause, all which might have been avoided by each of the 
 parties simply agreeing to see their own friends without the 
 presence or intervention of the other. In the one case the 
 range of the more kindly sympathies may appear to be circum- 
 scribed, in the other, dislike is quickly ripened into aversion." 
 
 1832. 
 
 " I fear that the Eevolutionary Spirit which was rebuked 
 by Burke, and derided by Canning, though driven from high 
 places, is not the less active amongst the people. This was 
 my opinion in 1817, and it is still more so now, when the 
 resumption of cash payments has revolutionised our monetary 
 system, and with it has caused the most fearful devastation in 
 the fortunes and general condition of the agriculturists — both 
 labourers and proprietors. If what is charged against Goody 
 
 17 
 
246 LETTERS, ETC. 
 
 Peel, or Peel the Candid, be true, the epithet " genteelly 
 vulgar " is a term of approval to what I should be inclined to 
 apply to him. To improve his fortune or his prospects by 
 fair means is not denied to Mr. Peel ; but to recommend a 
 measure of very doubtful, nay, dangerous policy, merely 
 because it would double his own wealth, when earnestly ex- 
 horted by his father against its fearful consequences, is what I 
 dare not believe of Peel (and of him you know I think very 
 meanly), even though charged with it openly, and to my 
 knowledge never denied. The miserable policy of men like 
 Peel will have its reaction during this generation ; for them, 
 the problem will be solved, that half is greater than the whole ; 
 certainly better for them. The danger does not appear now, 
 nay, at the hour of its arrival, I do not think it will appear, 
 to be from within (and I incline to believe that its manifesta- 
 tion must be from without) ; but who can doubt that, if all 
 were right at home, We, this People of England, could have 
 any thing really to fear from abroad ? 
 
 It is quite folly to think that any book, or class of books, 
 can be any longer of general Interest. Even Newspapers, the 
 only papers of general Interest as a class, are daily being 
 subdivided. The result of great and constant subdivision is a 
 daily increasing antagonism — or general indifference of the 
 whole to the subject of each. It may be you are right in 
 thinking, or rather in hoping, that the greater equalisation, not 
 in wealth, for that is the reverse, but, in intelligence and the 
 external appearance of all classes, and the growing power and 
 ultimate supremacy of the middle classes, will cause greater 
 mental activity, which must result in a daily increasing, and 
 ultimately in universal, benevolence. I have entertained views 
 not dissimilar, as you well know, and they are now held, in 
 some form or other, by all good men ; but I doubt whether 
 any good can come from the use of evil or antagonist means. 
 Benevolence and kindly feelings towards all that has life, must 
 precede intelligence and mental activity, in those at least who 
 
LETTERS, ETC. 247 
 
 are to effect any great changes in our social condition. Owen 
 of Lanark fulfils this condition, as all his life has been devoted 
 to extend and improve the happiness of those under his con- 
 trol or within his influence. He has also the most indomitable 
 perseverance, and has attested, by a Life devoted to the most 
 disinterested objects, the purity and singleness of his purpose. 
 With these qualities, what might not such a man have effected, 
 had he not wilfully stumbled over religion, which was not at 
 all in his way, and thus impaired greatly his power of doing 
 good. 
 
 I recollect writing a very long letter to Mr. Owen, and 
 conjuring him, with tears in my eyes, to avoid this rock ; this 
 vexed question of Fate and Freewill ; of which less seems to be 
 known, by those who argue upon it, than of any other subject 
 of difference. 
 
 " The Priesthood grossly cheat us with free-will ; 
 Will to do what, but what Heaven first decreed ? 
 Our actions then are neither Good nor 111, 
 Since from eternal causes they proceed : 
 Our passions, fear and anger, love and hate, 
 Mere senseless engines that are moved by fate ; 
 Like ships on stormy seas without a guide, 
 Tost by the winds, are driven by the tide." 
 
 These lines of Dryden seem to me to express the doctrine 
 and its results better than any other I recollect. It is true 
 the illustrations are now varied, but nothing has been added to 
 the argument either in force or variety." 
 
 With reference to the early project of Coleridge, Southey, 
 and others, to form a community on the banks of the Susque- 
 hannah, a project, or rather a principle, the practical application 
 of which seems now in some form or other likely to be tried, I 
 gratify myself, and, I doubt not, shall interest others, by the 
 following brief notice from the Friend : — 
 
 " Truth I pursued, as Fancy led the way, 
 And wiser men than I went worse astray." 
 
248 LETTERS, ETC. 
 
 " From my earliest manhood I perceived that if the people 
 
 at large were neither ignorant nor immoral, there could be no 
 
 motive for a sudden and violent change of Government ; and 
 
 if they were, there could be no hope but of a change for the 
 
 worse. 
 
 ****** 
 
 " My 'feelings, however, and imagination did not remain 
 unkindled in this general conflagration (the French revolu- 
 tion) ; and I confess I should be more inclined to be ashamed 
 than proud of myself if they had. I was a sharer in the 
 general vortex, though my little world described the path of 
 its revolution in an orbit of "its own. What I dared not expect 
 from constitutions of Government and whole nations, I hoped 
 from Keligion and a small company of chosen individuals, and 
 formed a plan, as harmless as it was extravagant, of trying 
 the experiment of human perfectibility on the banks of the 
 Susquehannah ; where our little Society, in its second genera- 
 tion, was to have combined the innocence of the patriarchal 
 age with the knowledge and genuine refinements of European 
 culture ; and where I dreamt that in the sober evening of my 
 life, I should behold the Cottages of Independence in the undi- 
 vided Dale of Industry, 
 
 ' And oft, soothed sadly by some dirgeful wind, 
 Muse on the sore ills I had left behindJ 
 
 " Strange fancies I and as vain as strange t Yet to the 
 intense interest and impassioned zeal, which called forth and 
 strained every faculty of my intellect for the organization and 
 defence of this scheme, I owe much of whatever I at present 
 possess, — my clearest insight into the nature of individual man, 
 and my most comprehensive views of his social relations, of the 
 true uses of trade and commerce, and how far the wealth and 
 relative power of nations promote or impede their welfare and 
 inherent strength." 
 
LETTERS, ETC. 249 
 
 I have now done. I have placed before you memorials of 
 one of the Greatest and Best Men of this age ; in great and 
 varied attainments, in the power of placing scattered Truths 
 in harmonious combination, and of illustrating them out of the 
 Stores of a vast Intellect, by far the most Wonderful Man of 
 his Time. 
 
 In these Letters you are admitted, as it were, into the Inner 
 shrine ; you hear him commune with his own Soul, I indulge 
 the hope that these volumes may not be without their response 
 from the minds of those who yet, in early youth, seek earnestly, 
 nay anxiously, for Truth; that Truth the test of which is 
 Consistency — the Harmony of the whole with the Parts, and 
 of each Part with the Whole. The human face divine is 
 blurred and transfigured by being made the impress of the 
 Mean and the Selfish ; not unfrequently the most intensely 
 selfish, when falsely held to be most beneficent or benevolent. 
 
 Read the Faces of all you meet in your next half hour's 
 walk. How many are there, the expression of which satisfies 
 you, that they are happy or possess the conditions of well 
 Being ? And why is this ? Is it not chiefly from the minds 
 of all men having been trained to be unjust, to seek to become 
 possessed of the labour of others without giving an equivalent, 
 and being made to consider the greater or less extent to which 
 each can carry this practice, as the test of their respective 
 talent ? It is this mental robbery, this desire to possess with- 
 out deserving ; of wishing the end and overleaping the means, 
 which is now soon to find its retribution. Look at those beau- 
 tiful women, beautiful, though, as you plainly see, restless and 
 disquieted ? And why restless or disquieted ? Have they not 
 Food, Shelter, and Clothing? Yes, these they possess in 
 abundance and variety ; in an abundance and variety far 
 beyond the reasonable (I had almost said the unreasonable) 
 needs of Human Beings. But they are disquieted because, 
 slaves as they are to the External, the Adventitious, and the 
 Unnecessary, they require yet more of that of which they have 
 
250 LETTERS, ETC. 
 
 already too much, just in the sense that the too much of Drink 
 or of Food to-day leads to the too much of to-morrow. What 
 would be said of a society or a people of whom it was believed 
 ■ — known, that those were held in highest honour who exacted 
 and destroyed the greatest amount of labour ? And yet is not 
 this our case ? Would not a man at the present time, who 
 purchased a suit of clothes every day, which he destroyed at 
 night, be held as a sort of Divinity by those who uphold the 
 present application, or misapplication, of labour ? And yet 
 this very people, or rather their self-constituted instructors 
 who hold, the greater the destruction the greater the benefit, 
 shrink from the more rational proposition of Lord Castlereagh, 
 of employing the " surplus population I in digging holes one 
 day and filling them up the next" as an absurdity. The true 
 principle — at least that which appears to me such — is founded 
 in eternal justice, as far as those words have any definite 
 meaning : it is, that no man shall receive more than he gives ; 
 that no man shall have rights (the very term being its best 
 confutation) which do not belong to all ; such Eights invariably 
 becoming Wrongs alike to those for whose advantage they are 
 exercised, and those at whose expense they are purchased. 
 
 And now, my dear children, once more farewell! The life 
 of exercise which I will not yet, nor perhaps again, call labour, 
 to which I destine you, will, I hope, whatever else of good may 
 result, leave you less of inclination, and your future less of 
 necessity, for speculations, which have been, for me, as neces- 
 sary as they are distasteful. You shall have your own inde- 
 pendence, and by so much your well being (and how great a 
 part independence constitutes, you cannot yet know) in your 
 own power. Health, springing from, and leading to exercise, 
 and cheerfulness ; an utter disregard and dislike of the petty 
 externals which are, from custom and the association of weak 
 minds, held in disproportionate regard, it shall be the endeavour 
 of my future life to secure for you. Believe me, my dearest 
 Children, that the highest wisdom is to be found in Simplicity, 
 
LETTERS, ETC. 251 
 
 whether of Thought or Action, and that all those whom you 
 see Slaves to the External and the Unessential, are necessarily- 
 Unhappy. This comes of concealment or suppression. 
 
 I do not think it would be possible for men to be selfish, if 
 Truth, literal and verbal Truth, were the rule, instead of the 
 exception. If men and women were accustomed to " sun " 
 their minds, to speak openly their wishes and aspirations, 
 instead of brooding over them until they become parts not 
 merely of the habits, but of the mind itself, we should have 
 little vice and less misery. It is this tendency of an artificial 
 and complicated society to become more and more insincere, 
 which gives me to hope less for the future state and prospects 
 of society than I should otherwise do; though I have faith, not 
 alone in the absolute progression, as a fact apart from the human 
 or conventional better or worse, but in the universal Law of 
 Kecoil and Ke-action. 
 
 THE END. 
 
 Waterlow and Soils, Printers, Carpenters' Hall, Loudon Wall. 
 
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