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DUKE 
 
 UNIVERSITY 
 
 LIBRARY 
 
 Treasure "Room 
 
 THE 
 COLERIDGE 
 COLLECTION 
 
V 
 
LETTERS, CONVERSATIONS, 
 
 RECOLLECTIONS. 
 
Digitized by the Internet Archive 
 in 2012 with funding from 
 Duke University Libraries 
 
 http ://arch i ve .0 rg/detai Is/lette rsco n ve rsat02co le 
 
L 
 
 ■ 
 
 LETTERS 
 
 CONVERSATIONS AND RECOLLECTIONS 
 
 S. T. COLERIDGE. 
 
 Pliny writ his Letters for the Public ; so did Seneca, so did Balzac, Voiture, Sec. Sec. ; 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. — Bomngbrokk to Swift. 
 
 IN TWO VOLUMES. 
 
 VOL. I. 
 
 LONDON: 
 EDWARD MOXON, DOVER STREET. 
 
 1836. 
 
LONDON : 
 
 BRADBURY AND EVANS, PRINTERS, 
 
 WHITEFRIARS. 
 

 TO ELIZABETH AND ROBIN, 
 
 THE FAIRY PRATTLER, AND STILL MEEK BOY OF 
 
 THE LETTERS, 
 
 AND THROUGH YOU EQUALLY TO YOUR YOUNGER BROTHERS 
 AND SISTERS, 
 
 THESE LETTERS AND REMINISCENCES 
 
 OF THE VERY REMARKABLE AND WONDERFUL MAN WHO 
 
 WATCHED YOUR EARLIEST DEVELOPMENT, 
 
 AND TO WHOM YOU WERE OBJECTS OF TENDEREST LOVE 
 AND SOLICITUDE, 
 
 ARE INSCRIBED BY YOUR 
 
 AFFECTIONATE PARENT. 
 
 \?&Vtt 
 
PREFACE. 
 
 Having for more than sixteen years enjoyed a 
 large share of the affectionate regards, sympathy, 
 and inmost confidence of the most variously gifted 
 and extraordinary man that has appeared in these 
 latter days, it has been to me a most melancholy, 
 though not unpleasing, task, to arrange these ma- 
 terials, so as to give to you, my dearest children, 
 some idea — alas, how poor ! — how inadequate it 
 must be, of that friend for whose sake you are, if 
 possible, more dear to me. 
 
 To you, my dearest Elizabeth, the fairy Prattler 
 of the Letters, and to you, Robin, the still meek 
 Boy, I am especially desirous to convey, through 
 these fragments, some better, some more entirely 
 
Vlll PREFACE. 
 
 individualised, notion of the earliest friend, best, 
 and first lost. 
 
 Of the no less loving, not less to be loved 
 Charles Lamb, having been house-mates, your 
 recollections need not this aid. I stood beside 
 the Grave, and saw when it received their loved 
 forms, and, since then, I seem to have lived on 
 their memories. 
 
 Lamentation and regrets for the loss of such 
 men, would be felt by all who knew — and were 
 worthy to be known by — them, as a grievous wrong 
 done to their memories. If we have not learned 
 from, and for, these men, that boisterous grief, 
 grief of which the signs are external and visible, is 
 an inadequate and unfitting tribute ; then, as relates 
 to the manner in which they would be remembered, 
 they have failed to make themselves understood. 
 
 Thoughts that are indeed too deep for tears, 
 mingle with all our recollections of that grey- 
 haired Old Man, that mightiest Master of Poetry 
 
PREFACE. IX 
 
 and of Philosophy in its truest and only valuable 
 sense. 
 
 To have known such a man, to have shared his 
 many sorrows and sufferings, and to have partaken 
 of the few and far between gleams of glad and 
 joyous sunshine which fell to his lot, are recollec- 
 tions to be cherished in the inner sanctuary of our 
 hearts. Few indeed as were the gleams of genial 
 and warm and cordial uprising of that noble and 
 pure-minded Spirit in later years, still to him it was 
 an ever new delight to impart, all he had learnt, all 
 he had experienced, and much in which he could 
 only have been his own teacher, to those who 
 sought him in sincerity and simplicity of heart. 
 
 I seek most earnestly to make you know the 
 minds of these, to you, Ancient of Days ; and I 
 think I shall best effect this by allowing them to 
 speak for themselves. " Of the Dead," says the 
 old adage, " nothing but what is good." I say 
 to you " nothing — or what is true.'''' 
 
X PREFACE. 
 
 Of the first of these friends, both lost in the 
 past year, I shall chiefly speak to you; more full 
 and sufficient records of the last I earnestly hope 
 to see from the Pen of one every way fitted, both 
 by love and fine appreciation of his Character, to 
 the task. 
 
 I have given with the Letters such brief Notices 
 and Recollections as seemed likely to enable you 
 to appreciate that great and extraordinary mind, 
 that greatest and truest philosopher, in the highest 
 and only true sense of that term, in its combina- 
 tion with Love. 
 
 Upon the Letters and Conversations, however, I 
 chiefly rely for conveying to you some slight image, 
 though vastly inadequate, of the mind of this won- 
 derful, this myriad-minded man, whose loss is 
 however far too recent to admit of just or adequate 
 Estimation. 
 
 Cherished and sustained by his extraordinary 
 Intellect, and still more by the Love and Sympathy 
 
PREFACE. XI 
 
 in which, like a vast reservoir, he always super- 
 abounded, and the fulness of which seemed to arise 
 from its overflowing, I have been able to arrive at 
 settled and definite conclusions upon all matters to 
 which I have heretofore attached value or interest. 
 When I say that I have arrived at settled conclu- 
 sions, you will not for a moment believe that my 
 opinions can or ought to be received by others of 
 a totally different experience, as truths for their 
 minds ; still less that matters which depend upon 
 individual experience and temperament can be per- 
 manent truths for all time. You will find, and this 
 it is which I wish to impress upon your minds, 
 that a spirit of pure and intense humanity, a spirit 
 of love and kindness, to which nothing is too large, 
 for which nothing is too small, will be to you, as it 
 
 has ever been to me, its own il exceeding great 
 reward." 
 
 This, my dear Children, and I do not now 
 
 address you only, nor your younger brothers and 
 
Xll PREFACE. 
 
 sisters, but I would fain speak to, and, on this 
 point at least, could wish to be heard by, all young 
 and confiding minds, — has been to me a solace in 
 sorrow, an unspeakable reliance and support when 
 all outward has been lowering and overcast. This 
 indeed it is, in the language of an early letter, 
 "Which, like an ample Palace, contains many 
 mansions for every other kind of Knowledge (or 
 renders it unnecessary); which deepens and ex- 
 tends the interest of every other . (knowledge or 
 faculty), gives it new charms and additional pur- 
 pose : the study of which, rightly pursued, is 
 beyond any other entertaining, beyond all others 
 tends at once to tranquillise and enliven, to keep 
 the mind elevated and stedfast, the Heart humble 
 and tender." In this is the purest source of mental 
 self-reliance, of self-dependence, and thence Inde- 
 pendence, under all circumstances. 
 
LETTERS, CONVERSATIONS, 
 
 RECOLLECTIONS. 
 
 
 LETTER I. U 
 
 Wednesday Morning, Jan. 28th, 1818. 
 
 Dear Sir, 
 
 Your friendly letter was first delivered to 
 me at the lecture-room door on yesterday evening, 
 ten minutes before the lecture, and my spirits were 
 so sadly depressed by the circumstance 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. 
 
 VOL. I. B 
 
2 LETTERS, ETC. 
 
 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 re- 
 luctant in expressing 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 painfully, conscious, needs the confirma- 
 tion derived from the coincidence and sympathy of 
 the friend, as much as the voice of honour within 
 us denounces the pretences of the flatterer. Be 
 assured, then, that 1 write as I think, when I tell 
 you that, from the style and thoughts of your 
 letter, I should have drawn a very different con- 
 clusion 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 own power, compatibly 
 with the performance of duties of immediate 
 
LETTERS, ETC. S 
 
 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 discourse. 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 re- 
 member 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. 
 
 b 2 
 
LETTERS, ETC. 
 
 LETTER II. 
 
 Sept. 20th, 1818. 
 
 Dear Sir, 
 
 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 remembrance ; 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 without giving me the opportunity of 
 
 assuring you personally that I am, with sincere 
 
 respect, 
 
 Your obliged, 
 
 S. T. Coleridge. 
 
LETTERS, ETC. 
 
 LETTER III. 
 
 Dec. 2nd, 1818. 
 My Dear Sir, 
 
 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 applicable 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 ma- 
 ligners. On them I have retorted only by pity and 
 by prayer. These may have, and doubtless have, 
 joined with the frivolity of " the reading public " 
 in 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, 
 
6 LETTERS, ETC. 
 
 flow with a hundred nameless rills into their main 
 stream, that they could find nothing but cold praise 
 and effective discouragement 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 numerous 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 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 Ali 
 
LETTERS, ETC. i 
 
 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 excellencies and the trifling proportion 
 which the defects bore to the excellencies. 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 1 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 dif- 
 ficulties which the anxieties of to-day oppose to 
 my completion of the great work, the form and 
 
8 LETTERS, ETC. 
 
 [ I 
 
 materials of which it has been the employment of 
 the best and most genial hours of the last twenty 
 
 4 years to mature and collect. 
 
 v ! 
 
 If I could but have a tolerably numerous audi- 
 ence to my first, or first and second Lectures on 
 the History of Philosophy, I should entertain 
 a strong hope of success, because T know that 
 these lectures will be found by far the most inte- 
 resting and entertaining of any that I have yet 
 delivered, independent 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; 
 and, secondly, what the tvords mean by which they 
 attempt to convey their meaning ; and I can con- 
 ceive 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, 
 Y\ / I remain, my dear Sir, 
 
 Yours, most sincerely, 
 
 7v\ 
 
 S. T. Coleridge. 
 
LETTERS, ETC. V 
 
 This letter, as well as some more specific allu- 
 sions and charges in after letters, I have thought it 
 "a sacred duty to publish ; no admiration or reve- ' 
 rence 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 incompa- 
 tibility of adaptation. How expressive is this 
 passage : — " In sympathy alone I found at once 
 nourishment and stimulus ; and for sympathy alone 
 did my heart crave," coupled as it is in my know- 
 ledge 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 sup- 
 posed " those to love him who were well pleased 
 to be loved by him." 
 
 b 3 
 
10 LETTERS, ETC. 
 
 LETTER IV. 
 
 Highgate, Sept. 30th, 1819. 
 
 My dear Sir, 
 
 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 pre- 
 ference, not merely from the greater mutual enjoy- 
 ment, 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 professions can bestow 
 on the most favoured of their followers, may be 
 learnt from the eleventh chapter of my Literary 
 
LETTERS, ETC. ll 
 
 Life, which, though addressed to a small and par- 
 ticular class, yet permits a more general applica- 
 tion. 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 com- 
 monly least dangerous, or even cease to be tempta- 
 tions to a mind forearmed by principles and aspira- 
 tions 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 your- 
 self from the present hour such views of action 
 and enjoyment, as will make the leisure attached 
 to independence, and honourably earned by previ- 
 ous industry, the fair object of a wise man's efforts 
 and a good man's desires. Meantime, let the 
 
12 LETTERS, ETC. 
 
 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 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 future affluence more and 
 more desirable, 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 
 improvement 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 in- 
 formation and your example will fall where they 
 are most wanted, like the noiseless dews in Malta, 
 
LETTERS, ETC. 13 
 
 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 prudently 
 appropriate to reading, without wrong to the claims 
 of health and social relaxation, there is one depart- 
 ment of knowledge, which, like an ample palace, 
 contains within itself mansions for every other 
 knowledge; which deepens and extends 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 steadfast, the heart 
 humble and tender: it is biblical theology —the phi- 
 losophy 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. 
 
14 LETTERS, ETC. 
 
 You have perhaps heard that my publisher is a 
 bankrupt. 
 
 ■5(sr 3£ 3J? ■Sfc % 
 
 yfc ■'P 'P ^p "Sf 1 
 
 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 consider- 
 able, 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 God that, relatively 
 to my fellow men at least, I have been " sinned 
 against, not sinning ;" and relatively to my Maker, 
 
LETTERS, ETC. 15 
 
 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, 
 
 S. T. Coleridge. 
 
 Leaving out the particular expression of biblical 
 theology, liable to be interpreted, or, rather, misin- 
 terpreted by every believer in belief according to 
 his own particular faith or delusion, 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 attention, any letter, 
 essay, or advice, so beautifully expressed, or, when 
 applied to practice, so well adapted to secure that 
 happiness which surpasseth understanding; far, 
 very far, surpasseth adequate expression. Often 
 do I dwell upon the recommendation, to " let the 
 chosen employments of the years in hope be the 
 
16 LETTERS, ETC. 
 
 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 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 w r ould fain hope that, not only for you but for 
 all others, riches, as such, will be better appreciated 
 ere your career commences ; 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 
 
LETTERS, ETC. 17 
 
 destroying these fruitful sources of crime and 
 misery, or of subjecting them to general not indivi- 
 dual advancement. 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 cf 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 bow me down to earth, 
 Nor care I that they rob me of my mirth. 
 But, oh I 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," 
 
18 
 
 LETTERS, ETC. 
 
 LETTER V. 
 
 
 
 Dec. 13th, 1819. 
 My dear Sir, 
 
 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 dis- 
 charged; 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 
 
LETTERS, ETC. 19 
 
 had gone over, a very pretty house, with beautiful 
 garden and grounds, and a still more lovely 
 prospect, at the moderate rent of 601. 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 ad- 
 vantageous 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 indigna- 
 tion 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 pre- 
 vent the poet from occasionally changing sides, and 
 manifesting his existence by smoke traversed by 
 electrical flashes from the crater. 
 
It I 
 
 20 LETTERS, ETC. 
 
 Have you seen Cobbetfs last number? It is 
 the most plausible and the best written of any thing 
 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 appro- 
 priate a stolen horse, by adding mutilation and 
 deformities to robbery, is as artful as it is amusing. 
 Still, however, he has given great additional pub- 
 licity 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, manufactures, and credit, might be 
 as mere a summer thunderstorm in Great Britain as 
 he represents it to be in America. 
 
LETTERS, ETC. 21 
 
 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 
 parliamentary 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, 
 
 S. T. Coleridge. 
 
 The tendency of the age is now decidedly prac- 
 tical, and the advocates of abstractions will do well 
 to admit the superiority 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 damn- 
 able, are now held (such is the rapid advance of 
 public opinion) to be stale and common-place, and 
 
«« LETTERS, ETC. 
 
 have already given way to a far more searching 
 inquiry into the nature and uses of all property. 
 When we see a man so highly gifted, so far differ- 
 ing from the common sense of his contemporaries 
 and immediate successors, stigmatize as a wretch, 
 one of the most extraordinary writers of the day, 
 for holding opinions which those contemporaries 
 have for the greatest part adopted, and many gone 
 far beyond, we are forcibly struck with the ab- 
 surdity of all ille-isms or affirmations. If we con- 
 fine ourselves to the expression of an opinion, or, 
 if more honest, we confess our ignorance of the 
 matter at issue, we shall be more likely to 
 approach true conclusions. 
 
 Neither is it the fact, that Cobbett claimed him- 
 self to be the discoverer of any or all of the prin- 
 ciples he advanced or advocated ; he combined the 
 scattered truths of Paine and the preceding 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 import- 
 
LETTERS, ETC. 23 
 
 ance 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 opposition, 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 of a crime, useless in remedying that 
 crime, and is only useful, if useful at all, in pre- 
 venting future crimes or evils. The direction of 
 existing powers and combinations, and the forma- 
 tion of new combinations, upon scientific and prac- 
 tical principles, 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 
 
24 LETTERS, ETC. 
 
 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. 
 
 j 
 
 LETTER VI. 
 
 20th March, 1820. 
 My dear Sir, 
 
 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 
 
LETTERS, ETC. 25 
 
 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 philoso- 
 phical essay in the third volume, had a two-fold 
 object — to guard my own character from the sus- 
 picion of pantheistic opinions, or Spinosism (it was 
 written, though not so much at large, before the 
 work was printed, and omitted by wilfulness, or 
 such carelessness as does not fall far short of it) ; 
 and next, to impress, as far as I could, the convic- 
 tion 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 re- 
 luctantly a sceptic, or something more, respecting 
 
 * Though myself opposed to apologetic prefaces or modi- 
 fications of opinion to suit conventional influences, I give 
 this note as an act of justice to its author. 
 
 VOL. I. C 
 
26 LETTERS, ETC. 
 
 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 regarded 
 with instinctive horror by the human mind, and 
 the reference to our Lord's own declarations con- 
 cerning miracles, were among the passages that 
 particularly impressed his mind. 
 
 I should have sent a corrected copy of the 
 
LETTERS, ETC. 27 
 
 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 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 be most un-christian moroseness not to feel 
 delight in the unwearied 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 
 judgments 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 impro- 
 vident in consequence, more and more exchange 
 the sentiments of Englishmen for the feelings of 
 Lazzaroni. 
 
 God bless you, and 
 
 S. T. Coleridge. 
 
28 LETTERS, ETC. 
 
 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 cir- 
 cumstances 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.' U*, u'V^o >^ff 
 
 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 
 
LETTERS, ETC. 29 
 
 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 crea- 
 tion ; and then, cutting the knot it cannot solve, merges 
 the latter in the former, and denies reality to all finite 
 existence. But here the philosophizer is condemned to 
 meet with his sure confutation in his own secret dis- 
 satisfaction, and is forced at length to shelter himself 
 from his own importunate queries in the wretched 
 evasion, that of Nothings no solution can be required. 
 Wretched indeed-, and weak as desperate I Nature her- 
 self — 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 bitter 
 irony, Pain and Anguish and Remorse ask thee, Are 
 we too Nothings ? 
 
 O youthful reader I (for such The Friend dares 
 anticipate), thou, that in my mind's eye, standest be- 
 side me, like my own youth ! Fresh and keen as the 
 morning Hunter in the pursuit of Truth, glad and rest- 
 less in the feeling of mental growth ! O learn early, 
 
30 LETTERS, ETC. 
 
 that if the Head be the Light of the Heart, the Heart is 
 the Life of the Head : yea, that Consciousness itself, that 
 Consciousness of which all reasoning is the varied modi- 
 fication, is but the Reflex of the Conscience when most 
 luminous ; and too often a fatuous vapour, a warmth- 
 less 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, Okeii, and the German 
 " Natur-philosophen " of the present day, the Result 
 has been, and ever must be, pantheism, under some 
 one or other of its modes or disguises : 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 conclu- 
 sion. All speculative disquisition must begin with 
 Postulates, authorised and substantiated by the con- 
 science 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 
 
LETTERS, ETC. 31 
 
 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." 
 
 I may as well state here that the writer, 
 possessing confessedly 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 therefore ? " and 
 in a humourous strain of contemptuous remark, 
 exhibit the selfishness of the (in mind) vulgar 
 fisherman who, having left a- wretched and preca- 
 rious 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 
 
32 LETTERS, ETC. 
 
 reward or advantage, 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 super- 
 stitious 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 recal. 
 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, the love, the 
 affectionate regards, and the respect of ingenuous 
 
LETTERS, ETC. 33 
 
 natures. To all others his heart was (I will not 
 say closed) unresponsive. To you, my dear chil- 
 dren, who from 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 uncomplaining- 
 ness the very opposite, however, of torpid sorrow 
 or resignation, had fashioned for himself a happi- 
 ness, 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 
 c3 
 
34 LETTERS, ETC. 
 
 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 particular, the 
 very peculiar cadence or rhythm, which of right 
 belongs to the poetry of Coleridge in somewhat the 
 
LETTERS, ETC. 35 
 
 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, he 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." 
 
86 LETTERS, ETC. 
 
 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 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 sesame 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, 
 
LETTERS, ETC. 37 
 
 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 individuals he acknow- 
 ledged no sympathy, he was esteemed and rever- 
 enced, 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 
 
38 LETTERS, ETC. 
 
 out even to self-sacrifice, and then bear in mind 
 that gratitude is a feeble flame, which needs con- 
 stantly to be kept alive by a repetition of benefits, 
 or that in improvident natures it gives place to 
 rancourous 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 mutual friend intro- 
 duced 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 experi- 
 encing a share — and he thought it a large one — of that 
 kindness which Mr. Lamb 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 profound sense of the excellence of one of 
 the finest model-beings whom it ever was his fortune to 
 meet" — Chambers' Journal. 
 
LETTERS, ETC. 39 
 
 LETTER VII. 
 
 Highgate, April 10th, 1820. 
 
 My dear Friend, 
 
 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 General 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 
 
40 LETTERS, ETC. 
 
 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 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, 
 
 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 inde- 
 
LETTERS, ETC. 41 
 
 pendence 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 . . . , 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 enthu- 
 siasm 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, corresponding to 
 what Spurzheim calls the organ of ideality. What 
 
42 LETTERS, ETC. 
 
 in other women is refinement exists in her as by 
 implication, and, a fortiori, in a native fineness of 
 character. She often represents to my mind the 
 best parts of the Spanish Santa Teresa, ladyhood 
 of nature. 
 
 Vexation! and Mrs. Gillman has this moment 
 burnt 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 be 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, 1 ' 
 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 
 
LETTERS, ETC. 43 
 
 man 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 where 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 
 
44 LETTERS, ETC. 
 
 stores of a mind perfectly unequalled, both with 
 respect to the mass of knowledge, — nay more, 
 true wisdom, — and the eloquence with which that 
 knowledge was adorned, and asserting, in oppo- 
 sition 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 direction, Coleridge, taking up 
 the down of a thistle which lay by the road 
 side, and holding it up, said, after observing the 
 direction in which it was born by the wind, — 
 " The tendency of that thistle is towards China, 
 but I know with assured certainty that it will 
 never get there ; nay, that it is more than pro- 
 bable that, after sundry eddyings and gyrations 
 up and down, backwards and forwards, that it will 
 be found somewhere near the place in which it 
 grew." Then, turning to me, — " T refer to your 
 experience, if you ever knew the probabilities, 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 
 
LETTERS, ETC. 45 
 
 laws or regulations were made, which is a mani- 
 fest 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 ima- 
 ginary travels, shows very 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. 
 
 Saturday, April 8th, 1820, Highgate. 
 My dear Friend, 
 
 It is not the least advantage of friendship, 
 that by communicating our thoughts to another, we 
 render them distinct to themselves, and reduce the 
 subjects of our sorrow and anxiety to their just 
 magnitude for our own contemplation. 
 
 As long as we inly brood over a misfortune 
 
48 LETTERS, ETC. 
 
 (there being no divisions or separate circumscrip- 
 tions 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 had been produced by them, than 
 by any positive resemblance 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 ade- 
 quately 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. 
 
LETTERS, ETC. 47 
 
 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, 
 neivspapers, mobs, sedition and treason trials, pub- 
 lic 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 competi- 
 tors, 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 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 
 
48 LETTERS, ETC. 
 
 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 sub- 
 ject 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 extraordinary 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 Lammer- 
 moor (with the exception, however, of the almost 
 
LETTERS, ETC. 49 
 
 Shakspearian old witch-wives at the funeral) and 
 of the Ivanhoe, I meant 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 Richardson, 
 than they are in the present times ; but only that 
 Sterne, &c, would not have had the same imme- 
 diate 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 with the most com- 
 plex 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 draught of a letter written by me so long 
 
 VOL. I. D 
 
50 LETTERS, ETC. 
 
 ago as my first lectures at the London Philoso- 
 phical Society, Fetter Lane, and on the backs 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, Richardson, and Sterne ; — in moral, or, if 
 that be too high and inwardly a word, in mannerly 
 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 court- 
 ship of Widow Wadman, as Scott himself would 
 be capable of presenting it. Add, 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, Lieute- 
 nant 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 
 
LETTERS, ETC. 51 
 
 Tabitha Bramble, or with Betty (in Mrs. Bennefs 
 Beggar Girl) ; and though, by the use of the 
 Scotch dialect, by Ossianic mock-highland motley- 
 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 characters so good produced by one 
 man, and in so rapid a succession, 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. 
 
 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 Presby- 
 terians 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, 
 d 2 
 
52 LETTERS, ETC. 
 
 introduced are sufficiently different from our own 
 for poignancy, and yet sufficiently near and similar 
 for sympathy ; nor yet because, for the same rea- 
 son, the author, speaking, reflecting, and descant- 
 ing in his own person, remains still (to adopt a 
 painter's phrase) in sufficient keeping with his sub- 
 ject matter, while his characters can both talk and 
 feel interestingly 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 know- 
 ledge, for truth, as the offspring of reason — in 
 short, the mighty instincts of progression and free 
 
LETTERS, ETC. 53 
 
 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 pos- 
 sible condition of that equilibrium in which our 
 moral Being subsists ; while the disturbance of the 
 same constitutes our sense of life. Thus in the 
 ancient Tragedy, the lofty struggle between irresist- 
 ible 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 indhTerents ! 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 
 
54 LETTERS, ETC. 
 
 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- congru- 
 ous 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 Phan- 
 tasies (a collection of faery or witch tales), from 
 which both the incident and name is borrowed. 
 
 I 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-BOVSD Traveller ; or, 
 Histories, Lays, Legends, Incidents, Anecdotes, 
 and Remarks, contributed during a detention in 
 one of the Hebrides, recorded by their Secretary, 
 Lory Mc Haroldson, Senachy in the Isle of . 
 
 The principle of the work I had thus expressed 
 in the first chapter: — M Though not fact, must it 
 
LETTERS, ETC. 55 
 
 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 con- 
 tradistinguishes man), there is a humanity common 
 to all periods of life, which each period from child- 
 hood has its own 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, but which he will never draw forth, who, 
 content with mimicking the unessential, though 
 natural defects of thought and expression, has not 
 the skill to remove the childish, yet leave the child- 
 like 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 ; but 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, 
 
56 LETTERS, ETC. 
 
 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 publication ; 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 proposed 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 principle, and the decision 
 
LETTERS, ETC. 57 
 
 and power of growth which it communicates 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 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 Theological 
 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 historical belief, with their reciprocal action on 
 each other ; and thus, on the one hand, to do away 
 the servile superstition which makes men Biblio- 
 laters, and yet hides from them the proper excel- 
 lencies, the one continued revelation of the Bible 
 documents, which they idolise; and, on the other 
 hand, to expose, in its native worthlessness, the 
 so-called evidences of Christianity first brought 
 into toleration by Arminius, and into fashion by 
 d 3 
 
58 LETTERS, ETC. 
 
 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. 
 Your very affectionate friend, 
 
 S. T. Coleridge. 
 
LETTERS, ETC. 59 
 
 If it had been possible for the 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 conjunction with familiar and popu- 
 lar elucidation. There was nothing shapeless and 
 unmeaning in anything he ever said or wrote. 
 There were no crudities, no easy reading in his 
 productions. 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 
 illustrated, 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 
 interest. Would that it were possible to recal 
 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 
 
60 LETTERS, ETC. 
 
 " Weather-bound Traveller." Myself a proficient 
 when a youth as a raconteur, I was still surprised at 
 the extraordinary 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. Ar- 
 dently do I hope that the fragments above alluded 
 to have been saved, and that the worthy and ex- 
 cellent 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 opportunities of free and unrestrained inter- 
 course and intercommunion with the more influ- 
 ential 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 termed it, this want of 
 faith. That this was the fact at that time, I am 
 
LETTERS, ETC. 61 
 
 willing to admit ; but 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 obnoxious 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 superstition which they have hitherto retained, 
 out of . consideration, as it should seem, to the 
 fouler superstitions and mental degradation by 
 which they are still surrounded. 
 
 But my excellent friend had another cause of 
 quarrel with this sect. He saw with what readi- 
 ness 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 generally given to Turgot and his 
 
62 LETTERS, ETC. 
 
 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 imagina- 
 tion 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 surrounded, or 
 to the education which they had received, he op- 
 posed 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 bio- 
 grapher. For myself, opposed as I am both from 
 principle, 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, 
 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 
 
LETTERS, ETC. 63 
 
 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 circumstances and influences, not the con- 
 sequence 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 
 
64 LETTERS, ETC. 
 
 patriotism, but in the daily and hourly occurrences 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 pas- 
 sage, in which the author feelingly denounces and 
 exposes the attempts of the mischievous and heart- 
 less 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 : — 
 
 " 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 
 
LETTERS, ETC. 65 
 
 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 blundering 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 habi- 
 tually interested himself in the welfare of others. The 
 searcher after truth must love and be 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 incul- 
 cate philanthropy, while it denounces every home- 
 born feeling by which 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 
 
66 LETTERS, ETC. 
 
 tyranny contemplated by the new parliament. He 
 
 predicted that it would be carried. I remember 
 
 that, in allusion to the system of coercive regu- 
 
 • 
 lation 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, intro- 
 duced by an affecting story of a beggar in Switzer- 
 land, who, being offended by a refusal where he 
 had hitherto met with kindness, said, as he de- 
 parted, — " Well, you will find I shall not come 
 again, and then you may see if you can get 
 another beggar." The 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. 
 
A 
 
 
 LETTERS, ETC. 67 
 
 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 
 Netherlander 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 canvas 
 is expecting rather too much from my patience*.' 
 
 " ' Perhaps then,' said Edward, ' Quintin Matsys 
 would suit you, who so frequently sets before"us with 
 
 * This man was an economist of the worst kind, without 
 knowing anything of political economy. 
 
68 LETTERS, ETC. 
 
 such truth and vigour money-changers at their counters, 
 with coins and ledgers.' 
 
 " ' Not so either, young gentleman,' said the old 
 man : ' that we can see easily and without exertion in 
 reality. If I am to be entertained 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.' 
 
 " ' 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 repre- 
 sentations 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 
 
LETTERS, ETC. 69 
 
 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 glo- 
 riously 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 brilliant entertainment, step into 
 the lighted theatre, how can it be expected that we should 
 interest ourselves in the variety of wretchedness and 
 pitiful distress that is here served up for our amuse- 
 ment ? 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 whether absolutely laudable, either as a regulation 
 of police, or a maxim of art, I am not prepared to 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 un- 
 
 * Just so. 
 
70 LETTERS, ETC. 
 
 seasonably disturbed, impudently importuned, and some- 
 times even grossly imposed xipon. 
 
 " ' 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 individuals*. 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.' 
 
 " ' This is the very thing,' said the old merchant, 
 ' which in all countries maintains mendicity, that we 
 cannot and will not rid ourselves of this petty feeling 
 of soft-hearted vanity and mawkish philanthropy. This 
 it is, at the same time, that renders the better -j- mea- 
 sures 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, 
 
 * Surely H. B. must have read this. 
 
 •j- 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 through- 
 out a whole nation without frightful suffering? — S. T. C. 
 
LETTERS, ETC. 71 
 
 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 de- 
 parted, < Well, 1 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 poor enough. If it were possible 
 that the impulse of pity could die in us, there would 
 
 BE A MELANCHOLY PROSPECT FOR OUR JOY AND OUR 
 
 pleasure. The man who is fortunate enough to be 
 able to bestow, receives more than the poor taker. 
 Alas ! it is the only thing,' she added with great emo- 
 tion, ' that can at all excuse and mitigate the 
 
 HARSHNESS OF PROPERTY, THE CRUELTY OF POS- 
 SESSION, that a part of what is disproportionately 
 accumulated is dropped upon the wretched creatures 
 who are pining below us, that it may not be 
 
72 LETTERS, ETC. 
 
 UTTERLY FORGOTTEN THAT WE ARE ALL BRE- 
 THREN*.' 
 
 " The father looked at her with a disapproving air, 
 and was on the point of saying something, when Ed- 
 ward, 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 IT- 
 
 * I know nothing so ludicrous, and at the same time so 
 affecting, 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. 73 
 
 self, 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 misery t 
 are tortured and wasted in a thousand fearful groups, as 
 in Dante's imagery, and do not venture even to 
 raise theik 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, 
 
 * Say selfishness, for the opulent have not a monopoly of 
 cruelty. 
 
 f 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. 
 
 VOL. I. E 
 
74 LETTERS, ETC. 
 
 and impudence, and withdraws 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 wretched- 
 ness 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 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 ac- 
 customed to be 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 crea- 
 ture, for whom, in public walks and vernal 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 be- 
 stows on him a more liberal boon, and enables him to 
 
LETTERS, ETC. 75 
 
 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 himself. Happy the rich 
 man, who can promote this faith, who can bestow with 
 the visible the invisible gift ; and woe to the prodigal, 
 who, through his 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 droop- 
 ing under the load of his wearisome existence. 7 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; but she roused herself and recovered her com- 
 posure as her father returned." 
 
 E 2 
 
76 LETTERS, ETC. 
 
 
 LETTER IX. 
 
 31st July, 1820. 
 My very dear Friend, 
 
 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 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 
 
 * 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. 
 
LETTERS, ETC. 77 
 
 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-expound- 
 ing the conscience, would 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 ignoi'ance, 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 recommending, a grand pana- 
 cea, and saw not the truth till my body had con- 
 tracted 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 bewil- 
 
78 LETTERS, ETC. 
 
 derment. But this I say to man only, who knows 
 only what has been yielded not what has been 
 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 gnaw- 
 ing, 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 respect- 
 ing your health. Mr. Gillman feels satisfied that 
 there is nothing in your case symptomatic of aught 
 
LETTERS, ETC. 79 
 
 more dangerous than irritable, and at present disor- 
 dered, organs of digestion, requiring indeed great 
 care, but by no means incompatible with comfort- 
 able 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 acquaintance with so many medical 
 men in the course of my life) — I am most anxious 
 that you should not apply to any medical practi- 
 tioner at Clapham, till you have consulted some 
 physician recommended by Gillman, and with whom 
 our friend might have some confidential conversa- 
 tion. — 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 month's tranquil- 
 
80 LETTERS, ETC. 
 
 lity 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 Clapham on 
 which it would amuse or gratify you to have my 
 notions, write to me, and I shall be served by hav- 
 ing something to think and write about not con- 
 nected 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 unspeak- 
 ably dear you are to your, you must not refuse me 
 to say in heart, 
 
 S. T. Coleridge. 
 
 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, philo- 
 sopher, 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 
 
LETTERS, ETC. 81 
 
 laudanum. If any other testimony were or could 
 be needed, I have received ample confirmation from 
 subsequent communications. From this bodily sla- 
 very (for it icas 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 per- 
 haps any other trade, to degrade the moral being, 
 has preserved a simplicity and singleness of pur- 
 pose, united to a manly frankness, 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 surgeon, living in a small town or village, 
 and circulating In a radius of ten miles, are, and 
 e 3 
 
82 LETTERS, ETC. 
 
 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 kindness and delicacy of feeling ; never, 
 even for a moment, angry. The present system of 
 money-making, and, what is worse, sleight of hand, 
 
 * Salter, if I recollect right, lived in Devonshire ; but 
 whether at Ottery or in its neighbourhood, I am ignorant 
 
LETTERS, ETC. 83 
 
 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 pur- 
 suits 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 delightful recollections which they would have 
 contained. These recollections, which are now so 
 misty, so shadowy, and so unsubstantial, as to 
 present little that is tangible, little that 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 
 
84 LETTERS, ETC. 
 
 most poignant at the opportunities that I suffered 
 to pass unimproved. 
 
 It may seem a contradiction, but I am never 
 more grateful, never more thankful for the com- 
 munion vouchsafed, never more revere the memory 
 of the illustrious departed, than when I am com- 
 pelled 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 
 
LETTERS, ETC. 85 
 
 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 essentially unfits him, has 
 often secured to himself the imagination, and, 
 through the imagination, the best affections of 
 those amongst whom he lives, before he is seriously 
 attached himself." 
 
86 LETTERS, ETC. 
 
 " Hark yet again to that sweet strain ! See how 
 calm, how beauteous that prospect toward my gar- 
 den ! (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 
 
LETTERS, ETC. 87 
 
 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." 
 
 " I deprecate a literal still more than an ideal 
 religion. The miracles may be fairly illustrated 
 by the familiar example of a lecture with experi- 
 
88 LETTERS, ETC. 
 
 ments at the institution. A man ignorant of the 
 law whence these conjurations proceeded would be 
 acted upon in a very different manner w r hen com- 
 pared 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 meteorolo- 
 gical 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 his 
 evidence. So with the miracles. They are super- 
 erogatory. The law of God and the great prin- 
 ciples 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 
 
LETTERS, ETC. 89 
 
 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 good- 
 ness of heart or strength of mind to be an atheist. 
 
 " And, were I not a Christian, and that only in the 
 sense in which I am a Christian, I should be 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 Car- 
 lile, 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 be an 
 absurdity. It might as well be said because there 
 
90 LETTERS, ETC. 
 
 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 functions 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 pro- 
 tect him equally against * bodies of men as against 
 
 * To explain this allusion it will be necessary to state that 
 the prosecution against Carlile was carried on by a loyal and 
 constitutional 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 body ; 
 the allusions in, and the application of, which, will be readily 
 made by all interested. 
 
 Jack Stripe 
 jts\_i Eats tripe, 
 
 It is therefore credible 
 
 That tripe is edible. 
 
 And therefore perforce, 
 
 It follows, of course, 
 
 That the devil will gripe 
 
 All who do not eat tripe. 
 
 Kl J _ I And as Nick is too slow 
 To fetch em below, 
 
LETTERS, ETC. 91 
 
 individuals. Carlile may be wrong ; Ms persecutors 
 undoubtedly are so." 
 
 " How I loathed the horrid speeches of the Attor- 
 ney-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 
 
 And Giffbrd, 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." 
 
92 LETTERS, ETC. 
 
 doubt the early Christians, who in the second cen- 
 tury 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 questioned on this point, 
 ' Believe ye not this ; neither would ye believe if 
 one were to rise from the dead. 1 And again, ' No 
 man who believes not in this, is worthy to be 
 received.'" 
 
 " 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 
 
LETTERS, ETC. 93 
 
 truth ; a man may state the truth in words, and yet 
 tell a lie in spirit, and as such deserve punishment 
 for calumny." 
 
 " Allmenin power are jealous of the pre-eminence 
 of men of letters ; they feel, as towards them, con- 
 scious 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 
 
94 LETTERS, ETC. 
 
 occurs, it will tell fatally. The fabric of our 
 society resembles a house of cards built by chil- 
 dren, which so long as the squads 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 component 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, wonderful prophecies." 
 
 " If I should finish ' Christabel,' I shall certainly 
 extend it and give new characters, and a greater 
 number of incidents. 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 
 
LETTERS, ETC. 95 
 
 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 conti- 
 nuation 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 
 
 * I have extracted from the above work the following 
 tribute to the genius of Coleridge by ProfessorW^on, 
 clarion et venerabile nomen. /" / /^ */- ,. 
 
 " 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 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 
 
96 LETTERS, ETC. 
 
 originated in a sort of familiar conversation between 
 two clever men, who have said, l 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 myself 
 wrote many things together.*" 
 
 " 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 buffeted by 
 adversity or crossed by fatality. The ' Remorse ' 
 is certainly a great favourite of mine, the more so 
 
 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." 
 
LETTERS, ETC. 97 
 
 as certain pet abstract notions of mine are therein 
 expounded." 
 
 " 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 
 degradation 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 
 
 * It is to be hoped that Mr. Green will favour the world 
 with the process by which he has arrived at these con- 
 clusions. 
 
 VOL. I. F 
 
98 LETTERS, ETC. 
 
 these things there are (or maybe) different opinions; 
 but those who disbelieve 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. 1 " 
 
 " Tobin came one morning with a face of much 
 interest to inform me that Davy had made a won- 
 derful discovery. ' I doubt it not; I think he 
 will make many discoveries.' 'Yes, yes; but I 
 mean in philosophy. He tells me he has dis- 
 covered 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 
 
LETTERS, ETC. 99 
 
 life, so there is another-worldliness, or rather other 
 worldliness, equally hateful and selfish with this 
 loorldliness" 
 
 " Lord Erskine, speaking of animals, hesitating 
 to call them brutes, hit upon that happy phrase — 
 ' the mute creation.' " 
 
 " Lord Kenyon, on the trial of a bookseller, for 
 publishing ' Paine's Age of Reason,' 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 en- 
 forced this belief, and shown its influence by 
 their conduct. Above all, gentlemen, need I name 
 to you the Emperor Julian, who was so celebrated 
 f 2 
 
100 LETTERS, ETC. 
 
 for the practice of every Christian virtue that he 
 was called Julian the Apostle *. ,w 
 
 "It is indisputable that nervous excitation is con- 
 tagious. 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 
 
 * 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. 
 
LETTERS, ETC. 101 
 
 in election, is not simply blasphemy, but super- 
 fetation 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 Mathews : it is not f How admirable such and 
 such parts are ! ' but ' It is wonderful that one man 
 should do all this ! ' " 
 
 LETTER X. 
 
 August 8th, 1820. 
 My very dear Friend, 
 
 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 
 
' 
 
 10,2 LETTERS, ETC 
 
 number, quantity, and quality of my engagements, 
 the necessity of several journeys 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, where he is 
 engaged on an Essay on the Principles of Taste 
 in relation to Metre and Rhythm, 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 Eng- 
 lish versification by digging in the original mines, 
 viz. — the tunes of nature and impassioned con- 
 versation, both of which may be illustrated from 
 Mr. Frere's* Aristophanic Poems. I have been 
 
 * 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. 
 
LETTERS, ETC. 103 
 
 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 
 
 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. 
 
104 LETTERS, ETC. 
 
 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 bless her ! and 
 she has been writing letter after letter to E. about 
 J., and every discomfortable recollection and anti- 
 cipation 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 pre- 
 sent 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, introduced 
 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 
 
LETTERS, ETC. 105 
 
 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 Highgate. 
 
 Would to heaven I were with you! In a few 
 days you should see that the spirit of the moun- 
 taineer is not yet utterly extinct in me. Words- 
 worth has remarked (in the Brothers, I believe), 
 
 " The thought of death sits light upon the man 
 That has been bred, and dies among the mountains." 
 
 But I fear that this, like some other few of Words- 
 worth's many striking passages, means less than it 
 seems, or rather promises, to mean. Poets (espe- 
 cially if philosophers too) are apt to represent the 
 effect made upon themselves as general ; 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 mountains 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- 
 f 3 
 
106 LETTERS, ETC. 
 
 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 superstitions 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 civi- 
 lised states, they appear to be in mind and charac- 
 ter just what their condition and employments 
 would render them in level plain, the same as amid 
 Alpine heights. At least the influence acts indi- 
 rectly only, as far as the mountains are the causa 
 causes 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 proper- 
 ties in sheep seem to partake of both characters. 
 And truly, to this circumstance, aided by the favour- 
 able action of a necessarily scanty population (for 
 man is an oak that wants room, not a plantation 
 tree), we must attribute whatever superiority the 
 
LETTERS, ETC. 107 
 
 mountaineers of Cumberland and Westmoreland 
 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 acci- 
 dents of birth-place and abode, together with the 
 vague, misty, rather than mystic, confusion of God 
 with the world, and the accompanying nature-wor- 
 ship, of which the asserted dependence forms a 
 part, is the trait in Wordsworth's poetic works that 
 I most dislike as unhealthful, and denounce as con- 
 tagious ; 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 mask- 
 ing 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." 
 
108 LETTERS, ETC. 
 
 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 mys- 
 terious 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 con- 
 sider 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 
 
LETTERS, ETC. 109 
 
 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. 
 
 In reading an extract in the German Encyclo- 
 paedia 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 Euro- 
 peans, 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 them- 
 selves, 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 estab- 
 lished priesthood contra-distinguished from indivi- 
 
110 LETTERS, ETC. 
 
 dual 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 a 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 delicious 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 counter- 
 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 
 
LETTERS, ETC. Ill 
 
 worlds, as it were, correlative and mutually poten- 
 tiating, yet each integral and self-subsistent — having 
 the same correlation, as the geometry and the obser- 
 vations, 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 rea- 
 sonably 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 No. 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, 
 
J 12 LETTERS, ETC. 
 
 and permanence. This I must defer to another 
 letter, for I cannot let another post pass by, with- 
 out your knowing that we are all thinking of and 
 loving you. 
 
 S. T. Coleridge. 
 
 To the preceding letter, pregnant as it is with 
 materials for thinking, your attention will be at- 
 tracted, both by the great variety of subjects brought 
 forward and illustrated, and by the expressions of 
 earnest and affectionate attachment which it con- 
 tains. 
 
 Certainly no man that I ever knew united in so 
 
 great a degree, so entirely, " fondeur " with the 
 
 most extreme simplicity, 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, 
 And whom I love, I love indeed" 
 
 " Why was I made for love, and love denied to me? " 
 
LETTERS, ETC. 113 
 
 Alas ! my dear children, how can I hope to 
 convey to you (except your own minds are con- 
 senting) all that this glorious being 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 recal 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, with- 
 out any assignable limits, for whatever was beau- 
 tiful 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. 
 
<*> 
 
 114 LETTERS, ETC. 
 
 " But he is shy, both man and boy 
 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. 
 
 LETTER XI. 
 
 Highgate, Oct. 11th, 1820. 
 My dear Friend, 
 
 You will think it childish in me, and more 
 savouring of a jealous boarding-school miss than a 
 friend and a philosopher, 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 
 
LETTERS, ETC. 115 
 
 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 withhold my vote of consent : that I mean 
 which respects Mr. Brougham's hollow compli- 
 mentary phrases to the ministry and the House 
 of Lords. On expressing my regret that his poor 
 hoaxed and hunted client had been lured or terri- 
 fied 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, how- 
 ever, 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 activity, 
 
116 LETTERS, ETC. 
 
 enthusiasm, and combination, peculiar to the re- 
 formists, 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 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 incongru- 
 ous or alien purposes. It was ever heavy on my 
 heart, that the people, alike high and low, do 
 perish for 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 publication (The 
 Watchman), would be the aspiration of my death- 
 bed — That all may know the truth; and 
 
 THAT THE TRUTH MAY MAKE US FREE. 
 
LETTERS, ETC. 117 
 
 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 plung- 
 ing 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 proposition 
 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 per- 
 mitted 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 
 
118 LETTERS, ETC. 
 
 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 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 produced, 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- 
 shew 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 otherwise 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 testi- 
 mony, from which we are forced or entitled to infer 
 innate Coarseness, if not Grossness? The dire 
 
LETTERS, ETC. 119 
 
 disclosure of the extent and extremes to which 
 Calumny may be carried — and perhaps the recent 
 persecution of poor dear mixes its work- 
 ings — 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 dung- 
 hill 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 Satur- 
 day morning, while my letter, which is unfortu- 
 nately 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 pre- 
 paration 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 
 
120 LETTERS, ETC. 
 
 affectionate, and — if it did not look like a retort, 
 how truly might I not add — 
 
 Your obliged and grateful friend, 
 
 S. T. Coleridge. 
 
 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 ; 
 but 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 ques- 
 tion 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 
 
LETTERS, ETC. 121 
 
 Persecution ; " but better, certainly more prudent, 
 counsels prevailed. 
 
 On the conduct of Mr. Brougham in this case, 
 he was accustomed 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 unsound- 
 ness, 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 instru- 
 ments of functional 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 con- 
 
 VOL. I. G 
 
122 LETTERS, ETC. 
 
 victions; what shall we say of those, to whom 
 time brings no improvement — age, no mental re- 
 pose ? It is the duty of all men, who have calmly 
 observed, meditated, and reflected, who are suf- 
 ficiently near to be interested, and remote enough 
 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 believe 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 per- 
 verted 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 
 
LETTERS, ETC. 123 
 
 study Brougham, not to resemble him. What is 
 the use of that cutting irony, that bitter sarcasm, 
 that supercilious 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 con- 
 ceivable form of society. 
 
 The American coachman, who, to the great 
 G 2 
 
124 LETTERS, ETC. 
 
 surprise of Mr. Stewart, told him more of the 
 practice and mode of teaching at the High School 
 of Edinburgh than he knew himself, 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 Reformer" for 
 " Whig " (for here the Whigs are not true Re- 
 formers), 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 
 
 * 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, ?" " 1 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. 
 
LETTERS, ETC. 125 
 
 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 
 pretension and prescription alone, are held to 
 be fit to govern nations, though there are fete 
 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. 
 
126 LETTERS, ETC. 
 
 LETTER XII. 
 
 Saturday, Oct. 20th, 1820. 
 
 My dear Friend, 
 
 Doubtless nothing can be more delightful to 
 me, independent of Mrs. Gillman's kind but un- 
 necessary 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, absolutely 
 sure, that it would not inconvenience you. 
 
 But in the fear of this, I could not ask or receive 
 your companionship 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, 
 
 S. T. Coleridge. 
 
LETTERS, ETC. 127 
 
 Of this journey to Oxford I have a very painful 
 recollection ; 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 pro- 
 gressed, or have been stationary in act at least." 
 
128 LETTERS, ETC. 
 
 LETTER XIII. 
 
 Oct. 25th, 1820. 
 My dearest Friend, 
 
 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 sug- 
 gested 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 exe- 
 cute, a scheme of publication, " the Queen's case 
 stated morally; 2, judicially; 3, politically." But 
 again Mr. G. earnestly persuaded me to suppress 
 
LETTERS, ETC. 129 
 
 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 in- 
 volve me with certain of my connexions in high 
 life, and be injurious to Hartley and Dervvent, 
 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, 
 
 S. T. Coleridge. 
 
 We shall soon see you ? 
 
 G 6 
 
130 1ETTERS, ETC. 
 
 Shortly after this I find the following heads of 
 conversation : — 
 
 " I recollect meeting Mr.*Brougham well. I 
 met him at 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 discover ana- 
 logies. 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 
 
LETTERS, ETC. 131 
 
 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.' 
 
 " / said nothing ; but I did not forget it? 
 
 " The question of the atonement and of the sa- 
 crament being inti'oduced, he insisted on the divine 
 origin of the sacrament, and that it was to be 
 understood in a mystical sense, not, however, 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 
 
132 LETTERS, ETC. 
 
 respect to free will, in the ordinary acceptation, he 
 affirmed it to be incompatible with omnipotence, 
 with the attributes of that God who is omniscient 
 and omnipresent, 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, 1 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 
 
LETTERS, ETC. 133 
 
 of the Jews, a religion of punishments and threat- 
 enings only, was incomplete ; 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 ; 
 ex. gr., 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 persecuted by Charles II. 
 
 " He is borne out in all his statements by Mrs. 
 Lucy Hutchinson, that most delightful of women 
 
134 LETTERS, ETC. 
 
 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 opposition, 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, 
 
LETTERS, ETC. 135 
 
 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 neces- 
 sarily 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 certain means of relief if this were 
 not a two-fold question. If, when you say to a man, 
 
136 LETTERS, ETC. 
 
 — ' 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 ? / 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 
 
LETTERS, ETC. 137 
 
 be governed by an aristocracy, or, what is still 
 more likely, by a contemptible democratical oli- 
 garchy of glib economists, compared to which the 
 worst form of aristocracy 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." 
 
 ; Some men — Jeffrey is one — refer taste to palate.' 
 
138 LETTERS, ETC. 
 
 " Absurd terms, when compared, as ' conclusion 
 of a war,' ' 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 popu- 
 larity; in some degree it may be owing to his 
 having exposed and confuted the absurdities, or 
 rather the absurd part, of the schoolmen. Hume 
 has carried his premises to their natural and in- 
 evitable 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 toe are, not which is in us." 
 
LETTERS, ETC. 139 
 
 " Socrates seems to have been continually oscil- 
 lating 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 of the Monthly Review or Magazine, and 
 of Dr. Aikin, its editor, I was provoked by his 
 evident wish that 1 should say something in its 
 favour to reply, — ' That all men of science or 
 literature could attest that the one was a void 
 Aikin, and the other an aching void.' " 
 
140 LETTERS, ETC. 
 
 
 
 LETTER XIV. 
 
 Sunday Evening, Nov. 27, 1820. 
 My very dear Friend, 
 
 I have been more than usually unwell, with 
 great depression 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 connected with pain- 
 ful associations, and of that morbid temperament, 
 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 
 
LETTERS, ETC. 141 
 
 avail myself of every moment that ill health left me, 
 to get forward with my Logic and with my "Asser- 
 tion 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 habi- 
 tual, that my acknowledgments you cannot but 
 take for granted. Mr. Gillman has been ill ; Mrs. 
 Gillman — and this leads me to the particular ob- 
 ject 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 jus- 
 tice to yourself and other connections, for it is a 
 
142 LETTERS, ETC. 
 
 great comfort to me ; something, I 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 flve-and-twenty years. 
 May God bless you, my dear friend, 
 
 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 tran- 
 script of an early, a very early sonnet, written pro- 
 
LETTERS, ETC. 143 
 
 bably at the time when the author's heart, as well 
 as his head, was with Spinoza. 
 
 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 youth, 
 
 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 ! 
 
 Your dreams alone I dreamt, and caught your blind- 
 ness. 
 
 O grief! — but farewell, Love ! I will go play me 
 With thoughts that please me less, and less betray me. 
 
J 44 LETTERS, ETC. 
 
 TO NATURE. 
 
 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 
 
 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. 
 
LETTERS, ETC. 145 
 
 LETTER XV. 
 
 January, 1821. 
 My DEAR YOUNG FRIEND, 
 
 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 infir- 
 mity shall have been purged away. I feel the most 
 entire confidence that no prosperous change of my 
 outward circumstances would add to your faith in 
 the sincerity of this assurance ; still, however, the 
 average of men being what it is, and it being nei- 
 ther 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 
 
 VOL. I. H 
 
146 LETTERS, ETC. 
 
 an honourable competence, 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 undistinguish- 
 ably 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 God is my 
 witness, that my wish for an easier and less embar- 
 rassed lot is chiefly (I think I might have said exclu- 
 sively) grounded on the deep conviction, that ex- 
 posed to a less bleak aspect I should bring 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 signifying compe- 
 tence, 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 
 
LETTERS, ETC. 147 
 
 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." 
 
 Read 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 
 h 2 
 
148 LETTERS, ETC. 
 
 philosophical, were it only on this account, — that I 
 know of no age in which the same has not been 
 advanced, and with the same grounds. Nay, I 
 retract ; there never was a time in which the com- 
 plaint would be so little wise, though perhaps none 
 in which the fact is more prominent. Neither 
 philosophy nor poetry ever did, nor as long as they 
 are terms of comparative excellence and contra- 
 distinction, ever can be popular, nor honoured with 
 the praise and favour of contemporaries. 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 munifi- 
 cently, almost profusely, rewarded. Walter Scott's 
 poems and novels (except only the two wretched 
 abortions, Ivanhoe and the Bride of Ravensmuir, 
 or whatever its name may be) supply both instance 
 and solution of the present conditions and compo- 
 nents of popularity, viz. to amuse without requiring 
 any effort of thought, and without exciting any 
 deep emotion. The age seems sore from excess of 
 
LETTERS, ETC. 149 
 
 stimulation, 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 other- 
 wise than on the whole^ and where "■ 1 admire" 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, Roderick Random, 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 pur- 
 pose 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 requisite for 
 
150 LETTERS, ETC. 
 
 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 know- 
 ledge 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 anticipations of 
 the future. As I now am, however, from iive to 
 six hours devoted to actual writing and compo- 
 sition 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 judg- 
 ment, or my correcting hand. Add to these, letters 
 from lords and ladies, urging me to write reviews 
 
LETTERS, ETC. 151 
 
 or puffs of heaven-born geniuses, whose whole 
 merit consists in being ploughmen or shoemakers. 
 Ditto from actors ; entreaties for money, or recom- 
 mendations to publishers, from ushers out of place, 
 &c. &c. ; and to me, who have neither interest, 
 influence, nor money, and, what is still more 
 dpropos 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 correction, 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 Review of each Play ; together with 
 a relative and comparative Critique on the kind 
 and degree of the Merits and Demerits of the 
 Dramatic Works of Ben Jonson, Beaumont and 
 Fletcher, and Massinger. The History of the 
 English Drama; the accidental advantages it 
 
152 
 
 LETTERS, ETC. 
 
 afforded to Shakspeare, without in the least de- 
 tracting from the perfect originality or proper 
 creation of the Shakspearian Drama ; the contra- 
 distinction 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 com- 
 pression, amounts to three volumes of about five 
 Jmndred 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, Rabelais, and others, during the predomi- 
 nance of the Romantic Poetry. In one large 
 volume. — These two. works will, I flatter myself, 
 form a complete code of the principles 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 
 
LETTERS, ETC. 153 
 
 Human Mind to exhibit the Powers of the 
 Human Reason, to discover by its own Strength 
 the Origin and Laws of Man and the World from 
 Pythagoras 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 Reformation, 
 addressed to a Candidate for Holy Orders ; in- 
 cluding 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 
 the arrows of detraction, to be let fly against the 
 luckless bird from whom they had been plucked 
 or moulted. 
 
 h 3 
 
154 LETTERS, ETC. 
 
 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; 
 
LETTERS, ETC. 
 
 155 
 
 Of this work, to which all my other writings 
 (unless I except my Poems, and these I can ex- 
 clude in part only) are introductory and prepara- 
 tive ; and the result of which (if the premises be, 
 as I, with the most tranquil assurance, am con- 
 vinced 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 commencing predominance of the me- 
 chanical system at the restoration of our second 
 Charles, and with this the present fashionable 
 views, not only of religion, morals, and politics, 
 
 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. 
 
156 LETTERS, ETC. 
 
 but even of the modern physics and physiology. 
 You will not blame the earnestness of my expres- 
 sions, 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 ac- 
 quitted of folly, and abuse of time, talents, and 
 learning, in a labour of three fourths of my intel- 
 lectual 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 ! 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 
 
LETTERS, ETC* 157 
 
 to me the one only fit subject remaining for an 
 Epic Poem — Jerusalem besieged and destroyed 
 by Titus. 
 
 And here comes my dear friend j 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 
 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 ju^ 
 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 
 Reviews, and with more effective enmity under- 
 mined by the utter silence or occasional detractive 
 
 n^uk^^^" 
 
158 LETTERS, ETC, 
 
 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 
 recurring 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 unexampled hardships and 
 sufferings than from manifold and peculiar advan- 
 tages, I have never yet found a parallel, I have 
 devoted myself to a life of unintermitted reading, 
 
 * 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 Re- 
 view, of which Southey is yet the main support. 
 
LETTERS, ETC. 159 
 
 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 consequence 
 of these toils and this self-dedication, I possess a 
 calm and clear consciousness, that in many and 
 most important departments of truth and beauty I 
 have outstrode my contemporaries, 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 imme- 
 diate 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 Royal and Sur- 
 rey Institutions, in Fetter-lane, at Willis's Rooms, 
 and at the Crown and Anchor (add to which the 
 unlimited freedom of my communications in col- 
 loquial 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 
 
160 LETTERS, ETC. 
 
 only waiting, a few for the sickle, but a large part 
 only for the sheaving, and carting, and housing, 
 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 employed 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. 
 
LETTERS, ETC. 161 
 
 Now I see but one possible plan of rescuing my 
 permanent utility. It is briefly this and plainly. 
 For what we struggle with inwardly, we find at 
 least easiest to bolt 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 ap- 
 pearance as my health and habits have made ne- 
 cessaries, so that my mind may be 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 matur- 
 ing and completing my great work, and (for if 
 
162 LETTERS, ETC. 
 
 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, 50/.; and I think that from 
 10/. to 201. I could rely upon from 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 produced the 
 means. 
 
 I have thus placed before you at large, wander- 
 
LETTERS, ETC. 163 
 
 ingly, as well as diffusely, the statement which I 
 am inclined to send in a 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 riylit to do this ? 
 Can I do it without moral degradation? and, lastly, 
 can it be done without loss of character in the eyes 
 of my acquaintance, and of my friends"' acquaint- 
 ance, who may have been informed of the cir- 
 cumstances? 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 state- 
 ment, 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 incon- 
 siderable accession to the pleasure I anticipate from 
 disembarrassment, that you would have to con- 
 template in a more gracious form, and in a more 
 
164 LETTERS, ETC. 
 
 ebullient play of the inward fountain, the mind and 
 manners of, 
 
 My dear friend, 
 Your obliged and very affectionate friend, 
 
 S. T. Coleridge. 
 
 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 wi'itten. 
 
 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 stric- 
 tures 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 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 
 
LETTERS, ETC. 165 
 
 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 them- 
 selves. 
 
 No blame, therefore, do I attach to the parties 
 who permitted such an appeal, from such a man, to 
 strangers. Unworthy 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 
 
166 LETTERS, ETC. 
 
 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 occupied, instead of 
 busying themselves with spiritual responsibility, 
 respecting which nothing is or can certainly be 
 known, had applied themselves to the question of 
 moral and physical 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 
 
LETTERS, ETC. 167 
 
 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 crotchet, 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 occupations 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 system successfully practised by 
 
168 LETTERS, ETC 
 
 Much that is now sought to be attained is 
 very pleasant, nay, very desirable, but the means 
 
 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 Tracy. 
 
 " Malwa, 29th March, 1832. 
 
 " During a short stay in Adjmeer, I contrived to visit the 
 Mhairwanah, the former Abruzzi of Rajpootana. It was 
 well worth riding eighty-four miles. I saw a country whose 
 inhabitants, since an immemorial 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 
 
LETTERS, ETC. 169 
 
 by which it is sought are not practicable, the har- 
 monious combinations, to any adequate extent, 
 
 plough. Female infanticide was a prevalent practice 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 summoned 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 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 
 
 VOL. I. I 
 
170 LETTERS, ETC. 
 
 are not yet possible ; and all endeavours to force 
 the 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 benevolent 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 con- 
 templation of possible 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 
 
 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." 
 
 Jacquemont's Letters. 
 
LETTERS, ETC. 171 
 
 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 surrounding eircumstances ; 
 not in the heart, but in the understanding, 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 endea- 
 vouring 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 revo- 
 lution is a 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 dis- 
 coverable with equal facility. We certainly should 
 never attempt to make proselytes by appeals to the 
 selfish feeling, and consequently should plead for 
 i 2 
 
172 LETTERS, ETC. 
 
 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 practicable. Society, as at present consti- 
 tuted, 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 diffusing truth, who uniting the 
 zeal of the methodist with the views of the philo- 
 sopher, should be personally among the poor, and 
 teach them their duties in order that he may render 
 them susceptible of their rights.' 1 
 
 The present tendencies are, I believe, adverse to 
 
 * I consider both necessary, nay, desirable. Would plead- 
 ing 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 would be 
 of terrific danger, did not a sense of justice aided by personal 
 fears create advocates, who end in becoming mediators. 
 
LETTERS, ETC. 173 
 
 the attainment of any high, pure, or lasting advan- 
 tage, unless it be from the necessary re-action or 
 recoil. I can conceive of no blasphemy more vile 
 or self-degrading, than that which contemplates 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 one of the most 
 favoui'ed and influential of its organs, that it would 
 be of the highest possible advantage to Great Bri- 
 tain, if its country were wholly destroyed by a vol- 
 cano, so that its factories and towns might be com- 
 pelled to have recourse to other lands for food, and 
 thus sell sundry additional bales of cotton or pigs 
 of iron*? 
 
 * 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 
 
174 LETTERS, ETC. 
 
 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 administrator. To believe that this 
 most pernicious of all systems can long exist ; to 
 think that this faith in mechanics, mental and distri- 
 butive, 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, 
 
 made, some to furnish feathers for the caps of others, and 
 some 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 esti- 
 mating 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 disparag- 
 ingly), would be more innocently employed in destroying 
 life than in attempting to mutilate the reputation of the great 
 dead. 
 
LETTERS, ETC. 175 
 
 '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 
 The whole one self ! Self, that no alien knows ! 
 Self, far diffused as Fancy's wing can travel I 
 Self, spreading still ! Oblivious of its own, 
 Yet all of all possessing ! " 
 
 Religious Musings, page 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 inter- 
 course and intercommunication ; yet always pre- 
 serving, even in moments of the most entire inter- 
 fusion 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. 
 
176 LETTERS, ETC. 
 
 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 attain- 
 able. To this I seek to approximate ; and this, 
 my dearest friends, every one may to some consi- 
 derable 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, 
 And therefore does not stoop, nor lie in wait 
 Fur 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, wheresoe'er he be, 
 Are at his heart ; and such fidelity 
 It is his darling passion to approve, 
 More brave for this — that he has much to love. 
 'Tis, finally, the man who, lifted high, 
 Conspicuous object in a nation's eye, 
 
LETTERS, ETC. 17*7 
 
 Or left unihought 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!' 
 
 LETTER XVI. 
 
 Blandford-place, March 1st, 1821. 
 My dearest Friend, 
 
 God bless you, and all who are dear and 
 near to you ! but as to your pens, they 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 ink- 
 stand), it would be base to complain. I hate 
 abusing folks in their absence. Do you know, my 
 dear friend, that, having sundry little snug super- 
 stitions of my own, I shrewdly suspect that whim- 
 sical 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 
 i 3 
 
178 LETTERS, ETC. 
 
 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 pro- 
 mises, — cetera 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 means of communication, without 
 books, and even without writing materials, — that is, without 
 paper upon which to write, — need not be 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 
 
LETTERS, ETC. 179 
 
 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 court- 
 ship, 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), 
 
 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 undomestic 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 un- 
 noticed 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 Bem- 
 bridge Ledge or Point. To enjoy these you must be with- 
 out 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. 
 
J 80 LETTERS, ETC. 
 
 which makes an Elysium of a home in other re- 
 spects only home-\y. 
 
 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 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 
 pleasantry, " 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 hu- 
 manity springing from the gentleness, the kindness 
 of his heart. He dwelt with much unction on the 
 curious and instructive letters of Steele to his wife ; 
 
LETTERS^ ETC. 181 
 
 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 right reason, I shall use plainness and sincerity 
 in my discourse to you, as much as other lovers do per- 
 plexity 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 excellencies 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 mu- 
 tual. . . . 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 pure 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 con- 
 
182 LETTERS, ETC. 
 
 tempt. 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 endea- 
 vours towards a life of strict virtue and religion, can 
 qualify me to raise new ideas in a breast so \vell 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- 
 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. 1 
 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 
 
LETTERS, ETC. 183 
 
 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 
 
 " Richard 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 exceed its 
 fit and just proportion, may, perhaps, be 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 un- 
 
184 LETTERS, ETC. 
 
 kind 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 tor- 
 menting me, like a peevish beauty. Good Prue, write 
 me word you shall be overjoyed 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 affec- 
 tionate 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 Prue, 
 
 " 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, 
 
 " Richard Steele." 
 
LETTERS, ETC. 185 
 
 " 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 
 
 " Richard 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 selfish- 
 ness 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- 
 
186 LETTERS, ETC. 
 
 minded woman, to make home cheerful and happy 
 to her 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 gene- 
 rally 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 for- 
 tunes, 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 any thing 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, habi- 
 tually possessed of that happiness, have been throwing 
 
LETTERS, ETC. 187 
 
 away impotent endeavours for tbe rest of mankind, to 
 the neglect of her for whom any other man, in his 
 senses, would be apt to sacrifice every thing else. 
 
 " I know not by what unreasonable prepossession it 
 is, but methinks there must be something austere to 
 give authority to wisdom ; and I 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 perfections, 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 understanding. 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 overflows with love and 
 
188 LETTERS, ETC. 
 
 gratitude for daily instances of your prudent economy, 
 the just disposition you make of your little affairs, 
 your cheerfulness in despatch of them, your prudent for- 
 bearance 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 ! 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 
 
LETTERS, ETC. 189 
 
 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, 
 
 " Richard Steele." 
 
 " I sometimes compare my own life with that of 
 Steele (yet oh ! how unlike), led to this from hav- 
 ing myself also for a brief time borne arms, and 
 written i 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, 
 
 c Lingering he raised his latch at eve, 
 
 Though tired in heart and limb ! 
 He loved no other place, and yet 
 Home was no home to him.' 
 
 Oh ! the sorrow, the bitterness of that grief which 
 springs from love not participated, or not returned 
 
190 LETTERS, ETC. 
 
 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 dis- 
 regard. 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 essential indelicacy) of the present taste 
 would be opposed. To be of any use it should be 
 a plain treatise, the results of experience, and 
 
LETTERS, ETC, 191 
 
 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," 
 
 LETTER XVII. 
 
 Thursday night. May 4th, 1821. 
 My dear. Friend, 
 
 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 imposes on the mind a 
 sort of counterfeit feeling of quiet, similar to the 
 satisfaction which the having done it would pro- 
 duce) you had not been written to, will not preju- 
 dice 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, Robert Sutton, and 
 ourselves, and Mrs. Gillman's most un-Mrs. Gill- 
 
192 LETTERS, ETC. 
 
 manly 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, 
 
 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 themselves. 
 
 "Had Lord Byron possessed perseverance enough 
 to undergo the drudgery of research, and had his 
 
LETTERS, ETC. 193 
 
 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 promul- 
 gated, that the moral death of an unoffending being 
 should be a consequence of the transgression of 
 humanity * and its atonement ? " 
 
 " 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 excite- 
 ment, 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 poetry will ever reach posterity ; it has 
 relation to nothing." 
 
 * Let it always be borne in mind, that this and other ex- 
 pressions 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. 
 
 VOL. I. K 
 
194 LETTERS, ETC. 
 
 " 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 
 books now than did iEschylus, Sophocles, or 
 Horner^ yet if we except Burns, none* such have 
 
 been." 
 
 " Crashaw seems in his poems to have given the 
 first ebullience 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. 
 
 * In after years he excepted Elliot, the smith, though he 
 held his judgment in very slight estimation. 
 
LETTERS, ETC. 195 
 
 " Where he does combine richness of thought 
 and diction nothing can excel, as in the lines you 
 so much admire — 
 
 ' Since 'tis not to be 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 invalued diadem, 
 She offers them her dearest breath 
 With Christ's name in't, in change for death. 
 She'll bargain with them, and will give 
 Them God, and teach them how to live 
 In Him, or if they this deny, 
 For Him she'll 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 dear'st may be. 
 Mother's arms or father's knee ; 
 Farewell house, and farewell home, 
 She's for the Moores and martyrdom.' 
 
 k 2 
 
196 LETTERS, ETC. 
 
 " These verses were ever present to my mind 
 whilst writing the second part of Christabel ; if, 
 indeed, by some subtle process 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 acci- 
 dents 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 con- 
 sists in the submitting to the operation of thought 
 every object of feeling, or impulse, or passion ob- 
 served out of it. I would be willing to live only as 
 long as Shakspeare were the mirror to Nature. 1 ' 
 
LETTERS, ETC. 197 
 
 " What can be finer in any poet than that beau- 
 tiful passage in Milton — 
 
 Onward he moved 
 
 And thousands of his saints around. 
 
 This is grandeur, but it is grandeur without com- 
 pleteness : but he adds — 
 
 Far off their coming shone J 
 
 which is the highest sublime. There is total com- 
 pleteness. 
 
 "Sol 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 multeity, there results shapeliness — 
 forma formosa, Where the perfection of form is 
 combined with pleasurableness in the sensations, 
 
198 LETTERS, ETC. 
 
 excited by the matters or substances so formed, 
 there results the beautiful. 
 
 " Corollary. — Hence colour is eminently subser- 
 vient 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 delight- 
 ful 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 predominate, 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, predominates, so as to abstract the 
 mind from the parts — the majestic. 
 
 " Where the parts by their harmony produce an 
 effect of a 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. 
 
LETTERS, ETC. 199 
 
 " 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 oc- 
 curs 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 
 
'200 
 
 LETTERS, ETC. 
 
 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 suf- 
 ficient reasons, when urged by a friendly and affec- 
 tionate 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 one- 
 ness with himself, which gives value to the conso- 
 lation ; the reasons are the same whether urged by 
 man, woman, or child. It must be, therefore, that 
 there is something in the will itself, above and 
 beyond, if not higher than, reason. Besides, is 
 reason or the reasoning 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 pos- 
 sessed at four and twenty ? Does he not love the 
 
LETTERS, ETC. 201 
 
 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.' " 
 
 k3 
 
202 LETTERS, ETC. 
 
 " 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 discovered 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 con- 
 flicts, we reserve consolation and sympathy for 
 those who can appreciate its force and value." 
 
 " 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 ano- 
 ther class, who see nothing else. The first class 
 may sometimes fail ; the latter rarely succeed." 
 
 Having been for nearly sixteen years a constant 
 
LETTERS, ETC. 203 
 
 guest, and, for part of that time, the housemate of 
 Charles Lamb — the gentle, the pensive Elia — and 
 his admirable, his every way 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 ! Mrs. Inchbald, Mrs. 
 Barbauld (the two Bald women, as he used to call 
 them), Lloyd, Hazlitt, Coleridge, Irving, Colonel 
 Phillips, Admiral Burney, William Godwin, Monk- 
 house — all dead ; Wordsworth, Southey, Sergeant 
 Talfourd, Basil Montagu, Martin Burney, Mr. 
 Carey, Barry Cornwall, Robert Jameson, Leigh 
 Hunt, Manning, Crabb Robinson, Charles Cowden 
 
204 LETTERS, ETC. 
 
 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 greatest 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 w^eary 
 the attention. 
 
 The following lines of Lloyd will convey some 
 idea, though very imperfect, of this model-man : — 
 
 LAMB. 
 
 " The child of impulse ever to appear, 
 And yet through duty's path strictly to steer ! 
 
 " 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 1 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." 
 
LETTERS, ETC. 205 
 
 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 commenced 
 an intimacy which never knew an hour's interrup- 
 tion 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, 1 ' 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. 1 " 
 
206 LETTERS, ETC. 
 
 " I advised Coleridge to alter the lines in Chris- 
 tabel — 
 
 " Sir Leoline, the Baron rich, 
 Had a toothless mastiff bitchy" 
 
 into — 
 
 " Sir Leoline, the Baron round, 
 Had a toothless mastiff hound ; " 
 
 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.' 
 
 " ' Why, perhaps it is better not,' said the par- 
 son, and went away, determined how to behave in 
 future." 
 
 " I made that joke first (the Scotch corner in hell, 
 fire without brimstone), though Coleridge somewhat 
 licked it into shape." 
 
LETTERS, ETC, 207 
 
 "Wordsworth, the greatest poet of these times. 
 Still he is not, nor yet is any man, an Ancient 
 Mariner." 
 
 " Procter is jealous of his own fame, which he 
 cannot now claim." 
 
 " Somerset House, Whitehall Chapel (the old 
 Banquetting 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 alto- 
 gether agree with Wordsworth, who thought the 
 view from Hare wood-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." 
 
-7 
 / 
 
 208 LETTERS, ETC. 
 
 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." 
 
 Lamb then told us a story of that very dirty 
 person, Tom Bish, which I give here for its feli- 
 city. 
 
 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 defined poetry as the highest truth, 
 which Lamb denied, and, amongst other instances, 
 quoted the Song of Deborah. 
 
LETTERS, ETC. 209 
 
 The conversation turned one night on the evi- 
 dence 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, 1 ' 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 Hazlitt, the con- 
 versation turned chiefly on theatres and actors. I 
 have preserved the following recollections : — 
 
210 LETTERS, ETC. 
 
 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, when the rest of 
 the company departed. Porson alone remained, 
 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 inquired 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, 
 
LETTERS, ETC. 21 I 
 
 taking care to fill Hansard's glass each time, and 
 singing— 
 
 " When wine and gin are gone and spent, 
 Then is small beer 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 
 
212 LETTERS, ETC. 
 
 loss whom to invite, pitched upon Brandon, the 
 boxkeeper, to meet him. All went on pretty well 
 until midnight, when George Frederick, getting 
 very drunk, his host began to be tired of his com- 
 pany. 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 ad- 
 miration, for to few did he vouchsafe manifesta- 
 tions of his very extraordinary powers. Once, and 
 once only, did I witness an outburst of his unem- 
 bodied 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 
 
LETTERS, ETC. 213 
 
 by Confucius, into which he was the first to pene- 
 trate 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 was 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 pur- 
 suits of men. Amongst other matters, the origin 
 of cooking, which it seems was deemed of sufficient 
 importance by older, and therefore wiser, nations 
 to form part of their archives. How this transcript 
 
214 LETTERS, ETC. 
 
 was obtained, whether from that intuitive know- 
 ledge to which allusion has been made, or whether 
 
 I application was had to the keeper of the state paper 
 
 j 
 t \ office of the Celestial Empire, I cannot now say. I 
 i r 
 
 • can only vouch for the truth of what follows, which, 
 
 with the reply to a letter of acknowledgment 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 . e 
 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 
 
LETTERS, ETC. 215 
 
 fashion of good wives, who, says the chronicle, are now 
 very scarce, put a pig into it, and was about to set it 
 on fire, when an old man, one whom observation and 
 reflection had made a philosopher, suggested that a pile 
 of wood would do as well. (This must have been 
 the father of economists.) 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 transcendental 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 originalit 
 of his views and arguments, won him over to the 
 creed of the veritable sceptics, the 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 high- 
 minded, and of Praed as the most insincere. 
 
216 LETTERS, ETC. 
 
 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 recollection. 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 strong hold of 
 the Peverils), of Sir Thomas Brown, and of old 
 Mandeville. We read old poetry and new ; but it 
 
LETTERS, ETC. 217 
 
 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. 1 ' 
 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 I 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, 
 
 Thyself redeeming- from that leprous stain, 
 
 Nobility ; and aye unterrifyed, 
 
 Pourest thy Abdiel warnings on the train, 
 
 That sit complotting with rebellious pride 
 
 'Gainst * her, who froir 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 I rejoice I" 
 
 * Gallic liberty. 
 
 VOL. I. L 
 
218 LETTERS, ETC. 
 
 Sunday. Dined with Lamb alone. A most de- 
 lightful day of reminiscences. Spoke of Mrs. 
 Inchbald as the only endurable clever woman he 
 had ever known ; called them impudent, forward, 
 unfeminine, and unhealthy in their minds. In- 
 stanced, 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 intellec- 
 tual woman. 1 ' 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 seces- 
 sion, 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 atten- 
 tions, saying, " He gave me more than half 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 recapi- 
 
LETTERS, ETC. 219 
 
 tulation 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." 
 
 " Miss Lamb, in her very pleasant manner, said, 
 ' Charles, who is Mr. Pitman ? ' 
 
 " ' Why, he is a clerk in our office. 1 
 
 " f 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 ask- 
 ing 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 de- 
 clined, and therefore I asked him here this night. 
 I never could 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 ? ' " 
 
 " Lamb one night wanted to demonstrate, after 
 l 2 
 
220 LETTERS, ETC. 
 
 the manner of Swift, that the Man-t-chou Tartars 
 were cannibals, and that the Chinese were identical 
 with the Celtes (Sell Teas)." 
 
 " He said that he could never impress a Scotch- 
 man 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 Scotch- 
 man, who sat next to him at a dinner the day 
 before, of a healthy book. 
 
 " ' Healthy, sir, healthy did you say V 
 
 "'Yes.' 
 
 " ' I dinna comprehend. I have heard of a 
 healthy man and of a healthy morning, but never 
 of a healthy book.' v 
 
 " Told a story of John Ballantyne, who going in 
 a chair, the two caddies jostled him a good deal, 
 upon which John remonstrated. The two caddies 
 set him down, and told him that he being very 
 little and light, was very wrong to choose that 
 
LETTERS, ETC. 221 
 
 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 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 re- 
 turning very late, or, by'r lady, it might be early in 
 the morning, to Edinburgh, 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 
 
LETTERS, ETC. 
 
 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 gentle- 
 man, it's the wine speaking.' " 
 
 f f The best pun ever made is that of Swift, who 
 called after a man carrying a hare over his shoul- 
 ders, ' Is that your own hare or a wig V " 
 
 Met Mr. and Mrs. Wordsworth, with Mr. Tal- 
 fourd, Monkhouse, and Robinson. 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 mea- 
 sured 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 River Duddon 
 and the Excursion. Repeated the Highland Girl. 
 He seemed to me to present the idea of a poet in 
 
LETTERS, ETC. 223 
 
 whom the repressive faculty was predominant. 
 Taken altogether, he impressed me very favour- 
 ably, and I regret 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 had 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 en- 
 forced denial of what at that period would have 
 enhanced the value of existence, — communion with 
 that 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 Row. Was much inter- 
 ested 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 
 
224 LETTERS, ETC. 
 
 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 appeared 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 with- 
 out 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 September 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 alto- 
 
LETTERS, ETC. 225 
 
 gether proud, selfish, and frequently puerile. Mrs. 
 Williams, I think, gave the account of his determin- 
 ing 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 pro- 
 duction 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 circum- 
 stance. 
 
 " Wordsworth one day said to me, 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.'" 
 
 * 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 
 
 L 3 
 
226 LETTERS, ETC. 
 
 LETTER XVIII. 
 
 June 23, 1821. 
 My dearest Friend, 
 
 Be assured that nothing bearing a nearer 
 resemblance to offence, whether felt or perceived, 
 than a syllogism bears to the 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 
 
 mind, whether of the Bishop or the Judge, can doubt, ceteris 
 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. 
 
LETTERS, ETC. 227 
 
 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 permanent 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, how- 
 ever 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. 
 
 S. T. Coleridge. 
 
228 LETTERS, ETC. 
 
 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 cir- 
 cumstances 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 ad- 
 miration ; yet with qualities of head and heart 
 worthy of all acceptance, was partly (almost I had 
 nearly said) on that very account disqualified in 
 my innermost convictions, certainly according to 
 the judgment of my then feelings, for the office 
 indicated. 
 
LETTERS, ETC. 229 
 
 LETTER XIX. 
 
 Sunday Afternoon, half-past 4. 
 
 My dear Friend, 
 
 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 the propriety of going elsewhere or staying 
 at home. When the Needle of your Thoughts 
 begins to be magnetic, you may be certain that 
 my Pole is at that moment attracting you by the 
 spiritual magic of strong wishing for your arrival. 
 N. B. My Pole includes in this instance both 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 
 
230 LETTERS, ETC. 
 
 which, believe me, stands a good many degrees 
 above moderate in the cordi or hedonometer of, 
 Yours most cordially, 
 
 S. T. Coleridge. 
 
 It must always be borne in mind, that the frag- 
 ments, 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 discre- 
 pancies, 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 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 particular opinions, on a subject 
 
LETTERS, ETC. £31 
 
 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 Revelation by the doctrines and 
 practices of Established Churches, honours God by 
 rejecting Christ." 
 
 " I have been reading Judge Barrington's 
 Sketches. It is the most pleasant book about 
 Ireland I ever read. I was especially amused by 
 the following 
 
232 
 
 LETTERS, ETC. 
 
 " DIALOGUE BETWEEN TOM FLINTER AND HIS MAN. 
 
 " Tom Flinter. Dick ! said he ; 
 « Dick. What ? said he. 
 
 " Tom Flinter. 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. 
 ' ' Dick. 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. 
 " Tom Flinter. Well, by this and by that, said he, 
 
 Dick ! hang up my hat ! says he." 
 
 " Whenever philosophy has taken into its plan 
 religion, it has ended in scepticism ; and whenever 
 religion excludes philosophy, or the spirit of free 
 inquiry, it leads to wilful blindness and super- 
 stition. Scotus, the first of the schoolmen, held 
 
LETTERS, ETC. 9,33 
 
 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 en- 
 trusted to the public ; and, unlike most secrets, it 
 hath been well kept." 
 
 " Interestingness, the best test and characteristic 
 of loveliness." 
 
 " Humour is consistent with pathos, whilst wit 
 is not." 
 
 <f All that is good is in the reason, not in the 
 understanding ; which is proved by the malignity 
 
234 LETTERS, ETC. 
 
 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." 
 
 END OF VOL. I. 
 
 LONDON : 
 BRADBURY AND EVANS, PRINTERS, WHITEFRIARS. 
 
LETTERS 
 
 CONVEESATIONS AND EECOLLECTIONS 
 
 OF 
 
 S. T. COLERIDGE. 
 
 Pliny 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. — Bolingbroke to Swift. 
 
 IN TWO VOLUMES. 
 VOL. II. 
 
 LONDON: 
 EDWARD MOXON, DOVER STREET. 
 
 1836. 
 
LONDON: 
 
 BRADBURY AND EVANS, PRINTERS, 
 
 WHITEKR1ARS. 
 
LETTERS, CONVERSATIONS, 
 
 RECOLLECTIONS. 
 
 LETTER XX. 
 
 Sept. \bth, 1821. 
 My dear Friend, 
 
 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 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 
 
 VOL. II. B 
 
2 LETTERS, ETC. 
 
 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 pro- 
 portionate 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 sur- 
 prised to find what a dwarf the giant shrinks into, 
 as soon as it steps out of the mist into clear sun- 
 light. 
 
LETTERS, ETC. 6 
 
 I am awave 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 importance 
 in all cases of hidden distress, and of their un- 
 speakable 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 experience 
 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 
 
4 LETTERS, ETC. 
 
 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, 
 
 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 ac- 
 quired by them, as we have acquired a style." 
 
 " Dr. Young one day was speaking of John 
 Hunter as being greatly over-rated, upon which I 
 replied, — ' Yes, to minds which, like birds en- 
 tangled in the lime, scoff and sneer at those pinions 
 of power that have emancipated themselves from 
 the thrall which bound them, but are nevertheless 
 
LETTERS, ETC. 5 
 
 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 under- 
 stood 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 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 beau- 
 tiful poem in the language, " Love," adding, — " I 
 learn we are indebted to Mr. Coleridge for that 
 exquisite poem, " The Nightingale.' 1 
 
 It is right that I should here observe, that the 
 
6 LETTERS, ETC. 
 
 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 know- 
 ledge of the most prominent of my contemporaries. 
 This will apply equally to many other recollections 
 and memorandums, 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 
 3000 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 nauti- 
 cal matters *." 
 
 * It is somewhat singular that the name of another and 
 larger book of Mr. Wordsworth's should also owe its circula- 
 tion to a misconception of the title. It has been my fortune 
 
LETTERS, ETC. i 
 
 Spoke with interest of Irving. Regretted 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 
 character, but to allow an audience to influence 
 him further than the fitness of his discourse to his 
 hearers was not to his advantage. 
 
 " The most happy marriage I can picture or 
 image to myself would be the union of a deaf man 
 to a blind * woman." 
 
 to have met with the Excursion at a great number, of inns 
 and boarding-houses in picturesque scenes —in places where 
 parties go for excursions ; and upon inquiring how it hap- 
 pened 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 ex- 
 cursion, but, alas ! for their taste, had left their poetic excur- 
 sion untouched ; uncut, even, beyond the story of Margaret. 
 * Whilst these pages are passing through the press this 
 most extraordinary conjunction has taken place at Barming, 
 near Maidstone. 
 
LETTERS, ETC. 
 
 LETTER XXI. 
 
 Sept. 24th, 1821. 
 My dearest Friend, 
 
 I will begin with the beginning of your (to 
 me most affecting) 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 inseparably, 
 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 icel- 
 come of your anxious affection, 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 abate- 
 ment, 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 
 
LETTERS, ETC. 9 
 
 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-withering instances, 
 forced on me by the experience of my last twenty 
 years, compels me to feel and value with an addi- 
 tional glow. Lastly, it is a source of strength and 
 comfort to know, that the labours and aspirations 
 and sympathies of the genuine and invisible Hu- 
 manity 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 counter- 
 poise to these ? Not a counterpoise — but as 
 weights in the counter-scale there will come the 
 self-reproach, that spite of all inauspicious obsta- 
 cles, not in my power to remove without loss of 
 self-respect, I have not done all I could and might 
 -have done to prevent my present state of depend- 
 ence. I am now able to hope that 1 shall be capa- 
 ble of setting apart such a portion of my useable 
 b 3 
 
10 LETTERS, ETC. 
 
 time to my greater work (in assertion of the ideal 
 truths and a 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 imme- 
 diately if I could find a publisher willing to under- 
 take it on equitable terms, might prove an excep- 
 tion 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 Right separated from all mere Expe- 
 dience, nay, from the question of earthly happiness 
 for its own sake. But I cannot answer to myself 
 
LETTERS, ETC. 11 
 
 that the image of any serious 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 pre- 
 sumption 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 pro- 
 blem 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 temp- 
 tations 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 se//^ sacrifice, and 
 that the Heart itself, in its perplexity, may acqui- 
 esce for a time in the decision as a more safe way ; 
 
12 LETTERS, ETC. 
 
 and, lastly, that the question can only be fully 
 answered, when Self and Neighbour, as equi-distant 
 A 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 disson- 
 ance is not real between us, and that it would not 
 have seemed to exist, had I continued the subject 
 into the possible particular cases ; ex gr. suppose a 
 case in which the misery, and so far the moral 
 incapacitation, of both parties were certainly fore- 
 seen 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 all its limbs, features, and cir- 
 cumstances, your heart and mine would prompt 
 different verdicts. 
 
 But the thought of you personally and indi- 
 
LETTERS, ETC. 13 
 
 vidually 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 Satur- 
 day. I do most earnestly wish that you could 
 accompany 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, 
 
 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 which, 
 as they affected others, I could not communicate 
 so fully, — convey so entirely as I desired to my 
 respected friend ; hence he altogether misappre- 
 hended 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, 
 
14 LETTERS, ETC. 
 
 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 attach- 
 ment common to all) with few omissions, and those 
 of no importance. 
 
 I should consider it a misfortune for any one to 
 have suggested alterations or omissions in this work, 
 as such suggestions would have disturbed or have 
 interfered with my original determination ; a deter- 
 mination to let my dear friend be known 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 
 
 fcj rv - -. 
 
 some aids and with longer preparation, but then it 
 
 would not so icell have expressed what I sought to 
 convey. It would not have so entirely expressed 
 
LETTERS, ETC. 15 
 
 my own or my late friend's opinions and convic- 
 tions ; 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 department of autobiography. 
 
 When asked to accompany a recent deputation 
 to remonstrate with the present ministers, I as- 
 sented, 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 tran- 
 script of the writer's mind, give more of interest 
 and more insight into character than volumes of 
 disquisition or surmises. 
 
 " Read the Troilus and Cressida; dwelt much 
 upon the fine distinction made by Shakspeare be- 
 
16 LETTERS, ETC. 
 
 tween 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 de- 
 serves the name of love." 
 
 " 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 be easy, as it will be natural and in due 
 season. Whereas by the present system of religious 
 teaching, men are enjoined to value chiefly happiness 
 at the end of life ; which, if they were implicitly to 
 follow, they would, by neglecting the first great 
 
LETTERS, ETC. 17 
 
 duty, that of innocent enjoyment during existence, 
 effectually preclude themselves 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. Mar- 
 riage has, as you say, no natural relation to love. 
 Marriage 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 
 
18 LETTERS, ETC. 
 
 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 pro- 
 pounded 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." 
 
 " The Essenians for several ages subsisted by 
 adoption : we shall see if the Shakers continue so 
 long." 
 
 " We shun a birth, and make a public exhibition 
 of an execution. 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."" 
 
LETTERS, ETC. 19 
 
 " 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 doc- 
 trines, 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 phi- 
 losophers 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 Rome, Greece, 
 and Egypt, where idol worship led to immorality 
 and vice of the most frightful kind." 
 
20 LETTERS, ETC. 
 
 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." 
 
 " Quarrels of anger ending in tears are favour- 
 able 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 for- 
 giveness to the penitent, but hath nowhere pro- 
 mised penitence to the sinner." 
 
LETTERS, ETC. 21 
 
 " So Mr. Baker heart did pluck, 
 And did a courting go ! 
 And Mr. Baker is a buck ; 
 
 For why? — he needs the doe." 
 
 " Oh ! there are some natures which, under the 
 most cheerless, all-threatening, nothing-promising 
 circumstances, can draw hope from the Invisible ; 
 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 Alsop's mother, whom I have 
 never seen, were to die." 
 
 
 .V^ 
 
 
22 LETTERS, ETC. 
 
 LETTER XXII. 
 
 My dear Friend, 
 
 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 Ramsgate. Once when I had stopped 
 and stood stone still for some minutes, Mrs. Gill- 
 man's 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, how- 
 ever, were visions to which I had myself given the 
 commencing act — fabrics of which the " I wonder 
 where is now" had laid the founda- 
 tion 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 
 
LETTERS, ETC. 23 
 
 the rememberable kind, accompanied with the feel- 
 ing 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 comfort 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 concerns 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 
 only after tea), have been auspicious, beyond my 
 best hopes, to my health and spirits. The change 
 in my looks is beyond the present reality, but may 
 
24 LETTERS, ETC. 
 
 be veracious as prophecy, though somewhat ex- 
 aggerating 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 — ex.gr. 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, her face becoming plump, and a 
 delicate, yet cool and steady colour, stealing upon 
 her cheeks. Mr. Gillman too is uncommonly 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 
 
LETTERS, ETC. 25 
 
 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 
 
 if so many there were or could be. The 
 
 situation the very best in all Ramsgate (Welling- 
 ton Crescent, East Cliff, Ramsgate) ; and we, or 
 rather Mrs. Gillman's voice and manner, procured 
 it shameful cheap for the size and accommodations. 
 
 I am called to dinner; so God bless you, and 
 receive all our loves, my very dear friend. 
 
 S. T. Coleridge. 
 
 My birth-day, 51 ; or, as all my collegiates and 
 Mrs. Coleridge swear, 50. 
 
 1 
 
 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 
 
 VOL. II. c 
 
26 LETTERS, ETC. 
 
 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 
 
 r 
 
 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 others. As I 
 write for men as they are, not as they may be, or 
 as I think they should, and yet icill be, I should not 
 have published these personal and individual com- 
 munications during the life of their author under 
 any conceivable circumstances, even if such publi- 
 cations were usual or conceivable. Adhering, there- 
 fore, o 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 
 
LETTERS, ETC. 21 
 
 refusing to allow Cowley to appear in " his dressing 
 gown and slippers." 
 
 Of the Conversations about this period I possess 
 the following: — 
 
 " 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 
 c 2 
 
2» LETTERS, ETC. 
 
 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 was no 
 counterfeiting, that it was too real ; that he was a 
 being 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 Rydal 
 perceived an amendment in me. In self-manage- 
 ment, in the power of keeping my eyes more, 
 and my heart less open, in aversion to baseness, 
 intrigue, in detestation of apostacy, to * 
 
 v *3f yfe ^ *f 
 
 * I have now no means of supplying this hiatus. 
 
LETTERS, ETC. 29 
 
 and silent or suggestive detraction it would be well 
 for me if I were as I was at twenty-five. Amend- 
 ment ! 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 dulness ; and upon his departure Godwin 
 would drop in just to say that Tobin was more dull 
 than ever." 
 
 " Mentioned many things of, and concerning, 
 
30 LETTERS, ETC. 
 
 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." 
 
 " 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 
 predominance of talent in conjunction with genius, 
 in the persons of Lamb and himself. Hence a 
 temporary coolness, at the termination 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 
 
LETTERS, ETC. 31 
 
 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.' 1 ' 
 
 " 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 overvaluing 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 attend- 
 ing the Privy Council, and that he feared he should 
 
32 LETTERS, ETC. 
 
 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 ortho- 
 graphy, I had before this conceived strong 
 suspicions that my good friend Colin Mackenzie 
 could not spell, and they are now confirmed.' " 
 
 " Met Wilkie 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.' 
 
 '. I am delighted to hear you sanction my use of 
 that opinion,' said Lady Sarah Bathurst, ' indeed it 
 was a most " atrocious " business ; and if any ini- 
 quity could withdraw the sun's light, that would 
 surely have occasioned a physical, as well as moral, 
 
LETTERS, ETC. 33 
 
 eclipse.' A general outcry; an earnest entreaty on 
 the part of Lady Sarah, put an end to this extraor- 
 dinary scene.' 1 
 
 " 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 per- 
 ceiving it, a counter instead of a wafer. The 
 communicant thinking it would melt, very patiently 
 waited, but without effect. The Priest seeing him 
 hesitate enquired 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 countries, especially in Italy. 
 Indeed the religious of all countries are, in the eye 
 of Reason, the greatest blasphemers, seeing that 
 though all affirm God made man in his own image, 
 they make God after their own imaginations.'''' 
 c 3 
 
LETTERS, ETC. 
 
 LETTER XXIII. 
 
 Ramsgate, Nov, 2nd, 1821. 
 My dear Friend, 
 
 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 heedfully, 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 Right, — I can repeat (with 
 as much confidence as the slippery and Protean 
 nature of all self- inquisition and the great a priori 
 
LETTERS, ETC* 35 
 
 likelihood 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) consequents — 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 trans- 
 formations of posts and bushes into apparitions and 
 
36 LETTERS, ETC. 
 
 foot-pads must not be interpreted as symptoms of 
 brain fever or depraved vision. 
 
 And now, my dearest . . . . ! 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 have learnt 
 almost to undervalue their sex ?" In other words, 
 those who in their reasonings have supposed as 
 possible, not even improbable, that women can be 
 unworthy and insincere in their expressions or 
 attachment to men, the frequency of which it is as 
 impossible, living open-eyed, not to have ascer- 
 tained, as it is with a heart awake to what a woman 
 ought to be, and those of whom you speak substan- 
 tially * 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 continuation 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 
 
 * Thus in orierinal letter. 
 
LETTERS, ETC. 37 
 
 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 counter- 
 parts 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 sore evil, fearful in its heart- 
 withering affliction in proportion to the capacity of 
 being blessed, a weak, artful, or worthless woman 
 is — perhaps in her own experience has been ? And 
 if she happened to know a young Man, know him 
 as the good, and only the good, know each other — 
 
38 LETTERS, ETC. 
 
 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 disinterested dread of his taking a step 
 irrevocable, and, if unhappy, miserable beyond all 
 other misery, that of guilt alone excepted? Espe- 
 cially if there were no known particulars to guide 
 her judgment — if that judgment were given avow- 
 edly, on the mere unbelieved possibility, on an 
 unsupposed supposition of the worst. 
 
 In Mrs. Gillman I have always admired, what 
 indeed I have found more or less an accompani- 
 ment 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 
 
LETTERS, ETC. 39 
 
 thing as female friendship, or in some similar brut- 
 ish forgetfulness that woman is an immortal soul ; 
 and as to all parts of the male 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, 
 
 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 and to the Postmaster; and 
 this morning, Monday, Oct. 29, I received your 
 letter dated 16th, which ought to have been deli- 
 vered 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 forgiveable, but it is utterly inex- 
 cusable ; a Blind-worm sting that has sensibly 
 
40 LETTERS, ETC. 
 
 quickened my circulation, and I have half a mind 
 to write to Mr. Freeling, if my wrath does not sub- 
 side with my pulse, and I should have nothing 
 better to do. 
 
 Earnest, affectionate, and impressive as this let- 
 ter was to me, and must be to others, I find in it 
 a proof, if such were not upheaped and overflowing 
 in the preceding letters, of the love and abounding 
 sympathy of this wonderful being ; the more admir- 
 able 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 affec- 
 tions. I may yet undertake a full exposition 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 essen- 
 tially indelicate, prevents the communication of 
 many of the most valuable truths to the gentler sex, 
 
LETTERS, ETC. 41 
 
 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 render- 
 ing necessary 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 ances- 
 tors? I fear much, that judged by any fixed sta?id- 
 ard, 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 
 
1 
 
 y 
 
 ^jM 
 
 
 42 LETTERS, ETC. 
 
 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 uni- 
 versal 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 beau- 
 tiful, 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 
 
 \ 
 
LETTERS, ETC. 43 
 
 attempt to illustrate more fully, namely, to the dis- 
 tinction 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 preju- 
 dices more nearly coincided with those of the rigid anti- 
 prelatists. 
 
 " Puritan. Beauty ! 1 am sure it is not the beauty 
 of holiness. 
 
 " Milton. True: but yet it is beautiful. 
 
 " 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. 
 
 " Puritan. But call to mind the pride and wanton 
 vanity of those cruel shavelings that wasted the labour 
 and substance of so many thousand poor creatures in 
 the erection of tbis haughty pile. 
 
 " Milton. I do. But still it is very beautiful. 
 
 " Puritan. Think how many score of places of 
 worship incomparably 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. 
 
44 LETTERS, ETC. 
 
 " 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 koXov, 
 quasi koXovv, i. e. calling on the soul, which receives 
 instantly and welcomes it as something con-natural." 
 
LETTERS, ETC. 45 
 
 LETTER XXIV. 
 
 Saturday Afternoon, Nov. 1 7th. 
 
 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 . . . ., 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 per- 
 manent change in her countenance, expression, and 
 
40 LETTERS, ETC. 
 
 motion, with a sort of pride of comfort ; second 
 (and in one respect more urgent), my anxiety to 
 consult you on the subject of a proposal made to 
 me by Anster, before I return an answer, which 
 I must do speedily. I cannot conclude without 
 assuring you how important a part your love and 
 esteem constitute of the happiness, and through 
 that (I will yet venture to hope) of the utility, of 
 your affectionate friend, 
 
 S. T. Coleridge. 
 
 " 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 sacra- 
 ment administered to him. The next day, when 
 his instructor was interrogating him, he asked how 
 many gods there were ? 
 
 " • None at all,' said Mustapha. 
 
 " ' How! none at all?' said the priest. 
 
LETTERS, ETC. 47 
 
 " e 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 theology, that has not had at one time or other 
 believers and supporters amongst men of the greatest 
 powers and most cultivated minds. 1, 
 
 " In one respect, and in one only, are books 
 better than conversation. 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 conclu- 
 sions." 
 
48 LETTERS, ETC. 
 
 " 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, Bolingbroke, Pope ; and it was indeed 
 delightful to hear him read and comment upon 
 these very interesting records of the thoughts, feel- 
 ings, 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, 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 
 
LETTERS, ETC. 49 
 
 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 he 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. His 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 Eng- 
 land. As to the return of his health and vigour, you 
 might inquire of his hay- makers ; but as to his temper- 
 ance, 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." 
 
 VOL. II. 
 
50 LETTERS, ETC. 
 
 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 infirmities, should only occa- 
 sionally converse with great people, notwithstanding 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 understanding 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 five 
 times for once that I go to them, and whom I can 
 tell, without offence, that I am otherwise engaged at 
 present." 
 
 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 consuetudine 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 
 
LETTERS, ETC. 51 
 
 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 1 
 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." 
 
 BOLINGBROKE TO SWIFT. 
 
 " Dear 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 i'esprit, meuble inutil, votre outil dan- 
 gereux : laisser souper nos cloches le matin pour 
 £veiller les chanoines, et pour faire dormir le doyen 
 d'un sommeil doux et profond, qui lui procure de beaux 
 
 D 2 
 
52 LETTERS, ETC. 
 
 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 gardener'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 look 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 principle, my 
 opinion was this, — that whenever those evils which 
 usually attend and follow a violent change of govern- 
 ment, were not in probability so pernicious as the 
 grievance 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 chil- 
 dren in slavery, and because I conceived that a prince, 
 who could not think himself secure without mercenary 
 
LETTERS, ETC. Oi.' 
 
 troops, must needs have a separate interest from that of 
 his subjects ; although I am not ignorant of those arti- 
 ficial 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, there grows up a 
 commerce of corruption between the ministers and the 
 deputies, wherein they both find their accounts, to the 
 manifest danger of liberty ? — which traffic would neither 
 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. 
 
 TfF 4? TP ^P tP 
 
 " 1 have ever hated all nations, professions, and com- 
 munities, and all my love is towards individuals : for 
 
 * This from Swift— the Arch Tory ! 
 
54 LETTERS, ETC. 
 
 instance, I hate the tribe of lawyers, but I love Coun- 
 sellor Such-a-one and Judge Such-a-one. But princi- 
 pally 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 hard upon whole bodies 
 or corporations; yet the general opinion is, that reflec- 
 tions 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." 
 
LETTERS, ETC. 55 
 
 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 gene- 
 rally on such little scraps that witlings feed ; and it is 
 
56 LETTERS, ETC. 
 
 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? Yester- 
 day was her birthday, now entering on the ninety-first 
 3'ear 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 continuing so long to me a very good and 
 tender parent, and for allowing me to exercise for some 
 years those cares which are now as necessary to her as 
 hers have heen 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 contracting 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. 
 
 " While we do live we must make the best of life. 
 " ' Cantantes licet usque (minus via lsedet) eamus,' as 
 
LETTERS, ETC. 57 
 
 the shepherd said in Virgil when the road was long and 
 heavy. 
 
 * ^ % # 
 
 " Can you possibly think he can neglect you ? 
 If you catch yourself 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 glim- 
 merings of their minds ; a genius has 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 pos- 
 terity, 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 tranquillity he 
 
 D 3 
 
58 LETTERS, ETC. 
 
 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 
 could not be restored to ourselves to enjoy them. But 
 as, when the continual 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 something 
 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 than the 
 present, and therefore the future may have some hopes 
 of them. I find my heart hardened and blunted to 
 new impressions ; it will scarce receive or retain af- 
 fections of yesterday, and those friends who 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 
 
LETTERS, ETC. 59 
 
 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 Bolingbroke'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, 
 
 * 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. 
 
60 LETTERS, ETC. 
 
 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 dis- 
 appointment vexes me to this very day, and I believe it 
 was the type of all my future disappointments. 
 
 # * * * 
 
 " 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 require a kind of sub- 
 sidium. 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 v/e 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. 
 
 BOLINGBROKE TO SWIFT. 
 
 " I am under no apprehension that a glut of study 
 and retirement should cast me back into the hurry of 
 
LETTERS, ETC. 61 
 
 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 tan- 
 tum recte facere possiin, 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 tenour of my 
 life : good digestion, serene weather, wind me above it 
 now and then, but I never fall below it; / am sometimes 
 gay, hut 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 : 
 
62 LETTERS, ETC. 
 
 but even in those constrained 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. 
 
 TV* ^F Tfp 3p 
 
 " 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 practice 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 appointing 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 
 
LETTERS, ETC. 63 
 
 yet there will frequently be things which we ought to 
 wish altered, and persons whom we ought to wish 
 hanged. 
 
 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 
 mans means ; his ends are his own good, and the good 
 of society. You 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 wili 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 passion or this direction 
 of self-love to your aid. Tacitus has crowded this ex- 
 
64 LETTERS, ETC. 
 
 cuse for you, according to his manner, into a maxim, 
 
 contemptu fames, 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 to 
 me 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. Is it that we grow more 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 ; 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. 
 
 * Reason 
 
LETTERS, ETC. 65 
 
 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 5001. 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, hang- 
 men, 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 corruption must be purged by national cala- 
 mities. 
 
 * * * # 
 
 " 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 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 pas- 
 sion may decay and stupidity not succeed. What hurt 
 does age do us in subduing what we toil to subdue all 
 
66 LETTERS, ETC. 
 
 our lives ? It is now six o'clock in the morning ; I 
 
 recal 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 disagreeable 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 re- 
 pair 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 
 
LETTERS, ETC. 67 
 
 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 neglected 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 preserve their health, saunter away half their time." 
 
 LETTER XXV. 
 
 Monday Morning. 
 My dear Friend, 
 
 Ab Hydromania, Hydrophobia: from Water- 
 Lust comes Water-dread. But this is a violent me- 
 taphor, and disagreeable 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, 
 
68 LETTERS, ETC. 
 
 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 in- 
 terest 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 origi- 
 nate. 
 
 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 remem- 
 
LETTERS, ETC. 69 
 
 brances 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 coun- 
 tenance glistening with the genial spray of the 
 outpouring ; this, in conjunction with your anxiety 
 and that of Mr. and Mrs. Gillman concerning 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. I could 
 not but be amused to hear from him, as well as 
 from Mrs. Chisholm and two other visiters, the 
 instantaneous expression of surprise at the appa- 
 rent 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 OF WEAK MEN, when they 
 
70 LETTERS, ETC. 
 
 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, 
 
 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 the Draughtsman, I would paint Gill- 
 man in the character of Honesty, levelling a pistol 
 (with "Truth" on the barrel) at Sutton, in the 
 character of Modern Reform, and myself as a 
 Dutch Mercury *, with rod in hand, hovering 
 aloft, and pouring water into the touchhole. 
 
 * Mercury, the god of lucre and selfish ends, patron god 
 of thieves, tradesmen, stock-jobbers, diplomatists, pimps, 
 harlots, and go-betweens; the soothing, pacifying god. 
 
LETTERS, ETC. 71 
 
 The superscription might be " Pacification," a little 
 finely pronounced 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 ms-sorted ministry ; though the pos- 
 sibility 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 extra- 
 vagant mood of the Poefs mind, occurred to him. 
 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 ex- 
 press a correct notion of our rulers? 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 Govern- 
 ment, the necessity of whose existence precludes 
 
72 LETTERS, ETC. 
 
 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 condition ; 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 ourselves, and distrust 
 those who seek us. / speak advisedly : in the dis- 
 trict in which I reside, self-government has been 
 obtained; and I speak from observation, and a 
 thorough knowledge 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 
 
LETTERS, ETC. 73 
 
 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 proportion 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 dis- 
 creditable 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. 
 
 i: On one occasion Godwin took me to Purley, 
 where we met Sir Francis Burdett. Altogether, 
 during the whole day, 
 
 ' The feast of reason and the flow of soul ' 
 
 was without drawback. It was indeed an Attic 
 Feast. 
 
 VOL. II. E 
 
74 LETTERS, ETC. 
 
 " I was pressed to go again. I went: but how 
 changed! No longer did I see gentlemen or 
 scholars, I only saw drunkards, who to obscenity, 
 scurrility, and malignity, added every species of 
 grossness and impurity. I had been in the com- 
 pany of sceptics, of Pyrrhonists, but never before 
 had I seen wickedness exhibited so completely 
 without disguise, and in all its naked deformity 
 
 " The only emulation was, which could utter the 
 most senseless, the most horrid impurities, uttered 
 in all the uproarious mirth and recklessness of lost 
 souls. I became sick ; I left the room and got into 
 a hackney coach, which happened to be at the 
 door. I 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 recal at 
 least the truant energies of one who, in spite of my 
 disgust at the orgies in which he participated, so 
 respectfully entreated me." 
 
LETTERS, ETC. 75 
 
 I find the following lines amongst my papers, in 
 my own writing, but whether an unfinished frag- 
 ment, 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 hut 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." 
 
 e 2 
 
7() J.ETTKHS, ETC. 
 
 LETTER XXVI. 
 
 Jan.. 25th, 1822. 
 Dearest Friend, 
 
 My main reason for wishing that Mrs. Gill- 
 man should have made her call on Mrs ; 
 
 or that Mrs. . . . . would waive the ceremony, 
 and taking the willingness for the act, and the 
 praesens in rus (if Highgate deserves that name) for 
 the future in urbe, would accompany you hither, on 
 the earliest day convenient 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 some- 
 thing like impropriety in so doing. Speaking con- 
 fidentially, 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 rela- 
 tively 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 
 
LETTERS, ETC. 77 
 
 content to wish it; and leave the rest to your 
 knowledge of the circumstantial pros and cons. 
 Only remember, that what is dear to you becomes 
 denr to me, and that whatever can in the least add 
 to happiness in which you are interested, is a duty 
 which I cannot neglect without injury to my own. 
 I am convinced that your happiness is in your oxen 
 possession. 
 
 One part of your letter gave me exceeding com- 
 fort — 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 1 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 
 
78 LETTERS, ETC. 
 
 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. G. 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 con- 
 stancy ; 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 say down- 
 right — engage myself, but I certainly permitted Mr. 
 Stutfield to make the trial in such a form that I 
 scarcely know whether I can, in the spirit of the 
 expectation I excited, be the first to cry off, he 
 appearing fully satisfied and in good earnest. 
 Now, supposing this to be the state of the case, 
 
LETTERS, ETC. 79 
 
 how would my work fare the better by dictating it 
 to two amanuenses instead of five or six, if I get 
 so many ? For the occasional explanations, 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 foreknown that on such a 
 day I must do so and so. I need not explain 
 myself further. You can understand the " 1 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 starting s 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 con- 
 fidence and inmost reclination, 
 
 Your affectionate friend, 
 
 S. T. Coleridge. 
 
80 LETTERS, ETC, 
 
 I have preserved the prospectus of a Course of 
 Lectures which were delivered in Flower de Luce 
 Court in 1818, 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 occasionally 
 take their turn in contributing to the entertainment of 
 the social board, and tbe 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. 
 
LETTERS, ETC. 81 
 
 But why should they be opposed, when they may be 
 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 
 <if 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 ot 
 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 
 E 3 
 
82 LETTERS, ETC. 
 
 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 supposing, 
 that the same information could not be so surely or 
 conveniently acquired from such books as are of com- 
 monest 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 promiscuous 
 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 judi- 
 ciously chosen, will suffice for the attainment of every 
 wise and desirable purpose ; that is, in addition to those 
 which he studies for 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 
 
LETTERS, ETC. 83 
 
 same nourishment and the same gratification, if only we 
 ourselves return with the same healthful appetite. 
 
 " The subjects of the Lectures are indeed very dif- 
 ferent, but not, in the strict sense of the term, diverse: 
 they are various rather than miscellaneous. There is 
 this bond of connexion 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 cul- 
 tivation of which they themselves so largely contribute, 
 as being all in kind, though not all in the same degree, 
 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." 
 
84 LETTERS, ETC. 
 
 LETTER XXVII. 
 
 Friday Night, March 4th, 1822. 
 My dearest Friend, 
 
 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 Sweden- 
 borg's Hells modere ; but arose this morning lighter 
 and with a sense of relief. 
 
 I scai*ce know whether the enclosed Detenu is 
 worth enclosing 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 , and with 
 
LETTERS, ETC. 85 
 
 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 
 
86 LETTERS, ETC. 
 
 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 O, 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 milliner's 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 Rhyme wrapped round the nose- 
 gay. To be feminine, kind, and genteelly (what I 
 should now call neatly) dressed, these were the 
 only things to which my head, heart, or imagination 
 had any polarity, and what I was then, I still am. 
 God bless you and yours, 
 
 S. T. Coleridge. 
 
 Letter to a Young Lady. 
 
 If there be any one subject which it especially 
 concerns a young woman to understand, both in 
 itself generally, and in its application to her own 
 
LETTERS, ETC. 87 
 
 particular habits and circumstances, it is that of 
 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 differ- 
 ent 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 of 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 
 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 whole sphere of a 
 Woman's moral and personal Being, her Enjoy- 
 ments and her Duties, dismissing none, adding 
 many, and modifying all. Even those Duties (if 
 such there be) which it may seem to* leave behind, 
 it does but transfer ; say rather, it re-imposes and 
 
 * Too often, I fear, on the supposed sanction of the mis- 
 translated and still worse interpreted text, Genesis ii. 29. 
 
88 LETTERS, ETC. 
 
 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 ob- 
 ligations additionally binding on her conscience, 
 because undertaken by an act of her own free will. 
 A woman — mark me ! in using that term I still 
 have before my 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 ex- 
 ceptions, 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 pro- 
 bationary Eden of courtship alone. To the Many 
 of both sexes I am well aware this Eden of matri- 
 mony is but a Kitchen-garden, a thing of Profit and 
 convenience, in an even temperature between indif- 
 ference and liking ; where the beds, bordered with 
 Thrift, reject all higher attractions than the homely 
 charms of Marygold 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 fragrance and 
 
LETTERS, ETC. 89 
 
 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 " Heart's-ease " or your " Herbs of 
 grace " would bloom or burgeon. To be happy 
 in Marriage Life, nay (unless you marry with the 
 prospect 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 respect- 
 ability), in order not to be miserable, you must 
 have a Soul-mate as well as a House or a Yoke-ma,te ; 
 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 opportuni- 
 ties of observation, conscientiously vow to love, 
 honour, and respect. With what disgust would 
 yo*u not turn from a sordid, with what horror 
 would you not recoil from a contagious or infec- 
 tious garment offered to you ? you would not suffer 
 it to come near your skin. And would you surrender 
 
90 LETTERS, ETC. 
 
 your person, would you blend your whole person- 
 ality, as far as God has put it in your power to do 
 so, all that you call " I " — soul, body, and estate — 
 with one, the contagion of whose Principles, the 
 infection or sordidness of whose habits and conver- 
 sation 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 under- 
 standing 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 toe ought 
 to be, we need support, help, communion in good. 
 
LETTERS, ETC. 91 
 
 What, then, if instead of a Helpmate 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 Nosegay 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 attendant on an unfit choice, and the 
 criminal folly of a rash and careless one. But by 
 
02 LETTERS, ETC. 
 
 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 cha- 
 racter, principles, and temper, likely to find his 
 happiness in me, and to make me happy and 
 deserving to be so? For perfection can be ex- 
 pected 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 
 King with the speck downmost. But it is one thing 
 to choose for the companion of our life a man 
 troubled with occasional Headachs or Indigestions, 
 and another to run into the arms of inveterate Gout, 
 or consumption (even though the consequent Hectic 
 
LETTERS, ETC. 93 
 
 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 com- 
 plaints am really thinking, and meaning you to 
 think, of moral and intellectual Defects and Dis- 
 eases, I have hazarded the hard word " Hemiplegia;" 
 as I can conceive no more striking and appropriate 
 Image or Symbol of an Individual with one half of 
 his Being, that is, his person, manners, and cir- 
 cumstances 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 dimi- 
 nishing end of the Glass and confounding vices 
 with foibles, — I know no better way than 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 par- 
 
94 LETTERS, ETC. 
 
 ticular application to yourself? In the latter I can 
 of course only speak conjecturally, except as your 
 outward circumstances and relative Duties are con- 
 cerning ; in all else you must be both Querist and 
 Respondent. 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, there- 
 fore, 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 differences of belief in points where good 
 and wise men have agreed to differ. Religious (in 
 my present use of the word), is but morality in 
 reference to all that is permanent and imperishable, 
 God and our souls, for instance ; and Morality is 
 Religion in its application to individuals, circum- 
 stances, the various relations and spheres in which 
 we happen to be placed; in short, to all that is 
 
LETTERS, ETC. 95 
 
 contingent and transitory, and passes away, leaving 
 no abiding trace but the conscience of having or 
 not having done our duty in each. 
 
 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 unob- 
 jectionable 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 moui'nful 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 good Qualities of the Individual a 
 tenderness, a sensibility, a quickness of perception, 
 and a vivacity of Principle, that cannot but con- 
 ciliate 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 excellencies. Manly virtues and manly sense 
 
96 LETTERS, ETC. 
 
 with feminine manners without effeminacy, form 
 such an assemblage, a tout ensemble so 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 de- 
 cisive and, if possible, the preventive " no ; " or all 
 claims to Reason and Conscience, and to that dis- 
 tinctive seal and impress of divinity on Womanhood, 
 the Maternal Soul, must be abandoned. The pro- 
 bable misfortunes 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 Mothers 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 
 Remorse. 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 has not availed against 
 
LETTERS, ETC. 97 
 
 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 unfitness 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, dismissing too the 
 objections from want of competence, on both sides, 
 in worldly means, proportional to their former 
 rank and habits ; and yet what worse or more 
 degradingly selfish (yea, the very Dregs and Sedi- 
 ment of Selfishness, after the more refined and 
 human Portion of it, the sense of self-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 Off- 
 spring Nature has taken the responsibility upon 
 herself? — Putting all these aside, as too obvious 
 
 VOL. II. F 
 
98 LETTERS, ETC. 
 
 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 
 fundamental Law of Duty in favour of some particu- 
 lar pursuit or passion, and considering the dictates 
 of Honour as neither more nor less than motives of 
 selfish Prudence in respect of character ; in other 
 words, as conventional and ever-changing regula- 
 tions, the breach of which will, if detected, black- 
 ball 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 unconditional obedience 
 to the original Voice from within, a man substitutes 
 
LETTERS, ETC. 99 
 
 for this, and listens after, the mere echo of the 
 Voice from without ; his knowledge, I mean of what 
 is commanded by Fashion and enforced by the fore- 
 seen consequences of non-compliance on his Worldly 
 reputation (thus I myself heard a buckish Clergy- 
 man, a clerical Nimrod, at Salisbury, avow, that 
 he would cheat his own Father in a Horse), then I 
 say, that to smile, or show yourselves smiling-angry , 
 as if a Tap with your Fan was a sufficient punish- 
 ment, and a " for shame ! you don't think so, I am 
 sure," or " you should not say so," a sufficient re- 
 proof, 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 super- 
 ficial 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 
 f 2 
 
100 LETTERS, ETC. 
 
 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 Principles of action, so often and so 
 boastingly confessed by your clever fellows — " I 
 take care of Number One; hey, Neighbour: what 
 say you ? " — " 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 Con- 
 sequences. 
 
 There are men who let their life pass away with- 
 out 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 incapable of feeling, 
 that the greatest possible good he can do for him- 
 self or for others, is to do his duty and to leave the 
 
LETTERS, ETC. 101 
 
 consequences 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, because it 
 carries on our Self-interest beyond the grave ! " 
 
 O my dear ! so many worthy persons, 
 
 who really, though unconsciously, both act from, 
 and are actuated by, far nobler impulses, are edu- 
 cated to talk in this language, that I dare not 
 expose the folly, turpitude, immorality, and irre- 
 ligion of this system, without premising the neces- 
 sity of trying to discover, previous to your forming 
 a fixed opinion respecting the true character of the 
 Individuals from whom you may have heard decla- 
 rations of this kind, whether the sentiments pro- 
 ceed from the Tongue only, or at worst, from a 
 misinstructed Understanding, or are the native 
 growth of his Heart." 
 
 TP tJ? 9 'F vfc 
 
 S. T. C. 
 
102 LETTERS, ETC. 
 
 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. 
 
 ii. 
 Yet what is love, I praie thee saie ? 
 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. 103 
 
 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. 
 
104 LETTERS, ETC. 
 
 LETTER XXVIII. 
 
 Saturday Morning, March 22nd, 1822. 
 
 My dear Friend, 
 
 Mr. Watson is but now returned. I was 
 about to set off to your house and take turns with 
 
 Mrs 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 deiiciant medici, medici tibi fiant 
 
 Hsec tria : mens hilaris, requies, moderata diaeta. 
 
 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 
 
LETTERS, ETC. 105 
 
 by advertising the nostrum under the name of 
 Dr. Samsartorius, Carbonifugius s Panacea Saler- 
 nitana iensis. 
 
 You will have thought, I fear, that I had for- 
 gotten my promise of sending you Charles Lamb's 
 epistola porcince. But it was not so. I now enclose 
 it, and when you return it I will make a copy for 
 you if you wish it, for I think that writing in your 
 present state will be 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 deli- 
 vered 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 unqualified 
 f 3 
 
106 LETTERS, ETC. 
 
 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 inferences that I draw, respecting your health, 
 ease of heart and mind, and all the events, inci- 
 dents, and circumstances, that affect, or are calcu- 
 lated 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 
 
LETTERS, ETC. 107 
 
 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 communicate them. When on the white 
 paper, they are already out of us; and when the 
 letter is gone, they will not stay long behind ; 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 weigh- 
 ing 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 sup- 
 press every expression of suffering, and not tell you 
 
108 LETTERS, ETC. 
 
 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 
 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 vex- 
 ations 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, Discus- 
 sions, 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. 109 
 
 Give my love to Mrs , and tell her I will 
 
 try to deserve hers. 
 
 Ever and ever God bless you, my dearest friend. 
 
 S. T. Coleridge. 
 
 The letter here alluded to is a most delightful 
 communication from Charles Lamb ; which, with 
 the hints thrown out by Manning, as to the pro- 
 bable origin of roast meat, were afterwards inter- 
 woven into that paper on Roast 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 invaluable. Indeed, if I judge 
 aright from the numberless Letter-Ze£s in my pos- 
 session, 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 Lite- 
 rature. 
 
110 LETTERS, ETC. 
 
 " 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 CEdipean avulsion ? — was the crackling the colour of 
 the ripe pomegranate? — had you no damned comple- 
 ment 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 
 
LETTERS, ETC. Ill 
 
 but self- extended ; but pardon me if I stop somewhere — 
 tvhere 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 ex- 
 pect 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 che- 
 rished 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. 
 
112 LETTERS, ETC. 
 
 " Bat 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 composition. In return I had a very polite 
 letter, expressing a wish that I should review it. 
 
LETTERS, ETC. 113 
 
 I did so : but when the Review was published, in 
 the place of some just eulogiums due to Mr. Pitt, 
 and which I stated were upon the best authority 
 (in 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 number of the 
 Review he inserted the whole of my communica- 
 tion in an article of the Review, and added at the 
 conclusion words to this effect : ' We have been 
 anxious to be clear on this subject, as much has 
 been said on this matter by men who evidently do 
 
 * Was not this a fraud, a moral forgery ? And this man, 
 who attained notoriety and influence by conduct and prac- 
 tices like these, is he not a Judge, whose office it is to punish 
 such acts in another ? 
 
114 LETTERS, ETC. 
 
 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 shillings had been paid. I tore it open, 
 and found it to contain a long communication from 
 Hay don the Artist, which, in allusion to my Poem 
 on Mont Blanc, ended thus : ' From this moment 
 you are immortal.' I was ungrateful enough to 
 
LETTERS, ETC. 115 
 
 consider Mr. Haydon's immortality dear at two 
 shillings ! And though 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 ? " 
 
116 T LETTERS, ETC. 
 
 LETTER XXIX. 
 
 April 18th, 1822. 
 My dearest Friend, 
 
 There was neither self nor unself in the 
 flash or jet of pleasurable sensation with which I 
 
 T p 
 
 saw the old Ipall mall 
 3 
 
 tea canister top surmount- 
 
 ing my own name, but a mere unreflecting glad- 
 ness, 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 sun- 
 shine ushering in a genial south-west, and setting 
 all the birds a-singing ; while the joy at the recal 
 of the old, dry, scathy, viceroy of the discouraged 
 spring, the Tartar laird from the north-east, aug- 
 ments yet loses itself in the delight at the arrival of 
 the long wished-for successor to his native realm, 
 
LETTERS, ETC, 117 
 
 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 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 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 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, 
 
 S. T. Coleridge. 
 
118 LETTERS, ETC. 
 
 The following observations preface a chronolo- 
 gical and historic assistant to a course of lectures, 
 delivered in 1818. 
 
 " The history of philosophy commences with the birth 
 of Thales. Of the three different dates given by three 
 several chronologists — namely, 640, 629, and 594th 
 year before Christ — I have chosen the 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 generally sup- 
 posed 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 perfec- 
 tions 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 doubt- 
 less intended that we should, the gratification 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 discriminative character of the Greek lan- 
 guage, as it appears in the Iliad and Odyssey ; and 
 
LETTERS, ETC. 119 
 
 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 subjective ends of language. It is the 
 language of poetry, not of speculation ; an exponent of 
 the senses and sensations, not of reflection, abstraction, 
 generalisation, or the mind's own notices of its own acts. 
 It was, in short, what the state of society was — the best 
 and loveliest of its kind, 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 effec- 
 tive power) depended chiefly on his superior wealth, 
 
 * 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, 
 
120 LETTERS, ETC. 
 
 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 
 difficult, 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 philo- 
 sophy ; inasmuch as all the problems, which it is the 
 peculiar object of philosophy to solve, the Hesiodic 
 theology, or rather theogony, precludes, by resolving 
 the absolute origin and ground of all things into night 
 
 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. 
 
 Hobbks' 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. 
 
LETTERS, ETC. 121 
 
 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 pre- 
 determined by some one predominant object, to which 
 they were to be all alike subservient and instrumental. 
 Thus, in Sparta, 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 equilibrium 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 accus- 
 tomed 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 
 
 vol. ii. a 
 
s 
 
 ^ 
 
 M 
 
 LETTERS, ETC. 
 
 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 connections 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 manifested in 
 the rise of the Lyric Poets, Thales, the immediate pre- 
 decessors 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 con- 
 ducted it to the final extinction of Philosophy (or, at 
 least, its long trance of 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 con- 
 tained within the prescribed limits ; and, in addition to 
 this, it would belong rather to the claims of individuals 
 
 * "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." 
 
LETTERS, ETC. 123 
 
 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, supported 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 
 g 2 
 
124 LETTERS, ETC. 
 
 present condition, either unsound or uncongenial. 
 If they possess that buoyancy of spirit, which best 
 fits tliem 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 compared 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 re- 
 pute 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 respect to 
 females, do they not all possess a sort of mental 
 odour? Are not all masters, all those who are 
 held in estimation, not scholars, but always masters, 
 even in their sports ; and are not the female teachers 
 always teaching and setting right? whilst both not 
 only lose the freshness of youth, both of mind and 
 body, but seem as though they never had been 
 
LETTERS, ETC. 125 
 
 young. They who have to teach, can never afford 
 to learn; hence their iinprogression. 
 
 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 
 
126 LETTERS, ETC. 
 
 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 sur- 
 rounding 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. 
 
 LETTER XXX. 
 
 Thursday Afternoon, May 30th, 1822. 
 
 My VERY DEAR FRIEND, 
 
 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 have done in my place, I will, as indeed too 
 
■ 
 
 LETTERS, ETC. 127 
 
 safely to make a merit of it I may do, leave the 
 palliative and extenuating 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 been, 
 
 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 in- 
 stantaneous and decisive generous Friendship of the 
 
 * 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. 
 
128 LETTERS, ETC. 
 
 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 Reason, 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 Understand- 
 ing, a personal property — the contemplation of 
 
 's late and present state of Head and Heart 
 
 would overwhelm me. But 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. 
 
 .... join the party ? or, if Mrs '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. 
 
LETTERS, ETC. 129 
 
 "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 naiis. 
 The discovery 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 men- 
 tally 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 
 g 3 
 
130 LETTERS, ETC. 
 
 of intelligence or anything 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 dis- 
 appeared from amongst his 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 neighbourhood, 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 
 
LETTERS, ETC. 131 
 
 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 suc- 
 cessful, and by the results of his experience en- 
 riched himself and greatly benefited his countrymen. 
 This I hold to be the most extraordinary instance 
 of credible devotion in modern times." 
 
 " Phillips left Nottingham, where he had first 
 established himself, at an early age. He after- 
 wards kept a hosiery shop in St. Paul's, and sold 
 the Magazine at the back. He used to boast that 
 he could do more by puffing than -all the other 
 booksellers. It is certain that he was a great 
 annoyance to them at one time. He had a host 
 of writers in his pay, whom, however, he never 
 retained. A gross flatterer. I recollect hearing 
 
132 LETTERS, ETC. 
 
 him address some fulsome compliments to Dr. 
 Beddoes, to which the Doctor appeared to listen 
 with patience. He was, after a peroration of ten 
 minutes' 1 duration, told by the Doctor that he was 
 wrong in his chronology. 
 
 " ' Not right in my chronology ! " said the sur- 
 prised bookseller ; " what has chronology to do 
 with the matter ?" 
 
 " ' Only this : that so far back as the year 1540, 
 this kind of complimentary insult had become 
 obsolete.' 
 
 " The Knight said no more, but decamped at 
 once. 
 
 " Once, when in an abstruse argument with Mrs. 
 Barbauld on the Berkleian controversy, she ex- 
 claimed, — ' Mr. Coleridge! Mr. Coleridge! 1 
 
 " The Knight was present. No sooner did he 
 hear my name mentioned than he came up to my 
 chair, and after making several obsequious obei- 
 sances, 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, * I would have given 
 
LETTERS, ETC. 133 
 
 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, indeed, afterwards that he never 
 feared offending by 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 disgusting." 
 
 LETTER XXXI. 
 
 June 29th, 1822. 
 
 My Dear Friend, 
 
 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, 
 
134 LETTERS, ETC. 
 
 have sped toward you from 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! 1 ' 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 Reasons 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 Quicken- 
 ing 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 coin- 
 
LETTERS, ETC. 135 
 
 cidence 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 coun- 
 tenances ; 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 be- 
 coming 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 his- 
 trionism. 
 
 In one of my juvenile poems (on a Friend who 
 died in a Frenzy Fever), you will find # that I was 
 
 * To me hath Heaven with bounteous hand assigned 
 Energic Reason and a shaping mind, 
 The daring ken of Truth, the patriot's part, 
 And Pity's sigh, that breathes the gentle heart. 
 
136 LETTERS, ETC. 
 
 jealous of this in myself; and that it is (as I trust 
 it is), otherwise^ I attribute mainly to the following 
 causes: — A naturally, at once searching and com- 
 municative 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 
 
 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 Beings passless mound f 
 
 Tell me, cold grave ! is Death with poppies croivned ? 
 
 Tired sentinel! 'mid fitful starts I nod, 
 
 And fain would sleep, though pillowed on a clod. 
 
LETTERS, ETC. 137 
 
 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 deepen- 
 ing conviction of the transcendency of the moral 
 to the intellectual, and the inexpressible 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 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, 
 
 S. T. Coleridge. 
 
138 LETTERS, ETC. 
 
 " Once, when in the Roman States, I entered a 
 house of entertainment on a Friday, accompanied 
 by a German artist, and, being hungry, asked for 
 some ham or meat. The woman to whom I ad- 
 dressed myself said I could not have it; it was 
 fast day. I replied we were heretics. She still 
 hesitated, when her husband growled out, — ' Let 
 them have it, let them have it; they are damned 
 already.'' Thus satisfying himself that, as we were 
 heretics, or what, singular enough, is here con- 
 sidered synonymous, philosophers, and therefore 
 already damned, he could not injure us farther, 
 but might benefit himself by ministering to our 
 guilty appetites. 1 ' 
 
 " 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." 
 
LETTERS, ETC. 139 
 
 " 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 mis- 
 taken 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 im- 
 possible to obtain a copy of the Newgate Calendar, 
 as they had all been bought up by the Americans, 
 whether to suppress this blazon of their forefathers, 
 or to assist in their genealogical researches I could 
 never learn satisfactorily." 
 
140 LETTERS, ETC. 
 
 LETTER XXXII. 
 
 Rarnsgate, Oct. 8th, 1822. 
 My dearest Friend, 
 
 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, com- 
 pressing or wringing. The first, when the Vision 
 of a Happy Home sunk for ever, and it became 
 impossible for me any longer even to hope for 
 domestic happiness under the name of Husband, 
 when I was doomed to know 
 
 . _i That names but seldom meet with Love, 
 
 And Love wants courage without a name ! 
 
 The second commenced on the night of my arrival 
 (from Grasmere) in town with Mr. and Mrs. Mon- 
 tagu, when all the superstructure raised by my 
 idolatrous Fancy during an enthusiastic and self- 
 sacrificing Friendship of fifteen years — the fifteen 
 
 \r* 
 
LETTERS, ETC. 141 
 
 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 Trans- 
 figuration into Baseness ; when, with 12007. a year, 
 and just at the moment that the extraordinary 
 Bankruptcy of Fenner and Curtis had robbed me of 
 every penny I had been so many years working 
 for, every penny I possessed in the world, and 
 involved me in a debt of 150/. to boot, he first 
 regretted that he was not able to pay a certain Bill 
 of mine to his 's wife's brother, him- 
 self e never wanted money so much in his life,' &c. 
 &e. ; 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, ftis debt than 
 mine! 
 
 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 
 
142 LETTERS, ETC. 
 
 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 contemplative 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 J. . . — remitted with the belief and 
 confidence of the Falsehood of the charge — relapsed 
 again — and again — and again — blended with the 
 sad convictions, that neither E. nor I. thought of 
 or felt towards me as they ought, or attributed any 
 thing done for 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 the scales 
 whether he should live or die, and the cause of 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, 
 
LETTERS, ETC. 143 
 
 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-subsisting, 
 separate something, detached from the cause. I 
 cannot help hearing the sound of my voice at the 
 moment when I. . . 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 pos- 
 sible before I had reached his aunt Martha's, but at 
 latest before five. " Nay, say six. Be, if you can, 
 by five, but say six." Then, when he had passed 
 a few steps — " J. . . six ; O 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. 
 
144 LETTERS, ETC. 
 
 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 Ramsgate, 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 hil- 
 lock of Termites or Bugaboos as with this single 
 Ant-consanguineous. As soon therefore as dear 
 Mr. Gillman returned to us, you will not hold it 
 either strange or unwise that, in agreeing to ac- 
 company him to Dover, the kingdom of France 
 west of Paris, Ramsgate, 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 O ! how often have I wished, 
 
LETTERS, ETC. 145 
 
 and do I wish, that you and Mrs could 
 
 form a household in common at Ramsgate 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 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 strain- 
 ing 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 
 
 VOL. II. H 
 
146 LETTERS, ETC. 
 
 nor dare hear of any mid state, of no vague neces- 
 sities 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 effec- 
 tive 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-condemnation, J. . . . would never 
 have tampered with Fatalism ; and but for Fatalism, 
 he would never have had such cause to condemn 
 himself. With truest love, 
 
 Yours, 
 
 S. T. Coleridge. 
 
 P.S. Affectionate remembrances to Mrs ; 
 
 in short, to you and yours. While I write the two 
 last words, my lips felt an appetite to kiss the baby. 
 
LETTERS, ETC. 147 
 
 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 
 that the genial sunshine of my friend's mind would 
 again shine, inward at least, with unobscured bril- 
 liancy. Now, I can but garner in my heart the 
 experience of the past, to be conveyed, as all per- 
 sonal experience must be, to unwilling or inatten- 
 tive 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 sen- 
 sitiveness 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 offer- 
 h 2 
 
148 LETTERS, ETC. 
 
 ing or a testimony to convictions, not lightly at- 
 tained, 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 con- 
 clusion. 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 exten- 
 sive 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 
 
LETTERS, ETC. 149 
 
 worse and every way more injurious than direct 
 lies, we render success far less probable, and even 
 in its attainment, less valuable, from the recollec- 
 tion of the very unworthy means by which it has 
 been achieved. 
 
 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. 
 
150 LETTERS, ETC. 
 
 LETTER XXXIII. 
 
 Dec. 26th, 1822. 
 
 My VERY DEAR FRIEND, 
 
 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 pre- 
 scribes the rule and form of all conclusion or con- 
 clusive reasoning ; second, as the Criterion, or that 
 which teaches to distinguish truth from falsehood, 
 containing all the sorts, forms, and sources of error, 
 
LETTERS, ETC. 151 
 
 and means of deceiving or being deceived ; third, 
 as tlie 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 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. Stutfield 
 will give three days in the week for the next fort- 
 night ; and that I have no doubt, notwithstanding 
 Mrs. Coleridge and my little Sarah's expected 
 arrival on Friday next, that by the end of January 
 the whole book will not only have been 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. Wat- 
 son, and shall therefore avail myself of the oppor- 
 tunity 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 
 
152 LETTERS, ETC. 
 
 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 Religion, of which the first Half, 
 containing the Philosophy or ideal Truth, possi- 
 bility, 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 honour- 
 able sufficiency, were it only by school books, and 
 compilations from my own memorandum volumes. 
 The publication of my Shakspeare and other simi- 
 lar 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 
 
 look so charmingly well. My affectionate regards 
 
LETTERS, ETC. 153 
 
 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-condi- 
 tion 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, 
 
 S. T. Coleridge. 
 
 "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. 
 h 3 
 
154 LETTERS, ETC. 
 
 Whether it is that women have a passion for nurs- 
 ing, or from whatever cause, they invariably dis- 
 courage 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 benefitted. 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 sicken- 
 ing fondness, and affectionate interest in all that con- 
 cerns himself, from a wife freely chosen, are what 
 
LETTERS, ETC. 155 
 
 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." 
 
 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. 
 
156 LETTERS, ETC 
 
 LETTER XXXIV. 
 
 Grove, Highgate, Dec. 10th, 1823. 
 My dear . . . 
 
 I shall be alone on Sunday, and shall be 
 happy to spend it with you. Ever since the disap- 
 pearance 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 harassing 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 fore- 
 most 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 
 
LETTERS, ETC. 157 
 
 the Image, and the Terror of the Image, blends 
 with the recollection of the Past a strange expect- 
 ancy, a fearful sense as of a something still to 
 come ; and breaks in, and makes stoppages 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 
 (O! the vanity of Prophecies, the truth of which 
 can be established only by the proof of their use- 
 lessness) 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 alone, I shall defer to that time all but 
 my tenderest regards to Mrs. . . . , and the 
 superfluous assurance that I am evermore, my 
 dearest . . . . , 
 
 Your most cordial, attached, and 
 
 Affectionate friend, 
 
 S. T. Coleridge. 
 
158 LETTERS, ETC. 
 
 P. S. You will be delighted with my new 
 room. 
 
 " The notion, that affections are of less importance 
 than advantages, or that the latter dare even be 
 weighed in the same scales, is less truly described 
 as opposite to my opinion than as alien from my 
 very nature. As to accomplishments, I do not 
 know whether it is right to cherish a positive opinion, 
 of an indifferent thing, that is neither good nor 
 evil. If we leave all moral relations out of view, 
 such as vanity, or the disposition to underrate the 
 solidities of the soul, male or female, &c. &c, the 
 question of accomplishments (as they are absurdly 
 called) seems to me to depend on the individual 
 woman, in the same way that dress does. Of two 
 equally amiable and equally beloved women, one 
 looks better in an evening, the other in a morning 
 dress. It is just as it suits, and so with accom- 
 plishments. There are two women, to whom, 
 though in different ways, I have been deeply 
 attached in the course of my life. The one had no 
 
LETTERS, ETC. 159 
 
 so-called accomplishments, and not only at the time 
 when I had faith in the return, did I say, " And I 
 love her all the better, 1 ' but I am still convinced 
 that such would be my opinion of any such woman. 
 Accomplishments (in which nothing good, useful, 
 or estimable, is or can be accomplished) would not w~& 
 suit her. Just as I should say to a daughter, or 
 should have said to the lassy in question, had she 
 been my wife, " My dear ! I like to see you with 
 bracelets; but your hand and fingers are prettiest 
 without any ornament, they don't suit rings.' 1 '' 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, I must say that I am persuaded that the 
 consciousness of them occupies as little room in her 
 own thoughts. 
 
 " Accomplishments, what are they ? why truly the 
 very want of the French, Italian, smattering of 
 terms without relation to things or properties of any 
 kind, and piano-fortery, which meets one now with 
 Jack-o'-lantern ubiquity in every first and second 
 story in every street, is become a presumptive accom- 
 
160 LETTERS, ETC. 
 
 plishment, as the being free from debt is a negative 
 stock. Mrs. C . . . had no meretricious accom- 
 plishments. Did you ever suspect, from anything 
 I ever said, that this lay in the way of my domestic 
 happiness? And she, too, had no accomplish- 
 ments, to whom the man in the poet sighed forth 
 the 
 
 ' Dear maid ! no prattler at a mother's knee 
 Was e'er so deeply prized as I prize thee, 
 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 fol- 
 lows ; which I give to show the pain caused by a 
 slight misapprehension, and the great anxiety of 
 the writer to remove an erroneous impression. 
 
LETTERS, ETC. 161 
 
 LETTER XXXV. 
 
 Dec. 24th, 1823. 
 
 MY DEAREST .... 
 
 I forgot to ask you, and so did Mr. and 
 Mrs. G . . . . , whether you could dine with us 
 on Christmas-day — or on New YearVday — or on 
 both ! If you can, need I say that I shall be glad. 
 My noisy forge-hammer is still busy ; quick, 
 thick, and fervent. 
 
 With kindest regards to Mrs } 
 
 Your ever faithful and affectionate, 
 
 S. T. Coleridge. 
 
162 LETTERS, ETC. 
 
 LETTER XXXVI. 
 
 My dear Mrs 
 
 Indeed, indeed you have sadly misunder- 
 stood my last-hurried note. So over and over 
 
 again has Mr 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 ex- 
 pressing 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 
 
LETTERS, ETC. 163 
 
 my saying it was now too late, he still desired me 
 to write, his words being, — " For though .... 
 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. Gill- 
 man 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. 
 .... could either leave the children or take 
 
 them? But to expect Mr 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, .... knows me too well to attribute 
 to me any other feeling or purpose than the real 
 ones." I give you my word and honour, my dear 
 madame, that these were, to the best of my recol- 
 
]64 LETTERS, ETC. 
 
 lection, 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 cir- 
 cumstance 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-mor- 
 row with Miss Southey, my own Sarah's friend 
 and twin-sister, and with Miss Wordsworth at 
 Monkhouse's, in Gloster-place ; yet Mr. Gillman 
 has both dissuaded and forbidden me as my me- 
 dical 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 
 
LETTERS, ETC. 165 
 
 most contrary to any form of disrespect, omissive 
 or commissive ; to which, let me add, that / should 
 
 be doing what Mr (I am sure) would not 
 
 do, if, having shown you consciously any disrespect 
 I continued to subscribe myself his friend, not to 
 speak of any profession of being what in very truth 
 1 am, my dear Mrs. , . . ., 
 
 Sincerely and affectionately yours, 
 
 S. T. Coleridge. 
 
 This letter is written in a very hurried and 
 irregular 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. 
 
166 LETTERS, ETC. 
 
 LETTER XXXVII. 
 
 
 Grove, Highgate, April 8th, 1824. 
 
 Dear Mrs 
 
 . There are three rolls of paper, Mr. Words- 
 worth's translation of the first, second, and third 
 books, two in letter-paper, one in a little writing- 
 book, 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 not be 
 
 at home. 
 
 My dear .... . » 
 
 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 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 
 
LETTERS, ETC. 167 
 
 less painful recollections of the trouble and anxiety 
 I have occasioned you. 
 
 In the agitation of leaving Mrs 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 morning, 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. You and Mrs 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 bless you, 
 And your obliged and most 
 
 affectionately attached friend, 
 
 S. T. Coleridge. 
 
168 LETTERS, ETC. 
 
 Thus early, my dear children, did you become 
 the objects of his affection and affectionate solici- 
 tude. It is pleasant to me, almost as pleasant as it 
 is painful, to recal 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 anything to hope. 
 
 This letter was written after a sojourn of about 
 ten days in London, respecting which I have pre- 
 served 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, 
 
LETTERS, ETC. 169 
 
 that those alone who have been steeped in anxieties 
 and in suffering can appreciate 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 to make sacrifices as a tribute to, or from sym- 
 pathy with, their own past trials ; though it may 
 fairly be doubted whether suffering ever yet pro- 
 duced patient consideration for the anxieties of 
 another, or increased the real charities, though it 
 may greatly enlarge the sympathies and the sen- 
 sibility which pass current as charity, that greatest 
 of all the virtues. 
 
 VOL. II. 
 
170 LETTERS, ETC. 
 
 LETTER XXXVIII. 
 
 April 1 4th, 1824. 
 My dearest Friend, 
 
 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, 
 S. T. Coleridge. 
 
 My kindest love and remembrance to Mrs. . . . ., 
 and. assure her that I called this morning at Mrs. 
 Constable's, induced by the very fine though un- 
 warm day, to hope I might find the little boy 
 there, and was rather disappointed to see her 
 
LETTERS, ETC. 171 
 
 return without him. But, doubtless, we are en- 
 titled 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. 
 
 April 27th, 1824. 
 
 My dearest Friend, 
 
 I direct this to your house, or firm should I 
 say ? because I should not think myself justified in 
 
 exciting in Mrs an alarm, for which I have 
 
 no more grounds than my own apprehensions and 
 unlearned conjectures. And yet having these bod- 
 ings, I cannot feel quite easy in withholding them 
 
 from you. On Saturday, the morning Mrs 
 
 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 
 
 i 2 
 
172 LETTERS, ETC. 
 
 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 there is either some 
 mesenteric affection, which sometimes exists in 
 infants without betraying itself by any notable 
 change in the ingestion or the egestae, yet pro- 
 ducing 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 con- 
 vulsive twitches, and neither starts nor screams in 
 its sleep. For the first I have no opportunity (the 
 sun being clouded) of making a decisive experi- 
 ment, and requested Mrs. Constable to try it with a 
 candle, as soon as it was taken up after dark ; and 
 
LETTERS, ETC. 173 
 
 though the presence of this symptom is an infallible 
 evidence of the presence of effusion, or some equi- 
 valent 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 freedom 
 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 lest any neglect should be 
 suspected on her part, but likewise from an antici- 
 pation 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 expect- 
 ing 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 posi- 
 
174 LETTERS, ETC. 
 
 tive change for the worse, no measurable retro-gres- 
 sion. I have of course repeatedly spoken to Mr. 
 Gillman, but he says it is impossible to form any 
 conclusive 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 warrant- 
 ably be attempted in this uncertainty but mild 
 alteratives, watchful attention to the infant's regu- 
 larity, 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 — 
 There is no Resurrection for a Love 
 
LETTERS, ETC. 175 
 
 That uneclipsed, unthwarted, wanes away 
 In the chilled heart by inward self-decay. 
 Poor mimic of the Past I the love is o'er, 
 That must resolve to do what did itself of yore." 
 
 God bless you, and your ever affectionate 
 
 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. 
 
 To you, my dear Rob, 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 intermingled with perfect 
 sympathy and identity of feeling, most predomi- 
 nated. His mind was at once the most masculine, 
 
176 LETTERS, ETC. 
 
 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 simi- 
 larity 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. 
 
LETTERS, ETC. 177 
 
 LETTER XL. 
 
 March 20th, 1825. 
 
 My dearest Friend, 
 
 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 interro- 
 gating 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-ach follows. 
 
 But enough of this Subject. I ought to be 
 i 3 
 
178 LETTERS, ETC. 
 
 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 can- 
 not 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 line 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, Revisal, 
 &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. 
 
LETTERS, ETC. ]79 
 
 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 hu- 
 manity. I do not like him the better for it; but I 
 should not like him the better without it. Mean- 
 time he is active, shrewd, a thorough man of 
 business ; sanguine I should think, both by con- 
 stitution and by 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, 
 
 S. T. Coleridge. 
 
 It will be necessary to the better understanding 
 of some passages of this letter, to refer very briefly 
 
180 LETTERS, ETC. 
 
 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 controul, had resulted 
 in serious loss, and still more serious deterioration 
 in the value of the property embarked ; a loss and 
 a deterioration 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 
 
 * 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. 
 
LETTERS, ETC. 181 
 
 from the unfitness of the men who were associated 
 in its management, 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 pecu- 
 niary damage; second, by the very serious losses 
 attendant upon the relinquishment of the under- 
 taking, 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 confid- 
 ence, 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 re- 
 liance. Will it be credited that, before this draft 
 reached maturity (a dissolution of partnership hav- 
 ing taken place between the drawers), that the 
 senior and more affluent partner placed this very 
 bill in the hands of the worthy member for Leo- 
 minster, and himself, being an attorney, commenced 
 proceedings for its recovery, although the circum- 
 
182 LETTERS, ETC. 
 
 stances 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 condition to abandon of myself, I 
 have been saved years of continued 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 
 
LETTERS, ETC. 183 
 
 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 mo- 
 tives 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 pos- 
 sible, " 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, and my 
 feelings, in a state of fitness, and as it were con- 
 tempered 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 re- 
 ducing my needs to the measure of my condition. 
 I have attained, though somewhat seared in the 
 
184 LETTERS, ETC. 
 
 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 began, 
 So is it now I am a man, 
 So let it he when I grow old, 
 
 Or let me die." 
 
 I recollect well — as it were only yesterday — a 
 little excursion 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 Bake well, and arrived, weary 
 and heated, at the village (how beautifully named) 
 of Hope. There, having refreshed and rested our- 
 
LETTERS, ETC. 185 
 
 selves, we were preparing to continue our ride, 
 when the appearance of a man, who, by an expres- 
 sion 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 
 Resignation was only acquiescence in that which 
 was felt to be wrong or unjust, or undeserved ; and 
 was a very different condition from content. 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 you now, my repugnance and 
 utter dislike of Resignation. Resignation to, or 
 acquiescence in, that which is felt to be an evil, a 
 sorrow, or a grievous injury, Loss or infliction, is 
 of very doubtful value, is at best 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, 
 
186 LETTERS, ETC. 
 
 fear. It seems that condition in which the ener- 
 gies, mental and physical, find their equipoise and 
 equilibrium; where they all exist and act in har- 
 mony ; 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." Read 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. 
 
LETTERS, ETC. 187 
 
 LETTER XLI. 
 
 April BOth, 1825. 
 
 My dearest Friend, 
 
 Having disburthened myself of the main Loads 
 of outward obligation at least that pressed upon me, 
 my Essay for the R. S. L., and my Aids to Reflec- 
 tion, with other matters not so expressly my own, 
 but having the same, if not greater, demands on 
 such quantity of time, as bodily pain and disquali- 
 fication, with unprecludible interruption, have ena- 
 bled me to make use of, I take the very first 
 moment of the Furlow to tell you that I have been 
 perplexed both by your silence and your absence. 
 In fact, I had taken for granted you were in Derby- 
 shire, till this afternoon, when I saw one who had 
 met you yesterday. 
 
 Now I cannot recollect anything that can — I am 
 sure, ought to have given you offence, unless it 
 
188 LETTERS, ETC. 
 
 were my non-performance of the request communi- 
 cated to me by Mr. Jameson. 
 
 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 must not feel wounded if, 
 loving you so truly as I do, and 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 under- 
 taking on the frame of your moral and intellectual 
 Being. In the meantime, you never came near me, 
 so that I might have been able to rectify my 
 opinions, *or rather to form them; and I felt, and 
 still feel, 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 pit- 
 tance with you and yours', than see you unhappy 
 with twenty thousand at your command. 
 
 Do not, my dearest Friend! therefore let my 
 perplexities, derived in great measure from my 
 unacquaintance with the facts, and to which my 
 
LETTERS, ETC. 189 
 
 ever-wakeful affection gave the origin, prevent you 
 from treating, as you were wont to do, 
 
 Your truly sincere 
 
 S. T. Coleridge. 
 
 Whilst I write, my attention is called to a work 
 where this Great and Gentle Being is called bigoted, 
 uncharitable, and I know not what harsh terms are 
 huddled and upheaped upon 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 injustice done to another as the greatest 
 misfortune that can befal 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 / instead of 
 it. What do we really express ? our opinions. 
 Why not then couple the opinion with the Being 
 who holds or propounds it ? To what then 
 does the opinion thus impersonally expressed 
 
190 LETTERS, ETC. 
 
 amount ? That he, the writer of this Review, 
 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 Jef- 
 fery, 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. Roe- 
 buck, Mr. Fox, and my high purposed and honest 
 Friend, John Bell, who 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." 
 
LETTERS, ETC. 191 
 
 " 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 con- 
 sequences 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 babes." 
 
 Garrick. 
 " 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 genera- 
 tion, while the name alone remains for posterity, 
 
192 LETTERS, ETC. 
 
 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 
 Shakspeare. It will be sufficient for me to direct 
 attention to one peculiarity, the common and ex- 
 clusive 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 comprehends, while it is eminently and in the 
 exactest sense of the word characteristic, inasmuch 
 as this transcendant power sprung from the same 
 source in both, — from an insight into human nature 
 at its fountain head, which exists in those creations 
 of Genius alone, in which the substance and essen- 
 tial forms are the Gifts of Meditation and self- 
 research, and the individualising accidents, and the 
 requisite drapery are supplied by observation and 
 acquaintance with the world. We may then hope 
 
LETTERS, ETC. 193 
 
 for a second Garrick or of an approach to a Shaks- 
 peare where we find a knowledge of Man united 
 to an equal knowledge 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 ma- 
 terials 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 in our greatest actor, we can conceive 
 no more lively or impressive way than by pre- 
 senting him in the two extreme Poles of his 
 Creative and almost Protean Genius — in his Richard 
 the Third and his Abel Drugger." 
 
 " In the language of prophecy, the first and pro- 
 minent symptom of a good or evil will, or influ- 
 encing tendency, is brought forward as the con- 
 dition or occasion of all that follows. The first 
 
 VOL. II. k 
 
194 LETTERS, ETC. 
 
 link in the chain of effects is made the representative 
 of the common cause of them all, or the good or 
 evil state of the moral Being of the agents. So, 
 for instance, a turbulent malcontent disposition in 
 large classes of a country, with the assertion of 
 Rights, unqualified by, and without any reference 
 to, duties, a vague Lust for Power, mistaken for, 
 and counterfeiting the love of, Liberty — 
 
 ' Licence they mean when they cry Liberty, 
 For who loves that, must first be wise and good — ' 
 
 show themselves first in clubs, societies, political 
 unions, &c. &c. And this, as the first prominent 
 symptom, foretels and becomes itself a powerful 
 efficient cause of the disruption, disorganisation, 
 and anarchy that follow. Most truly, therefore — 
 indeed what great truth and principle of State 
 Wisdom can be mentioned which is not to be 
 found in the oracle of the Hebrew Prophets — most 
 truly doth Isaiah proclaim — ch. viii. v. 9, — " Asso- 
 ciate yourselves, O ye people! and ye shall be 
 broken in pieces. Give ear, all ye of far countries! 
 
LETTERS, ETC. 195 
 
 Gird yourselves (i. e. form yourselves into Clubs as 
 with Girdles), and ye shall be broken in pieces." 
 
 " It at once soothes and amuses me to think — 
 nay, to know, that the time will come when this 
 little volume of my dear, and well nigh oldest, 
 friend, dear Mary Lamb, will be not only enjoyed 
 but acknowledged as a rich jewel in the treasury 
 of our permanent English Literature ; and I cannot 
 help running over in my mind the long list of 
 celebrated writers, astonishing Geniuses ! Novels, 
 Romances, Poems, Histories, and dense Political 
 Economy quartos, which, compared with Mrs. 
 Leicester's School, will be remembered as often 
 and prized as highly as Wilkie's and Glover's 
 Epics, and Lord Bolingbroke's Philosophies com- 
 pared 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 
 k 2 
 
196 LETTERS, ETC. 
 
 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 dis- 
 tinguished himself by something connected with 
 finance — a loan for Greece, I think — as an extra- 
 ordinary man, — " Yes," said Mackintosh, " he is : 
 he is an extraordinary man — an extra-ordinary 
 r, , J ordinary man. 1,1 
 
 LETTER XLII. 
 
 Saturday, May 2, 1825. 
 My dear Friend, 
 
 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 one which there was any 
 chance of my not retaining ; but I 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 
 
LETTERS, ETC. 197 
 
 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, 
 
 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 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, perhaps, at the zenith of his 
 influence (it was before he sunk into Parliament), 
 and in the meridian of his powers. It was in the 
 
198 LETTERS, ETC. 
 
 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 touch- 
 ing 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 them- 
 selves the sufferings of the very poor. To them, 
 the reply of the young lady, when told that the 
 
LETTERS, ETC. 199 
 
 poor could not get bread, " then why not eat pic- 
 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 con- 
 dition, to know, are nearly all our Legislators ; and 
 not merely those who misrepresent Counties, but 
 the misrepresentatives of Towns. Colonel Sibthorp 
 may 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 intelligent popula- 
 tion 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 idleness and profligacy have re- 
 jected the idle and the worthless, who are received 
 and cherished in the hives of industry. Brighton, 
 Bath, and Mary-le-bone, are well and truly served 
 by men who belong to the people ; whilst Man- 
 chester, Liverpool, 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 
 
200 LETTERS, ETC. 
 
 his bold, and, it may be, somewhat burly, bearing, 
 feasted under an immense Tent, more than a thou- 
 sand Visiters, 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 Micheldever. 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 honey- 
 suckle — 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 freshness 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. 
 
LETTERS, ETC. 201 
 
 On the morning following, I was one of a party 
 which proceeded to the Church-yard of Michel- 
 dever, and strewed the grave of Henry Cook with 
 flowers. Ill-fated youth ! hadst 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 Carpenter, 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 re- 
 moving the flowers from her son's grave, fearful 
 lest the wrath of these Parvenu's should follow hei 
 k 3 
 
202 LETTERS, ETC. 
 
 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 Pa- 
 rents, driven by the death of their son, in old age, to 
 the wretched Workhouse of Michel dever. 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. Pleasures withheld for punishments vouch- 
 safed. 
 
 If they are awakened to the consciousness of the 
 
LETTERS, ETC. 203 
 
 Blood they have shed, the Widows and the Father- 
 less that owe their 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 taking, 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 Gentleman (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, coun- 
 
204 LETTERS, ETC. 
 
 tenance, 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 feelings 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 bene- 
 fited, delighted, and instructed by his multifarious 
 writings, shall not evince their sense of his tran- 
 scendant 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 communion with a mind, whose match- 
 less 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 w T as of this man, thus gifted, that Hunt, after he 
 had become a personal enemy, said, when asked 
 
LETTERS, ETC. 205 
 
 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 or social circle, attracting and en- 
 gaging 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 let- 
 ters; 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 kind- 
 ness and delicate attention, to those who had been 
 heretofore his assistants, are of great interest. 
 
 * This economy of time he also carried into conversation. 
 I recollect his observing, to the clever and pretty girl who 
 ministered to him at Sutton Scotney, " Time is valuable ; 
 never throw away your words. I never do." 
 
206 LETTERS, ETC. 
 
 Normandy Farm, Aug. 26th, 1834. 
 Dear Miss .... 
 
 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 themselves 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 been so 
 excellent, that I should have deemed it a neglect 
 of my duty had I failed thus to express my sen- 
 timents regarding it. 
 
 I am your faithful friend, 
 And most obedient servant, 
 
 Wm. Cobbett. 
 
LETTERS, ETC. 207 
 
 Normandy, April 9th, 1835. 
 
 Mr. 
 
 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 
 
208 LETTERS, ETC. 
 
 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 Jirst" 
 
 That he never swerved; that, contemning impos- 
 ture 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. 
 
LETTERS, ETC. 209 
 
 LETTER XLIII. 
 
 May 10 th, 1825. 
 
 My dearest Friend, 
 
 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 
 most interesting Features in the History of the 
 most celebrated Universities in Great Britain, Ger- 
 many, France, &c. Reduction of all Universities 
 of any name, with respect to their construction and 
 constitution, to three Classes. 2. The Meaning of 
 the Term, University, and the one true and only 
 adequate Scheme of a University stated and un- 
 folded from the Seed (i. e. the idea) to the full 
 Tree with all its Branches. 3. The advantages, 
 moral, intellectual, national, developed from reason 
 
210 LETTERS, ETC. 
 
 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 Metro- 
 polis. (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 Uni- 
 versities, &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 anti- 
 cipation of what I might say attract an audience of 
 respectable smallclothes and petticoats sufficiently 
 large to produce something more than, with the 
 same exertions of Head and Hand, I might earn in 
 my Garret (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 monster city and a 
 Crown and Anchor Room demand a -}-, and would 
 
LETTERS, ETC. 211 
 
 an = , after all expenses paid, but ragged economy, 
 unless I were certain of effecting more good in this 
 than in a quieter way of industry. 
 
 I wrote to Mr. B. Montagu for his advice; but 
 he felt no interest himself in the subject, and 
 naturally therefore was doubtful of any number of 
 others feeling any. But he promised to talk with 
 his friend Mr. Irving about it ! On the 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, and, this I add as a 
 white-washer, was a regular attendant on my lec- 
 tures), that the subject itself is stirring up the 
 Mud-Pool of the Public Mind in London with the 
 vivacity of a Bottom wind. If you can find time, 
 I wish you would talk with Jameson about it, and 
 obtain the opinion of as many as are likely to think 
 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 us, for I am sure 
 he would be glad to see you. Need I say that 
 
212 LETTERS, ETC. 
 
 my thoughts, wishes, and prayers follow you in all 
 your doings and strivings, for I am evermore, my 
 dearest friend, 
 
 Yours, with a friend and a father's 
 
 affection and solicitude, 
 
 S. T. Coleridge. 
 
 My kindest remembrances to Mrs . . . , with 
 kisses for little Titania Puckinella. 
 
 Years have passed since I heard the Nightingales 
 sing as they did this evening in Mr. Robart's Garden 
 Grounds ; so many, and in such full song, parti- 
 cularly that giddy voluminous whirl of notes which 
 you never hear but when the Birds feel the temperature 
 of the air voluptuous. 
 
 P.S. Tf 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 premeditating the subject. 
 
LETTERS, ETC. 213 
 
 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 knowledge^ 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 restless- 
 ness, 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 
 necessities of our gracious and religious King ren- 
 dered 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 
 
214 LETTERS, ETC. 
 
 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 dis- 
 pute 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 withdrawn him 
 from an arena to which his health, genius, and 
 modes of thinking, were alike unsuited. To con- 
 vey to you an adequate individual notion or image 
 of the Friend you have lost is with me quite hope- 
 less ; the next thing to this is to present to you as 
 many individual pictures or views of his mind as 
 
LETTERS, ETC. 215 
 
 are within my power. To begin with the first — 
 here is the Estimate formed by one of my earliest 
 Friends ; hear what was said of him by T. N. T. 
 now Sergeant Talfourd, who, more than any man 
 I know, himself a Poet of the highest order, is best 
 fitted to appreciate the Poets of our time. 
 
 " Not less marvellously gifted, though in a far differ- 
 ent 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, condens- 
 ing, developing, and multiplying the rich products of 
 his research with marvellous facility and skill ; now 
 pondering fondly over some piece of exquisite loveli- 
 ness 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 Shakspeare, 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 fan- 
 
21C) LETTERS, ETC. 
 
 tasy. 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.' 
 
 " 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 murmur- 
 ing - 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. 
 
LETTERS, ETC. 217 
 
 " To refute this assertion, there are his Wallenstein ; 
 his love poems, of intensest beauty; his Ancient Mari- 
 ner, with its touches of profoundest 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 sweetness 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 cen- 
 sured because he has deviated from the ordinary course 
 of the age in its development, and instead of commit- 
 ting 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 
 
 VOL. II. L 
 
218 LETTERS, ETC. 
 
 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. Ex- 
 pressed his surprise at Sou they 's extreme want of 
 Judgment. " Any Establishment which could fuse 
 into a common opposition, into an opposition on Com- 
 mon Grounds, such heterogeneous and conflicting mate- 
 rials, xoould deserve, ought, to be destroyed. I almost 
 wish that Southey had been one of the audience, 
 Jit though few, who attended my Lectures on Philo- 
 sophy ; 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 sub- 
 join it ; trusting that the Lectures themselves will 
 
LETTERS, ETC. 219 
 
 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 anticipa- 
 tions ; 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 hopeless form of fastidiousness, the 
 wish to conciliate those who are never to be con- 
 ciliated, inferior minds smarting under a sense of 
 inferiority, and the imputation which they are con- 
 scious 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, they are yet 
 almost the only things which give such minds a 
 status in Literature. 
 
 l 2 
 
220 LETTERS, ETC. 
 
 LETTER XLIV. 
 
 T\ " 
 
 Nov. 26th, 1818. 
 
 Dear Sir, \^ 
 
 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. 
 
 S. T. Coleridge. 
 
 « Prospectus of a Course of Lectures, Historical and 
 Biographical, on the Rise and Progress, the Changes 
 and Fortunes of Philosophy, from Thales and Py- 
 thagoras to the Present Times ; the Lives and Suc- 
 cession of the distinguished Teachers in each Sect ; 
 the connexion of Philosophy with General Civilisa- 
 tion ; and, more especially, its relations to the His- 
 tory 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 argu- 
 ment form neither part nor object of the present Plan, 
 
LETTERS, ETC. 221 
 
 which supposes 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 reflection, must be presumed, 
 at some period or other, to have put to his own 
 thoughts : — What, and for what am I made ? What 
 can 1, and what ought I to, make of myself? and in 
 what relations do I stand to the world and to my fellow 
 men ? Flattering myself with a continuance of the 
 kind and respectful attention, with which my former 
 courses have been honoured, I have so little appre- 
 hension 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 an- 
 nounced. When, indeed, I contemplate the many and 
 close connexions of the subject with the most inter- 
 esting periods of History; the instances and illustra- 
 tions 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 super- 
 
222 LETTERS, ETC. 
 
 fluous even as a literary work. We have, indeed, a 
 History of Philosophy, or rather a folio volume so 
 called, by Stanley, and Enfield's Abridgment of 
 the massive and voluminous Brucker. 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 im- 
 possible 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. What- 
 ever 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 
 
LETTERS, ETC. 223 
 
 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 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 former, we shall have a full concep- 
 tion of the sense in which the term, Philosophy, is used 
 in this Prospectus and the Lectures corresponding to it. 
 " The main Divisions will be — 1. From Thales and 
 Pythagoras to the appearance of the Sophists. 2. And 
 of Socrates. The character and effect of Socrates' life 
 and doctrines, illustrated in the instances of Xenophon, 
 as his most faithful representative, and of Antisthenes, 
 or the Cynic sect, as the one partial view of his philo- 
 sophy, and of Aristippus, or the Cyrenaic sect, as the 
 other and opposite extreme. 3. Plato and Platonis<n . 
 4. Aristotle and the Peripatetic school. 5. Zeno and 
 Stoicism, Epicurus and Epicureans, with the effects of 
 these in the Roman republic and empire. 6. The rise 
 of the Eclectic or Alexandrine Philosophy, the attempt 
 to set up a pseudo-Platonic Polytheism against Chris- 
 tianity, the degradation of Philosophy itself into mysti- 
 cism and magic, and its final disappearance, as Philo- 
 
224< LETTERS, ETC. 
 
 sopby, under Justinian. 7. The resumption of the 
 Aristotelian philosophy in the thirteenth century, and 
 the successive re-appearance of the different sects from 
 the restoration of literature to our own times." 
 
 LETTER XLV. 
 
 My dearest Friend, 
 
 The person to whom I alluded in my last 
 \ 
 
 is a Mr. T . . . ., who, within the last two 
 or three years, has held a situation in the Colonial 
 Office, but what, I do not know. From his age 
 and comparatively recent initiation into the office, 
 it is probably not a very influensive one ; and, on 
 the other hand, from the rank and character of his 
 friends he has occasionally brought up with him to 
 our Thursday evening convex, or, to mint a more 
 appropriate term, owe-versazione, it must be a re- 
 spectable one. Mr. T ... is Souther's friend, 
 and more than a literary acquaintance to me, only 
 in consequence of my having had some friendly 
 
LETTERS, ETC. 225 
 
 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 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 conviction 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 de- 
 plorable 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, 
 
 S. T. Coleridge. 
 
226 LETTERS, ETC. 
 
 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 par- 
 tition,'' 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. 
 
LETTERS, ETC. 227 
 
 (i Hatred of superiority is not, alas ! confined to 
 the ignorant. The best informed are most subject 
 to jealousy, and to unfair representations of new 
 views and doctrines." 
 
 " Quoted his short 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 condition of 
 our country. I cannot conceive a time or a state 
 
228 LETTERS, ETC. 
 
 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 com- 
 pelled 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 par- 
 
LETTERS, ETC. 2£9 
 
 taker 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 visiters. The less the independence of mar- 
 ried 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 per- 
 manent aversions, and, what is the same thing, 
 permanent alienations proceed from this cause, all 
 which might have been avoided by each of the 
 
30 LETTERS, ETC. 
 
 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 sym- 
 pathies may appear to be circumscribed, in the 
 other, dislike is quickly ripened into aversion." 
 
 1832. 
 " I fear that the Revolutionary 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 con- 
 dition of the agriculturists — both labourers and 
 proprietors. If what is charged against Goody 
 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 
 
LETTERS, ETC. 231 
 
 of very doubtful, nay, dangerous policy, merely 
 because it would double his own wealth, when 
 earnestly exhorted 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 know- 
 ledge never denied. The miserable policy of men 
 like Peel will have its reaction during this genera- 
 tion ; 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 
 manifestation 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 In- 
 terest as a class, are daily being subdivided. The 
 result of great and constant subdivision is a daily 
 increasing antagonism — or general indifference 
 
232 LETTERS, ETC. 
 
 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 dis- 
 similar, 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 in- 
 telligence and mental activity, in those at least who 
 are to effect any great changes in our social con- 
 dition. Owen of Lanark fulfils this condition, as 
 all his life has been devoted to extend and improve 
 the happiness of those under his controul 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, 
 
LETTERS, ETC. 9.33 
 
 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 argu- 
 ment either in force or variety." 
 
234 LETTERS, ETC. 
 
 With reference to the early project of Coleridge, 
 Southey, and others, to form a community on the 
 banks of the Susquehannah, 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." 
 
 " 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 revolution) ; 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 
 
LETTERS, ETC. 235 
 
 revolution in an orbit of its own. What I dared 
 not expect from constitutions of Government and 
 whole nations, I hoped from Religion 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 generation, was to have combined the inno- 
 cence 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 undivided Dale of Industry. 
 
 ' And oft, soothed sadly by some dirgeful wind, 
 Muse on the sore ills I had left behind/ 
 
 " Strange fancies ! and as vain as strange ! Yet 
 to the intense interest and impassioned zeal, which 
 called forth and strained every faculty of my intel- 
 lect for the organisation 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 icealth and relative power of nations 
 
236 LETTERS, ETC. 
 
 promote or impede their welfare and inherent 
 strength," 
 
 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. 
 
LETTERS, ETC. 237 
 
 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 pos- 
 sessed 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 without 
 deserving ; of wishing the end and overleaping the 
 means, which is now soon to find its retribution. 
 Look at those beautiful 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 
 
238 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 soci- 
 ety 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 appli- 
 cation, 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 employ- 
 ing the " surplus population ! 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 
 
LETTERS, ETC. 239 
 
 Rights 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 per- 
 haps 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 necessary 
 as they are distasteful. You shall have your own 
 independence, 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 cheer- 
 fulness ; 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, 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. 
 
240 LETTERS, ETC. 
 
 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 Recoil and 
 Re-action. 
 
 end or VOL. II. 
 
 LONDON: 
 BRABlil'RY AND EVANS, PRINTERS, \VHITEI'R1AI!S. 
 
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