Biographia Epistolaris Part 33

Sir Humphry Davy's description of Coleridge at this date is well known, and we must quote it; "Coleridge has left London for Keswick. During his stay in town I saw him seldomer than usual; when I did see him, it was generally in the midst of large companies, where he is the image of power and activity. His eloquence is unimpaired: perhaps it is softer and stronger. His will is less than ever commensurate with his ability.

Brilliant images of greatness float upon his mind, like images of the morning clouds on the waters. Their forms are changed by the motions of the waves, they are agitated by every breeze, and modified by every sunbeam. He talked in the course of an hour of beginning three works; he recited the poem of 'Christabel' unfinished, and as I had before heard it. What talent does he not waste in forming visions, sublime, but unconnected with the real world! I have looked to his efforts, as to the efforts of a creating being; but as yet he has not laid the foundation for the new world of intellectual forms" ('Fragmentary Remains', p. 74).

Southey had now returned from Portugal, and was also in London ('Southey's Letters', i, 183). It was not till September, 1803, that Southey came to Keswick ('Southey's Letters', i, 229-31). During the interval Coleridge had written various things for the 'Morning Post', the most outstanding contributions being the two powerful letters to Fox of 4th and 9th November 1802, written on the occasion of that statesman going to Paris and paying court to Napoleon. The next eight letters to Thomas Wedgwood give the best impression of Coleridge between October 1802 and February 1803.

Letter 111 To Thomas Wedgwood

Keswick, Oct. 20, 1802.

My dear sir,

This is my birthday, my thirtieth. It will not appear wonderful to you, when I tell you, that before the arrival of your letter, I had been thinking with a great weight of different feelings, concerning you, and your dear brother, for I have good reason to believe, that I should not now have been alive, if in addition to other miseries, I had had immediate poverty pressing upon me. I will never again remain silent so long. It has not been altogether indolence, or my habit of procrastination which have [1] kept me from writing, but an eager wish,--I may truly say, a thirst of spirit, to have something honourable to tell you of myself.

At present I must be content to tell you something cheerful. My health is very much better. I am stronger in every respect, and am not injured by study, or the act of sitting at my writing desk; but my eyes suffer if at any time I have been intemperate in the use of candle-light. This account supposes another, namely, that my mind is calm, and more at ease. My dear sir, when I was last with you at Stowey, my heart was often full, and I could scarcely keep from communicating to you the tale of my distresses, but could I add to your depression, when you were low?

or how interrupt, or cast a shade on your good spirits, that were so rare, and so precious to you? ...

I found no comfort but in the driest speculations;--in the 'Ode to Dejection', which you were pleased with. These lines, in the original, followed the line "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 was my sole resource, my only plan And that which suits a part infests the whole, And now is almost grown the temper [2] of my soul.

I give you these lines for the spirit, and not for the poetry. ...

But better days are arrived, and are still to come, I have had Visitations of Hope--that I may yet be something of which those who love me may be proud.

I cannot write that without recalling dear Poole. I have heard twice, and written twice, and I fear by a strange fatality, one of the letters will have missed him. Leslie [3] was here some time ago. I was very much pleased with him. And now I will tell you what I am doing. I dedicate three days in the week to the 'Morning Post', and shall hereafter write, for the far greater part, such things as will be of as permanent interest as any thing I can hope to write; and you will shortly see a little essay of mine, justifying the writing in a newspaper.

My comparison of the French with the Roman Empire was very favourably received. The poetry which I have sent is merely the emptying out of my desk. The epigrams are wretched indeed, but they answered Stuart's purpose, better than better things. I ought not to have given any signature to them whatsoever. I never dreamt of acknowledging either them, or the 'Ode to the Rain'. As to feeble expressions, and unpolished lines--there is the rub! Indeed, my dear sir, I do value your opinion very highly. I think your judgment on the sentiment, the imagery, the flow of a poem, decisive; at least, if it differed from my own, and if after frequent consideration mine remained different, it would leave me at least perplexed. For you are a perfect electrometer in these things--but in point of poetic diction, I am not so well satisfied that you do not require a certain aloofness from the language of real life, which I think deadly to poetry.

Very soon however I shall present you from the press with my opinions full on the subject of style, both in prose and verse; and I am confident of one thing, that I shall convince you that I have thought much and patiently on the subject, and that I understand the whole strength of my antagonist's cause. For I am now busy on the subject, and shall in a very few weeks go to press with a volume on the prose writings of Hall, Milton, and Taylor; and shall immediately follow it up with an essay on the writings of Dr. Johnson and Gibbon, and in these two volumes I flatter myself I shall present a fair history of English Prose. If my life and health remain, and I do but write half as much, and as regularly as I have done during the last six weeks, this will be finished by January next; and I shall then put together my memorandum-book on the subject of Poetry. In both I have endeavoured sedulously to state the facts and the differences clearly and accurately; and my reasons for the preference of one style to another are secondary to this.

Of this be a.s.sured, that I will never give any thing to the world in 'propria persona' in my own name which I have not tormented with the file. I sometimes suspect that my foul copy would often appear to general readers more polished than my fair copy. Many of the feeble and colloquial expressions have been industriously subst.i.tuted for others which struck me as artificial, and not standing the test; as being neither the language of pa.s.sion, nor distinct conceptions. Dear sir, indulge me with looking still further on in my literary life.

I have, since my twentieth year, meditated an heroic poem on the 'Siege of Jerusalem', by t.i.tus. This is the pride and the stronghold of my hope, but I never think of it except in my best moods. The work to which I dedicate the ensuing years of my life, is one which highly pleased Leslie, in prospective, and my paper will not let me prattle to you about it. I have written what you more wished me to write, all about myself.

Our climate (in the north) is inclement, and our houses not as compact as they might be, but it is a stirring climate, and the worse the weather, the more unceasingly entertaining are my study windows, and the month that is to come is the glory of the year with us. A very warm bed-room I can promise you, and one at the same time which commands the finest lake and mountain view. If Leslie could not go abroad with you, and I could in any way mould my manners and habits to suit you, I should of all things like to be your companion. Good nature, an affectionate disposition, and so thorough a sympathy with the nature of your complaint, that I should feel no pain, not the most momentary, at being told by you what your feelings require at the time in which they required it; this I should bring with me. But I need not say that you may say to me,--"You don't suit me," without inflicting the least mortification. Of course this letter is for your brother, as for you; but I shall write to him soon. G.o.d bless you,

S. T. COLERIDGE.

Thomas Wedgwood, Esq.

[Footnote 1: 'Sic.']

[Footnote 2: Cottle prints "temple," an error.]

[Footnote 3: The eminent Edinburg Professor. For three years the private tutor of Mr. T. Wedgwood (Cottle). [For further information regarding John, aftwards Sir John, Leslie (1766-1832) see 'Tom Wedgwood' by Lichfield.]]

LETTER 112. TO THOMAS WEDGWOOD

Keswick, November 3, 1802.

Dear Wedgwood,

It is now two hours since I received your letter; and after the necessary consultation, Mrs. Coleridge herself is fully of opinion that to lose time is merely to lose spirits. Accordingly I have resolved not to look the children in the face, (the parting from whom is the downright bitter in the thing) but to go to London by to-morrow's mail.

Of course I shall be in London, G.o.d permitting, on Sat.u.r.day morning. I shall rest that day, and the next, and proceed to Bristol by the Monday night's mail. At Bristol I will go to "Cote-House"[1] At all events, barring serious illness, serious fractures, and the et cetera of serious unforeseens, I shall be at Bristol, Tuesday noon, November 9.

You are aware that my whole knowledge of French does not extend beyond the power of limping slowly, not without a dictionary crutch, through an easy French book: and that as to p.r.o.nunciation, all my organs of speech, from the bottom of the Larynx to the edge of my lips, are utterly and naturally anti-Gallican. If only I shall have been any comfort, any alleviation to you I shall feel myself at ease--and whether you go abroad or no, while I remain with you, it will greatly contribute to my comfort, if I know you will have no hesitation, nor pain, in telling me what you wish me to do, or not to do.

I regard it among the blessings of my life, that I have never lived among men whom I regarded as my artificial superiors: that all the respect I have at any time paid, has been wholly to supposed goodness, or talent. The consequence has been that I have no alarms of pride; no "cheval de frise" of independence. I have always lived among equals. It never occurs to me, even for a moment, that I am otherwise. If I have quarrelled with men, it has been as brothers or as school-fellows quarrel. How little any man can give me, or take from me, save in matters of kindness and esteem, is not so much a thought or conviction with me, or even a distinct feeling, as it is my very nature. Much as I dislike all formal declarations of this kind, I have deemed it well to say this. I have as strong feelings of grat.i.tude as any man. Shame upon me if in the sickness and the sorrow which I have had, and which have been kept unaggravated and supportable by your kindness, and your brother's (Mr. Josiah Wedgwood) shame upon me if I did not feel a kindness, not unmixed with reverence towards you both. But yet I never should have had my present impulses to be with you, and this confidence, that I may become an occasional comfort to you, if, independently of all grat.i.tude, I did not thoroughly esteem you; and if I did not appear to myself to understand the nature of your sufferings; and within the last year, in some slight degree to have felt myself, something of the same.

Forgive me, my dear sir, if I have said too much. It is better to write it than to say it, and I am anxious in the event of our travelling together that you should yourself be at ease with me, even as you would with a younger brother, to whom, from his childhood you had been in the habit of saying, "Do this Col." or "don't do that." All good be with you.

S. T. COLERIDGE.

Thomas Wedgwood, Esq.[2]

[Footnote: 1 Westbury, near Bristol, the then residence of Mr. John Wedgwood.]

[Footnote 2: Letters Cx.x.xII-Cx.x.xIV follow 112.]

LETTER 113. To THOMAS WEDGWOOD

Keswick, January 9, 1803.

My dear Wedgwood,

I send you two letters, one from your dear sister, the second from Sharp, by which you will see at what short notice I must be off, if I go to the "Canaries", If your last plan continue in full force, I have not even the phantom of a wish thitherward struggling, but if aught have happened to you, in the things without, or in the world within, to induce you to change the place, or the plan, relatively to me, I think I could raise the money. But I would a thousand-fold rather go with you whithersoever you go. I shall be anxious to hear how you have gone on since I left you. You should decide in favour of a better climate somewhere or other. The best scheme I can think of, is to go to some part of Italy or Sicily, which we both liked. I would look out for two houses. Wordsworth and his family would take the one, and I the other, and then you might have a home either with me, or if you thought of Mr.

and Mrs. Luff, under this modification, one of your own; and in either case you would have neighbours, and so return to England when the home sickness pressed heavy upon you, and back to Italy when it was abated, and the climate of England began to poison your comforts. So you would have abroad in a genial climate, certain comforts of society among simple and enlightened men and women; and I should be an alleviation of the pang which you will necessarily feel, as often as you quit your own family.

I know no better plan: for travelling in search of objects is at best a dreary business, and whatever excitement it might have had, you must have exhausted it. G.o.d bless you, my dear friend. I write with dim eyes, for indeed, indeed, my heart is very full of affectionate sorrowful thoughts toward you.

I write with difficulty, with all the fingers but one of my right hand very much swollen. Before I was half up the "Kirkstone" mountain, the storm had wetted me through and through, and before I reached the top it was so wild and outrageous, that it would have been unmanly to have suffered the poor woman (guide) to continue pus.h.i.+ng on, up against such a torrent of wind and rain: so I dismounted and sent her home with the storm in her back. I am no novice in mountain mischiefs, but such a storm as this was, I never witnessed, combining the intensity of the cold, with the violence of the wind and rain. The rain drops were pelted or slung against my face by the gusts, just like splinters of flint, and I felt as if every drop cut my flesh. My hands were all shrivelled up like a washer-woman's, and so benumbed that I was obliged to carry my stick under my arm. O, it was a wild business! Such hurry skurry of clouds, such volleys of sound! In spite of the wet and the cold, I should have had some pleasure in it, but for two vexations; first, an almost intolerable pain came into my right eye, a smarting and burning pain; and secondly, in consequence of riding with such cold water under my seat, extremely uneasy and burthensome feelings attacked my groin, so that, what with the pain from the one, and the alarm from the other, I had "no enjoyment at all"!

Just at the brow of the hill I met a man dismounted, who could not sit on horse-back. He seemed quite scared by the uproar, and said to me, with much feeling, "O sir, it is a perilous buffeting, but it is worse for you than for me, for I have it at my back." However I got safely over, and immediately all was calm and breathless, as if it was some mighty fountain put on the summit of Kirkstone, that shot forth its volcano of air, and precipitated huge streams of invisible lava down the road to Patterdale.

I went on to Grasmere. [1] I was not at all unwell, when I arrived there, though wet of course to the skin. My right eye had nothing the matter with it, either to the sight of others, or to my own feelings, but I had a bad night, with distressful dreams, chiefly about my eye; and waking often in the dark I thought it was the effect of mere recollection, but it appeared in the morning that my right eye was blood-shot, and the lid swollen. That morning however I walked home, and before I reached Keswick, my eye was quite well, but "I felt unwell all over". Yesterday I continued unusually unwell all over me till eight o'clock in the evening. I took no "laudanum or opium", but at eight o'clock, unable to bear the stomach uneasiness and achings of my limbs, I took two large tea-spoons full of Ether in a wine gla.s.s of camphorated gum-water, and a third teaspoon full at ten o'clock, and I received complete relief; my body calmed; my sleep placid; but when I awoke in the morning, my right hand, with three of the fingers, was swollen and inflamed. The swelling in the hand is gone down, and of two of the fingers somewhat abated, but the middle finger is still twice its natural size, so that I write with difficulty. This has been a very rough attack, but though I am much weakened by it, and look sickly and haggard, yet I am not out of heart. Such a 'bout'; such a "periless buffetting," was enough to have hurt the health of a strong man. Few const.i.tutions can bear to be long wet through in intense cold. I fear it will tire you to death to read this prolix scrawled story.