Biographia Epistolaris Part 13

LETTER 47. TO THOMAS POOLE, OF STOWEY. DEDICATION TO THE "ODE TO THE DEPARTING YEAR."

My dear Friend,

Soon after the commencement of this month, the editor of the 'Cambridge Intelligencer' (a newspaper conducted with so much ability, and such unmixed and fearless zeal for the interests of piety and freedom, that I cannot but think my poetry honoured by being permitted to appear in it) requested me, by letter, to furnish him with some lines for the last day of this year. I promised him that I would make the attempt; but almost immediately after, a rheumatic complaint seized on my head, and continued to prevent the possibility of poetic composition till within the last three days. So in the course of the last three days the following Ode was produced. In general, when an author informs the public that his production was struck off in a great hurry, he offers an insult, not an excuse. But I trust that the present case is an exception, and that the peculiar circ.u.mstances which obliged me to write with such unusual rapidity give a propriety to my professions of it: "nec nunc eam apud te jacto, sed et ceteris indico; ne quis asperiore limae carmen examinet, et a confuso scriptum et quod frigidum erat ni statim traderem." (I avail myself of the words of Statius, and hope that I shall likewise be able to say of any weightier publication, what 'he'

has declared of his Thebaid, that it had been tortured with a laborious polish.)

For me to discuss the 'literary' merits of this hasty composition were idle and presumptuous. If it be found to possess that impetuosity of transition, and that precipitation of fancy and feeling, which are the 'essential' excellencies of the sublimer Ode, its deficiency in less important respects will be easily pardoned by those from whom alone praise could give me pleasure: and whose minuter criticisms will be disarmed by the reflection, that these lines were conceived "not in the soft obscurities of retirement, or under the shelter of Academic Groves, but amidst inconvenience and distraction, in sickness and in sorrow."[1]

I am more anxious lest the 'moral' spirit of the Ode should be mistaken.

You, I am sure, will not fail to recollect that among the ancients, the Bard and the Prophet were one and the same character; and you 'know'

that although I prophesy curses, I pray fervently for blessings.

Farewell, Brother of my Soul!

--O ever found the same And trusted and beloved!

Never without an emotion of honest pride do I subscribe myself

Your grateful and affectionate friend, S. T. COLERIDGE.

[Bristol, December 26, 1796.]

[Footnote 1: From the Preface to the first Edition of Johnson's _Dictionary of the English Language._]

CHAPTER IV

CONTEMPORARY PORTRAITS OF COLERIDGE

(From Mr. Wordsworth's Stanzas written in my Pocket-copy of Thomson's 'Castle of Indolence'.)

With him there often walked in friendly guise, Or lay upon the moss by brook or tree, A noticeable Man with large grey eyes, And a pale face that seemed undoubtedly As if a blooming face it ought to be; Heavy his low-hung lip did oft appear, Deprest by weight of musing Phantasy; Profound his forehead was, though not severe; Yet some did think that he had little business here:

Sweet heaven forefend! his was a lawful right: Noisy he was, and gamesome as a boy; His limbs would toss about him with delight, Like branches when strong winds the trees annoy.

Nor lacked his calmer hours device or toy To banish listlessness and irksome care; He would have taught you how you might employ Yourself; and many did to him repair,-- And certes not in vain; he had inventions rare.

For Josiah Wade, the gentleman to whom the letters, placed at the beginning of the last chapter, were written, the fine portrait of Mr.

Coleridge by Allston, (nearly full length, in oils,) was painted at Rome in 1806,[1]--I believe in the spring of that year. Mr. Allston himself spoke of it, as in his opinion faithfully representing his friend's features and expression, such as they commonly appeared. His countenance, he added, in his high poetic mood, was quite beyond the painter's art: "it was indeed "spirit made visible"."

Mr. Coleridge was thirty-three years old when this portrait was painted, but it would be taken for that of a man of forty. The youthful, even boyish look, which the original retained for some years after boyhood, must rather suddenly have given place, to a premature appearance, first of middle-agedness, then of old age, at least in his general aspect, though in some points of personal appearance,--his fair smooth skin and "large grey eyes," "at once the clearest and the deepest"--so a friend lately described them to me,--"that I ever saw," he grew not old to the last. Sergeant Talfourd thus speaks of what he was at three or four and forty. "Lamb used to say that he was inferior to what he had been in his youth; but I can scarcely believe it; at least there is nothing in his early writing which gives any idea of the richness of his mind so lavishly poured out at this time in his happiest moods. Although he looked much older than he was, his hair being silvered all over, and his person tending to corpulency, there was about him no trace of bodily sickness or mental decay, but rather an air of voluptuous repose. His benignity of manner placed his auditors entirely at their ease; and inclined them to listen delighted to the sweet low tone in which he began to discourse on some high theme. At first his tones were conversational: he seemed to dally with the shallows of the subject and with fantastic images which bordered it: but gradually the thought grew deeper, and the voice deepened with the thought; the stream gathering strength, seemed to bear along with it all things which opposed its progress, and blended them with its current; and stretching away among regions tinted with etherial colours, was lost at airy distance in the horizon of fancy. Coleridge was sometimes induced to repeat portions of 'Christabel', then enshrined in ma.n.u.script from eyes profane, and gave a bewitching effect to its wizard lines. But more peculiar in its beauty than this was his recitation of 'Kubla Khan'. As he repeated the pa.s.sage--

A damsel with a dulcimer In a vision once I saw: It was an Abyssinian maid, And on her dulcimer she played Singing of Mount Abora!

--his voice seemed to mount and melt into air, as the images grew more visionary, and the suggested a.s.sociations more remote."[2]

Mr. De Quincey thus describes him at thirty-four, in the summer season of 1807, about a year and a half after the date of Mr. Allston's portrait.

"I had received directions for finding out the house where Coleridge was visiting; and in riding down a main street of Bridgewater, I noticed a gateway corresponding to the description given me. Under this was standing, and gazing about him, a man whom I shall describe. In height he might seem to be above five feet eight: (he was in reality about an inch and a half taller;) his person was broad and full, and tended even to corpulence: his complexion was fair, though not what painters technically style fair, because it was a.s.sociated with black hair: his eyes were large and soft in their expression: and it was from the peculiar appearance of haze or dreaminess, which mixed with their light, that I recognised my object. This was Coleridge. I examined him steadfastly for a minute or more: and it struck me that he saw neither myself nor any object in the street.

He was in a deep reverie, for I had dismounted, made two or three trifling arrangements at an inn door, and advanced close to him, before he had apparently become conscious of my presence. The sound of my voice, announcing my own name, first awoke him; he started, and for a moment, seemed at a loss to understand my purpose or his own situation; for he repeated rapidly a number of words which had no relation to either of us. There was no 'mauvaise honte' in his manner, but simple perplexity, and an apparent difficulty in recovering his position among daylight realities. This little scene over, he received me with a kindness of manner so marked that it might be called gracious.

Coleridge led me to a drawing room and rang the bell for refreshments, and omitted no point of a courteous reception. He told me that there would be a very large dinner party on that day, which perhaps might be disagreeable to a perfect stranger; but, if not, he could a.s.sure me of a most hospitable welcome from the family. I was too anxious to see him, under all aspects, to think of declining this invitation. And these little points of business being settled, Coleridge, like some great river, the Orellana, or the St. Lawrence, that had been checked and fretted by rocks or thwarting islands, and suddenly recovers its volume of waters, and its mighty music, swept, at once, as if returning to his natural business, into a continuous strain of eloquent dissertation, certainly the most novel, the most finely ill.u.s.trated, and traversing the most s.p.a.cious fields of thought, by transitions, the most just and logical, that it was possible to conceive."

I will now present him as he appeared to William Hazlitt in the February of 1798, when he was little more than five and twenty.

"It was in January, 1798, that I rose one morning before daylight, to walk ten miles in the mud, to hear this celebrated person preach. Never, the longest day I have to live, shall I have such another walk as this cold, raw, comfortless one, in the winter of the year 1798. 'Il y a des impressions que ni le temps ni les circonstances peuvent effacer.

Dusse-je vivre des siecles entiers, le doux temps de majeunesse ne pent renatre pour moi, ni s'effacer jamais dans ma memoire.' When I got there, the organ was playing the hundredth psalm, and when it was done, Mr. Coleridge rose and gave out his text. "He departed again into a mountain 'himself alone'." As he gave out this text his voice 'rose like a stream of rich distilled perfumes;' and when he came to the two last words, which he p.r.o.nounced loud, deep, and distinct, it seemed to me, who was then young, as if the sounds had echoed from the bottom of the human heart, and as if that prayer might have floated in solemn silence through the universe. The idea of St. John came into my mind, of one crying in the wilderness, who had his loins girt about, and whose food was locusts, and wild honey. The preacher then launched into his subject, like an eagle dallying with the wind. The sermon was upon peace and war--upon church and state--not their alliance, but their separation--on the spirit of the world, and the spirit of Christianity, not as the same, but as opposed to one another. He talked of those who had inscribed the cross of Christ on banners dripping with human gore.

He made a poetical and pastoral excursion,--and to shew the fatal effects of war, drew a striking contrast between the simple shepherd boy, driving his team afield, or sitting under the hawthorn, piping to his flock, as though he should never be old, and the same poor country lad, crimped, kidnapped, brought into town, made drunk at an alehouse, turned into a wretched drummer-boy, with his hair sticking on end with powder and pomatum, a long cue at his back, and tricked out in the finery of the profession of blood.

Such were the notes our once loved poet sung:

and for myself, I could not have been more delighted if I had heard the music of the spheres. Poetry and Philosophy had met together, Truth and Genius had embraced, under the eye and with the sanction of Religion.

This was even beyond my hopes. I returned home well satisfied. The sun that was still labouring pale and wan through the sky, obscured by thick mists, seemed an emblem of the 'good cause'; and the cold dank drops of dew, that hung half melted on the beard of the thistle, had something genial and refres.h.i.+ng in them." [3]

A glowing dawn was his, but noon's full blaze Of 'perfect day' ne'er fill'd his heav'n with radiance.

Scarce were the flow'rets on their stems upraised When sudden shadows cast an evening gloom O'er those bright skies!--yet still those skies were lovely; The roses of the morn yet lingered there When stars began to peep,--nor yet exhaled Fresh dew-drops glittered near the glowworm's lamp, And many a s.n.a.t.c.h of lark-like melody Birds of the shade trilled forth'mid plaintive warbling.

The princ.i.p.al portraits of Coleridge are, besides the one by Allston referred to by Sara Coleridge, engraved by Samuel Cousins, one by Peter Vand.y.k.e, painted in 1795; one by Hanc.o.c.k, drawn in 1796; another by Allston, unfinished, painted in Rome; one by C. R. Leslie, taken before 1819, one by T. Phillips, belonging to Mr. John Murray, engraved for the frontispiece of Murray's edition of the 'Table Talk'; another by Phillips, in the possession of William Rennell Coleridge, of Salston, Ottery St. Mary; and a crayon sketch by George Dawe, now at The Chanter's House. These portraits have often been engraved for biographies and editions of Coleridge's 'Poems'. Vand.y.k.e's portrait appears in Brandl's Life and d.y.k.es-Campbell's edition of the 'Poems'; Hanc.o.c.k's in the Aldine edition of the 'Poems'; and Leslie's in the Bohn Library 'Friend' and in E. H. Coleridge's 'Letters of S. T. C'.

Allston's portrait of 1814 is given in Flagg's 'Life of Allston'. The two best reproductions of Vand.y.k.e's and Hanc.o.c.k's portraits are to be found in Cottle's 'Early Recollections'.

A small portrait in oils (three replicas), taken by a Bristol artist, 'circ.' 1798, engraved for Moxon's edition of 1863.

A portrait in oils by James Northcote, taken in 1804 for Sir G.

Beaumont, engraved in mezzotint by William Say.

A portrait in oils taken at the Argyll Baths, 'circ.' 1828 (see 'Letters', 1895, ii, 758).

A pencil sketch of S. T. C., et. 61, by J. Kayser (see 'Letters', ii, frontispiece).

[Bust by Spurzheim. Bust by Hamo Th.o.r.n.ycroft, Westminster Abbey.]

[Footnote 1: An error of Sara Coleridge. This portrait was painted for Wade in Bristol, 1814: and is now in the National Portrait Gallery (Flagg's 'Life of Allston', pp. 105-7). The portrait of 1806 was given to Allston's niece, Miss R. Charlotte Dana, Boston.]

[Footnote 2: Talfourd's full description is found in "Final Memorials of Ch. Lamb", last chapter.]

[Footnote 3: Hazlitt's full description is found in 'Essays of William Hazlitt', Camelot Series, pp. 18-38.]