!i » SAMUEL TAYLOR COLERIDGE ENGLISH ROMANTIC SCHOOL. SAMUEL TAYLOR COLERIDGE ENGLISH ROMANTIC SCHOOL. './flHlfi4/ . '/ft ///"> ^'l>/f^>/t/f/> i SAMUEL TAYLOR COLERIDGE ENGLISH ROMANTIC SCHOOL. By ALOIS BRANDL, PROFESSOR OF ENGLISH LANGUAGE AND LITERATURE, GERMAN UNIVERSITY OF PRAGUE. ENGLISH EDITION BY LADY EASTLAKE. [Assisted by the Author.) WITH PORTRAIT. ' ^ or THf ^"\ UHIVERSITT J LONDON: JOHN MURRAY, ALBEMARLE STREET, 1887. LONDON: PRINTED BY WILLIAlSl CLOWES AND SONS, Limited, STAMTORD STREET AND CHARING CROSS. I TO PROFESSOR JACOB SCHIPPER. 57SbS AUTHOR'S PREFACE, If Coleridge at this day is not quite unknown in the country whose influence on the intellectual life of England he, with Carlyle, did most to promote, the merit is due before all to Freiligrath, the editor of the Tauchnitz edition of his poems, and the author of a masterly translation of the " Ancient Mariner " ; to Gervinus, who in his work on Shakespeare gave copious quotations from Coleridge's critical notes; and to Brandes, who in the ' Hauptstromungen der Literatur des 19'^" Jahrhunderts ' has given us a kind of instan- taneous photograph of Coleridge's poetical, political, and theological activity. The difficulty, especially for a foreigner, of duly describing so many-sided a man, is one on which I have never entertained the slightest self-deception. His life is rich in psychological problems. As a poet he presented in a period of formal school-prescription A UTHOR 'S PRE FA C£. an example of inspired genius, in which, nevertheless, we have to see nothing mar\'ellous, but merely the natural working of cause and effect. Those, further, who would investigate the sources of his aesthetic and theological opinions must feel their way through a very labyrinth of English, Greek, and German writings. At the same time he stood in the closest connection with the great events of the age. In his hopes, fears, and efforts the outbreak and collapse of the French Revo- lution are reflected — the wars of Napoleon, and that of German Independence — the rise of Socialism, and the first triumphs of Liberalism. This task is one which I have undertaken alitiost against my will. At first I only intended to trace in a single essay the influence of the German school of literary criticism on that of England, which is practi- cally that of Coleridge. But the Essay on his Collective Philosophy soon grew into a volume. And this in its turn struck me as so fragmentary, one-sided, and even as so unjust, that I felt myself bound to attack also the life and the poetry. I fared like the Wedding Guest in the " Ancient Marinerl" . The first impression took me captive ; I could not escape without a glance at the whole, and I was compelled to hear the tale to the last word. On the other hand, to undertake the life of the man without interweaving a history of his literary develop- ment, although usual in England, and still frequent with us, I felt to be not less out of the question. For such AUTHOR'S PREFACE. a limited scheme would, to my feeling, have deprived the story of its point. A poet, as a rule, interests us not because he has gone through this and that, but because he has written this and that. His personality, it is true, comes first, and his natural and acquired character must always be kept in view, but his art is the final end in which all its successes and reverses culminate ; all therefore that he has derived from particular predecessors, all that he has inherited from ' universal tradition, is necessarily included in the picture. Not only are the events of his life to be brought into consistent connection, but every important work by him, whether in prose or verse, has to be compared with those of the same class which have preceded it — I either by himself or by some acknowledged teacher. Thus only can a dilettante history of literaiy men be converted into a scientific history of literature. The outward evidence of such research I have, on the other hand, as far as possible dispensed with. My authorities are only briefly indicated ; for all who care to go further can hardly avoid referring to Alibone's ' Dictionary of English Literature,' where the full titles are given. I mention here, once for all, the slight biography included in Pickering's edition, as well as that by Ingleby and Ashe. ' '■ Both in Germany and England I have received the most kind assistance. Above all am I indebted to Lord Coleridge. No sooner did he hear of my undei-- taking than he not only made over to me the requisite AUTHOR'S PREFACE. family papers, but with the utmost kindness himself became my guide at Ottery St. Mary. Without his help and without also the unique liberality of the British Museum — chiefly through the intervention of Dr. Garnett, the Keeper of Printed Books — the present work could hardly have been possible. From the Imperial Court Library at Vienna, and from the University Libraries of Vienna and Prague I have also derived all the help in their power. To Mr. Hunter, late librarian of Dr. Williams's Library, I am indebted for access to the documents deposited there by Mr. Crabb Robinson, which still contain many a grain of gold not included in the well-known edition. Dr. Edward Schroeder, now Professor at Berlin — formerly at Gottingen, — had the kindness, in spite of pressing occupation, to search the Gottingen records for me. To the Rev. Travers Harford, B.A., I am indebted for copying the Spinoza glosses in University Hall, London ; to the Rev. Mr. Lee, the Superior, and to Mr. Lockhart, the Steward of Christ's Hospital, for interesting particulars ; to Mr. Watts, Fellow of Jesus College, Cambridge, for the same ; and finally, for sympathetic help in the philo- sophical portions to my esteemed colleague Professor Frederic lodl. As regards the special conditions of English thought, I found various friends ever ready to enlighten me viva voce. I need only name Dean Church, Canon Liddon, AUTHOR'S PREFACE. Professor Drummond, Miss Toulmin Smith, Dr. Frederick Furnivall, Mr. C. H. Herford, M.A., Dr. James Syme, and Mr. Henry Sweet, M.A. Nor can I ever forget numerous other instances of kind help which I have experienced, though I refrain from enumerating them further. A. B. Innsbruck, August lS86. Finally I take up the pen again to express my gratitude to Lady Eastlake, the most kind and skilful originator of this English edition, which is in one respect even superior to the German, as it contains the original words of all the quotations. A. B. Innsbruck, March 25///, 1S87. CONTENTS. CHAPTER I. CHILDHOOD AND KOYHOOD. (1772-90.) Birth and Parentage — A Strange Childhood — Christ's Hospital — Discipline and Diet — Rev. James Boyer — The Boy rheumatic — Wishes to be a Shoemaker — Imitates Leander — Studies Plato and Plotinus — Earliest Verses — School-fellows — Charles Lamb — Gift of Talk — French Revolution — Pantheistic Ideas — His only just Punishment — Ode on the Destruction of the Bastille — Monody on Chatterton — English I,andscape school — Bowles — Leaves Christ's Hospital CHAPTER II. AT THE UNIVERSITY. (1791-94.) Cambridge — Happy Time — Obtams Brown's Gold Medal — His Peculiarities — Torrents of Talk — Revolutionary Opinions — Berkeley — Hartley — Priestley — Frend — The French Terror — Godwin — Enlistment — Discharge — Letter to Brother — Return to Cambridge — Southey — Plan of Pantisocracy — Bristol — Lectures — The Fricker Family — The Fall of Robespierre — Return to Cambridge — Kind Treatment there — Leaves Cam- bridge — Aversion to Pitt — Studies Milton — "Religious Musings " 43 CONTENTS. CHAPTER III. rANTISOCRACY. IIRISTOL. (I795-I796-) PAGE In London— At " Salutation and Cat "—To a Young Ass— Rise of Sympathy for the Poor and Oppressed— Note-book— In Bristol —Lectures— Pitt — Thomas Poole— Josiah Wake— Benjamin Hobhouse — Dr. Beddoes — Religious Doubts — Unitarians— "The Devil's Thoughts "—Analysis of " Religious Musings" — Schiller's " Robbers "—Marriage— Life at Clevedon— " The Kolian Harp "—Breach with Southey— Canvass for Watchma7i —Collective Poems — Political Opinions — " Bread-and-cheese Question" — "Fire, Famine, and Slaughter" — Lloyd — Mysticism — Nether Stowcy 93 CHAPTER IV. NETHER STOWEV. WORDSWORTH. (NOVEMBER 1796 TO SEl'TEMBER 1 798.) Happy Life at Stowcy — Thelwall— Toulmin Mackintosh — Words- worth — Influence of Wordsworth — " Osorio " and Sheridan — " Ode onDeparling Year " — " Destiny of Nations" — " France" — Sonnets by Higginbottom — Visit from Lamb — Opium — " Kubla Khan" — Mental Diseases of Poets — "Frost at Mid-^ night "— " Lewti "—"The Nightingale "— " Fears in Solitude^ — Coast of Devonshire with Wordsworth — Attempt to Compose together — "Ancient Mariner" — " Christabel " ^- Lyrical Ballads — Contemporary Criticism of " Ancient Mariner "^The term " Lake Poets" — Money Embarrassments — Preaching — Hazlitt — The Wedgwoods — Again Religious Doubts — Departure for Ccrmany with Wordsworths 15S CHAPTER V. SEI'TEMIiER 179S TO Al'RIL iSoO. Voyage— Hamburg— Klopstock — Ratzeburg — Lessing's Works- Remarks on Shakespeare- Gottingen— Carlyon— The two Parrj^ CONTENTS. I'AGE — Christian Heyne — Blumenbach — Study of Kant — The Hartz INIountains — Return to Gottingen — Degraded State of Germany — The Brocken— Return to England — Writes for Alorning Post — Becomes a Torj- — Improvises Pitt's Speech — Effect of his X Articles — Editor offers Partnership — Translates Wallenstein and Piccolomini — Much Abused — Leaves London — The Lakes . . 230 CHAPTER VL AT THE LAKES. ILL AND RESTLESS. (SUMMER OF iSoO TO AUTUMN 181O. Greta Hall — Decline of Poetic Inspiration — ^ Mrs. Robinson — Domestic Alienation — Southey at Greta — "Ode to Dejection"— Metaphysics— London— Stoddart— Basil Montague— Humphrey Davy— Wales and Devonshire with Thos. Wedgvirood — 111 — Liverpool — Malta — Sir Alex. Ball — Becomes his Secretary — Naples — Rome — Proscribed by Napoleon — Pope Pius VII. — Leaves Rome in Disguise — Genoa — Smuggled on Board Ship — Returns to England — Bristol — De Quincey — • Lecturing in London — • The Friend — "Christopher North" — Goethe's \ "Faust" — Immoderate use of Opium — Unhappy Family Relations—Leaves Keswick, never to return 266 CHAPTER VII. IN HAMMERSMITH, AND AT CALNE. /ESTHETIC WORKS. (AUTUMN OF 181O TO SPRING OF 1816.) With the Morgans at Hammersmith — Writing for Courier and Morimig Post — Lectures on English Philosophy and Literature — Crabb Robinson — Jean Paul — Maass — Successful Lectures on Shakespeare and Milton — Schlegel's Work on Shakespeare — A Letter to Crabb Robinson — The Times — Second Course of Lectures on Shakespeare — Lord Byron — "Remorse" — Removal to Calne — Lectures at Bristol — Laudanum becomes his Bane — ' Biographia Literaria ' — How received — "Zapolya" — Essays on the Fine Arts — Letters to Justice Fletcher on the .Irish — With the Gillmans at Highgate 313 CONTENTS. CHAPTER VIII. AT HIGHGATK. THEOLOGY. (1816-1834.) PAGE Highgate— Happy Life with Gillman? — Numerous Visitors— Pulilic Respect for him — Reconciled to the Church — ' Lay Sermons ' — Second edition of Friend — Publication of " Christabel " — Bankruptcy of Fenner — Letter to Judge Coleridge — Seventh Course of Lectures — "Essay on Beauty'' — Royal Literary w Society — Tieck — ' Aids to Reflection ' — Irving — Basil Montague — His " Confessions" — ' On Constitution of Church and State' — ' History of Jests of Maxilian, Satyrane's Cousin ' — His own Epitaph — Death — High Estimate of him — Accusations of ■^ Plagiarism — Summary of Character 348 I UHIVER8IT1 LIFE OF COLERIDGE. CHAPTER I. CHILDHOOD AND BOYHOOD. (1772-9O.) " The future seraph in my niortal frame." — To an Infanf. Birth and Parentige — A Strange Childhood — Christ's Hospital — Discipline and Diet — Rev. James Boyer — The Boy rheumatic — Wishes to be a Shoemaker — Imitates Leander — Studies Plato and Plotinus — Earliest Verses — School-fellows — Charles Lamb — Gift of Talk — French Revolution — Pantheistic Ideas — His only just Punishment — Ode on the Destruction of the Bastille — Monody on Chatterton — English Land- scape School — Bowles — Leaves Christ's Hospital. Samuel Taylor Coleridge was bom on the 21st October, 1772, — a critical time in the world's history. This was the period when the three Powers first com- bined for the partition of Poland ; when France, under the rule of the aged Louis XV., and he under that of Madame Dubarry, had sunk to the lowest stage of irresponsible government ; when England, represented by an obsequious Parliament, debated how best'^ to impose a system of taxation on her American colonies ; and even when, what seems now strangest of all, English B LIFE OF COLERIDGE. vessels took the lead as the keenest slave-traders on the high seas. To this state of high-handed policy the literature of the day opposed a strong counter-current. The letters of Junius roused the minds of English patriots ; the ' Confessions ' of Rousseau exposed in coarsest colours the artificial conventions of French social life ; while in Germany the writings of Lessing and Goethe contributed to set in motion the irresistible storm and stress of reactionary feeling which overran the world. The Revolution was in the air, and Coleridge, both as poet and thinker, was stirred in his deepest soul by it. The little town of Ottery St. Mary was his birthplace. Both native British and ancient Roman remains abound in that locality. In the old city of Exeter Saxon inhabitants had manfully resisted the Norman invaders -, while many a brilliant adventurer such as Drake and Raleigh was born in that neighbourhood. In the old vicarage on this historic ground the future poet first saw the light, being cradled next an old Gothic stone fire-plac(^ which still exists, and within view of the weather-beaten pointed arches of the fine old church of St. Mary, His father, John Coleridge, a remarkable and self-made man, was descended from a family of simple wool- dealers in the town of South Molton, but, like the middle class of the eighteenth century in general, he contrived — in spite of adverse fortune — to raise himself to con- siderable intellectual eminence. The bankruptcy of his I772-90- LIFE OF COLERIDGE. 3 father drove the penniless boy into the streets, whence he was rescued by a benevolent patron, and before he was twenty a poor girl married him. For all that, he managed to go, or be sent, to Cambridge, where he studied hard, and took Holy Orders. From 1760 he held the Vicarage of Ottery St. Mary, and conducted the Free Grammar-school. On the death of his wife he married again, and, with narrow means and the gout in his system, realised the difficulty of providing for a rapidly increasing family. But, though never free from the cares of life, his resources were equal to them. If preaching and teaching were the duties of his pro- fession, teaching, at all events, was the delight of his heart. He accordingly set up a private academy next door to the Grammar-school, undertook about twenty boarders, pushed them on in Latin and Greek as far as Aristophanes and Euripides, and'gave them mathematics, astronomy, and French in addition — all for the sum of sixteen guineas a year. He also found time in his double capacity of pastor and master to publish various works, theological and philosophical ; never omitting, as in duty bound, to make them the advertisements for his own school. Nor could he be accused of neglecting his own children, or the souls of his parishioners ; indeed, his enthusiasm in the servace of the last-named bordered on the ridiculous, for he would occasionally quote the Bible to the poor labourers in what he believed to be the original Hebrew, so that they might hear, as he thought, the very words used by the Holy Spirit. B 2 LIFE OF COLERIDGE. In the year of Samuel's birth he wrote a * Critical Latin Grammar,' for the purpose of simplifying the rules for the use of his pupils — one suggestion being to exchange the names of the cases for terms of greater significance ; for example, that of the ablative, for "the qualc-quare-quidditive case"; while, under the delusion that it would interest the unfortunate victims, he appended to it a tremendously learned treatise on the origin of the Latin alphabet. A certain grotesque conscientiousness thwarted his best intentions. He recognised the sanctity of earthly duties, and exerted himself honestly to fulfil them ; though generally carried away by fits of absence and total ignorance of the world into oblivion of them. All who knew him, appreciated the rectitude and disinterestedness of his character. Many of the neighbouring gentry subscribed regularly for his books, sent their children to his school, and sought his acquaintance ; and the Bishop of Exeter invited him to his table. For all that, his books remained unread — even uncut — and many an anecdote circulated at his expense. Leaving home once for a few days, his wife placed a neat bundle in his knapsack, adding, " Mind you put on a clean shirt every day." On his return she found the knapsack empty. He had obeyed her literall}- as to donning the clean shirt, but had omitted to take off the dirty one. He was a strange being, and it is no wonder that his son, though looking back upon him with the tcndcrest respect, should have compared him to Parson Adams— equally as apt to lose himself in the clouds. 1772-90. LIFE OF COLERIDGE. 5 The economical cares of the family weighed chiefly upon the mother, by name Anne Bowden, but the good woman's back was suited to the burden. Her ancestors, from the time of Queen Elizabeth, had been small land- holders in Exmoor, and her soul was not above her descent. Not that she was without education. Her signature is firm and free, though evidently not called often into requisition. As far as can be judged, she possessed a sound understanding, and she looked up to her husband with all the reverence due to his profession. What a healthy appetite for work appears in the tone with which she used to warn her marriageable sons against " your harpsichord young ladies ! " Nor could there be any doubt of the courage of the woman who undertook to marry the unpractical vicar, already the father of three children. And this courage was needed more and more, as she presented him year after year with fresh olive-branches, till they numbered no less than ten — one daughter, and nine sons in addition, — for whom, however, they managed to provide in a highly respectable fashion. Two sons entered the church, three the army, one was a medical man, two died young, while the hero of our tale, who was the youngest, cannot, in a practical and worldly sense, be said to have afforded her much satisfaction. From her he inherited his homely and unconventional habits, from his father the fatal gift of transcendental aims. As long as he belonged to the nurseiy he was her favourite, but once full-grown, he fell low in her esteem. This became laughably apparent on LIFE OF COLERIDGE. one occasion, when, after a long absence, during which he had reaped considerable literary fame, he returned to Ottery. This was in 1799, by which time his mother had become too deaf to hear what was going on ; yet, as he engaged in a lively argument with his brothers, she was so convinced that Samuel must be in the wrong, that she exclaimed, " Oh, if your poor father had been alive, he would soon have convinced you ! " The tone which prevailed in the family was a truly English mixture of freedom of thought and submission to authority. The Rev. John Coleridge was apt to consider the Holy Scriptures from a poetical point of view. In his ' Miscellaneous Dissertations on chapters xvii. and xviii. of the Book of Judges,' he endeavoured to explain prophetic visions on physiological principles, as attribu- table to a temporary suspension of bodily consciousness. At the same time, far from doubting any portion of the Scriptures, he gave, as in duty bound, every prophecy and miracle his unqualified subscription. As regards the literature of the day, he detested the measured, in- sipid, rhetorical, pseudo-classical correctness of the school of Pope. According to a sentence in his grammar, " Artificial rules hamper a great genius. A soaring mind will wear no shackles." At the same time he defended this view by pointing to great classical examples. lie appealed to the metrical liberties taken by Homer and Virgil, and quoted Longinus — "The sublime is born with man, and cannot be taught." He chose a similar middle-course in politics. He did not 1772-90. LIFE OF COLERIDGE. " 7 hesitate to denounce the fratricidal war with America, soon after its outbreak, from the pulpit. So earnest and overpowering were his words, that, by the desire of his congregation, the sermon was printed. With a side glance, at its close, at the government of the day, he uttered the warning, " May a spirit of mercy and right- eousness govern our State." At the same time, no revolutionary idea ever entered his head. He was a loyal subject of his sovereign. He repudiated all such modern writers as Rousseau, with his fiction of a pre- historic contract between a People and their Ruler. Government in his eyes was not so much a human as a Divine institution ; War, not only a diplomatic folly, but the judgment of the Most High on the wickedness of the age. " Lead godly lives, and the Almighty will grant you peace." Two opposing tides — healthy en- lightenment and a mystical faith — crossed and recrossed each other in his mind ; the rationalistic spirit of the eighteenth century contending perpetually with an ever active imagination. No father more likely to be succeeded by such a son could well have existed. Samuel Taylor Coleridge showed from his earliest years an astonishing capacity. At three years of age he read a chapter of the Bible, and entered the Grammar- school. At six years of age — the year of Voltaire's and Rousseau's death — he joined the lowest Latin class. He was a prodigy ; all the old women in Ottery agreed on that point, and he agreed with them also, and went his own peculiar way. While his brothers were romping LIFE OF COLERIDGE. out of doors, he was sitting by his mother, reading the legends of Tom Hickathrift, Jack the Giant-killer, the Arabian Nights, conquering or begging with Belisarius, or wandering with Robinson Crusoe on desert islands in dread of cannibals. He played but seldom, and then generally alone ; chiefly acting such scenes as he had read. With a little stick he decapitated weeds and nettles, and fancied himself one of the "Seven champions of Christendom." At most he admitted his one sister into his confidence, who rambled with him over hill and dale. We shall find these pleasant recollections reflected in his earliest poems. Instead of joining in active sports with other boys, the little fellow lived in dreams, and soon nothing was too strange or monstrous for him to believe. On the other hand, no attempt on his father's part to point out the different planets, and explain their mar- vellous mass and distance, excited his astonishment. His head ran upon ghosts. As he lay ill of some childish but infectious ailment, he wondered why no Lady Northcotc of that day came to see him. "The four Guardian Saints (Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John) who stand round my bed are not afraid of catching the fever." His delusions at length became so strong as to alarm his father, and his ghost and witch stories were banished. Alluding later to this time in letters to friends, Coleridge admitted that, though simple and innocent as a child, he had none of childhood's thoughts and habits. He possibly exaggerated his own infantine I772-90- LIFE OF COLERIDGE. 9 oddities, for with increasing years he rather coveted and assumed childlike ways. Poets are the least trustworthy of autobiographers ; and Coleridge of all poets, with his mystical vein, his feverish imagination, and his tendency to view all things with the inward, rather than the out- ward eye, lived habitually in a world of visions. They raised him, it is true, above the commonplaces of life, but also occasionally let him down to earth in rather humiliating fashion. The death of his father (1781) roused the child rather roughly from his dreams. The apparently robust man died from a stroke, at the age of sixty-two. The mother remained in Ottery till her own death, in 1809 ! but the vicarage had to be vacated. The brother George offered to carry on the education of the boy, but was bound meanwhile for Oxford, where three years later he took his degree. So the family broke up ; when a former and grateful pupil of the old vicar's — a member of one of the best families in the neighbourhood. Sir Francis Buller — obtained him a presentation to Christ's Hospital School in London. Thither the future poet was transferred, at the beginning of May 1782, not quite ten years of age. The woods of Ottery were clothing themselves with tenderest green when he entered the grey, busy city, '' where I saw naught lovely save sky and stars." Separated thus from the paternal nest, " ere my soul had fixed her fond domestic loves," he had yet lived too idyUic a life in the country ever to turn into a towns- boy ; and in tracing his further development, it must /- piece of intelligence I could collect, alike tend to assure me that it may be done by interest, but not by negotiation, without an expense which I should tremble to write. Forty guineas were offered for a discharge the day after a young man was sworn in, and were refused. His friends made interest, and his discharge came down from the War Office. If, however, negotiation 7n7ist be first attempted, it will be ex- pedient to write to our Colonel — his name is Gwynne — he holds the rank of General in the army. His address is ' General Gwynne, K.L.D., King's Mews, London.' "My assumed name is Silas Tomkyn Comberbach, 15th, or King's Reg. of Light Dragoons, G. Troop. My number I do not know — it is of no import. The bounty I received was six guineas and a half; but a light horseman's bounty is a mere lure. It is expended for him in things which he must have had without a bounty — gaiters, a pair of leather breeches, stable jacket and shell ; horse-cloth, surcingle, watering bridle, brushes, and the long etcetera of military accoutrement. I enlisted the 2nd of December, 1793, was attested and sworn on the 4th. I am at present nurse to a sick man, and .shall, I believe, stay at Henley another week. There will be a large draught from our regiment to complete our troops abroad. The men were picked out to-da}'. I suppose I am not one — being a very indocile equestrian. Farewell ! S. T. COLERIDGE. "February 20th, 1794. Our regiment arc at Reading and Hounslow, and 1791-94- LIFE OF COLERIDGE. 67 Maidenhead and Kensington — our headquarters, Read- ing, Berks. The commanding officer there, Lieutenant Hopkinson, our adjutant. " To Captain James Coleridge, Tiverton, Devonshire.^'' It is rather strange that Captain Ogle, who, accord- ing to Coleridge's daughter, Miss Mitford, and other vouchers, passed for his only liberator, should not have been so much as named in this letter. It fell to the brother to exert himself for the unhappy dragoon. Samuel was granted his dismissal on the loth of April, 1794, on the plea of respect for his position in life, and for his relations. He departed gaily, though not without emotion. His friends fetched him in a coach, the officers shook hands with him, and his astonished comrades gave him three cheers, as, with tears in his eyes, he drove away. He now returned to Cambridge, where the summer term had just begun. The whole episode was characteristic of his future doings. The authorities of Cambridge received him with a kindness which in the end proved beneficial to the Church. He was censured by Dr. Pearce in the presence of the assembled Fellows ;* and that was his sole punishment. Nor were his misdemeanours even reported to Christ's Hospital, though those of the brothers Le Grice had been carefully made known there. * "1794, Apr. 12. Coleridge admonitus est per Magistrum in praesentia Sociorum." (Adm. B.) F 2 68 LIFE OF COLERIDGE. chap. ir. Coleridge found himself recognised and treated as a man of extraordinary ability. Even those who, like the author of the prize poems and future Archdeacon, Wrangham, lamented his principles, admired his genius. For all that he took no pleasure in his college, and laid no value on its privileges. He withdrew generally from the prescribed attendance at chapel, and preached up Deism. We find him again on the move in June — the summer term only expired on the 6th of July — this time taking a cheerful excursion in Wales. His companion was a fellow-scholar, by name J. Hucks — a tolerable poet and great lover of nature — an enemy equally to atheism, and to all government ; full of interest and pity for the people, a gentle-hearted hater of tyrants, who in every old castle saw only a shameful monument of feudal oppression. We have to thank him for a short account of this tour in the form of letters. (' A Pedestrian Tour through North Wales." London, 1795.) These two plodded about together in Rousseau fashion, "exploring the hidden beauties" of nature by the ingenuity of man " unmcchani/xd," and when they met dancing peasants (which we should think was seldom !) they thought sorrowfully "of that happy age when all mankind were brothers." Each carried suffi- cient clothes for three months in a knapsack. It was a regular escape from Europe's over-whitewashed cul- ture. Not but what they would have preferred some primordial American forest. 1791-94- LIFE OF COLERIDGE. 69 Such an extension of their plans was really proposed by Coleridge, at their first halt in Oxford. For this purpose his old school-fellow Allen, the sharer of his love secrets, whom he found installed in University College, made him acquainted with a fellow-enthusiast of kindred energy, prepared not only to dream about such a Utopia, but to put it into practice ; with no less a man, namely, than Robert Southey. Southey was born in Bristol, Chatterton's native city, and seemed to have equally inherited the poverty and the enthusiasm, the hatred for prince and priest, the love of nature, and the romance of his unhappy predecessor. He was about two years younger than Coleridge, and like him had been placed in a strict London school, and finally expelled from it, because in a school periodical called " The Flagellant " — founded for the express purpose — he had boldly proved from the Fathers of the Church that flogging was an invention of the Devil ! The Oxford masters were preparing him for the career of a theologian, but he detested their intolerance and pedantry. He had already written a drama on Wat Tyler's insurrection, preaching the most modern com- munism under this mediaeval form ; also an epic poem on the Maid of Orleans, which gave him opportunity to contrast the French love of freedom with the despotic proclivities of his own countrymen. As a conscientious Freethinker, and a poetic Godwinian, he now welcomed his kindred spirit from Cambridge, with a frank look, a ready hand and ostentatiously uncut 70 LIFE OF COLERIDGE. chap. ii. hair. No time was lost in swearing eternal friend- ship with a heartiness which now prevailed between the leading poets on both sides of the Channel ; ( \ each, after the fashion of Goethe and Schiller, contri- buting to complete the other, and each equally capti- vating the other. The most romantic friendship quickly ensued. Next followed the plan of a " Pantisocracy " — the new- coined name for an equally new-coined society. This society, which was to be founded in America upon con- ditions of ideal equality, was the first point of their bond. Neither party had the patience to allow any time for the natural progress of the human race, or for the work of future generations. The ideal was to be at once converted into the real. Even the English Radical was pronounced too phlegmatic to proceed at the desired pace. Coleridge compared " these parliamentary oscil- lators " to ducks, who at one moment boldly lift their heads above the mill-pond, and the next moment, at the least word of the minister, plunge them into the blackest mud below. It is true the French Revolution had been victorious, but it was not to be denied that the tyranny of the king had been replaced by one in the name of Freedom of a still worse kind. It was all very well to respect the principle which Robespierre had represented, but his guillotine was a horror. Europe also was still too steeped in the tra- ditions of despotism to answer their purposes. Why attempt to break the shackles of oppression by means 1791-94. LIFE OF COLERIDGE.. 7'I sure to be slow and tedious, and probably bloody, when an undefiled region lay ready for them on the other side of the Atlantic ? Southey had for years longed for a hut in America, and Coleridge now proposed to found a colony somewhat after the fashion of one named ^ " Platonopolis," a model city, which his old friend Plotinus i/ had with imperial aid endeavoured to establish in Campania, in the third century after Christ. In this transatlantic Paradise there were to be no exclusive privileges, no private property, no public guardianship, and therefore no selfishness, no sin, and no violation of laws. The new order of things of course required a new name. Democracy implied a previous division into upper and lower classes, which was exactly what they wanted to avoid ; and hence a term was created which for years after remained the watchword of the two friends. The way in which they initiated their propaganda was significant of their different natures. After three weeks' stay in Oxford, Coleridge began his tour of fraternity. Taking a circuitous route, he marched round the coast of North Wales, hobnobbed with hospitable royalists, and talked politics over a glass of beer ; scribbled verses of revolutionary moral on the window-panes of wayside inns, and fraternised demonstratively with the unwashed. In his admiration for nature, also, he was so careless of his own safety as to be surprised in a fit of absence by the rising tide on the shore of Beaumaris, and only just rescued in time by the fishermen, who sheltered him. 72 LIFE OF COLERIDGE. CHAr. u. cold and wet, in their huts. This episode he celebrated in an outburst, addressed to the Rev. W. J. Hort : " Freedom's undivided Dell, Where Toil and Health with mellowed Love shall dwell. Far from folly, far from men, In the rude romantic glen." Southey, on the other hand, acted and provided. He gained the sympathy of Allen. He won the adhesion of George Burnett, a farmer's son, who was also preparing for a clerical life in Balliol College. These two shook the dust off their feet as they left the university after the summer term, and discussed their project on their way home. A few cheerful hours devoted to labour in the forenoon were to suffice to earn them board and lodging. Trees would have to be felled ; the trunks to build the house, the branches for firing. The art of handling such primitive implements as axe and plough would present no difficulty ; and for cooking and other house- work, each emigrant was to take a wife with him. By far the larger portion of the day was to be reserved for J social intercourse, and literary production. With such discussions Southey beguiled the way to [Bath, where his mother and aunt resided, and where he immediately ordered a stout linen coat, an article which, as the son of a linen-draper, he may be supposed to have under- stood. His mother and brother also entered readily into the plan. Nothing was wanted except the pecuniary means for the journey, purchase of land, and of agri- cultural implements ; his mother had no monc}-, and his 1791-94- LIFE OF COLERIDGE. 73 aunt closed her door against him. Accordingly, in the first week of August 1794, he went to Bristol, where Coleridge had just arrived, in order to consult with him as to their further steps. That miserable money which had hitherto so persistently eluded their possession — and the use of which, with the utmost contempt, they now purposed for ever to renounce — proved an inexorable barrier to further proceedings. Romance knocked her head against the wall of the matter of fact. If they could but persuade some people of good means to join them ! The locality was not unfavourable to this hope. Bristol, with its 100,000 inhabitants (London had then only 651,000, Liverpool 47,000, and Berlin 134,000), was the second largest city in England, and, situated at the mouth of the Avon, carried on a lucrative trade with Ireland, Scotland and America. In matters of religion great toleration prevailed, which stood the Unitarians in good stead. Political freedom,, also, was so pronounced, that in October 1793, the people twice burnt the gates of the Custom House ; and despite the interference of the military, successfully resisted the imposition of an excise duty on articles of consumption. At the same time, the character of society was literary ; theatre and music were patronised, five newspapers and several circulating libraries sup- ported. A number of authors and authoresses also resided in the city ; among whom Mrs. Hannah More took the most prominent place. Southey had a few good friends here ; one of them, Robert Lovell — the 74 LIFE OF COLERIDGE. chap. ii. somewhat eccentric son of a wealthy Quaker — was an admirer of Chatterton, and himself an author ; and through Lovcll, Coleridge became known to Joseph Cottle, a young publisher, well-to-do, good, harmless, and vain ; a writer of memoirs, a poet of semi-religious and heroic subjects. The friends met with a friendly re- ception, but Lovell alone declared himself in favour of the proposed emigration, and the expense could not be laid on him only ; so the chief difficulty remained unsolved. The requisite wives were more easily obtained. A poor pastrycook, of the name of Fricker, had left a widow and six children — excellent people, not devoid of pride, whom, it is true, no one credited with any brilliant qualities, but of whom Byron only, in thoughtless joke, ever said a disparaging word. They lived in a quiet way upon Redcliffe Hill, at the south-east end of the city, directly opposite the slender Gothic tower and the churchyard of St. Mary Redcliffe, where Chatterton used to indulge his mediaeval dreams. The five daughters supported themselves in highly respectable fashion by needlework and teaching, and one tried her fortune as an actress. Mary was already engaged to Lovell, and Southey was in love with Edith — how tempting it was to Coleridge to strengthen the tie of friendship with the connection of a brother-in-law ! Sarah, or as Coleridge pleased to call her, Sara, was the eldest and reckoned the handsomest. She was a brunette, also nearly two years older than he ; nor was she distinguished for any 1791-94- LIFE OF COLERIDGE. 75 particular culture ; but she had taught herself singing, showed an active, ready disposition, and was altogether a straightforward, honest girl. Little deviations from drawing-room manners only gave her an extra charm. In the memoir of her daughter, she is described with warm affection as the pattern of feminine freshness and practical sense. Coleridge's mother would never have included her among " the harpsichord young ladies." It was not long before the twenty-two-year-old student had approached her at least half-way in court- ship. Southey was astonished. In Oxford, Mary Evans had still been mistress of his heart. In June 1794, Coleridge had written, in verses called " The sigh ! " — " Though in distant cHmes I roam, A wanderer from my native home, Thy image may not banished be ; Still, Mary! still I sigh for thee." In the meanwhile, under the pretext of prudence, though not without a coquettish assumption of com- passion, Mary had broken the tie between them. On his pedestrian tour he had accidentally, as he main- tained, turned his steps to Wrexham, where her married sister, with whom he corresponded, resided ; and while standing in a fit of absence at the inn window, he suddenly saw both the sisters pass by. In his own words, " I sickened, and well-nigh fainted, but instantly retired within." " The ladies themselves both started and gave a short cry, almost a faint shriek." Then he wrote on the 22nd July to a college friend at Cambridge 76 LIFE OF COLERIDGE. chap. ii. " She lives, but no longer for me — perhaps already the bride of another, and fresh from his embraces." Thus, with a new vacancy in his heart, the ardent young poet arrived at Bristol, and crossed the threshold of the Frickers' house. To all appearance he had but few more months to spend in England. Sara admired him, as many another had done, and was too much a child of nature to conceal her feelings. She was even ready to go with him to America, and Heine's " old story " was revived with a few slight changes. " In the wood- bine tower she owned her love, and let me kiss my own warm tear from off her glowing cheek." Now he was all'ready to depart ; i.e., as soon as money was obtained, and the now approaching winter over ; and the voyage was fixed for the month of March. Thus the most extravagant act of his life gave him the companion of it. The Pantisocratic mania of brotherly union became meanwhile so catching that Burnett now came forward to demand the hand of a fourth Miss Fricker ; Miss Martha, however, had too much sense and self-respect to consent to engage herself in a hurry. She did not intend to lend herself as a performer in this epidemic of matrimony, but determined to be chosen for herself alone. She accordingly contemptuously declined the offer, and preferred to die an old maid. With love thus clamorous with three couples, the question of the money took an acute form. The three poetic swains held serious counsel together. Did they not carry bills of acceptance on the nibs of their own pens ? 1791-94- LIFE OF COLERIDGE. 77 Southey was ready to publish his "Joan of Arc," and Coleridge his " Imitations from the Modern Latin Poets," both by subscription. Nor was this enough. A still more interesting work in a higher region of interest was proposed, and no sooner proposed than carried out in strict pantisocratic partnership. This was a tragedy on the Fall of Robespierre. It was probably the author of Wat Tyler who had the credit of this idea, for Coleridge, as, he once owned, had no inclination in that line. The fact of Robespierre's fall was itself not more than a month old, having occurred on the 27th July, 1794; and the majority of the dramatis personcs were still living on the banks of the Seine. But such actuality was as welcome to the Coleridgian school of romance as platonism, or fables, or any other conditions unconventional enough to allure the instinctive elements of poetry. Had not the very execution of Louis XVI. been already woven by an Irishman of the name of Preston into a pathetic tragedy, and that even in the very year 1793 when it happened? In order to insure a freshness of perform- ance on a par with that of the material, the three poets decided that the three acts — the first by Coleridge, the second by Southey, and the third by Lovell — should be delivered within four-and-twenty hours. Coleridge accordingly brought a part of his task by the next evening, though requiring several days for its completion. Southey, the fertile writer that was to be, accomplished the whole within the time ; and Lovell did the same by the third act ; only unfortunately it did not agree with 78 LIFE OF COLERIDGE. CHAP. ir. the two others, and had to be entirely recast by Southey. A dedication to Mrs, Hannah More was now added, and the work was complete. The consistency of the piece was sufficiently preserved, and for that they were indebted to the revolutionary papers which the authors had largely consulted, and whence they drew that especial conception of Robespierre, which represented him as great in his object but unscrupulous in his means ; as "a tyrant for his country's freedom"; with many a tirade of immovable confidence in the proceedings of the Revolution. As to the artistic unity of the piece, there was not much to be said. The characters, namely, which Coleridge inaugurated, were not carried on by Southey even in the rudest outlines, and one can only admire the prudence of the Bristol publisher who declined to accept the proffered copyright. At the beginning of September, the continuation of the pecuniary dilemma took Coleridge to London, and thence, after a short stay, back to Cambridge. In both places, as far as in him lay, he exerted himself in the furtherance of the pantisocratic scheme. In London he renewed his acquaintance wdth " Charles " — the name by which Lamb was known to him, — and raved so passionately about America that Lamb first laughed at him, and then took flight from the anger he had excited in this " fool of a genius " (* Southey 's Correspondence '). Lamb, however, made him acquainted with George Dyer, once a Christ's Hospital boy, who, following in the steps of Junius, Howard, and the "Rights of Man," had 1791-94- LIFE OF COLERIDGE. 79 just fired off a daring pamphlet against the inordinate sinecures of the upper classes, the misery and mis- management of prisons and hospitals, the utter want of education in the poor, and the barbarous punishments sanctioned by our laws ('Complaints of the Poor,' 1793). From Dyer he received words of the utmost encourage- ment, but no promise of coalition. Then he visited his old haunts in the Hospital, shook Favell and the younger Le Grice by the hand, both of whom stood at the head of the school, and won them over to pantisocracy ; finding them willing disciples in all respects, " <})p€vBa)Taroi fiera -on in " The Devil's Drive." Ii8 LIFE OF COLERIDGE. chap. iii. It was at this time that Coleridge took part in that new modelling of "Joan of Arc," which Southey found necessary as soon as he began to print it. At twenty years of age our young student had purposed writing an epic poem on the fall of Jerusalem, but had wandered off into the "Religious Musings," which in many respects recalled the "Paradise Lost." The more interest did he take in this first important attempt to renew the art of the epic romance. In the introduction he set himself to polish many a rough blank verse, as is evident from the still preserved MS. in the British Museum. For the second book he undertook — Southey watching carefully at his elbow — to contribute a considerable portion of the dream of the Maid of Orleans, at first incorporated in the original edition, but later published separately, under the title of " The Destiny of Nations." This fragment is more closely related to the "Religious Musings" than to any other poem by Coleridge; indeed, may be said to have grown out of it; though on nearer examination exhibiting no small difference ; and in the meanwhile, the description, both of the natural and supernatural, may be compared — to use a painter's expression — to the realism of the Netherlandish school. The introduction in both poems is a Song of praise to the Platonic God ; to the infinite Love which informs " myriads of self-conscious mind.s," " atoms numberless," and monads. And then, not content with generalities, he enlists more individual forms, summons the mystic monsters of Greenland, "with pitying spirits who make 1795-96. LIFE OF COLERIDGE. 119 their moan o'er slaughtered infants," " or that giant bird Vuokho, the beat of whose wings is Tempest ;" and that nameless monster who dwells as destructive principle in the depths of the ocean. Wild phantasies, yet wise ; adding, as if in his own excuse, " Till Superstition, with unconscious hand, Seat Reason on her Throne." This is the preamble. With a sudden turn, " and such perhaps the spirit who held commune with that warrior- maid of France who scourged the invader," he leaps to a winter scene in a rude village, describing it with a reality of which his earlier poems afford no parallel. He thus exchanges the aristocratic guidance of Spenser and \ Milton for the humbler one of Cowper. For the maid as here depicted is the exact counterpart of Cowper's honest peasant girl, in the Winter Evening, in the " Task" — "artless and dignified, like the fair shepherdess of old romance." One winter's evening she finds in the wilderness of snow a countryman with horses and cart, which he describes with almost the nicety of Cowper in the " Task," with the same poor mother with her children " crowded beneath the coverture," "lifeless all, yet lovely." Originally, with an anticipation of Wordsworth's manner, he gave the number of the children, viz., six — " but why not nine ? " as Lamb, in one of his letters, banteringly asks him. His democratic tendency is more evident here than in his former years. The poor country- man — husband and father — has been driven from his village by the invading English, his cottage burnt, and LIFE OF COLERIDGE. his wife and children frozen to death ! Such are the effects of war ! And, in his search for suitable detail, he describes the cold suckling on the mother's arm, " the crisp milk frozen on its innocent lips." And now follows the vision of Joan, " stung with too keen a sympathy," as explained by her guardian spirit. She sees the chaos that preceded Time. The difficulty for the poet was to present that which was formless under any intelligible shape. He compares it " with slimy shapes, and miscreated life," poisoning with long and pestful calm " the vast Pacific," till at length " the fresh breeze wakens the merchant sail uprising." This was a description not imagined, but borrowed from some equatorial voyager, and repeated later in the " Ancient Mariner." Milton had helped himself out with the ever substantial forms of waves, flames, and volcanoes ; and Coleridge himself, in the " Religious Musings," with the abstract expression, " an anarchy of spirits." Here he has found for the Inexpressible a positive image, con- juring up an appearance of reality, without diminishing the sense of mysterious vagueness. We are intended to feel ourselves arm-in-arm with the Supernatural, and to shudder at it. From chaos now emerges a " hell-hag, foul bringcr of tyranny and war." In the " Religious Musings " she is seated, in Miltonian fashion, in an underground cave, " unconquerable, huge ; Creation's eyeless drudge "... " nursing the impatient earthquake." Now the allegory turns into a vision. The period of the Rococo had 1795-96. LIFE OF COLERIDGE. 121 forgotten how to produce apparitions under the garb of reahty. The writers of that time brought them on the stage suddenly and pompously, wrapped in grave-clothes — as, for instance, in "Admiral Hosier's Ghost " — losing thereby those finer details of preparation and surround- ings intended gradually to excite the credulous elements of the imagination. In this way the Supernatural was no more than an operatic impression. The witches of Macbeth danced a regular ballet on the London stage. Even the old popular ballads were dressed up after a modern fashion. Thus it was that " Margaret's Ghost," recast by Mallet (1759), no longer appeared in the witching hour of midnight, but in the solemn hour of dawn. Unannounced it glides in, with the first stanza, and grinds out its horrors in sprawling rhetoric : " The hungry worm my sister is." This was a defect common to the Rococo school even on the Continent, and first sharply denounced by Lessing in his critique on Vol- taire's ' Semiramis,' where the ghost bursts full drive by open daylight into the assembly of the nation. The classicists were altogether too much occupied with the effect of single verses or expressions not to neglect the finer transitions and organic coherence of the whole. They wrote in epigrams. Only in the popular ballads was the old magic power of ghostly elements preserved ; especially in Scotland, where the feeling of the Middle Ages, properly speaking, extended down to Walter Scott. Lying, as it were, dusty and despised in a corner of the literary lumber-room, till a year after the outbreak of 122 LIFE OF COLERIDGE. chap. hi. the Revolution, Burns pulled it out in his well-known poem of " Tarn o' Shanter," which no longer smells of the dust of the theatre, but of the true brimstone of the infernal regions. Not that Burns can be said to have known the treasure he had discovered. He conceived the grim situation only as a joke. The ghosts are in Tam's own head. The Piper, instead of being the Devil, is the wind. Coleridge was in earnest. He learned from the Scotch the difficult art of properly introducing a witch. A new and fertile field of romance was thus laid open, and Coleridge forthwith began to cultivate it. His note-book (at p. 4) records the old British legend of the fifty king's daughters who were driven by a storm to England, and there in intercourse with devils peopled the island with giants. The fact that between the magic scenes as conceived by Coleridge, and those in " Tam o' Shanter," certain differences existed, is not to be denied. But this proves nothing against the influence of Burns. They point rather to a second teacher, and that a German one, in what may be called " the black art " of poetry. But when the English writers of the Rococo period adopted a foreign poet other than the antique, it was sure to be a Frenchman or an Italian : and the Romantic school took the lead. How heartily does Goldsmith ridicule the unwieldy erudition of the Germans ! " If angels were to write, they would write no folios." Up to the appearance of the " Sorrows of Werther," German had only been learnt for commercial and business 1795-96. LIFE OF COLERIDGE. 123 purposes — as some people learn Russian nowadays. The respect for nationality and for the Middle Ages, the sense of an affinity with other countries, the feeling { y""^^ for German ideas, came first with the Romantic school. " Gessner's Idyls," though still partaking strongly of the pseudo-classic, were the first offspring of the German Muse, which, under the royal House of Hanover, found a welcome in England. That was from 1760 to 1769. Between 1770-79, Werther made its appearance, when „ / the passionate yearning for the larger school of Nature took the place of the pious landscape idyl. The third step was taken by Schiller in his early dramas, which, after the outbreak of the French Revolution, were called for and translated. "The Robbers" especially attracted the friends of freedom by its dissatisfaction with the conventionalities of society and by its impetuous longing for natural rights, even when iron and fire and previous injustice were necessary to attain them. Among the more considerable poets who went with this stream our pantisocrats were the first. Werther influenced Southey, who swallowed him in his school-days and turned a sonnet to " the neglected Albert "; while Coleridge con- temptuously assigned him to the ranks of the whining fashionable romancers ( Watchman, No. IV.). It was different with Schiller. He pleased Southey, who described the last act of " Kabale and Liebe " as " dreadfully affecting," and undertook to write a whole series of Robber tragedies ; while as to our young Titan, Schiller threw him into ecstasy. In the beginning 124 LIFE OF COLERIDGE. chap. hi. of 1795* a college friend, with whom Coleridge had supped, gave him a drama to read, " the very name of which I had never before heard. A winter's midnight, the wind high, and the Robbers for the first time ! The readers of Schiller will conceive what I felt." This is the introduction to an enthusiastic sonnet on Schiller, "the bard, tremendous in sublimity," — evidently the fruit of his first fresh impression. It is easy to see which part of the tragedy attracted him the most ; namely, the voice of the starving father, proceeding from the dark dungeon in the weather-beaten tower. The kindred night-scenes of Burns and Schiller were fused together in Coleridge's imagination. Schiller stood the highest in his opinion, " for human beings agitate and astonish more than all the goblin rout, even of Shakespeare" (Introduction to the Sonnet). He also jotted down fragments of opinion in the note-book among hints for exciting stories. It may truly be said that Schiller impelled him to pursue the doings of demons more from within than from without, thus leading the way to a more impressive and penetrating realism. The remainder of these jottings is less interesting. Now, become riper, and at all events sometimes compelled to resign his own will, he sought more sympathy with the * It was in December 1794, or January 1795, that Coleridge publislicd this sonnet with others in the Morning Chronicle. This is evident from the date of the lectures (February 1795), in which both " The Robbers " and " Cabal and Love " arc mentioned. 1795-96. LIFE OF COLERIDGE. 125 Actual, more embodiment of the Spiritual. The change is seen even in style and metre. The breaks in his blank verse are placed more in the centre of the line, permitting thus, as he expressed himself to his friend Poole (6th May, 1796), "of greater richness." The style of the " Religious Musings " became "more sublime, but has no longer that diffused air of severe dignity which charac- terises my epic slice." From these judgments, passed on himself, it is evident how rightly he took cognisance of what went on in his own mind — like modern poets, generally speaking, who feel their own pulse. In the spring and summer of 1795 he cultivated anew the school of landscape lyrics with erotic colouring, and ^ the more abundantly from the fact that Cottle offered him thirty pounds for the little volume. The former models are still traceable. The manner of Bowles, though quite in a general way, is seen in the musical Sonnet to the river Otter. Coleridge was quick in grasping an idea, though slow in working it out. It seems even as if his chief influence over Southcy consisted in grafting some of Bowles' elegiac enamel upon that poet's fresh but feeble boyishness. Southey writes, with significant con- nection, " my poetic taste has been much ameliorated by Bowles, and the constant intercourse with Coleridge." And now the transference from the American castle in the air to Bristol brought with it a more concrete style. Wherever he went, the passion for his betrothed accompanied him. It kept his heart warm, and his eyes open to the beauties of the surrounding landscape. It 126 LIFE OF COLERIDGE. chap. hi. was bliss for "the poor bard in city garret pent," not only to utter the name of Philomel, but to hear her sing. The sweet beat of her tones wakened a thousand ideas in his seething brain ; but sweeter still sounded the \'oice of his Sara. With a heart fuller than ever of life and love, he looked around him in his walks. His powers of observation were further stimulated by reading Thom- son's " Seasons." An entry in the note-book (p. 4) begins : "The vernal hours" — "Zr^^? Thomson," — and soon follows the date " April day — the sunshine blends with every shower ; and look ! how full and lovely it lies on }-onder hills ! " In May, ascending Brockley Coomb, Somersetshire, he was fairly overpowered by the beauty of the distance. In the Sonnet so entitled he gives for the first time a picture with local colour and characteristic features proper to that jDlace only ; and again he ends with the all-explaining refrain, " O were my Sara but here ! " The deeper his own emotions, the richer and truer was the echo from Nature herself. At length, on the 4th October, 1795, the event he had so ardently desired, came to pass. The young poet, only twenty-three }-cars of age, was married to his lady-love at the beautiful church of St. Mary Redcliffc ; the fine architecture of which inspired the fancy of Chattcrton, and witnessed also the consecration of Southey's love. Coleridge, however, was not likely to think of the beauty of a building which, to his view, represented onl}- the superstition, extortion, and compulsory sci-vice by which it had been erected, and was therefore purchased far too 1795-96. LIFE OF COLERIDGE. 127 dearly. He was, we know, a Pantisocratist, and that not only by public profession. When a friend asked him in confidence — his wife trusting unquestioning to his genius — how he proposed to meet his new responsi- bilities, he pointed straightway to the generosity of his publisher Cottle, who had promised him an honorarium of one-and-a-half guineas for every hundred verses, and had also given him an instalment in advance. What we now call Communism had taken such root in the whole circle, that even this wealthy publisher saw nothing alarming in the declaration given in the preface to the poem called " The Malvern Hills," that "no sentiment has been more detrimental to mankind than the belief that the property we have is our own, and that it is to be hoped that the period is not far removed when every poor man will receive a stipend from the Government under which he lives, rising "in proportion to the number of his children " (Preface to his poem, " The Malvern Hills"). Freely as Coleridge took, he liked also to give ; he agreed, for instance, to give his mother-in- law an allowance of five guineas a quarter ; though he certainly was not often in a position to pay it. Un- encumbered with worldly possessions, and light of heart, the 'new-married couple repaired on their wedding- day to the little sea-side town of Clevedon, about half a day's journey from Bristol ; and there, for two months, enjoyed such happiness as the young bridegroom had only expected on the shores of the Susquehanna. The dream was realised, and all sense 128 LIFE OF COLERIDGE. chav. hi. of disappointment gave way before the feeling of an Elysian bliss. The life at Clev-edon was pure poetry in a Pantisocratic sense. The solitary cottage they inhabited was at the / west end of the little town, and was almost as primitive as if it had been meant for our first parents. It con- sisted only of the ground floor, on a level with the garden, with a rose-tree peeping in at the window. The room they occupied had been simply whitewashed, and that a long time before. Their friend Cottle, who rode out to see them on the fourth day, had the consideration to order a carpet for them. All other arrangements were eminently fitted for a philosopher. The wash-table had no glass, and the kitchen no kettle. The young wife had to dispense with coffee, rice, spice, and a number of other trifles, and among them, not the least, a Bible. But the rent was only five pounds a year, and the young husband nourished the happy conviction of earning all they wanted within a week. Thinking, rhyming, and perhaps some household work, filled up the flying hours. In the well-known note-book (p. 6) he writes : " Men, eager to adulterise my time by absenting me from my wife." And the wife not only shared his society, but also all the delights of his fancy. He dis- coursed to her on Spenser's giants, and on Ossian's heroes ; on the wonderful connection between the spiritual and physical world, and on the All-Incomprehensible ; until the " meek daughter of the family of Christ " re- proved his frcethinking bubble-blowing, and bade him 1795^6. LIFE OF COLERIDGE. 129 " walk humbly with his God," He even tried to rouse her literary ambition ; put some lines of acknowledgment to Cottle, for a silver thimble he had given her, into her mouth, and had them printed in her name. Out of doors, the white-flowering jasmine and the broad-leaved myrtle grew as high as the roof ; undulating meadows and woods stretched out far into the distance ; the lark sang high in the heavens, "viewless, or haply for a moment seen, gleaming on sunny wings ; " and over the silent, fragrant downs the thunder of the waves mur- mured low. How different to noisy, sooty, angular Bristol ! And as he mounted a neighbouring hill for the first time, and overlooked the surrounding country — with the Severn winding bright and full ; with the green fields, the white villages, and the flitting shadows of the clouds ; with the vanishing sails and distant islands — he folded his hands and felt the whole earth to be one temple. Doubly unenvying, yea, even with a kind of compassion, did he now contemplate the gold-seeking Bristol citizens as they walked past of a Sunday, eyeing his little abode with signs of envy. Absorbed in wander- ing thoughts would he sit at noonday on the slope of the hill, viewing through " half-closed eyelids the sunbeams dance like diamonds on the main." Still sweeter was it to sit in the twilight, arm-in-arm with his wife, while the evening star twinkled cheerfully over a darkening world, and when " it was a luxury to be." And further, to add the charm of Nature's music to the ear, he hung up an Eolian harp, on which every breath of air softly played. K I30 LIFE OF COLERIDGE. chap. hi. Reality had now risen to the level of romance ; the unattainable had become true. On the other hand, poetry had become the mirror of reality. This is seen in his poems, " The Eolian Harp," and " Reflections upon an Asylum of Peace " ; the first written in Clevedon, the other shortly after their de- parture. These are the truest and deepest-felt pictures of feeling hitherto found in Coleridge's writings. Even in outward form, in style and metre, these verses show a homely freedom. The inflated tropes which greatly disfigure his youthful effusions are now replaced by affecting repetitions : " Our cot, our cot, o'ergrown With white-flowered jasmin ; " at other times by synonymous expressions : " The stilly murmur of the distant sea Tells us of silence." More significant still is the difierence in the modes of de- scription. His apprenticeship to the school of Milton is, it is true, still unmistakeable. The " Eolian Harp " serves as a cheerful pendant to the sorrowful " Farewell Re- flections," as the "Allegro" does to the " Penseroso." The different situations are arranged according to the divisions of the day : — like Milton, Coleridge's lark sings in the morning, the waters murmur in noonday, while musical sounds — there, of clanging bells, here, of vibrating strings — are heard in the evening. The green radiance also of Wordsworth's glowworm appears again in the diamond gleam of the river's ripples ; while the « 795-96. I^IFE- OF COLERIDGE, 131 half-seen, half-vanished snowflakes of Burns reappear in the lark, now viewless, now seen gleaming on golden wings. But all these features — indoors and out — all these actions in human and animal life are now, as matters of his own experience, closely observed, drawn from Nature herself, and organically worked out We have no longer further to do with literary borrow- ings, but with original perceptions ; only occasionally directed by the ancient models. At the same time, another mind was now at his side, unbiased in view and feeling, and while he gazed fondly upon it, its directness and its honesty infected even him. The description of the Transcendental is now as clearly rendered as that of the Matter-of-fact. We no longer deal with isolated phenomena, but feel that divine omnipotence of life which beats in everlasting love and harmony behind the dial-plate of all earthly things : " And what, if all of animated nature Be but organic harps diversely framed, That tremble into thought ; as o'er them sweeps, • Plastic and vast, one intellectual breeze, At once the soul of each, and God of all ! " Milton had already struggled to represent the idea of the great Soul of the universe. His " Penseroso " travails with a Being, above, below, and around us, — with the ■** unseen Genius of the Wood " — though leading his puritan imagination direct to church music and divine worship. Pope, Thomson, Cowper, and the youthful Wordsworth, all prominent landscape-poets of the K 2 J.IFK OF COLERIDGE. eighteenth century, had striven with the same problem, and only approximately succeeded in describing what they felt, under the image of the revealed Creator. Coleridge comprehended and expressed it at once. His mind had long been prepared for it by the knowledge of Plotinus and Pantheism. In Clevedon, under the spell of the full enjoyment of love and nature, the existence of the Divine Soul of the Universe seemed to be revealed to him with a clearness never realised before, and with it also the power to express it. This was his profound legacy to his successors in landscape poetr\-. Both Wordsworth and Shelley betray his influence when they strike prophetic tones. They also apostrophise birds, heard, but not seen ; Ariel-like Shelley, the lark ; homely Wordsworth, the cuckoo, — pointing by such mysterious music to the all-pervading Unity. Wordsworth at the commencement of his great poem speaks of Nature's EoHan harp, which on beautiful evenings seems to search the very soul ; and Shelley, more strikingly still, recalling Coleridge's melodious simile, carries affection forward into the great Beyond : " Music, when soft voices die, Vibrates on the memory ; So thy thought, when thou art gone, Love itself shall slumber on." We stand now at an important point of oin- poet's development. His lyrical feeling has worked itself out symmctricall)-. He knew well why he called "The Eolian Harp" "the most perfect poem I ever wrote." 1795-96. LIFE OF COLERIDGE. I33 In this sphere he needed to learn nothing further from the art of another. His former models were now laid by like cast-off crutches in a corner ; and not only Gray and Bowles, but also Milton and Spenser. He has learned to stand on his own feet, and from a submissive but never slavish scholar, a master has been formed, who, in his turn, attracts great scholars. Though Coleridge had for a time curbed the restless- ness of his being, he was destined to have no suspension of struggle. The quiet joys of Clevedon were soon interrupted, and the next twelve months only brought a succession of more vexatious disappointments, miseries, and needs than he had ever experienced. The rudest change from sunshine to frost was destined to bring his mind to rapid maturity. The first stab came from his best friend, and not unexpectedly. Southey's long and close association with him had preserved his respect for the poet, but not for the man. He took umbrage at the " inordinate love of talking," with which Coleridge passed hour after hour, without attempting to work for his wife and himself. It provoked him to hear him hold forth in always the same strain, whether on the platform, in the pulpit, or in society. He was irritated on one occasion when, having, by Coleridge's entreaty, ceded one of his lectures — on the decline and fall of the Roman Empire — to him, Coleridge so dreamed and talked away the time that the public, after waiting long, went away grumbling. Then ensued a quarrel between the two, which the 134 LII'E OF COLERIDGE. ciiAr. iii. Frickers and Cottle had some trouble in patching up. This seriously shook the friendship. Southey found that he could not rely on him, and Coleridge, in his turn, shrugged his shoulders at the literary dexterity of his fellow-lodger ; and as marriage now interrupted their daily intercourse, a serious breach took place. About five weeks after Coleridge's establishment in Clevedon, Southey announced to him that the plan of a primeval farm on the shore of the Susquehanna was no longer to be thought of; but that, with the help of a rich uncle, he intended to undertake a journey to Lisbon, for the purpose of studies calculated to fit him, as soon as possible, to earn his bread as an author. He also had a betrothed ; a few days later he was married to Miss Edith Fricker, and the couple left the altar straight for Portugal. Coleridge could not conceal from himself that with Southey 's withdrawal, the American plan lost its chief support. We now hear of a quarto volume he proposed to write on the subject of Pantisocracy, but nothing more of outfit and journey. Those who were to have joined in the plan remained now at home, and came to grief more pitiably there perhaps than they would have done on the other side of the ocean. Lovell died the next year of a fever; Samuel Le Gricc and Favell went as volunteers, and lost their lives in the Spanish campaign; Burnet lived longer, even till 1811, tried his fortune as an inferior jDcnny-a-liner, as a .surgeon, and as a Unitarian preacher, in all unsuccess- fully ; and finally lost himself in moral degradation. 1795-96. LIFE OF COLERIDGE. 135 Coleridge might have had a similar lot but for his genius and his powers of social attractiveness He had no rich uncle to help him; he had also sacrificed more for the chimerical plan, and depended more on its fulfilment. The faithless Southey was now in legal form his brother-in-law, but never again his friend — he might depart even without a shake of the hand. In happy Clevedon he could keep his annoyance to himself, but in the rough weather which awaited him it broke out all the more bitterly. He wrote thus to Cottle on the 22nd of February, 1796, in reference to Cambridge : " I had left my friends; I had left plenty; I had left that ease which would have secured me a literary immortality, and have enabled me to give to the public works conceived in moments of inspiration and polished with leisurely solitude ; and alas, for what have I left them ? For , who deserted me in the hour of distress, and for a scheme of virtue impracticable and romantic." The Sonnet in praise of Southey was now suppressed. Cottle and Charles Lamb had to invoke all the powers of memory and relationship in order, on Southey's return (May 1796), to bring about a reconciliation. Yet Cole- ridge thus complained in 1797: "Friends, like the upas- tree, most false and fair, have tempted me to slumber under their shade e'en mid the storm, and then mixed their own venom with the rain from heaven " (to George Coleridge). Gradually a tolerable understanding was brought about, but the old mutual enthusiasm never 136 LIFE OF COLERIDGE. cuap. hi. returned. It had departed \\'ith the Pantisocratic scheme. Thrown thus, as Coleridge perceived, after the depar- ture of Southey, upon Europe for a home, and on his own Hterary earnings for his support, he could no longer endure the idle life on the Severn. He had begun to print an edition of his collective poems in the summer, and was now obliged to work earnestly at it. He wanted to start a large periodical at once, in order to further the cause of freedom, and that of his own maintenance. But printers and colleagues, newspapers and books, were far off in Bristol. The journey there and back took every time more than a day. In the capacity of editor also, which he undertook at first, he found that he wanted more intellectual stimulus than Sara and Clevedon could supply him. "Good temper and habitual case," he says in his note-book, "are the first ingredients of private society; but wit, knowledge, or originality, must break their even surface into some inequality of feeling, or conversation is like a journey on an endless flat." He therefore took leave of the quiet cot, lightening the adieu by moral reflections: "Was it right, while my unnumbered brethren toiled and bled, that I should dream away the entrusted hours on roseleaf beds ! pampering the coward licart with feelings all too delicate for use." Poetry alone would not in truth have sufficed to fill his life. "The limited splicre of mental activity in an artist," is the sentence jotted down in his note-book. With such in- ward consolation he returned to Bristol at the becrinnincf 1795-96. LIFE OF COLERIDGE. 137 of December 1795. He believed it would only be for a short period, and therefore took up his abode at his mother-in-law's house, and left Sara at Clevedon. But as week after week went by without his return to her, the young wife rebelled against the loneliness, and followed him ; and their residence in the city continued for nearly a year. Coleridge as founder and editor of a newspaper ! A very problematical position ! It is, however, matter of praise that he plunged into the business with the greatest energy. His only fault was that he wanted to do too much. The organ was to be of an exhaustive character — at once newspaper, review and annual register ; with leading articles, parliamentary reports ; with historical and critical essays ; but without adver- tisements — for such services towards the business world smacked too much of bribery. TJie Watchman was to appear weekly, with thirty-two closely printed pages, and warranted to tell the whole truth ; for, according to the motto borrowed from Priestley, " Truth is power, and the truth shall make us free." Friends, although sceptical, were enrolled in the undertaking. Cottle — fourteen helpers in his one person — purchased the paper and undertook to be security to the printer ; Burnet became sub-editor ; and 370 Bristol names were entered as subscribers. The Dreamer seemed to be transformed. At the beginning of January 1796, and in those centres of industry in the west of England, which, as most in communication with the United States, had ijS LIFE OF COLERIDGE. chap. hi. immensely increased in wealth, and independence of opinion, he undertook what may be called a recruiting- tour. In Birmingham he invaded one great merchant after another in his counting-house. The first on whom he stumbled was a haggard, abstemious tallow-chandler. Coleridge argued with him like a lawyer, drew pictures like a poet, prophesied the speedy coming of the mil- lennium like an apostle ; and, for all that, as he has described in the ' Biographia Literaria,' with exquisite self-ridicule, was growlingiy shown the door ; because he offered too many wares. After a few experiences of this kind he contented himself with presenting his letters of introduction, and if invited to remain, he limited the persuasions of his melodious tongue to twenty minutes. With Unitarians, Arians and Trinitarians he preached sedition, and sought to attract subscribers by posting placards. He thus ingratiated himself in all the more important towns, as far as Liverpool, with the radical leaders ; to some of the most pronounced of whom he desired to dedicate Sonnets — as, for instance, to the Re\'. Gilbert Wakefield, who shortly after Avas condemned to two years' imprisonment for a revolutionary pamphlet ; to G. A. Pollen, Esq., M.P., who attacked with speech and pen the corruption of all forms of traditional government ; to Dr. Samuel Parr, who kept a school near Birmingham, was intimate with Chas. Fox and Godwin, and who at a great party on his just past birthday (January 26, 1796), had proposed as a toast, a rope for the Prime Minister's 1795-96. LIFE OF COLERIDGE. 139 neck. The contact with such heroes of the tongue was calculated more and more to inflame the hot-headed young canvasser. His ardent disposition knew no restraint beyond that of an equally exaggerated con- scientiousness. When once induced by the entreaty of an anxious minister to conceal his blue coat and bright buttons beneath what he felt to be the hypocritical black gown, he wrote to Bristol with touching self-reproach : " I plead guilty, my God ! Indeed I want firmness." In Birmingham, at a meeting of kindred souls, who were disposed to take him by the hand, he began his address with the following discouraging announcement : " I am far from convinced that a Christian is permitted to read cither newspapers, or any other works of a merely political and temporal interest." This singular form of persuasion came to a height in Derby, \\here he roundly reprimanded the poet and naturalist Dr. Darwin for his supposed atheism. At Sheffield he forbore to advertise his new project, because a local paper — TJie Iris — had already taken up the cause of freedom with sufficient hardihood. If, in spite of these peculiarities, he returned to Bristol with a list of 1,000 subscribers, it was owing to the sanguine views he propounded everywhere, and partly to the respect that Englishmen feel for a strongly pronounced individuality. And the work itself! Even the first number, an- nounced to appear on the ist March, 1796, was behind its time. The second contained an article which mer- cilessly criticised the official order issued, for a day of I40 LIFE OF COLERIDGE. fasting and prayer, on account of the war ; adding these words from Isaiah : " my bowels shall sound like a harp." The more pious half of his readers felt this to be strangely misplaced, and threw up their subscriptions. Then his more free-thinking readers took umbrage be- cause in the next week he denounced the extreme left of the English Jacobins as immoral, and their chief re- presentative Godwin as "an imp of sensuality." For the first class he was too lax, for the second too prejudiced. The very richness of his intellectual development, which forbade his ever conforming to one only sect, or party, was the perpetual cause of his failure in worldly matters. Opposite complaints arose as to the selection of his subjects. The debates in Parliament were given too lengthily for some, too briefly for others. Some accused him of incompleteness, and yet this part of the work cost him the most trouble. One reader thought the poems scattered in the paper too few, and another thought them too man}-. Instead of fresh orders for subscription came letters of complaint, and those often unfrankcd. Carlyle has imputed to him "indolent impatience of the claims and ignorances of others." This was in point of fact the general impression, but the •cau.sc was attributable rather to an ideal aim to be just to the claims of all. He failed, in .short, by a simple want of common-sense, and had to pay for it by a crash. The tenth number (13th May) was the last. " The undertaking does not pay." The profits did not ■cover the e.\))cnses of the printing and jiapcr, and but 1795-96. LIFE OF COLERIDGE. 14^. for Cottle's generosity, the affair would have ended much worse. " O watchman, thou hast watched in vain ! '' During the next winter Coleridge remarked how much paper the maid stuffed into the stove in order to light the fire, and told her of it. " La ! Sir, why it's only the Watchman^ Nor did his collective poems bring him more profit.^ Not that he can fairly be reproached with indolence in the usual acceptation of the term. Verses that in an access of inspiration he threw off in an hour, would often take him two or three days to polish. Sonnets that had appeared a }'ear before, required to be altered, mode- rated, cleared up. Especially towards the poems of his boyhood was he severe in judgment, and many of the most interesting never appeared till the last edition, in 1834. Even "The Devil's Thoughts" struck him as too vulgar. When, therefore, the volume at last came out in April 1796, it was as good as he could make it, and was sold off in half a year. But it was small, and only brought in just enough to clear off his debts to Cottle. In his position as a married man, he doubtless hoped for more ; for he felt the obligations of duty. But his Pegasus was too fine a creature to submit to the yoke ; though, circumstanced as he was, he would, like Southey, have been the better husband had he been a worse poet. The practical results of both publications, poetical and prosaical, were thus somewhat sad ; but both furthered his intellectual progress. The editorship of the Watchman had obliged him- 142 LIFE OF COLERIDGE. cu.U'. in. to better define his own political views, and to form more decided opinions as to what was going on in the world. Accordingly, the pages of the WatcJivian plainly show how the French excesses led him involun- tarily in a more conservative direction. The first numbers preserved throughout the point of view upheld in the lectures given in the Corn-hall. " Pitt must have surrendered to a foreign clique," — that of the emigrants. "The war means general ruin, and must in time root out the active class of society." Why should not the Government, in view of the insupportable taxes, and of the famine among the people, take measures to mix a little opium with the food supplies, in order to render them more nourishing? This was a sarcastic question which friend Bcddoes, in his "Letter to Mr. Pitt," knowing how readily the populace in various parts had had recourse to this stupefying remedy, had sug- gested ; and, though agreeing literally with the doctor, Coleridge answered, " Opium might import bad habits." Meanwhile the Watchman treated France, up to the middle of April, with decided, though cautious friend- liness. At the same time he wrote in his note-book, with perfect seriousness, a number of furious entries about *' poor John Bull under the custody of a State Argus." ]5ut in the eighth number of the Watchman, of the 22nd April, another tone is heard. Napoleon had just commenced his Italian campaign, and in Paris the Directory had refused England's overtures of peace in order to keep possession of the Netherlands. The war 1795-96. LIFE OF COLERIDGE. 143 was no longer one of defence, but of attack. Coleridge was obliged to confess that the Republic was bent rather on conquering than emancipating other nations, and that it no longer deserved pity, nor even admiration, but reprobation. In an angry protest, the subscriber- less Watchman on the Avon now adjured the ruthless powers on the Seine, in the name of humanity, not to renew the horrors of war ; and in the laconic terms of one now undeceived, he announced the dread proclama- tions of the 15th and 17th April. The scales had now fallen from his eyes. It was no longer a question as to the moral welfare of Europe, but as to the dominion of the sea, and the safety of our Colonies. He now under- stood the eagerness of Pitt regarding the despised West Indian Islands. In the next number he recorded with complacency that Great Britain commanded the whole route to the East Indies, and almost the whole to the West. He felt that the increased demand_^ for English goods, and the flourishing foreign trade, lightened the burden of the National Debt, and the misery of the lower classes. " We have," he says, " the nerves of war, and the splendours of peace." This entire adhesion to these opinions did not, it is true, last long. In Coleridge's mind everything had its time. Burke, who, almost like Mirabeau, had gone over to the Royal party, was compared to a cameleon, " with hues as changing as they are brilliant" iWatcJiman, 17th March), and many a harsh criticism did he deal out, in the next years, on the Government. Especially, he never forgave Pitt for 144 LIFE OF COLERIDGE. CHAr. iir. protecting the slave trade, for fettering the Press and for repressing sentiments of freedom with police regulations. He acknowledged the results with a passmg show of approval, just as one praises a brave enemy. But from first to last he condemned his crooked diplomacy and outwardly violent means. " A state of compulsion, even though that compulsion be directed by perfect wisdom, keeps mankind stationary ; for whenever it is withdrawn, after a lapse of ages, they have to try evil, in order to know whether or no it be not good." What so deeply disappointed him in the French was the want of that feeling for moderation, and the patience necessary for all great aspirations. " Human happiness, like the aloe, a flower of slow growth" (note-book, May 1795). The critical department of the WatcJiman^ and the publication of his poems, led him also to a clearer understanding of his own poetical theories. Till then he had only intimated these theories in his poems or in private notes. Eagerly as, in his boyhood, he had studied both Plato and Plotinus, he had yet, before the date of his "Religious Musings," only expressed himself generally against the stamp of fashion, and in favour of the genuine tones of the heart. Now, as these ideas took greater possession of him, a firmer principle asserted itself The bard and the philosopher are placed in conjunction. " Both brook not wealth's rivalry ; and, long enamoured with the charms of order, they hate the unseemly disproportion." Every word here is platonic. According to Plato, the Beautiful should always be 1795-96- LIFE OF COLERIDGE. 145 united to the Good. " The great poet must also be a character and a thinker, and therefore a great man." This opinion Coleridge always maintained, supported by Southey and Wordsworth, and in contradistinction to Byron and Scott. In this spirit he criticised a sonnet of Lamb's, in 1795, as "having no body of thought." He further sketched the following ideal in his note-book, of a poem in the style of the " Religious Musings," that it should be " peculiar, not far-fetched ; natural, but not obvious ; delicate, not affected ; dignified, but not in- flated ; fiery, but not mad ; rich in imagery, but not loaded with it; — in short, a union of harmony and good sense ; of perspicacity and consciousness. Thought is the body of such an ode ; enthusiasm the soul ; and imagination the drapery." In the " Destiny of Nations " some of his Neo-platonic views come to light. Fancy is the power that first unsensualises the dark mind; giving it new delights; emancipating it from the thraldom of present impulse ; and teaching self-control, which, in the rudest myths, still preserves a glimmer of divine reason. In the same way had Plotinus conceived the Beautiful as the principle which gives form to matter (to the ' Logos ') ; intermix- ing, as he did so, scraps of mythology. In the Watchman he had both motive and oppor- tunity to show the public in intelligible prose what he meant. He began at once ; and in the first number he reviewed the traditional modes of criticism as practised by the chief journals — Gentleinaiis Magadne, Monthly L 146 LIFE OF COLERIDGE. ciiAr. Iir. Reviezv, BritisJi Critic, &c. — and fearlessly declared his disapproval of them. Notices, v/ithout selection and stud)\ now carelessly praising, now rudely blaming, seemed to him to have no merit beyond making a work known. Solid criticism and literary power they possessed not. In this respect his journal was to lead the way to a reform, by onl}' noticing works of acknowledged worth — only one in each number — and that without compliments or prejudice. So far he had promised more than he could at once perform. When the notice of Mr. Ire- land's Shakespeare articles — soon found to contain the stupidest misconceptions — appeared from Coleridge's own hand, it proved to be blundering enough; while his praise of Logan's ballad, " The Braes of Yarrow," was couched in general commonplaces. The higher tone which he advocated, was not so easily represented in the current language of a journal which found an early termination. In the preface to his collective poems he promised something more. He defended the subjectivity of the Lyrical school. " It is not egotism when, in order to relieve my heart, I sing my own sorrows, but it is a law of our nature. He who labours under a strong feeling- is compelled to seek sympathy, and the poet's feelings are all strong. It is far greater egotism when the reader cannot put himself in the position of the poet." His chief criticism, however, appeared in the intro- duction to a " Collection of Sonnets " which he circulated among his friends, in June 179(5. He here opposed the 1795-96. LIFE OF COLERIDGE. 147 idea of outward correctness of form, and exalted more the inner meaning. He censured mercilessly the much praised regularity of the Italian sonneteers. To him Petrarch had "one cold glitter of heavy conceits, and metaphysical abstractions " — a criticism founded only on Preston's bad translation, and which, a few years later, he humbly withdrew. Still, he maintained that the fact that a sonnet consists only of fourteen, and not of sixteen, or of twelve lines, was a mere matter of custom ; moreover, that the arrangement of the rhyme should depend on the feeling of the poet. How should momentary bursts of feeling be expressed in a con- ventional strait-jacket ! Away then with inverted sen- tences, and affected expressions ; with the cold epigram, and the tortured prose, which are meant to pass as poetry. Let sonnets be composed in the hearty and natural style of Bowles. " Such productions generate a kind of thought highly favourable to delicacy of character. They create a sweet and indissoluble union between the intellectual and the material world . . . and thus the poem may acquire totality ; or, in plainer phrase, become a whole." This was in the same sense as Plotinus, who contended that in the Beautiful, the material is moulded by the formative idea; thus uniting the confusion of many parts in one pervading whole. The merit of Coleridge did not consist in inventing these thoughts, but in directing them against the school of Pope, and in favour of the Romantic school. And not only are his own Sonnets defended in this intro- L 2 148 LIFE OF COLERIDGE. CHAr. in. (luction but those of Southey and Lamb ; of Bowles, who now lived as rector of a parish in Bath ; of Mrs. Charlotte Smith, who resided in Chichester, and, in addition to her sorry sonnets, sent forth also some revolutionary romances ; of Charles Lloyd of Birming- ham, whom Coleridge had fascinated in his canvassing tour; of William Sotheby of London, then occupied with the translation of Wieland's ' Oberon,' and later known as a dramatist; and with those of various other less known names. From town and country were summoned these kindred spirits to join the Bristol group, till the whole stately band sailed with Coleridge under the new Platonic flag. While Coleridge was thus undertaking the part of a leader in belles lettres, he was sorely put to it to meet what he whimsically called " the bread and cheese question " at home. An addition to his family was impending, and yet he had taken no steps to provide a certain maintenance for his wife. Sara groaned, com- plained, and fell ill. The future was cloudy. " Povert}', perhaps even the thin looks of those who want bread, and look to me for it, stare me in the face " (Cottle, 22nd February). " Why could not he write ; or at all events utilise his knowledge as a teacher ? " So thought Mrs. Barbauld, the fertile composer of juvenile works and poetry. At this time she was staying with the Estlins in Bristol, and saw nothing in Coleridge's way of life but " indo- lence disguised as deep philosophy," and would fain 1795-96. LIFE OF COLERIDGE. 149 have lectured him a little. She challenged him in an odd poem (1797) not to build his house in a labyrinth of metaphysics. " Youth, beloved of science ! of the Muse beloved ! not in the maze of metaphysics build thou thy place of resting. . . . Active scenes shall soon with healthful spirit brace thy mind, and fair exertion for bright fame sustained ; for friends, for country . . ." Coleridge appreciated her well-meant hints, so long as they remained private, and had already dedicated a friendly sonnet to her. But the publicity of the reproof irritated him, so that in after times he often repeated his contempt for what he thought Mrs. Barbauld's borne effusions. And, at all events, one larger poem was produced during his Bristol time, in 1796 ; namely, " Fire, Famine, and Slaughter : a war eclogue." His old hatred for Pitt reappears here, in the form of a grim joke. The three monsters specified meet in a desolate part of La Vendee, and boast of their evil deeds. " Who has sent them ? Letters four do form his name." As an immediate introduction, appears a letter from " Liberty, to her dear friend Famine;" and further on we are reminded of a scene from his " Fall of Robespierre." This drama, like that, belongs to the category of horrors ; though \\^h this distinction, that the horror is not excited by rhetorical generalities, but by drastic single details. Coleridge revels here in the representation of the hellish holiday of the beasts of prey on the battle-field ; of the dying mother, beaten by her starving child ; of the Irish rebels 150 LIFE OF COLERIDGE. chap. iir. shot by the h'ght of their own burning hovels ; and of the bloodthirsty minister condemned to be torn limb from limb, and roasted for ever. Here again his model was Shakespeare. During his last stay in London, Coleridge appears, from a Sonnet to Mrs. Siddons, to have seen, with his friend Lamb, a representation of Macbeth. Hence the wild hags with their fearful faces. The realistic style to which in his lyric pieces Coleridge had been converted a year before, now pervaded even his dramatic attempts ; though he never attained in them the same degree of originality. The hideous details border even upon cannibalism : Coleridge knew well what he did, and wrote in his note-book, with reference to Lear, "not to bring too horrid things, like Gloster's eyes, upon the stage." That the demoniacal humour against Pitt had its seat rather in his fancy than in his heart, we should have believed, even without the long- winded apology with which, twenty years later, in his most conservative time, he prefaces this same poem, as if to say, like the lion in the " Midsummer Night's Dream," " You ladies know that I one Snug the joiner am," What Coleridge brought forth besides this, between the spring and late autumn of 1796, is confined to a {q.\\ short occasional poems. Willingly would he have done more. In the summer he proposed a long list of sub- jects : an epic poem on the Origin of Evil ; another, in the style of Dante, on the " Excursion of Thor "; some satires in the style of the Elizabethan Donne ; odes to 1795-96- LIFE OF COLERIDGE. 151 Southey and to Darwin ; six hymns to the sun, the moon, and the elements, &c. Several suggestions for the last-named exist. But nothing came of it. Many a poet has been embarrassed by the external conditions of composition. Coleridge was interrupted by them. " My happiest moments for composition are broken in upon by the reflection that I must make haste ; that I am too late ! I am already months behind. I have received my pay beforehand ! O, wayward and desultory spirit of genius ! " Nor could he bear the slightest pressure from without. He could not command the ]\Iuse, as Southey did his ; it was rather she who commanded him. Household cares, much as he per- ceived their importance, seemed contemptible to him. What he held so cheap, had no incentive for him. Not even the critical essays on Collins and Gray, and against Godwin and Paley, that he had proposed writing, came to anything. He only doubled and trebled his plans, like the outposts of an exposed army. As writing did not succeed in bringing in bread, he sought to obtain a situation as a teacher. He deliberated for awhile whether he should engage him- self as tutor in the house of a Mrs. Evans. But he was married ! Then it occurred to him, as he had just begun to learn German, to undertake at once a transla- tion of all Schiller's works ; to proceed with the fruits thereof to Jena, to study chemistry and anatomy, the theologians Semler and Michaelis, and the great metaphysician Kant ; and so enriched, to return to 152 LIFE OF COLERIDGE. chap. hi. England, and set up a private academy for education — physical, religious, political, and literary. This was a far-reaching plan, eminently significant of his many- sided culture, but at the same time, as he soon admitted, utterly unpractical. He next seriously considered whether to turn Unitarian preacher. He had, however, some con- scientious scruples — Lamb had only pecuniary ones — and the congregation had no need to hurry him to decide ; which, considering the instability of his habits, was a fortunate thing for them. The sub-editorship of the Morning Chro7iicle, which he had already undertaken, " with heavy and reluctant heart," — for he dreaded any dependence of feeling, — must at this time have fallen through. At length a fortunate circumstance delivered him from the most pressing need. Charles Lloyd, the melancholy son of a rich Birmingham man, felt himself so strongly attracted both to Coleridge's personality and poetry, that he took up his abode with him, and contributed a considerable share of the household expenses. Coleridge made him heartily welcome. He allied himself lovingly with this poor, shy, Quaker youth, who had already given to the world a little volume of lachrymose sonnets after the manner of Gray and Bowles. But this help was only temporary, and Sara felt herself justified in requiring some certain knowledge of their circumstances ; for just as the poet had departed for Birmingham in order to fetch their guest, a little baby boy had made his appearance. As the young father received these tidings, he reflected, in a mournful sonnet, upon " all I 1795-96. LIFE OF COLERIDGE. i53 had been, and all my child might be," and could not repress an anxious misgiving as to the future. The manner in which he took this humiliating position to heart, may be seen in the change they created in his religious ideas. His platonic optimism was shaken, and with it his whole ideal Unitarian system. He saw that evil existed ; that the principle of good is not only imperfect, but has a positive mixture of evil ; that the material world is in opposition to the spiritual world ; that the dictates of nature are not the same as freedom of will ; and that nature is not God. He saw that these contrarities must first be reconciled ; that heaven is not in and around us, but before us ; that man is in many respects a miserable creature, and stands in need of the advent of a truly divine Redeemer. It was these dis- abusing convictions, as he himself owned ('Table Talk,' 23rd June, 1834), which restored to him the Christian doctrine. Till now he had far outstripped the Unitarians in the symbolic interpretation of the Bible ; now he took a step further, and entered in his note-book, while at Clevedon (p. 9), these reflections : " Unitarians travelling from orthodoxy to atheism. Why } " Even while still disposed to become their minister, he reproached them with a falsification of the Scriptures. " If you were to offer to construe the will of a neighbour as you do that of your God, you would be scouted out of society." He suddenly felt himself so sinful that he could hardly persuade himself to believe in that satisfaction, through the sacrifice of Christ, which the Church upholds. " My 154 /.//-y; OF COLERIDGE. cii.vi'. in. conscience revolts," he said. Whereas before he had followed his reason too confidently, through a maze of jihilosophy and semi-philosophy, he now lost all hold on reason. " Wherefore art thou come ? " he asked himself in a severe mental struggle, while going through the tragedy of his unsuccessful Watcliuian. " Doth not the Creator of all things know all things ? " (note-book, p. 1 6). In the next months, he formed the plan of thoroughly refuting the once so highly esteemed Godwin. " The Godwinian system of pride ! Proud of what ? An outcast of blind Nature, ruled by a fatal necessity — slave of an idiot nature " (note-book, p. 25). Towards the end of 1796, he was sometimes overcome by a deep mistrust of all religious thought. " Our quaint metaphysical opinions, in the hour of anguish like a plaything by the bedside of a deadly sick child " (note- book, p. 26) ; and almost the same words in a con- temporary letter. Such fragments arc like flashes of lightning, revealing for a moment the tempest of the mind. Upon the whole, he would willingly have abided by the teaching of Hartley and Berkeley. He named his eldest son after the one ; and the second, who ap- peared on tlic loth May, 1798, after the other. Almost superstitious in his desire to look on his own initials (S. T. C = e(7T7](Te) as a prophecy, it seemed like a spell to form another Hartley and Berkeley out of the two children. ]kit this was the last homage he paid to his old teachers. He was sick of human knowledge, and longed only for direct communion with a comforting, 1795-96. LIFE OF COLERIDGE. 155 helping, personal God. He looked back with horror on what he had said in December 1794, on the futility of prayer for divine help. Suffering taught him to pra)-. He now turned again more resolutely to mysticism; and no longer to Greek mysticism, but to that of the seventeenth century, as harmonising with the pessimism which now possessed him. According to Plotinus, the Creation was the result of Divine radiance ; according to Jacob Bohme, of Divine discord. These creeds had alread}-, in the first half of the eighteenth century, found an adherent and interpreter in William Law. In the summer of 1796 they greatly occupied the mind of Coleridge, as appears from a remark in his note-book (p. 24), to the purport that he intended to write the life of Jacob Bohme. That they were only capable of proof by inward illumi- nation in moments of ecstasy was no discouragement to Coleridge. He preferred intuition to everything 4 else. He was interested at the same time for other similar enthusiasts — though more Christian in character ; for George Fox, namely, the father of the Quakers^ and for Swedenborg (who died the year Coleridge was born) ; whose works had already formed a congre- gation in Manchester. " Mem. : to reduce to a regular form the Swedenborgian reveries " (note-book, p. 22) Not that he gave implicit belief to these men. All that he thanked them for, according to the ' Biographia Literaria/ was for keeping alive his heart, and preventing his mind from being imprisoned within the limits of 156 LIFE OF COLERIDGE. chap. hi. any single dogmatic system. He knew that he had a cloud before him, but it was a cloud of fire in the dark desert of Doubt. But he did not despond. In the society of Cottle and other friends he knew how to control his depression. And in a gay circle he was gay too. This, however, only shows that he had not lost a certain amount of manly pride, and elasticity of mind. In his confidential letters to Poole it was very different. " Out of the cup of hope I almost poisoned myself with despair." The future looked to him just as dark, as, two years before, on leaving Cambridge, it had looked bright. The race of the high-minded Mecaenas has never died out in rich England. Poole comprehended the situation. This gentleman, a wealthy young fellow, lived with his mother in the pretty quiet village of Nether Stowey, in Somersetshire. He was one who took the deepest interest in the weal and wee of the humblest of his fellow-creatures. He was trustee for every orphan child in the village, and adviser to the full- grown for miles around, and the fate of such a genius as Coleridge went to his heart. He had often had him for his guest, and before Coleridge's marriage, in May 1795, had proposed to his friends to raise a small income for him. But now he took the case into his own hands, begged him to come with wife and child, and offered liim a convenient little house, next his own — rent only £"]. Coleridge saw that he could serve Poole intel- lectually as much as Poole him material!}-. He could 1795-96. LIFE OF COLERIDGE. 157 therefore honourably accept the proposal, and did so with no end of thanks. And the same month witnessed his removal with wife, child, and Lloyd, from the prosaic city to the peaceful village, where his finest and most original poems were composed. This was the end of the Pantisocratical tomfoolery. /♦ Our poet was now roused from his craziest dreams. In s^ the way of politics he had attained some measure of common-sense ; and as regards poetry, had found his ' own line. For the time also his worldly embarrassments I were overcome. The Coleridge of this time — young, but also mature — brimful of imagination, and already the tolerably furnished poet, ought to be presented to the view of his compatriots as such, and not as the vegetating, dreaming, diddering, would-be oracular old man, as he' appears in all viva voce reports, and in Carlyle's description. It is true, in spite of all, a trace of his partiality for a community of goods lingered in his blood : he never ceased to live upon his friends. I5S LIFE OF COLERIDGE. CHAPTER IV. XETIIER STOWEY. WORDSWORTH. (NOVEMBER 1796 TO SEPTEMBER 1 798.) " Close your eyes with holy dread, For he on honey-dew hath fed, And drunk the milk of Paradise." — Kiibla KJiav. Happy Life at Stowey — Thelwall — Touhnin — Mackintosh — Wordsworth — Influence of Wordsworth — "Osorio " and Sheridan— " Ode on Depart- ing Year " — " Destiny of Nations " — " France "—Sonnets by Higgin- l)Ottom — Visit from Lamb — Opium — " Kubka Khan" — Mental Diseases of Poets — " Frost at Midnight" — "Lewti" — "The Nightin- gale " — " Fears in Solitude " — Coast of Devonshire with Wordsworth — Attempt to Compose together — " Ancient Mariner " — " Christabel " — Lyrical Ballads — Contemporary Criticism of " Ancient Mariner " — The term "Lake Poets" — Money Embarrassments — Preaching — Hazlitt — The Wedgwoods — Again Religious Doubts — Departure for Ger- many with Wordsworths. In Nether Stowey the idyl of Clevedon was repeated. Coleridge once more lived among meadows, corn-fields and clear brooks, while, but a few miles awa}-, sounded the sea. Nor was the background in another direction lacking in charm ; the wooded chain of the Ouantock Hills lying stern and dark, with the sun setting behind them. The house also was larger and more convenient, and a stately kitchen-garden belonged to it, in which Coleridge plodded to his heart's content ; and even the 1796-9S. LIFE OF COLERIDGE. 159 Avant of society which characterised Clcvedon, was supplied here ; so that not only nature, but his felloAv- creatures contributed to place our poet for two years on a bed of roses. Coleridge's children were the source of daily delight to him. With growing interest did he watch the first signs of thought in the little Hartley. And with pa- ternal pride would he take the half-nude little Berkeley from the nurse's arm, and exhibit " my second son " to some passing neighbour. Returning from his walks to his beloved Sara, and her " two blooming cherubs," a tear of gratitude would start. Lloyd, his guest, has depicted this domestic happiness with vivid colours in a novel. Even that melancholy individual brightened up under these auspices. He listened with increasing receptivity and intelligence to Coleridge's talk, became a convert to Milton, Hartley and Berkeley, crossed him- self as Coleridge did at certain theories of Godwin's, and only regretted that the divine scheme of Pantisocracy had been given up. Close by lived Poole; so close, that the four large elms which grew by his house, also appeared to overshadow Coleridge's humbler dwelling. A straight walk through a pasture was soon tracked between them. Coleridge was as much at home in his friend's house as in his own, and Poole's mother gave the tenderest welcome to Mrs. Coleridge. A few steps further, over a beautiful meadow, and other neighbours, scarcely less kind, were reached ; these were Mr. Cruik- shank and his young wife, married on the same day as i6o LIFE OF COLERIDGE. chap. iv. Samuel and Sara. Citizen Thchvall, the Democrat, dwelt also in the neighbourhood. He was a little, im- patient man, a dcspiser of religions, a blind defender of the French Revolution in every form of periodical, poem, and popular address ; at the same time honest, hearty, and vibrating with energy. But a few years before, he had narrowly escaped the penalty of high treason. At this time he had exchanged politics for farming. Cole- ridge found a warm admirer in him, but at the same time a wholesome example of enthusiasm under control. He often undertook also a five-hours' walk to Taunton, to visit Joshua Toulmin, a Unitarian preacher and a diligent historian of that city ; taking the service for him. In this gentleman he found a sober, but at the same time thorough partisan of the rights of man, who took refuge in the field of national freedom against the excesses of the revolutionary party. And when Cole- ridge expressed doubts as to whether the Unitarian confession could be considered a central point between orthodoxy and unbelief, Toulmin would stoutly resist him — as in a sermon of the time — with the text, " A double-minded man is unstable in all his ways." The correspondence with Bristol, and an extended use of the Bristol Library, were managed by a regular messenger. From time to time, also, visitors made their way thence. Of these Cottle and Burnet were especially welcome, and Lamb perhaps more so. This poor, but always witty little author — the self-sacrifi- cing guardian of his sometimes insane sister — enjoyed 1796-98. LIFE OF COLERIDGE. 161 for the first time the pleasures of a country life in the early summer weeks of 1797. Bowles also, who had just recovered from an illness at Shrewsbury, intro- duced himself here to the inspired minstrel of his repu- tation, and disenchanted^ him ! Mr. Mackintosh also, afterwards Sir James, the well-known antagonist of Burke, spoke frequently in Poole's house, but found it difficult to make himself agreeable to Coleridge, who had an insurmountable prejudice against everything Scotch. The quiet little village swarmed with authors. Wordsworth stood foremost here. His attention had been excited by the lectures in the Corn-hall, and he had approached the young man in the spring of 1796. The great bard resided at this time at Racedown, in Dorsetshire, and said one day to a friend : " I am going to Bristol to-morrow, to see those two extra- ordinary youths — Coleridge and Southey." In fact, Wordsworth's name is found as early as March 1796 on a list drawn up by Coleridge of authors with whom he was personally acquainted. His own brother George is also among them. No sooner was Coleridge settled in Nether Stowey than he returned Wordsworth's visit, and was introduced at the same time to the sister — Dorothy Wordsworth — then twenty-seven years of age. The first impression he made on her was somewhat disappointing. The pale face and thin figure, thick lips, and rough black semi-curling hair, did not agree with her expectations ; while he, on his own part, wrote to Cottle : " If you expected to see a pretty woman, you l62 LIFE OF COLERIDGE. chap. iv. would think her rather ordinary." But the homely innocence and heartiness of her character made him soon add a reversal of this sentence : " If you expected to see an ordinary woman, you would think her pretty." And in a few minutes she changed her first impression iof him, and admired the animated talk, the large and /full eye, "in a fine frenzy rolling," and his cheerful I loving interest in every thing, great and small. From This time their meetings became more long and frequent, and the mutual sympathy more hearty. In June 1797, Coleridge stayed for several days at Racedown ; and a month later, the Wordsworths stayed at Nether Stowey. They found out there that a place called Alfoxden — a good house and fine grounds, hardly two miles from the sea, and only a short hour from Nether Stowey, — was to let, and they took it at once. " Our principal inducement was Coleridge's society," wrote Wordsworth (Memoirs, vol. i. p. 103). For more than ten months the closest intimacy continued. In Cole- ridge's words, "we were three people, but only one soul.^ Lloyd and Lamb were both neglected, and Sara grew jealous of her husband's long walks with Doroth}-. She did not conceal this from him ; nor, on one occasion from her presumptive rival, when Dorothy arrived wet through, and showed her neighbourly confidence by borrowing a shawl. But no pouting took effect. The poet in Coleridge prevailed over the man ; literar}- friendship offered him gradually more than domestic union, and was destined to last the longest. 1796-98. LIFE OF COLERIDGE. 163 Wordsworth filled that place in Coleridge's life which Southey had given up. The older poet also hated fashionable society, with its outward distinctions and inward levellings ; he contended for the restoration of more natural conditions ; he had been enthusiastic in the cause of the Revolution ; he was indifferent to the orthodox Church, and he had helped to clear the way for the Romantic school. He had, moreover, wh at Southey had not, that whic h Coleridge especiall y ^required trom the~Tnflue nce of a_jriend— firmness of character. Wordsworth's origin was not southern, but from the border-land ; he was a discreet, faithful and somewhat uncouth northerner, and hence more able to control a^j nind wh jch in the restless glow of its fancy betrayed too often " the English Italy " whence it sprung. Wordsworth had grown up among mountains and lakes, and had directly imbibed their quiet grandeur. Com- pared with his two pale town-bred friends, Coleridge and Southey, he was robust and hardy. He knew nothing of carking cares for daily bread. He did not, like Coleridge, snatch with voracious eagerness at idea after idea with greedy grasp, losing more on the way than he succeeded in bringing home ; nor did he hasten, like the careful caterer Southey, from book to book, and from fee to fee. His mode of speech was rather too slow, his attitude too stiff, and his thought too constrained. But what he had once grasped, he pondered long in his mind, till by degrees the fruits emerged full ripe. The two new friends were very l64 LIFE OF COLERIDGE. chap. iv. unlike ; they did not rush into each other's arms like two ardent, raw youths, but they grasped each other by the hand with a feeling of profound mutual recog- / nition. Coleridge was the ivy which at last found the I oak, on which it could lean, and unfold its luxuriance. \But with him the act of twining and climbing was more / important than the result ; with Wordsworth the result I was the chief thing, Wordsworth maintained that he had seen many men who had done wonderful things, / but only one wonderful man — namely, Coleridge. He, on the other hand, worshipped in Wordsworth the one great poet. Wordsworth, on every occasion, stood up for the character of his friend, while Coleridge insisted on Wordsworth's pre-eminence in verse. "He is so far ahead of you," he remarked to some doubting friends, " that he looks a dwarf in the distance." . The biographical problem of this period is to show how each influenced the other. For whether employed in the domain of life, or in that of poetic creation, each, in some way, impelled his friend forward ; and if we take the sum total, it comes to pretty much the same on each side. Neither with Lamb nor with Southey was Coleridge's intercourse so happily based on equal terms. Taking, in this case, was not selfishness, but honour ; and giving, not generosity, but duty. Coleridge was the one who most required the fortify- ing of the will. When he moved to Nether Stowey his self-confidence was at an ignominiously low ebb. But after paying the first visit to Racedown. he wrote to 1796-98. LIFE OF COLERIDGE. 165 Cottle : " Wordsworth's conversation roused me | some- what." His ambition bounded up, though unfortunately, forthwith, over its limits. He returned to his idea of writing a work against Godwin's " System of Pride " (note-book, p. 24). He also began to work out a tragedy which had long floated before his mind, perhaps ever since he read the dungeon scene in Schiller's "Robbers." For in the spring of 1796 he wrote a sentence in his note-book which recurs almost verbatim in his work : " A dungeon. In darkness I remained. The neighbour's clock told me that now the May sun shone lovely on my garden " (p. 19). He planned also a gigantic epic poem, Miltonic in form and abstruseness ; requiring ten years' study of mathematics, natural history, psychology, geography, history, &c., five years' composition, and five years' correction : and all these grand projects he unfolded to Cottle in the same letter in which he described Wordsworth. Later on he wished at all events to embody his observations on nature, man, and society in an epic-lyrical form ; adopting the figure of a brook, as it flows from its mossy source down to the busy harbour. This would have been a cyclical poem in the style of Cowper ; like one planned by Goethe in his youth, and like that also executed by Schiller in his " Song of the Bell." The tendency of the time to com- prehensive forms was always tempting Coleridge to over-estimate his powers of persistence in work. The tragedy alone was carried out ; partly because Sheridan, then manager of Drury Lane Theatre, had, i66 LIFE OF COLERIDGE. chap. iv. through the intervention of Bowles, bargained for it ; partly, also, because the sonnets published in the Morning Chronicle had had unexpected success ; and further, because of Wordsworth's example. When in June 1797 Coleridge read aloud to his friend the first act of " Osorio," as the piece was first called, Wordsworth in his turn brought forward an already completed tragedy, " The Borderers"; which Coleridge unreservedly declared to be wonderful. Especially did he admire the deep touches of human feeling which are found in three or four passages in the " Robbers," and so frequently in Shakespeare. This urged him forward ; though it was without any in- fluence on his details ; for treatment and characters had been settled in his mind as early as the beginning of June, so that he had bound himself to Lamb to finish his task in a few days ; which Lamb rightly described as " Cole- ridgising." These two works stood in a certain affinity to each other. They were sent together on approbation to London in the autumn of 1797; "Osorio" direct to Sheridan, " The Borderers " to Covent Garden, with a letter of recommendation from Coleridge to the manager; and they both met with the same fate. The department of the serious drama improved in the last decennium of the eighteenth century. Horrors still continued popular, but less in the way of robbers, ghosts, and tyrants, external miseries, crass romances, and empty tirades, than in inward commotions of the soul. The Revolution had developed dark instincts by making- executions an everyday sight. The period of tragedies 1796-98. LIFE OF COLERIDGE. 167 on the Passions may be dated after i 7q6. \ Wor dsworth, in his "Borderers" (1795-6), treated the passion of jealousy ; Lloyd, in his " Duke of Ormond," pitted the passion of love against filial duty. Then Lamb dealt with drunkenness in "John Woodville," and Walter Scott with " Sensuality and Revenge " before a Secret Tribunal in the " House of Aspen," in 1798. In the same year Joanna Baillie, sitting sewing one hot summer afternoon by her mother's side, had planned a whole series of " Plays of the Passions "; the first volume, with both tragedies and comedies on Love and Hatred, appeared in 1798. In these, Shakespeare no longer appeared as the only model, but frequently some German writer. Wordsworth, for instance, had in the main followed " Othello," at the same time introducing the motive of the reputed unnatural father from Less- ing's " Nathan the Wise." Scott put himself to school to Goethe's " Gotz von Berlichingen " ; and Joanna Baillie, in one of her earliest pieces — " Rayner " — inter- wove a trait of touching fidelity on the part of a sei"vant from Lessing's '* Minna von Barnhelm." In these foreign and contemporary writers the desired intensity of feeling was found, combined with modern ideas and conditions. To this school Coleridge attached himself with his "Osorio." In substance, true love is seen contending with fraternal hatred ; in form, Schiller and Shakespeare, the dramatists of natural feeling, prevail. Of all the works we have named, this is the most important, and best illustrates the peculiar tendency of the time. l68 LIFE OF COLERIDGE. chap. iv. The plot of " Osorio," at least for the first three acts, is essentially taken from the Sicilian's narrative in Schiller's "Ghostseer"; subsequently worked up into a ballad by the youthful Byron, called " Oscar of Alva." Osorio — a man of the wildest passions — aims to deprive his harmless brother Albert, both of his life and his bride — by name Maria — who, in spite of Osorio's malice, and the father's (Belez) weakness, and of a fearful spiritual conspiracy designed to convince her of his death, remains true to her vanished lover. Proofs, in detail, are borrowed from the ghost scene — altar and magic lantern — discovery of the machine — an inquisitor who seizes the magician, &c. But, from the first, Coleridge felt the necessity of deviating from this model in important respects. He could not drown the good brother in a well, nor let the story expire in magic mystery, as in the play itself. The hero had to be kept alive, in order to wreak poetic justice on the delinquent. To finish his piece Coleridge made use of the closely- related plot of " The Robbers," where the bridegroom is also not killed, but only driven away; returning secrctl)-, and quickly convinced of the guilt of his brother, and of the fidelity of his lady. The connecting link of the two conceptions is " Hamlet." The avenger, returning home, assumes a strange and half-crazy character in order to bring the guilty parties to light, and exposes the conspiracy in a play within the play. That which in the " Ghostseer " is only a mysterious episode, is here used for the alternate purpose of crime and expiation. 1796-9!^. LIFE OF COLERIDGE. 169 and made the basis of a tragedy. The lovers, however, are not sacrificed by Coleridge, but are made happy, while the avengers triumph without the guilt and remorse of Schiller's "Robbers," for they have overcome the oppressor without having infringed the moral ties of humanity. In this lies the essential difference between the two dramas. The Englishman, who wrote almost as many years after the outbreak of the Revolution, as the Suabian wrote before it, was already more moderate. He no longer saw the existing order of social things in so black a light as to believe peace and love to be incompatible with them. He no longer believed that right could be re-established by wrong, but felt that earnestness of purpose and lawful means are better defences of national freedom. Hence the metamorphosis of the " Robbers " into a band of innocent, persecuted Moors, and of an unprincipled magistracy into the Spanish Inquisition; features, as may be here remarked, which had been suggested to him by the awful tale, ' The Monk,' lately published by Lewis (1795). The political aim which in his "Fall of Robespierre" Coleridge brought so onesidedly into the foreground, considerably receded here. We still see that the world was out of joint; that tyrants had to apprehend the despair of their slaves; that mankind was sick unto death, and required the sharpest remedies. But such generalities are found before him, even in " Hamlet." The principle of the treatment is now essentially artistic. Yet more decided was Coleridge's deviation from the lyo LIFE OF COLERIDGE. chap. iv. prescribed strictness in composition and style. At the same time he still related much that should have been put into action. Osorio, for example, has not a single explanation with Maria, the possession of whom was his chief aim. The complication begins before the beginning of the piece, and has to be laboriously accounted for. The essence of the classical manner lies in an analytical development of character and incident ; and it is therefore here that it holds its ground longest. In other respects he introduced much natural action. The scene changes from act to act, and claims an interest of its own : at one time a wild sea-coast ; then an armoury; and lastly, a cave by moonlight. The personages indulge in heart-gushings, more episodic still than in Shakespeare, from whom they are obviously borrowed. Thus the nurse in the fourth act tells the unhappy bride a child's tale — a sort of biography of Chatterton, with romantic additions, — far more poetic in itself than that in "Romeo and Juliet"; though at this stage of the play lacking due connection with the rest. At the fifth act we find Albert in his dungeon describing the sweet influences of nature — the woods, the winds, and the waters. It is a lyrical gem, though adding nothing to the development either of action or character. Both these passages had been published and appreciated, long before the drama itself, in the ' Lyrical Ballads,' 1798. Feeling, indeed, formerly too strict!}' banished from the stage, now began to be overdone. The poet over- 1796-98. LIFE OF COLERIDGE. 171 Stepped frequently the limits of the measure, in order to give full expression to the tumults of emotion. The most circumstantial directions for the actors are inter- posed. This never occurs with Shakespeare, Marlowe, or Ben Jonson ; though frequent with the Romantic school of all nations. But the directions now are to speak "fiercely," then "wildly," "with a frantic eagerness;" and then, again, " with the deep tones of subdued emo- tion," or "inarticulate with rage," The high-stepping grand speeches have also given way to gentle effusions, to be accompanied with music. Pseudo-tragedy dis- appears, and is replaced not by tragedy but by the melodrama. " Osorio " found no favour in Sheridan's eyes. This is the more noteworthy, since Sheridan himself brought forward an operatic treatment of Kotzebue's "Spaniards in Peru"; and thus introduced the melodrama into London with brilliant success. But Wordsworth, Lamb, and Scott had no better success with their attempts: Joanna Baillie, alone, obtained a certain respect ; even Byron's " Manfred," and " Heaven and Earth," took no hold on the stage ; while such a mixture of dialogue, pantomime, and music as the " Tale of Mystery," by Holcroft, the translator of Kotzebue, was (1802) given thirty-seven times in succession at Covent Garden. The cause for this was the same which then also made Kotzebue more popular in Germany with the masses, than pieces by Schiller and Goethe — a mechanical cleverness tells more in front of the footlights than all 172 LIFE OF COLERIDGE. lyrical and philosophical refinements. The great poets of the time of the Revolution despised, more or less, the traditional modes, and would only take their rules from inward feeling, and not from theatrical experi- ence. Coleridge, for instance, thought much of little naivetes which tell in reading, but never in acting " Drip, drip, drip ! such a place as this has nothing else to do but to drip, drip, drip ! " We can imagine how that sounds on the stage ! Scarcely had Sheridan, with his experience of the theatre, caught sight of this passage in skimming through the manuscript, than he threw the whole into the paper-basket ; and, lazy as he was in the use of his pen, he contented himself with remarking to an acquaintance of the poet, " Drip, drip, drip ! In such a piece as this there is nothing but drip, drip, drip ! " Eighteen years later, through the media- tion of Byron, the piece was performed ; and in Byron's own simultaneous tendency to the melodrama may be seen its chief result. In the renewed ardour of creation which animated Coleridge as he first began his tragedy, he undertook as a commission from the Cambridge Intelligencer, — he was not forgotten, it appears, at the University — to write an ode on "the Departing Year" (1796). It was composed between the 24th and 26th December, was published on the 31st December, and shows his poetic power in the highest force. In the Dedication to Poole he indicates the essential qualities of the lofty ode, as " impetuosity of transition, and fulness of fancy and 1796-9^. LIFE OF COLERIDGE. 173 feeling." That the depression of his latter Bristol time should have disappeared in Nether Stowey, was owing- to the absence of material troubles, and to the inter- course with Wordsworth. But whence this fresh flight into the clouds .-* The note-book shows it to have been connected with a fit of religious feeling. In the peaceful life of the country the influence of Jacob Bohme began earnestly to tell upon him. A good spell of kindred literature further contributed to this. Coleridge copied out for himself, among other things, the visions of some ecstatic virgin, with this remark : " Certainly, there are strange things in the other world, and so there are in all the steps to it ; and a little glimpse of Heaven — a moment's conversing with an angel — any ray of God, any com- munication from the spirit of Comfort, which God gives to his servants in strange and unknown manners, — are infinitely far from illusions. We shall understand them when we feel them, and when, in new and strange needs we shall be refreshed by them " (note-book, p. 27). To this he appended a glorification of mystic dreams. He called "the prayer of enthusiasts, a pious drunken- ness ; a spiritual concupiscence." He described what sleep must have been in Paradise. " In the paradisiacal world sleep was voluntary and holy — a spiritual state before God, in which the mind, elevated by contempla- tion, retired into pure intellect, suspending all communi- cation with sensible objects, and perceiving the all-present Deity" (note-book, p. 28) But the religious and the 174 LIFE OF COLERIDGE. poetic aspirations flowed on together. In the midst of such jottings we find also : " Dreams sometimes useful, by giving to the well- grounded fears and hopes of the understanding the feelings of vivid sense." And after this come sketches of single passages for his New Year's Ode. Having been long without poetic inspiration, he saw and felt the Supernatural with somnambulistic clearness. Whence the growth of this transcendental excitement we are taught by a comparison with his next earliest poem of this class, " The Destiny of Nations." There the vision is only related as the experience of another person. Here in the New Year's Ode it occurs to himself. In both cases the introduction shows " Nature struggling in portentous birth "; but while in the earlier piece only general descriptions of discord and hope take place, now the sorrows and joys which had befallen Europe in the foregoing years come tumultuously forward. An infernal Hag again appears. Death puts an end to her. Spirits of retribution dance round her grave in darkness and mist ; ghostly accessories come forth, taken from Burger's " Leonore," which had been variously translated, and which Lamb had expressly recommended to Coleridge's attention ;* then the mystical monster is changed into the Empress Catherine of Russia, who had commanded the awful storming of Ismail. And again the heavenly Guardian-angel lifts up his voice and invokes ruin upon * " Lconorc in England," by Professor Brandl. Excerpt from Eric Schmidt's " Charactcristikcn," Berlin, 1886, p. 244-8. 1796-9S. LIFE OF COLERIDGE. 175 the conqueror. But here, instead of the Enghshman of past times, the contemporary foes of peace and the slave- dealers are undisguisedly stigmatised. The supernatural atmosphere encompasses no longer imaginary, but real classes and persons. Dreams now appear as realities, and the poet's own condition of second sight the same : " Cold sweat-drops gather on my limbs ; My ears throb hot ; my eyeballs start ; My brain with horrid tumult swims ; Wild is the tempest of my heart ; And my thick and struggling breath Imitates the toil of death." One can no longer say that Coleridge possesses imagi- nation, but rather that he is possessed by her. With all this a deeply-seated innovation in metre is connected. In his boyhood he had written his odes in the learned and artificial stanzas in which the modern classicists imagined themselves to be repeating the ancient Greek choruses. After that he went over to Milton's more natural blank verse. But now, in his " Ode to the Departing Year," he felt that these columns of equal lines entailed a conscious recitative which became burdensome to him. He chose, therefore, a free rhythm, and adapted it instinctively to the varying import of his subject. This is a rich field for the most delicate metrical changes. Here there is none of that arbitrariness with which Gray, in his "Bard," had addressed both " Bearded majesty " and "Pale grief" in short-winded iambics. A very symphony reposes in these verses. It was long after. r' 176 LIFE OF COLERIDGE. chap. iv. that Wordsworth — for instance, in " The Skylark," — sought with s^Tiilar flexibility to adapt the rhythm of his ode to the nofl^|||[^^ feeling. The stronger self- control to which he ha^i^^j^^oleridge, was repaid to him by the enhancement of HB1^ta|i technical power. One other ode was produced in Stowey — namely, the "France" (1798), — far more temperate in feeling, and more peaceful in form. The unformed elements are no longer appealed to in the introduction, but the actual woods, waves, and clouds. But again we have the dance of spirits in wild agitation, the praise of liberty, and in the middle of the piece the politics of the day. The poet, however, is no longer the ardent admirer of France; her violence towards free Switzerland had forfeited the confidence of Coleridge, Wordsworth, and other con- temporaries. The hopes that he had built on the Revolution had vanished, as far as the future was concerned. The Pantisocratist, that was to have been, now acknowledges with a sense of guilt that he had looked for freedom in the wrong place, instead of where she is alone to be found, namely, on the mountains and on the sea. A painful feeling, as if all human [/progress were only a pious wish, tremblingly pervades the monotonous, long-drawn stanzas. Intoxicated hope has subsided into dejection. It is obvious that the poet's imagination, in the interim, had reached and passed its highest point. Still, the very combination of the departing glow of freedom and the growing dark- ness of disappointment, imparts to "France" a peculiar 1796-9S. LIFE OF COLERIDGE. 177 charm. " The finest ode in the Enghsh language," was Shelley's verdict ; and he doubtlessh^i^t in his mind when, at the beginning of hi^pH^ffy dithyrambic " To the West Wind," he aJ^H^nizes the woods, the waves and the clouds; di^airing as a man, but prophetically exultant as a poet. Wordsworth understood not only how to urge his friend on, but how to rein him in. This is apparent in the improvement of style in the second edition. What the elder poet read to the younger of his own unpublished verses, struck Coleridge most " by the absence of all forced diction and crowded imagery." Here nothing appeared to him obscure, hackneyed, or fantastic. Every word explained itself by the context. This made the greater impression on Coleridge from the fact that in his early days he had indulged far too much in rhetoric, and, in the higher class of lyric, did so still. He began now to weed the second edition far more strictly than he had done the first. Without exception, all he had written before 1793 was struck out; the same with the imitations of Ossian, and some poems on special occasions. In such verses, also, as he spared, numerous florid expressions, over-bold combinations, and high-flown tropes were rejected. This may be best traced in the " Ode to the Departing Year," though not composed till the end of December 1796. The *' purple locks " and " snow-white glories " of the angels were deprived of their colours, and " the cold sweat damps " of the poet turned into normal " sweat drops." N 178 LIFE OF COLERIDGE. chap. iv. Twenty years later, it is true, Coleridge maintained that the reviewers of the first edition had led him to make these alterations by their criticisms on his too general exaggeration. But this was not the case ; on the con- trary, they had praised him for tenderness of sentiment and elegance of expression. Lamb's admonitions, it was more probable, had helped ; it was he, who, in a letter of November 1796, had again urged, "Cultivate simplicity — banish elaborateness." The chief critic, how ever, was doubtless the growing maturiTy~6r"TTis^wn experience, supportedjby th£_purifying influence ^ fWordsworth. And as he pruned away his excrescences in style, so he did also his political exaggerations. The revolu- tionary sonnets of 1794, still preserved in the edition of 1796, were one and all banished. Coleridge had mean- while learned that mankind cannot so hastily cast off the heritage of the past, without lapsing into brutality. He now felt even ashamed of his bombastic verses on Lord Stanhope, who, very naturally, had left unnoticed the curse of "the leprous stain of nobility." Li the poems that were preserved, much also was moderated. In the notorious poem to the Donkey (December 1794) he had spoken contemptuously of " the tumult of some scoundrel monarch's breast." In its stead, after 1797, we read " the aching of pale Fashion's vacant breast." As regards religious matters, he left, it is true, the atheistic expression of " the impotency of prayer " standing in the lines " To a friend " (Lamb), but only to withdraw it in a note with discjust. 1796-98. ZZFis OF COLERIDGE. 179 And thus was his collection again given to the world in May 1797, not larger in itself, but better sifted, and again Lloyd and Lamb joined the ranks with some con- tributions. When Coleridge had his proofs objectively before him, all his own faults, as well as those of his friends, stared him so openly in the face, that, under the feigned name of Higginbottom, he wrote three ironical sonnets for the Monthly Magazine. The one was inspired by the some- what overdone simplicity of Lamb's writings ; the next touched lightly on the trivial whinings of Lloyd ; and the last lashed his own high-flown pathos. His mind was so absorbed by this subject that it never struck him that his friends might take these sonnets amiss ; at all events, Wordsworth remained faithful. Another travesty of the time concerned himself The incident of a mad dog, which ran through the village and bit other dogs, probably gave rise to it. " Recantation " is in truth a humorous apology for his earlier revolu- tionary rage. An ox amuses himself one April day with harmless capers on a sunny meadow ; the neighbours — one is reminded of Boyer, his master — declare him to be mad, and, in their anxiety for priest and altar, chase and worry him, till the happy creature really goes mad. The grotesque subject, the ^/.a:j/ choice of words, and the homely regularity of the verses, remind us of the i n voluntary pursuit of John Gilpin in Cowper's ballad. But the satirical tendency was new. For, with the most varying means — nov/ with serious filing, now with merry N 2 i8o LIFE OF COLERIDGE. chap. iv. irony — did Coleridge endeavour to strip off his poetic redundances, and, as the reward, felt himself continually more in harmony with Wordsworth. In the spring of 1797, his vein of landscape poetry burst out afresh. Clevedon had renewed itself in Stowey ; why should not poems of subjective description in the style of the " Eolian Harp," or the " Reflections on a place of Retirement," again come to birth? In point of fact, they did, and just as true, as graceful, and as grand as before ; in the same rhymeless and easy metre ; but without theological hypotheses, more in- tense in feeling, and yet the more simple and trans- parent in expression, in harmony with his more enlightened taste. It is wrong to cite always the " Ancient Mariner " and " Christabel " as his best works. In his " Reflections " there is more domestic warmth, more original thought, more artistic finish. His pictures are less strange, but they are all the more refreshing. Here we see more the man ; there, the dreamer. Here he not only causes a shudder, but teaches true devotion and wisdom. Here we may obtain from the poet, not only the entertainment of a leisure hour, but also, what he is bound to give, instruction and education for the nation. And first we may mention the verses " To the Rev. George Coleridge," to whom he dedicated the new edition of May 1797. This was his paternal brother, the Vicar of Ottery and guardian of his boyhood. The description of the quiet happiness which he now enjoyed 1796-98- LIFE OF COLERIDGE. l8i \ in his country home is the chief theme ; the possession of a wife being increased by the joys of fatherhood and friendship. Nor are the accents of a divine voice wanting, though no longer discoursing on a pantheistic, platonic soul of the world, but on poetic immortality : with these are intermingled recoU^Jfnons of childhood, joyful and sorrowful, while, with grateful sympathy, his brother's lot is depicted in still more beneficent colours. Allowing for all the sensitiveness of his worthy brother, it is simply incredible that he should have considered himself attacked in his character by these verses, as Coleridge with solemn vexation explains to the public. Some of the poems, which contain doubtful matter for a clergyman, may have excited his displeasure, but not the dedication poem itself At all events, no such narrow ideas should be permitted to interfere with the enjoy- ment of such a little gem. A visit from Lamb and his sister, in June, gave birth to a similar creation. Coleridge had hurt himself in some way, which obliged him to keep the house. He had to let his guests ramble alone over the hills and to the waterfall, while he could only look at them from the garden. Seated before his door, he says, as in the " Eolian Harp," — " This lime-tree bower my prison is." In this position he watches the sun setting slowly and gloriously, and acknowledges, with moistened eye, the government of an Almighty Power. Nor does he enjoy the glories of nature alone, for liis friends are within sight, and are enjoying the same. " Richer burn, ye clouds ! and i82 LIFE OF COLERIDGE. chap, w kindle thou, blue ocean ! " so that the friend — who, alas ! is tied to a city life, — may enjoy them the more. A sense of rapture pervades the poem. His imagination mounts higher than even at Clevedon ; intoxicated with the beauty of the landscape he introduces visionary elements, as in the last weeks of longing before his marriage. The green file of long, lank weeds begins at once, as he thinks, to nod — " a most fantastic sight," — a prelude to the dancing daffodils which Wordsworth, a few years later, celebrated in rapturous song. These verses referred to Lamb, as the dedication did to Cole- ridge's brother ; but they arose from a view of nature which, at that time, only Wordsworth understood how to share, and therefore was alone able to stimulate. In the same summer — 1/97 — his feeling for landscape rose to fever heat. In a trip to the wild coast of North Devon, he was taken unwell, and had to seek rest in a labourer's dwelling. Probably it was his old rheumatic affection, or, more properly speaking, the chronic inflammation of the joints inherited from his father, which had attacked him, as we have said, in Christ's Hospital, and which he never got rid of This is a painful complaint, but quite compatible with length of life ; but the longer Coleridge stayed in the damp grounds of the West of England, the worse he became. As a remedy, he began, in November 1796, to take opium. As far as he could subsequently remember, he had adopted this mode of relief from a prescription in some quack book, without considering how easily such 1796-98- LIFE OF COLERIDGE. 183 a i|||>it could be contracted. But this belongs to his many defects of memory in worldly things. The editor of the Watchman knew well the danger of " bad habits." But he defended himself on no lower authority than that of Dr. Beddoes. The doctor was a follower and personal acquaintance of the once celebrated Dr. John Brown, who professed to cure all diseases partly by opium, partly by alcohol, according as they originated in over-excitement or in debility. Dr. Beddoes had shortly before written a cautious but decidedly favourable preface to Dr. Brown's ' Elementa Medicina,' in which it is expressly stated (p. 230) that gout can be overcome by opium. So, like many another high - principled contemporary — as, for example, Wilberforce the slave emancipator, and the Baptist preacher, Robert Hall, — Coleridge fell a victim to mistaken advice. But upon the brain of the poet it acted, not merely as the benumber of pain, but as the source of dreams of bodily activity, and of all sorts of fancies, both pleasant and tormenting. This was the case at this time in Stowey, where he wrote long rigma- roles in his note-book, half grand, half inarticulate, full of pompous words, and painful oppression, which can be only explained as the hallucinations of opium. Thus, on p. yy : " Throned angels — upboiling anguish — leader of a kingdom of angels — love fires — a gentle bitterness — wellspring — total good — sick, lame, and wounded — blind, and deaf and dumb," &c. &c. Such medicine, therefore, as, according to his own account, he took on the occasion of this trip, may l84 LIFE OF COLERIDGE. chap. iv. doubtless have been opium. After a dose he would sleep — a deep sleep of the outer senses — for three hours, during which all life centred morbidly in the imagina- tion. A country bower among green hills appeared to his inward sight ; his beloved lay fondly at his side ; music sounded, and a prophetic mood possessed him, inspiring both surprise and awe. This was a favourite idyllic situation with him ; the same that meets us first in the " Eolian Harp." Even the " circling honey drops," the paradisaical sweetness, with melody in addition, repeated themselves in this mood in the same connection. Other pictures of memory also intermingled, and all tended together to conjure up the Gigantic and the Demoniac. Just before one of these sleeps, Coleridge had read in Purchas' ' Pilgrimage ' the account of a palace of the thirteenth century, belonging to the Tartar khan, Kublai. This palace, " the largest that ever was seen," was surrounded with trees, meadows, and menageries ; with moat, gates, and castles ; and a three- fold rampart, four times eight miles in circumference. Within this enormous " pleasure-dome " lay the bower which was his favourite subject. Twice five miles of fertile ground were seen in his imagination, covered with sunny gardens and towers — with incense-bearing trees, and primeval woods. Purchas described no more, but merely says that the form and materials of the whole were so costly and perfect, so charming and so stately, that description would take too long. But the poet's excellent memory in the intellectual 1796-98. LIFE OF COLERIDGE. 185 sense — supplied all gaps. Hardly awake from these trances, he would begin to write ; and if he had not been interrupted by an uninvited visitor, " Kubla Khan " would have been more than a fragment of fifty-four lines. Scarcely ever before has the course of lyrical inspira- tion, which is, generally speaking, also a kind of dream, been so easily traceable. A deeply-felt situation is the starting-point. Kindred representations join, often by means of external associations, and add new features, and thus the image grows. The combining power consists in an excitation of feeling, supported by a richly endowed memory. The understanding has only to watch that no inconsistency creep in. To which side of these two qualities the balance shall incline depends chiefly on the taste of the day. In the would-be classical era feeling was too much controlled by re- flection. The original mental picture did not sponta- neously grow, but had to be helped on by conscious, capricious aids, according to mechanical rules ; so that the work, despite the careful arrangements of the parts, gives rather the impression of an artificial than of an organic product. The writers themselves felt this, and selected by preference subjects addressed to the under- standing — such as moral poems and satires. The Romantic school, on the other hand, failed from not being critical enough, and nowhere less so than in " Kubla Khan." Coleridge threw himself unreservedly into the inspiration of the hour. The images rose up l86 LIFE OF COLERIDGE. chap. iv. involuntarily before him, " like things without any sen- sation, or consciousness of effort." Imagination took so high a flight as to approach actual illusion ; so that a psychological process became almost pathological in character. This enabled- him, it is true, to indulge in the most extraordinary conceptions, or, more properly speaking, to develop an extraordinary originality. On the other hand, the neglect of reflection was sure to revenge itself. North and south, sterility and luxuri- ance, grace and horror, knock about together, as in a kaleidoscope. Fancy runs down like a clock with a broken spring ; and in spite of all beauty, we miss that which Coleridge himself found missing in Lamb's verses — a firm and coherent body of thought. Let us not be unjust ! Every travailing mind must be measured by its contemporary opponents and followers. At the time we write we already look back from afar at the struggle between the Classical and Romantic schools. To us " Kubla Khan " is a splendid curiosity, a lyrical landscape fairy tale, which we know not what to make of. Ninety years ago this specimen of emotional inspiration evinced a bold and powerful reaction, Shelley borrowed many a curiosity from it ; for example, in " Marianne's Dream " we have the Fata Morgana towers — the half-joyful, half-demoniacal sound in the lady's ears — the bursting streams of light, and the feverishly-tossing floods — all without any practical object. And again, in the "Skylark," the "high-born maiden" in a palace, and the harmonious madness of the 1796-98. LIFE OF COLERIDGE. 187 singer. This is why Byron, Shelley, and Keats indulge so commonly in visions, distinctly so entitled — for example, "Darkness," "Vision of the Sea," "On a Dream " — seeking in all seriousness to forecast the future, and even placing the truth of the dream before. that of the waking eye. The poetic atmosphere became purified, but, in the zeal for reform, too much rarefied. The more brilliant the fireworks, the sooner were they extinguished. The early death of these poets, and of Coleridge also, as poet, is not unconnected with the revolutionary vehemence of their imagination. The English are accustomed to speak of the opium- eating to which Coleridge and others of his time fell victims, with moral condemnation, as if it had been a sin and not an illness ; just as in the middle ages the insane were looked upon as possessed. Any good doctor, with the help of cognac and coffee, would have cured them in a few weeks. As it was, a certain derangement of mind ensued, which complicated the case — the symptoms of the disease being mistaken for its cause. And the more Coleridge exerted himself intellectually, the stronger these symptoms became. Schiller found no scientific work so exciting as that of composing poetry, because it not only engages the understanding, but the whole mind. The poet is there- fore at all times and in all places pursued by nervous visions. I may cite Tasso's dialogue with his guardian angel; Goethe's vision of a bluish-grey semblance of himself and fantastically sprouting flowers ; also the red l88 LIFE OF COLERIDGE. chap. iv. light which floated before Hebbel during the creation of " Herod." And especially does this disturbance seem to have prevailed in England during the eighteenth century. It is remarkable how many authors lapsed into perma- nent insanity. That this was no mere chance may be gathered from the connection of their derangement with the intellectual tendencies of the time. In the first deccnnium, when great learning, political struggle, and literary envy prevailed, back to the time of the Dunciad, we find crabbed Misanthropes — Greene, the autobio- graphical rhymester of " Spleen," and Swift. Later, as domestic virtue and pious sentimentality came into fashion, there was an outbreak of religious mania, Collins, the composer of odes, went about in the church, sighing and sobbing with religious emotion ; Smart, the translator of the Psalms, told the people to kneel down in the streets ; while Fergusson, the amiable predecessor of Burns, and the gentle Cowper died in fear of eternal torments. In the time of the Revolution, and with the Romantic school, the over-strained imagination sought spasmodic enjoyments. Burns got drunk in true peasant fashion ; Coleridge, and his scholar De Ouincey — the last for its own sake — intoxicated themselves with opium ; nor was Byron a stranger to it. Southey over-did his reading, till he fell into idiocy ; Maturin, the tragedian, wrote with the consecrated wafer on his forehead ; while Lamb, after a disappointment in love, which threw him for six weeks into an asylum, wrote, with pathetic recol- lection, to Coleridge : " Dream not, Coleridge, of having 1796-98- LIFE OF COLERIDGE. 189 tasted all the grandeur and wildness of fancy, till you have gone mad." In Germany the mad infection began in the period of genius with Lenz and Holderlin. / Mistiness there took the form of metaphysics ; beyond the Channel that of poetic madness. An immense development of imagination took place in England, though not in healthy equilibrium. A number of inter- esting poetical works occur from the time of Swift to that of Byron ; but, of a higher class, only on a small scale or as episodes. Well-informed Englishmen even are known to admit that their more modern poetry is only piecemeal work. Coleridge was a genuine member of this uncomfortable but genial society ; the effects of opium were to be expected from him, and we need not be surprised that he should not always have waited for the pains in his joints, to take the remedy. During the second half of 1797 Coleridge's poetry of Nature was mute, except in so far as it mingled with other poetry. It revived again in the February of the following year, retaining the old ground-tones, but the colours became more gloomy. " Frost at Midnight " belongs to Coleridge's most original and finished works. Again he is in his own home, a sympathetic soul with him, gathering from slight and seldom observed signs the "secret minis- tries " of Nature. But he sits no longer out of doors, but within ; summer is exchanged for winter, day for night ; the music of the EoHan harp for the crackling of his fire ; the song of the lark for the screech of the owl ; ipo LIFE OF COLERIDGE. chap, iv, and instead of the Beloved, his own sleeping babe keeps him silent company. Recollections of his own youth are traceable in this poem, as in the dedication poem to his brother George ; but while in that work, with all their pathos, they led to a more cheerful enjoyment of the present, here they sharpen themselves into a painful sense of loss. Joy in external things, resignation within. Idyls, touchingly pervaded with elegiac tones. Here Shelley joined in with his wild poem, " Alastor." He also depicts himself in lonely colloquy with be- loved Innocence, while " Night utters a weird sound of its own stillness." He feels himself inwardly allied with earth, ocean, air — whether in summer or winter, wind or frost. He compares the bright and always brightening impressions of youth with the sorrowful present. But while Coleridge with his mystical God of Nature feels an inner harmony, Shelley's mind is all in tumult. The more the disguise of a universal happiness was stripped from the face of the French Revolution, the more did a universal shudder pass through English poetry. Coleridge's next work, as it appears, was " Lewti ; or, the Circassian Love Chaunt " (1798). The feeling is still more pathetic here. Some unkindness on Sara's part was the cause. As once in Clevedon, so here, the Beloved is sleeping in " a breezy jasmine bower," and a little bird sings o'er her head ; but it is only a figure — she herself is alienated from him. Dimly her " forehead fair " follows him through the moonlight, like 1796-9S. LIFE OF COLERIDGE. 191 the Abyssinian maid in " Kubla Khan"; but here, as a pale and ever paler little cloud, till it floats like "the lawny shroud of lady fair that died for love " (" Leonore "). And again he stands by the luminous water, only in this dream it is white. " I saw the white waves, o'er and o'er, Break against the distant shore. They broke in hght ; I heard no murmur of their roar." ■ Even the metre unites something of the peaceful regularity of his earlier blank verse with the free harmonious rhythm and arrangement of lines, as in " Kubla Khan "; while, here, passages and half-verses re- peat themselves with intentional and hurried monotony : " Lewti is not kind." " Lewti never will be kind." "Ah ! Lewti, why art thou unkind?" "To-morrow Lewti may be kind;" — till at last a sweet delirium takes his senses captive. This had a special charm for Shelley, who in his " Indian Serenade," has imitated both matter and manner. A mountain had weighed on Coleridge's breast, and that not only in sleep, but in reality. An attempt to shake this off is embodied in a second poem (1798), "The Nightingale." Let a poor "night- wandering man, whose heart was pierced with the remembrance of a grievous wrong," echo Milton's " most musical, most melancholy," if he will ; to him (Cole- ridge) the bird is " an airy harp," exulting in nature's joy. The beloved one is no longer mentioned; but, * Afterwards omitted. 192 LIFE OF COLERIDGE. chap. iv. instead of her, Wordsworth and his sister, with the little Hartley, share the poet's intelligence of the sounds and signs by which nature is revealed to Man. He is no longer in his garden or house, but on an old mossy bridge " you see the glimmer of the stream beneath, but hear no murmuring." And instead of the jasmine bower and flower-beds of Clevedon, he is surrounded " with a tangled under-wood," — the whole being, in his own words, " tipsy joy that reels with tossing head." Unrestrained, he now at last poured forth his sorrow, in the last days of April, when England was just expecting the invasion of the French — not aware that Bonaparte's preparations were directed against Egypt. In " Fears and Solitude " he shows us for the last time the joys of the husband, father, and friend, with the holy influences of the elements in a peaceful retreat — "a green and silent spot, amid the hills," — with the lark " that sings unseen " ; drawing the greater contrast between these scenes and the tyranny exercised over his fellow-citizens ; between this peace, and that approaching ruin of the beloved native land, which, with shame, he describes. " Seek not rescue from a change in government. You must learn to love Nature ; to revere her laws ; to draw wisdom from lakes, and hills, and clouds, and to ennoble your own souls while adoring God in His creation." The misery to come hangs like a thunder-cloud over the sunny landscape. This was the farewell song which the poet added to his domestic idyls. In the verses written among the Euganean Hills, Shelley again took 1796-98. LIFE OF COLERIDGE. 193 up the strain, contrasting a similarly soothing and imagi- nary paradise with the real fact of the fall of Venice and Padua. Not only Shelley — who in 1798 was still a child — was urged on by the creations of this time, but even Wordsworth, the older friend, who by his own strong sympathy had helped their production. Long and deeply had he nourished a similar religion of Nature, but only now did he find words to express the mysteriously educating power of earth and air over " souls of lonely places " in " The Eolian Visitations " and pantheistically coloured " Presences of Nature " (Introduction to the Prelude, 1799). Wordsworth, at all events, fully acknowledged his obligations to Coleridge, He dedicated to him his youthful poems, including the Prelude, as if to show how greatly he had influenced his intellectual development; and at the end he thanks him in so many words : "Thou hast enfranchised my thought from its earlier fear; thou hast taught me to take more rational proportions, and completed the discipline and consummation of a poet's mind." _On his own ex ound. lan dscap e-poetry, Coleridge had given more, and re- ceived but little beyond encouragement ^ In the art of description things were reversed ; here, Wordsworth was the master. ~ ~~ As early as 1796, if we can rely on the date fixed in the 'Biographia Literaria,' Wordsworth had read aloud an epic fragment called " The Vagrant," which he afterwards completed, and in 1798 published, under the O 194 LIFE OF COLERIDGE. chap. tv. title of "Guilt and Sorrow." It swarms with carriers, hosts, soldiers' wives, and rabble, all in a country-setting, and therefore essentially in the manner of Cowper ; only the scenery is wilder, and the tale worked up with awful human passions ; for between Wordsworth and Cowper lay the outbreak of the French Revolution. The model for these novel features had been derived by Words- worth from ' The Sicilian Romance,' the first of Mrs. Radcliff's tales of horror, which had appeared in 1790, just as he began his poem. A lonely ruined castle by night — suddenly deep sighs heard — discovery of a wretched woman, and a murdered traveller — a great mystery envelopes the crime. More deeply still was he influenced by Gessner's " Tod Abels," with which he had been long acquainted. Like as with the Swiss poet, the hero of the piece is a murderer from good motives ; in other words, in order to bring wife and children some plunder from foreign parts. He is pursued and punished by the fuiy of the elements — the very rocks roll down behind him. He meets the widow of a murdered man, just as Cain meets the widow of Abel, and sees the misery caused by a crime similar to his own. And again, like Cain, he meets his own family, and also perceives the burden which his guilt had laid on his wife, and how faithfully, in spite of all, she clings to him. All this awakens the voice of conscience in him, so that he invokes judgment and vengeance on himself. But what surprises us most in this fable, namely, the moral goodness of the murderer, appeared by no means strange 1796-98. LIFE OF COLERIDGE.. 195 in the eyes of his contemporaries. Noble villains were then common. Also, that the mythical Cain should turn into a real Englishman, was nothing out of the way in the democratic character of the literature of the day. But it was something new to credit landscape with an active agency in human deeds. Coleridge was deeply touched by " The Vagrant." He also had the power of conjuring the incidents of nature into words. But he had never dreamt of using her incidents for tragical ends. His own experiences in Stowey now brought these materials the closer to him. Did he not appear to himself, in his opium dreams, like a tortured culprit to whom the appearances of Nature assumed monstrous and delirious shapes ? Thus he only needed some outward impulse to use his pen in a similar way. " In midsummer 1798 he started on a trip with Words- worth along the southern coast of Devonshire. They came to Linton, and saw the striking rocky gorge called the " Valley of Stones." Here Coleridge conceived the plan of representing the murderer of Abel in his wretched wanderings. He had already returned to the inn at Linton, when a thunderstorm broke over the scene, and without his hat he ran down the long road to the valley, in order there to study the effects of the storm from life. Then hp at once began to write the " Wanderings of Cain." The first part was assigned to Wordsworth, keeping the second part for himself, for which in hot haste he threw off a sketch in prose, with a few leading O 2 196 LIFE OF COLERIDGE. chap. iv. verses. Cain is represented as a kind-natured murderer, tormented with remorse. He has the tenderest love for his Httlc son Enos, who accompanies him in the desert. He hears the angry voice of God in the roaring torrent and in the tumult of the wind ; he sees God's terrible image in the clouds. The curse on him, and his soul's anguish are perceived in his faint, wasted form, in his sullen, glaring eye, and in the agony expressed in his countenance. In this state he meets the spirit of Abel, mournful, like a Homeric ghost, and sees into what suffering he has plunged his brother. It is evident how little he gathered from the Bible, and how much from Gessner and Wordsworth ! Immediately the landscape "assumes a dreamy double character, like as in " Kubla Khan " — moonlight and daylight together, cedars and firs, blossoms and fruits. In " Guilt and Sorrow " both landscape and people were specifically English. Here a new world opens to us, circumstantially described, with foot-prints in the sand, with squirrels sporting in the trees, with rich forms and deep colours, but hanging in the air like a northern light — a world belonging to all time, and yet to no time ; having its own stead- fast but mystical laws, over which the imagination and not the reason is the ruling power. Wordsworth aimed more at matter-of-fact consistency, Coleridge at transcendental ; the first was the healthier, the other the most ambitious. The one lighted up the Common- place with a gleam of angelic light, fulfilling Goethe's words : " Miirchcn ! doch so wunderbar, Dichtcrkiinste 1796-98. LIFE OF COLERIDGE. 197 maclien's wahr,"* An anecdote of the time (Hazlitt) will help to define the distinction between them. Coleridge was angry because Wordsworth refused to believe the fairy and ghost tales of the country people. He believed them all, through thick and thin, though, like all the Romantic school, only with his imagination. rHe therefore, as a poet, conceived the supernatural element more powerfully, and brought it more into the , foreground. Wordsworth had marked out the direction of the proposed work ; but Coleridge followed it with I such originality, that the first attempt to work together, as once before with Southey, proved it to be impossible. When Wordsworth saw the outline Coleridge had sketched — the ink was scarcely dry — he screwed up his lips with his particular smile, and with a look of humorous despondency pointed to his own paper, which was almost a blank sheet. That sobered Coleridge, who felt then that his ideas were too far-fetched ; he threw his sketch laughingly aside, and the " Ancient Mariner " was written instead. The foundation of this story, according to Words- worth, was a dream of his friend Cruikshank's, in which a skeleton ship, filled with figures, had appeared. The idea kindled in Coleridge a number of kindred images. He was accustomed to wander of evenings on the shore to the north of Stowey, and watch a vessel emerging to sight on the open sea — first a little spot * " Fairy tale, however wonderful, the art of the poet will make it true." igS. LIFE OF COLERIDGE. chap. iv. between himself and the setting sun ; then a dark little cloud ; then a shadowy form, mast and yards, black as iron cross-bars ; while the solitary character of the coast helped to heighten the ghostly impression. But whence did he take his corresponding figures ? Literary recollections helped him. A phantom vessel occurs in Shakespeare. In " Macbeth " a witch sails to Aleppo in a sieve, in order to wreak her malice upon it sailor whom she hates : " I will drain him dry as hay : Sleep shall, neither night nor day, Hang upon his penthouse lid ; He shall live a man forbid : Weary sev'n-nights, nine times nine, Shall he dwindle, peak, and pine : Though his bark cannot be lost, Yet it shall be tempest-tost." Here Coleridge found his spectre sailors — Nightmare and Death — the last tlie less cruel — who, with similar result, cast lots for their defenceless victim — the An- cient Mariner. The supernatural part came first, then Wordsworth took it in hand and modelled the human forms. That took place on the occasion of another trip to Lin- ton, in November 1797. While the two poets, who were this time accompanied by Miss Wordsworth, climbed the wooded Ouantock Hills, surrounded with leafless brushwood and clear little streams, they thoroughly talked over the ghostly theme. A newly started monthly periodical wanted some contributions. The 1796-98. LIFE OF COLERIDGE. 199 ballads were pledged before they were written, and the fees for them went to cover the expense of the little trip. Wordsworth began his co-operation by throwing upon the distressed Mariner something of the fate of Cain ; the horrors of the deep which he endures being the penalty for the murder of one of God's creatures. The details were gathered from Shelvockc's ' Voyage round the World' (London, 1726). He there (p. 72) read of a captain, by name Simon Hatley, a discon- tented, cruel, splenetic man, who later, on account of his piracies, was taken by the Spaniards. The same, on a fearfully cold and stormy passage, far south of the Terra del Fuego, saw a black albatross, the only living thing in the wide waste of \\aters, who soared round and round the vessel for many days. The captain accordingly imagined in his superstitious way that the dark, disconsolate-looking bird had something to do with the bad weather, and in one of his gloomy fits shot the albatross, " not doubting " (perhaps) "that we should have a fair wind after it." The guardian spirits of Nature, of whom Coleridge often sang in Stowey, revenged the murder ; and the ship's company agreed to put the mark of Cain on the criminal, by hanging the body of the albatross about his neck. And the sequel ? How was the unfortunate Mariner to escape finally from the " Nightmare, Life in Death " ? Coleridge must somehow have known the epistle of Paulinus, Bishop of Nola, addressed by him in the second half of the fourth century to Vicarius, the Vice-Prefect of LIFE OF COLERIDGE. Rome, telling him the wonderful fate of a stranded corn vessel {Gentleman's Magazine, October 1853); and as the owner of the Lucanian coast, on which it had grounded, would not give it up, the Bishop declared it to be a prize rescued by the Almighty Himself, which no man, unpunished, could withhold. It had been wrecked near Sardinia, and deserted by all the crew, except one man who was forgotten at the pump. This man suffered an awful solitude, had no food for six days and nights, and longed for death. At length the Lord had compassion on him, and gave him new life " with the food of His Word." He commanded him to hoist sail ; and scarcely had the man raised himself for the work, than he saw " angelic hands busy about the task." He no sooner touched the rope than the sail moved to its place, and the ship resumed her course. Sometimes he saw an armed band on board who directed her movements. The " Pilot of the World " steered ; and after a voyage of twenty-three days, brought her safe into port. Some fishermen, inspired by the Lord, seeing the ship in the offing, put forth from the land in two small boats. But when they reached her they were in the utmost terror, for she looked like a man-of-war full of soldiers. The fishermen prepared to flee, when the cries of the old man brought them back. The ship was towed in triumph into the harbour, the man was landed, and related his adventures with tears of joy. But a different conclusion was required. In the stor\' (as aforesaid) the vessel comes into the harbour ; here 1796-98. LIFE OF COLERIDGE. 201 Coleridge makes her go " down like lead," like the horse in the wild hunt, in " Leonore." One more person- age was wanting, in order to pronounce blessing and atonement. This part, as often in such romances, fell to the Hermit. The scaffolding of the ballad was thus complete. The poem was enriched with emotional images. Not that these lyrical elements were added after the epic features had been decided ; on the contrary, the ex- ample of " Kubla Khan " shows that all took form pari passu. No personal experience had helped. Coleridge, strange to say, had never been at sea, still less at the North Pole, or at the Equator. This accounts for his making the furrow follow the ship, instead of streaming off from it, a mistake which he first corrected in the second edition after his visit to Germany. The poet's extensive reading about distant countries and seas stood him in good stead. In the " Destiny of Nations " he had adopted the History of Greenland by Crantz in describing the drifting field of ice, where " the white bear howls in agony." / Here in the "Ancient Mariner" he transposed the scene first to the South Pole, with " snowy cliffs '' and " ice mast-high, as green as emerald," and fearful cracking and splitting sounds. Here also he speaks of a calm in mid ocean ; of the horrid slimy things, "upon the shiny sea," and of the intense joy when again " the fair breeze blew." The opportunity was too attractive. The ship was to reach the Line and remain there, till the sea became stagnant with LIFE OF COLERIDGE. sparkling reptiles. In these monsters he seems to have taken particular interest, and to have consulted various zoological works ; for the note-book of this date contains long paragraphs upon the alligators, boas, and crocodiles of antediluvian times. Coleridge also repeats ideas from his own songs, as he makes the contrite sinner hear the song of the skylark, and " the noise of a hidden brook " ; all that is apparently only accessory, but it gives the ballad its chief charm. It had its effect also on succeeding poets, though no one imitated the fable itself Thus Walter Scott in the " Lord of the Isles " describes a ship in peril, in a phosphorescent part of the ocean, as surrounded with " elfish lustre, and lucid flakes," and refers expressly to Coleridge. And Byron also, in his dream of the destruction of the world, called " Darkness," would scarcely have depicted the return to chaos as a rotting sea with fallen sails, if the "Ancient Mariner " had not been in his mind. ' It was a delicate thought to put the weird tale not into the author's own mouth, but into that of an ancient mariner, who relates it with dreamy recollection. The "wedding guest," met in the street, is compelled to listen to the last sentence ; for such is the power exercised over him by the narrator, that "he cannot choose but hear." Doubtless this is a feature taken from life, for such a fascination did Coleridge himself exercise over his hearers. Something was also derived from other sources. Monk Lewis, in his tale already alluded to, had introduced a ballad, "Alonzo the Brave 1796-98. LIFE OF COLERIDGE. 203 and the Fair Imogen," which became at once popular. It commenced with Imogen's wedding banquet. While the bride is dancing she suddenly sees a knight next her, who never leaves her side ; she trembles as ^^^he discovers him to be the ghost of a former lover, who has fallen in the wars. Thus the narrative of the un- comfortable mariner is addressed to a wedding guest, so that the music of the dance is heard through the fearful tale. Monk Lewis' lover, who carries off the bride at midnight to his grave. Is obviously taken from Burger's "Leonore," he having been one of the first introducers of German ghost tales. Burger's work there- fore influenced Coleridge both directly and indirectly. It is in the nature of such ghostly stuff always to recur, and in spite of their strange features to be always repeated. The metre of the "Ancient Mariner" appears on the first view to be the same doggerel as that of the " Devil's Thoughts." This had hitherto been used by poets in a comic sense : Coleridge inspired it with a tremendous meaning. The Romantic school crossed themselves, where people before had only laughed. The con- sequence was that Coleridge found himself suddenly plunged into the form of the old ' Percy Ballads ' ; only he suited the irregularities of the metre, owing in the old ballads to carelessness and incorrect renderinsf, to the varying tones of his subject. The naive artlessness of the Middle Ages became in the hands of the Romantic school an intentional form of art. This opened the 204 LIFE OF COLERIDGE. CHAP. iv. door to the peculiarities of style observable in " Chevy Chase," in the "Battle of Otterbourn," &c. It would be too much to say that Coleridge led the wa}- to this innovation ; archaic words, epic formulas, and short popular proverbs had already been introduced by Chatterton. The interrogation as an enlivening element in burlesque narrative had never died out. Coleridge himself had applied it in a comic sense in the "Devil's Thoughts " — ("and how then was the devil clad ? ") ; while in the serious ballad William Taylor had restored it in his translation of " Leonore." But the significant ejaculation, " Heaven's mother send us grace ! " ; the apparently pleonastic attributes (" Man of woman born ") ; the sympathetic asides (" I fear thee, , Ancient Mariner"); the protestations, and not least, the y leaps and bounds of the narrative, which require a mar- I • ginal glossary in prose, — all these energetic symptoms were applied anew by Coleridge. Nor, as in his metre, was Coleridge satisfied merely with adopting the old- fashioned popular forms of art, but he added to them all sorts of strange features of his own. The Ancient • Mariner, for example, swears by his "grey beard," as if he were a Turk. The Romantic school has always had ^ an eclectic tendency. I have thus ventured an attempt to analyse the course and origin of one of the most original poems that ever was produced by man ; not in order to lower the poet as a pilferer from others, but to draw attention to the deeper difficulties and higher qualities of his work. The i796-9ii- LIFE OF COLERIDGE. 205 component parts were supplied to him, but their novel and organic combination was his own; and in art all depends on this power of construction. The real artist comprehends these things intuitively ; but to the con- scious psychologist they are as hidden as is the origin of life to the biologist. At the same time, it is well worth our while to track the artist's footsteps ; for the nearer we can come to him, the more we instinctively feel the action of genius, both in detail and in general laws ; the more keenly we pry, though \\?-ith feeble eye, into the workshop of the creative mind, the more completely shall we understand the beauty of the creation. The history of human culture and also antiquarian questions arc not to be neglected, but the inquiry into the inner processes of poetry is the chief aim of the history of literature. They teach us to perceive with a deeper and fuller perception, and therefore with a higher en- joyment. In the execution of the work Wordsworth was asfain reduced to inactivity. After the rude outline had been settled, he could only contribute a single verse here and there. His way was not to embody spirits, but to spiritualize men. He would like to have given the Ancient Mariner " character and profession " (see Lamb's correspondence) ; while Coleridge, feeling that the figure he had created had no form or stability for the actual world, wisely held aloof from anything definite in time* country, or worldly position. Wordsworth wanted the dead sailors to return to life the moment they touch the 2o6 LIFE OF COLERIDGE. chap. iv. sails ; but this would have impaired the dreaminess of the impression ! Nor did he even approve the style ; he wanted not only to have classic forms avoided, but also every rhetorical turn. His idea was to use a homely, peasant-like style, such as he sought in his own poems, though even there not with consistent simplicity. He therefore soon felt himself rather an obstructive element in the composition of the poem, and took his leave of the uncomfortable ship, which now floated more freely with- out him. The two poets dwelt at the opposite ends of the same English romantic school. They had the power to alternately attract, strengthen, and complete each other, but they could not penetrate or permeate each other. Coleridge even soon regretted having admitted his friend to so much voice in the composition. He saw that the story, by the admixture of guilt and penalty, was being used to point the moral of hurting no animal, which assorted ill with the supernatural basis ; indeed, contradicted it rather ridiculously. jHe accordingly repaired its faults, and then applied llimself — at latest in November 1797 — to an unmitigated fairy tale — " Christabel." " Perhaps 'tis pretty to force together Thoughts so all unlike each other ; To mutter and mock a broken charm, To dally with wrong that does no harm." In " Christabel," the personages are taken from fairy- land, treated, it is true, allegorically. Christabel herself is derived from the first book of the "Fairy Queen," where 1796-98. LIFE OF COLERIDGE. 207 Una — the lovely, pure, and noble maiden — is the im- personation of true holiness. Like her, Christabel bears a secret trouble in her heart. Her true knight is far away, and she enters alone into a dangerous forest to pray for him. Her enemy Geraldine, in similar fashion, is like Spenser's Duessa. She is in reality a sorceress ; in which respect Coleridge's idea was not new. Her proper form is half woman, half serpent. But, versed in all forbidden arts, she is able to assume the appear- ance of a beautiful and innocent lady, takes the false name of Fidessa, and deceives the best of knights ; for her real character is Falsehood. Not that Spenser was the inventor of this changeful apparition, for her ancestry ramifies through all the Middle Ages. The amicable conjunction of two such incompatible charac- ters ; the horrible, and yet captivating magic of the sorceress; the mental conflict of the outwardly defence- less maiden — this strange and romantic position is all the ballad is meant to portray. It is true an ingenious attempt has been made to interpret the personages and action in an allegorical sense (Coterill). But all the genuine allegory in it belongs to Spenser, and Coleridge has simply taken it over. In the conclusion of the ' Biographia Literaria ' he owns that he intended by " Christabel " nothing more than a common fairy tale. He, however, so altered and twisted Spenser's arrangement of the personages, that the allegorical meanings proper to each can only land the cleverest expositor in a puzzling labyrinth of hy- 2o8 LIFE OF COLERIDGE. chap. iv„ pothescs. The knight, who is the object of contention between the two women, is with Spenser not Christabel's lover, but her father. Probably he amalgamated the fable of the " Fairy Queen " with the " Marriage of Sir Gawayn " (' Percy Ballads '), where a false lady^ practises magical arts upon the young and beautiful Guinevere in the Green Wood, and gains Guinevere's old father for her lover. In the continuation of the poem, which Coleridge planned, but never executed, the witch was intended, like Spenser's Archimago, to take the form of the lover, and thus doubly to torment poor Christabel. But no ethical rules prevail here. " All: rational ideas are, as in Shakespeare's "Midsummer Night's Dream," thrown overboard from the first. For what can we make of a noble maiden who steals into a wood at midnight in order to pray for her lover ! The moral pedantry of the eighteenth century, which is so apparent in the " Ancient Mariner," was banished from this poem. | An uncanny but interesting play of fancy is brought ^ before us, the materials for which were furnished by the early ages of Song,' but here carried out in times nearer to us. All that Coleridge mingled with it was only intended to heighten " the giddiness of heart and brain," as he says in the last verse but three. To the materials of the narrative the forms had to be adapted. They arc therefore more fantastic than in the " Ancient Mariner." It is the same unfettered metre which Coleridge, following Shakespeare's example, used' 1796-98. LIFE OF COLERIDGE. 209 in " Fire, Famine, and Slaughter," only intended to give a far greater dramatic effect to the narrative. As regards the style, there is an accumulation of question and inter- jection, the great homeliness of single words enhancing the expectation of extraordinary things. Where, for example, the ' Percy Ballads ' had "swift as winds can be," and where Chatterton " quick as thought can be," Coleridge follows Spenser's example with the startling " as fast as ever can be." As regards composition, the lyrical was placed more boldly in the foreground ; for the further removed from reality the subject, the more was needed for actual sight and feeling. The first part of " Christabel " — and that alone was composed in Stowey — consists, properly speaking, only of three scenes, each of which demands a swift pencil : the forest where the maiden finds the diabolical Geraldine; the castle hall through which she conducts her unholy guest ; and the bedroom in which, with giddy senses, she sees the real form of the monster. All is so harmonious that one might as well describe three movements of music. And finally the Coda takes up the first and third movements, leading the whole to the wretched scene of the next morning. The Romantic school not only breaks through those frontier lines to which the classicists strictly adhere, but poetry itself is made to mingle with the sister arts of painting and music; and thus the most varied elements were combined to conjure up a new imaginary world Nowhere is that license of form, for which the revolu- tionary epoch unceasingly strove, more distinctly im- P LIFE OF COLERIDGE. / printed than on "Christabel "; which indeed became the chief agent by which that license was transmitted to the next succeeding poets. Walter Scott adopted the chief peculiarities of metre, style, and composition in his first work — "The Lay of the Last Minstrel" — and owed to them the greater part of its success ; one particular ejaculation to the Virgin Mary he borrowed literally. He retained these peculiarities more or less in his subsequent poems. Byron also used them in his first essay — " The Giaour " — and often afterwards, though with considerable alterations. Not till after the War of Independence did a purer classic feeling take the lead. The first of the three scenes, the meeting in the wood, grew mainly out of a suggestion by Spenser, In the " Fairy Queen," Una, rambling in the wood, longing for her lover, has laid herself down in the dark shade, where she suddenly perceives " a ramping greedy lion," who,, however, gently licks her hand. In a similar place Christabel meets the apparently amiable sorceress. But the scene is here connected with the "Vagrant," in Wordsworth's * Descriptive Sketches,' seated weary and forlorn in a wood. This introduced a number of land- scape features — the gloomy clouds, the faint moonlight, the howling dog, the " drowsy crow of midnight cock." the striking of the distant clock. The epic poets of the Renaissance were content to describe fairyland in general terms ; Coleridge brought in actual details. He helped himself, also, from the same source which Wordsworth had used; namely, from the last scene in the "Mid- 1796-9S. LIFE OF COLERIDGE. 211 summer Night's Dream," where the wolf is made "to howl to the moon," — " Whilst the scritch-owl, scritching loud, Puts the wretch, that lies in woe, I n remembrance of a shroud ; " — and the grave " lets forth its sprite," here represented in the jaerson of Geraldine. As respects her, the manner and time of her appearance had already been indicated by Spenser. Duessa shows herself in full beauty, adorned with jewels, modestly entreating ; but at Easter time such nightmares are seen in their proper form. Geraldine's previous history he took chiefly from Taylor's translation of Biirger's " Leonore," where, according to the lady's own story, she has been carried off upon a wild horse, and left in the wood half dead with fright, Scott and Byron, also — the one in the " Bridal of Trier- main," the other in the " Siege of Corinth," — have in- troduced female apparitions with involuntary likeness to "Christabel." The second scene — in the castle — was suggested by Mrs. Radcliffs ' Romance of the Forest.' Externally it is not only the same — situated close to a wood, the gate " ironed within and without," the painted window, &c. — but it contains the same inhabitants ; a morose old father, and a beautiful young maiden whose mother died in her infancy. Here, as there, we enter with a lady who has been carried off. and who is hospitably received. We see the daughter of the house stealing noiselessly up the stairs. Following a wide-spread r 2 LIFE OF COLERIDGE. popular belief, the witch is helped over the " threshold of the gate," by which she is supposed to gain power over the occupant of the dwelling. The ballad of "Alonzo the Brave and the fair Imogen" also con- tributed something — the " angry moan of the mastiff," and " the tongue of light " from the hearth, as soon as a bad spirit like Geraldine passes. Third scene — the bed-chamber. Spenser makes the lower, bestial half of the sorceress appear on occasion of a bath. Coleridge could not have managed such an incident in an old castle in the dead of the night. He therefore makes her share Christabel's bed, for reasons that he presumably took from Mrs. Radcliffs ' Mysteries of Udolfo '; namely, that the lord of the castle is ill, that all noise must be avoided, and that therefore Christabcl can arouse no servants. From the same work he took the idea of concealing the nature of the horrible sight as long as possible. The daughter, in Mrs. Radcliff's tale, sees a curtained picture in an out-of-the-way room ; she draws the curtain, and beholds something so unspeakably horrible, that she loses consciousness. The authoress, uses this as a means of heightening the reader's curiosity, and only tells us towards the end that it is the wax model of a half-putrified human body. In the same way Coleridge breaks off the narrative just when expec- tation is most excited ; when Christabcl, having seen "a sight to dream of, not to tell," can neither speak nor stir. He intended to disclose the dreadful secret at the con- clusion, which he never wrote. But by means of this 1 796-98. L IFE OF COLE RID GE. 2 1 3 silence he produced an effect which no words could have conveyed. Having kindled the imagination, he leaves it to conjure up all that is most appalling. His friend Lamb had good grounds for dissuading him from finishing the tale ; the mystery, half intentional, half accidental, enhances the sense of the Supernatural, The Classic school, which especially insists on deductive coherence, abjured such restless forms of art ; but the Romantic school, on the contrary, delighted in them the more, as a means of exciting, without satisfying, the imagination. Scott, in his " Marmion," alludes often and from the beginning to the great crime his hero has committed, but only after long delay and tension are we allowed to know what it is. Byron also gives no clear idea of the dark deeds with which the minds of his Lara and Manfred are burdened. /Compared together, the poetic value of " Christabel" depends less upon structure and characters than that lof the " Ancient Mariner," and more on the lyrical lelements of feeling. This is also the case with Keats' Jclosely related ballad, " The Eve of St. Agnes," where [,the part of Geraldine is taken by a lover. By the i8th of February, 1798, Coleridge had fin- ished the first part (in 327, and later in 332 lines). He writes to Cottle : " I have finished my ballad. It is in 340 lines " — a statement which fits no other poem of this time. Four more parts were still to follow; and had the Muse befriended him, he would, in spite of Lamb, soon have added them. The second part he 214 J^II^E OF COLERIDGE. chap. iv. Is known to have written two years later in Keswick. He describes the morning awaking in the castle, and how the lady leads her evil companion to her father ; and how he falls into her snares, and sends " Bard Bracy " to acquaint Geraldine's father where she is. With his wonted power, Coleridge contrives to show the ensnaring and poisonous expression " with somewhat of malice, and more of dread " of " the snake's small eye," as it seems to shrink in the foul lady's head — a Satanic heightening of the prophet's " flashing eye " in " Kubla Khan "; and imitated by Scott in the wedding feast in the " Bridal of Triermain," and by Byron in the " Giaour." But this pretty well exhausts the magic elements. The warning dream of " Bard Bracy," in which he sees a dove in the power of a green snake, is only a variation of the same form of simile given more forcibly at the beginning. Gentle human tones are soothingly intermixed ; namely, in a praise of that friendship which had once united the two fathers. But beautiful as these are, they harmonize ill with the general character of a fairy tale. It is also sunshine instead of moonlight ; moral observations and historically-sounding feudal names join in ; style and metre grow more subdued, and youth's genial play of fancy seems to decline. As long as he lived, Coleridge intended to continue the tale, but he never seriously took it in hand. " Pantisocracy," " Kubla Khan," and " Christabel" — his most brilliant undertakings — remained mere fragments ; and, strange to say, we are glad they tlid so remain. 1796-98. LIFE OF COLERIDGE. 215 Two more ballads of similar nature were begun in Stowcy. The first is the history of a curse, called the " Three Graves." According to Coleridge's own account, he sketched the plot in 1797 — presumably after writing " Christabel." Here again an innocent bride suffers from the arts of a malicious woman — this time her own mother ; who drives the poor girl almost to madness with her wicked curses. The incident itself has quitted the sphere of fairyland for that of plain prose, being founded on real fact, while the personages belong to homely life. The tale takes its rise from the mother's wretched and hopeless passion for her daughter's lover ; related by the grave-digger. The poet soon felt that he had made a mistake, and therefore only finished the third and fourth parts. The other poem is inscribed " Ballad of the Dark Ladye," and appeared first in the Morning Post, Dec. 17 "jj^ showing by its affinity to " Christabel " that it belongs to this period. The introduction is of well- known beauty, and derives its charm both from land- scape and erotic lyrical elements. The lover reminds his mistress how he had once told her a tale of love and woe ; how, leaning near her, his harp had sounded tones of mingled fear and devotion, as in the "Eolian Harp," and in " Kubla Khan." He had sung of a lover who, "crazed by cruel scorn," as he had described himself in " Lewti," had roamed the mountain woods, " nor rested day nor night." A beautiful angel sometimes stood before him, though he knew it to be the evil spirit — Geraldine. Only when he had given his life for his 2i6 LIFE OF COLERIDGE. chap. iv. lady, and lay dying in her charge, did she own that she had loved him. This was subsequently imitated in Keats' " La Belle Dame sans Mercy." After the intro- ductory story of the heartless lady, follows " the sister talc " of the equally heartless knight. He has brought a young maiden to misery, pining for his love, and he now comes to fetch her for their marriage. He proposes to conduct her to his home in the dark, " beneath the twinkling stars." But she shrinks from the thought of darkness, and wishes to be led from her mother's door " in the eye of noon," surrounded with bridal companions. And here the fragment breaks off; probably because Coleridge knew how closely it bordered upon " Leonore." One would have thought that these ballads, written in the very flowering time of fairy tales and dramas, would have met with immediate success. But that was not the case. First appeared the little volume with the " Ancient Mariner," with the " Nightingale," the two moral episodes from " Osorio," and the earliest short poems by Wordsworth. It was published by Cottle, with the appropriate title, * Lyrical Ballads.' Merc caviar for the multitude ! The sort of criticism that ensued may be judged from the example of the Mo7itJiIy Reviezv. The incident of the Nightmare was called "the strangest cock-and-bull story that ever we .saw." " Poetical touches of an exquisite kind, but no poetry : the style, artificial rust." Even friends had no pity for the unfortunate Mariner. Wordsworth made 1796-98. LIFE OF COLERIDGE. 217 him the scapegoat for the failure of the whole collection, while Cottle's withdrawal from business reduced its value to nil. Southey spoke disparagingly of the " Dutch attempt " ; Lloyd would have liked more riietaphysics ; Lamb alone showed enthusiastic admira- tion and sound criticism. Coleridge joined whimsically in the general condemnation, as seen in the following lines : " Your poem must eternal be, Dear sir, it cannot fail ; For 'tis incomprehensible. And without head or tail." When the 'Lyrical Ballads,' in 1800, reached another edition, another volume was added. To this Coleridge made only one contribution — the introduction to the " Dark Ladye," which attracted no attention. Thus warned, he rightly kept back his other fragments from publication. We can guess the sort of reception which the still stranger introduction to " Christabel " would have received. Those interested in it had the pleasure of hearing it recited. For fifteen years the poet contented himself with reading it aloud to friendly circles, and letting it be widely copied. In this way he personally amplified and explained the text, introducing the marvellous images to his hearers with melodious sing- song ; his expression varying with the nature of the subject. He thus gained admiring pupils, who dissemi- nated a juster taste, raised their hearers to the level of the poet's aim, and gradually inspired a large circle with a due appreciation for the new literature. Scott's 2iS LIFE OF COLERIDGE. chap. iv. poems, also, had accustomed the public to the style and metrical peculiarities which prevail in " Christabel," and Byron's recommendation at length brought the poem before the world in 1816. As regards the history of English literature, these ^Lyrical Ballads' exemplify the complete development of the English Romantic school. Coleridge — the platonic leader of the Bristol circle — introduced realistic imagi- nation into supernatural subjects ; Wordsworth, into natural subjects. Had the latter gone into philosophy, he would certainly have adopted the Aristotelian type. Each was aware of his power to supplement the other, and they accordingly — as they themselves relate — divided the realm of poetry between them. Both had now attained the summit of their capacity. What they composed after the ' Lyrical Ballads ' is in many respects beautiful and great, but it opened no new- paths, being only a further application of the art each had already acquired. Southey also gained his highest elevation, in 1800, by his oriental epic, "Thalaba." All were now full-grown poets. In the nineteenth century they only sought for more development in prose — their poetic powers indeed declined ; first in Coleridge, who over-stimulated his fancy by opium ; but in the others from a cause common to all. The Muse had been nourished by a confident enthusiasm for freedom and human progress, and this declined with the rise of Napoleon's power. The ideals of their youth had begun to wane, and with them waned also their creative 1796-98. LIFE OF COLERIDGE. 219 power. To this must be added the influence of the pubh'c, now not only sobered in character, but becom- ing critical and irritable where it had been formerly- credulous and sympathetic. An angry disgust at every Jacobinical symptom soon swept the ardour for progress, for the time being, out of the country. Love of countrj^ began to be preached, instead of love of mankind ; and our poets shared the decline as they had shared the rise of the French movement for freedom. I call them " our poets," but can no more character- istic a term be found for friends so closely allied ? In England they are called the " Lake school," which means neither more nor less than that their leaders migrated within a few years to the Cumberland lakes ; Wordsworth and Southey for good, and Coleridge for a time. They were friends by nature, but the epithet of " Lake poets " is as one-sided as were the political opinions of the Edinburgh Reviezu which bestowed it, and which was hostile to men who now rose up against the so-called Liberalism — or rather against the reac- tionary France of the time. " Lake school " is a name, but no designation. This was felt in England, where many critics have accordingly fallen into the opposite extreme, and maintained that the members of this group of poets had nothing in common beyond their personal and accidental conditions. As if they had only lived together, and not worked together ! In truth they were bound together by many a strong tie, and above all by one of a polemical kind ; namely, by the 220 LIFE OF COLERIDGE. chap. iv. aversion for the monoton\' that had preceded them, and by the struggle against merely dogmatic rules. Unbending uniformity is death ! Let us be various and individual as life itself is. Let us stand up for liberty when threatened by monarchical caprice ; but let us hold to the old paths when caprice, in the name of freedom, seeks to change them. Let us avoid the mere smooth surface of society, and rather wander, hermit-like, through nature, or plunge into the vortex of the people. Away with dry Rationalism. Let us fight it with all the powers we possess ; whether by bold Platonism, or humble Bible faith ; whether by en- thusiastic hymns, or dreamy fairy tales ; whether by the fabulous world of distant times and zones, or by the instincts of the children in the neat village. Let us abjure the ever-recommended nostrum of imitation of the old masters in poetry, and rather attach ourselves to homely models, and endeavour, with their help, lovingly and organically to develop their inner life. These were the aims of Walter Scott and his Scotch school, only with such changes as local differences demanded. Individuality in person, nationality and subject, and therefore the emphasis of all natural unlikeness, was the motto on both sides of the Tweed. And, as these men, when confronted by elements peculiar, rare, and marvellous, designated such elements as " romantic," so may they themselves be justly called the " Romantic school," But the term is much misused, and requires a little 1796-98. LIFE OF COLERIDGE. elucidation. Shakespeare is usually called a romantic poet. He, however, never used the expression, and would have been surprised if any one had applied it to him. The term presupposes opposition to the classic style, to rhetorical deduction, and to measured periods, all of which were unknown in the time of the Renais- sance, and first imported in that of the French Revo- lution. On the other hand, Wordsworth, Coleridge, Southey, Lamb, and Walter Scott's circle all branched off from the classical path with a directness and con- sistency which sharply distinguish them from their predecessors, contemporaries, and successors. Their predecessors had not broken with the Greek and Latin school, nor with the school of Pope ; Chatterton copied Homer ; Cowper translated him ; Burns in his English verses, and Bowles in his sonnets, adhered to what is called the ''pigtail period"! The principal poems composed in the last decennium of the eighteenth century — not to be reckoned by the birth or death-year of the composer, but by the date of his most individual work — such works, as far as they had no connection with " our poets," adhered still more to classic tradition. In London the satires of Mathias and Gifford renewed the style of the " Duriciad," and the moral poems of Rogers that of the " Essay on Man." Landor wrote his youthful " Gebir " in the style of Virgil, and originally in Latin itself The amateur in German literature, William Taylor of Norwich, and Dr. Sayers, interested them- selves especially for those works by Goethe which bear !!! Z/fZ; OF COLERIDGE. an antique characte,-for " Iphigenia," "Proserpina" "Alexis and Dora." Only when the war ^vith France drew near was the classical feeling interrupted. Camp- bell, the Scotchman, and Moore, the Irishman, both well schooled by translations from the Greek, recalled to mind the songs of their own people, and rendered them popular with the fa.shionable world-though only by clothmg them i„ classic garb. How different to the •■artrfiaal rust" of Christabel ; to the almost exa-..e. rated homeliness of •■ We are Seven"; and to the ™de "Lay of the. Last Minstrel"! When at last, with the fall of Napoleon, the great stars-Byron, Shelley, Keats and later the mature Landor-rose in the hemisphere' they T,ad all imbibed from the Romantic school a warmer form of thought and feeling, and a number of productive impulses, though, Euphorion-like, they still regarded the antique as their parent. They expressed much appreciation of the Romantic school, but their hearts were with ^schylus and Pindar. They contended for nafonal character, but only took pleasure in planting ^. n class, so,,. Byron's enthusiasm for Pope was no have d,ed m Greece, and Shelley and Keats in Italy Compared with what we may call these classical J members of the Romantic school, Wordsworth Co e I r.dge an Scott-and the rest-may be said t have: 1 an „othn,g, whether in the form of translation or ™ at,on, from classical literature; while they drl ™*..n,spn.ation from the Middle Ages. ^Z^^. 1 796-98. LIFE OF COLERIDGE. 223 Pope was only a lucid, able, and clever journeyman. It is therefore fair to consider them, and them alone, as exponents of the Romantic school. Such discussions upon a term may appear pedantic. But distinctions in words, define differences in conception. They are the landmarks for every progress in knowledge, though the individual inquirer may find at last that in the com- plexity of life no frontier lines can be laid down with mathematical precision. The delightful days in Stowey were coming to an end. Money embarrassments first supervened. Lloyd sepa- rated himself from Coleridge in July 1797, and went over to Southey, who was now studying law, talked of "hollow friends," professed "to forget all," but retui-^ed to him no more. The sonnets of Higginbottoni had perhaps offended him .'' By his departure the house lost its best financial support. Coleridge accordingly hastened to London in September, in order to arrange some literary work.. He looked forward to a long absence, and sent his wife the means to follow him. But in November of the same year, we find him again in Stowey. Through the much-abused Mackintosh, he had gained a good friend — Daniel Stuart, the publisher and proprietor of the Morni7ig Post. He was the champion of constitutional rights, the author of a pamphlet on " Peace and Reform," secretary of the Society of the " Friends of the People," and at the same time an excellent man of business. He appreciated our 224 LIFE OF COLERIDGE. chap. iv. poet, and knew also how to make use of him. From that time the Morning Post brought out a succession of pieces by Coleridge, at different times and in varying intervals. In return every week brought a guinea to Stowey, where it was always anxiously expected. But this did not suffice in the long run. A Unitarian preacher at Shrewsbury vacated his place in January 1798, and Coleridge seriously offered himself for it. He preached a sermon by way of trial, which, as before in Bath, treated of Peace and War, Church and State, but in a different form. The discourse had now more poetry in it and more faith in Christ. Even in his countenance there seemed to be something mystical and prophetic. An enthusiastic description of this sermon has been left by William Hazlitt, the son of a Unitarian clergyman in the neighbourhood. This gentleman was thirty years of age ; a realist-philosopher of the school of Bacon and Hobbes ; a good, though not very gifted, painter ; solid in principle, but outwardly rough, and not easy of access. He walked ten miles from his father's house, Wem in Shropshire, one cold January morning, in order to hear the Unitarian poet. His expectations were more than fulfilled. He felt that Coleridcre was the first and only man who had impressed him with the sense of genius. He declared later, when he had acquired notice as an essayist, that he had learned from Coleridge, and from no one else. He studied with astonishment in him the power of a creative fancy. How poor appeared to him now the conclusions of 1796-98. LIFE OF COLERIDGE. 225 the men of mere understanding ! " To require defini- tions of every word is barricading the road to truth," was a sentence of Coleridge's which HazHtt never forgot. This one instance suffices to show how power- fully Coleridge attracted the good people of Shrewsbury during his three weeks' stay there. He was certain of the position, though many a discriminating hearer felt what a pity it was that so great a genius should bury himself in the small chapel of a small religious sect in a small town. So also thought Thomas Wedgwood, a son of the Croesus of the Potteries. He was a friend of Poole, who had made him acquainted with Coleridge. He delighted in natural science, supported Dr. Beddoes' researches into gas, and even made the first practical experiments in photography. ^He shared Godwin's views, and at one time was inclined to join him in founding a communistic colony. The fact that he was unmarried and in delicate health, only increased his love of giving. He sent Coleridge a hundred guineas to keep him from accepting the pulpit. But our young Paterfamilias wanted continuous support, rather than passing generosity. Accordingly Thomas, and his brother Josiah, offered him an income of ;^i5o to devote himself exclusively to poetry and philosophy. The decision was easy. Coleridge received the letter in Hazlitt's presence, when breakfasting with him, and while tying one of his shoes, made up his mind to accept the offer. He did so less for himself than for his Q 226 LIFE OF COLERIDGE. chap. iv. family, to whom, from that time, he exclusively made over the sum. Again he returned to Stowey, and the continuation of his idyls seemed to be guaranteed from that day. But now it became evident that it was no longer material but intellectual needs which tempted him to leave his home and go forth into the battle of life. He repeated himself in his verses ; he finished none of his ballads ; his poetic vein seemed to be exhausted. New domains and forms of art were to renovate him ! The later deeds of the French had tended to turn his political opinions in an opposite direction. Only three years before he had declared it a crime of Pitt's to have said that the only part the lower orders ought to take in the government was to obey. Now he wrote in his note-book, p. 47: "To give the common people, the ignorant, any power, however mediate or distant, in the governing of the State, is surely to depart from the broad rule of wisdom, learned in the broad experience of mankmd." He hoped for nothing more from demo- cracy ; but where was he to look for counsels ? His friends could not help him. Wordsworth himself was in a wavering state ; even Godwin hesitated ; and with the aristocrats he neither had, nor wished for s}-mpathy. Good advice was scarce in Stowey, indeed not to be had' Still more burning was the question of religion. Mysticism had taken the place of his need of a belief, had kept it warm, but not satisfied it. He again admitted the vali- dity of Christianity, of the Trinity, of the Incarnation, 1796-9S. LIFE OF COLERIDGE. 227 and the Atonement, but he still considered them to be only symbols ; and without fully committing himself to them heart and soul he could not derive from them that moral and practical elevation of the soul for which, as a man of deep feeling, he longed. The fact that he was now outwardly independent of the Unitarian sect, seemed to have matured his determination to enfranchise himself from their influence altogether. The question only was how to attain this enfranchisement ! He had already learned all that both ancient and English philosophy could teach him, had\ weighed it, and dis- missed it. He wanted new premise.^ in order to extricate himself from his state of doubt. He looked to the Continent. With France he was thoroughly disgusted, and lost no opportunity of a taunt at the utter untrustworthiness of the French people. He rated them as much too low now as he had rated them too high before. The more promising did Germany appear to him. Poetry at this very moment was in its fullest bloom there ; popular life, devoid of democracy, existed there ; w^ell-known theo- logians and philosophers were labouring there. In the autumn of 1797 he had begun to learn German, in order to read Wieland's ' Oberon,' and to practise himself by the translation of Klopstock's odes. Now that benefi- cent patrons had arisen in the persons of the Wedg- woods, who provided the means not only for his famil)- in Stowey, but for a journey to Germany — generous acts which Eliza Meteyard, in her work, ' A Group of Famous Q 2 228 ■ LIFE OF COLERIDGE. chai'. iv. Englishmen,' calculated with some lack of delicacy from the books of the firm — Coleridge determined to continue his education in Germany itself. Various circumstances contributed to this resolve. It is not pleasant to continue in propinquity with those with whom, in a religious sense, we do not agree. Discord had also invaded his private circle. He had quarrelled with Lloyd, and also with Lamb. The insanity of Miss Lamb was a severe trial to her brother, who had also taken amiss the sonnets of Higginbottom, and who surrendered himself, in Coleridge's words, to an "unnatural indifference," sending no answer to a number of hearty letters. " I have a friend," wrote Lamb at that time, "a kinder friend has no man ; like an ingratc I left my friend abruptly, left him to muse on the old familiar faces." It was then that Coleridge let slip the following words : " Poor Lamb ! if he wants any knowledge, he may apply to me." At all events, such words were treacherously reported to Lamb. "Whispering tongues can poison truth," is the signifi- cant line penned two years later in the second part of " Christabel." Lamb became seriously angry, and sent Coleridge in irony a list of " theological questions " ; for instance : " Whether God loves a lying angel better than a true man ? Whether the higher order of the Seraphim illuminati ever sneer? Whether pure intelli- gences can love, or whether they can love anything besides pure intelligence?" The best remedy for all these unpleasantnesses was a temporary separation. 1796-98. LIFE OF COLERIDGE. 229 The reason that chiefly influenced Coleridge to leave was the fact that the Wordsworths had notice to quit their house. Accordingly they left on the 3rd July, and what was Stowey without them ! On the other hand, once on the wing, it was a furtherance to the whole plan for them to decide to go with him. At the same time, the pain of departure was great ; the beauty of the place, Poole, his wife and children. He delayed his move for months, and looked back with longing when on the journey. Accompanied by the Wordsworths, he took the Hamburg packet from Yarmouth on the i6th September, 1798. Sorrowfully he watched the receding shores of England till they vanished. Did he realise the fact that he was also bidding adieu to his youthful muse ? Such a beautiful ''and productive time as that spent in Stowey never recurred. 230 LIFE OF COLERIDGE. CHAPTER V. SEPTEMBER I798 TO APRIL 180O. " O ! framed for calmer times and nobler hearts ! O ! studious poet, eloquent for truth ! Philosopher ! contemning wealth and death, Yet docile, childlike, full of life and love ! " — A tombless Epitaph. Voyage — Hamburg — Klopstock — Ratzeburg — Lessing's Works — Remarks on Shakespeare — Gottingen — Carlyon — The two Parrys — Christian Heyne — Blumenbach — Study of Kant — The Hartz Mountains — Return to Gottingen — Degraded state of Germany — The Brocken — Return to England — Writes for Morning Post — Becomesi a Tory — Improvises Pitt's Speech— Effect of his Articles — Editor offers Partnership — Translates Wallenstein and Piccolomini — Much Abused — Leaves London — The Lakes. Coleridge, now independent in mind, and twenty-six years of age, entered Germany, a modest student ; far more tractable than he had been in Cambridge. He burned with the desire to become acquainted with German literature and German writers. This was at that time no unprecedented desire. The brilliant concourse of the muses at Weimar had already attracted, between 1780-89, a visit from William Taylor of Norwich, who, by his translation of " Iphigenia," had made his countrymen acquainted with the sound of Goethe's verse. Between 1790-99 he was followed b}- Monk Leuis— as 1 798-1800. LIFE OF COLERIDGE. 231 he was called — the amiable collector of ghost stories for the benefit of his sensation-loving countrymen, which he drew from German romances, from folk-lore, and from Herder's well-known " Volkslieder." But Cole- ridge took a different view. He did not throw himself into the poetical coterie on the Ilm, but, as far as possible, sought acquaintance with the general mass of the German people ; moving freely among both the upper and lower social strata of Lower Saxony, with whom, as a subject of the Hanoverian dynasty, he felt most sympathy. He wanted to obtain knowledge of the inner life of the people. It was more important to him to get cuttings from the roots than to fill his pockets with the fruit. He did not travel about like a literary journeyman, but rather with the childlike and universal interest of a poet of the Romantic school. Even on the passage he observed his fellow-passengers, and described them in letters to the Wedgwoods (" Satyrane's Letters") with all the realistic humour of Smollett ; a little German tailor with wife — a sly Prussian — a half-anglicised Hanoverian, and so forth. In those days of slow and comfortless travelling, fellow-travellers became much more intimate than now. Coleridge drank, and sang, and danced with them on deck, while below in the cabin the horrors of sea-sickness prevailed. When well out at sea this author of the " Ancient Mariner " gazed upon the ocean as if he had never seen it before, and was surprised at the agreeable impression produced by "one single, solitary, wild duck" upon the great LIFE OF COLERIDGE. expanse. Sailing up the Elbe he was equally fascinated by the huts of the peasants and fishermen as by the " summer-houses and Chinese show work " which an- nounced the vicinity of Hamburg. And when landed in the great city itself (20th September, 1798), he never wearied of wandering through the unpaved, muddy streets, noting the different costumes of the Danish, Hanoverian, and Hamburg women, staring in at the shop windows, always thinking of Hogarth, " as happy as a child." A letter of introduction opened the house of Klopstock's brother to him, who made him acquainted with the deaf Professor Edeling, known for his exuber- ance of anecdote. Two things attracted him ; intercourse with authors, and the French theatre. But of what avail was either without the language ? This was the indis- pensable key to all foreign culture, and this he deter- mined to obtain, Klopstock recommended a quiet place called Ratzeburg, where he could pursue his studies, and gave him a letter to the Amtmann. At the end of three days Coleridge drove there, and fancied the little town, with its brown-tiled roofs, its lake, and dark woods. The Amtmann sent him to the Pastor, a kind old man, who assigned him a room in his house. And here, in the midst of sweet nature and natural fellow- creatures, he determined to remain. A few days later he returned to Hamburg, in order to lake leave of the Wordsworths. On this occasion both the English poets were introduced to the author of the "Messiah." This only strengthened Coleridge's deter- ijyS-iSoo, LIFE OF COLERIDGE. 233 mination to conquer the German language, for with all his ardour for translating Klopstock's odes, he found communication with the author difficult, even with the help of Latin. Wordsworth spoke French. With some coolness the two poets of the Romantic school confronted the old master of Teutonic classicality. They were for freedom in poetic forms, he was for restraint. Coleridge asked about the earlier German poets, but Klopstock had hardly read one. The Englishman was more Ger- manic in feeling than the very leader of the Teutonic bards. Wordsworth also found the old gentleman — seventy-four years of age, and in a powdered wig, " the venerable father of German poetry," — strangely behind the time. In vain did he question him whether he knew Gray, who in English literature took a position somewhat akin to that of Klopstock. The two young poets left the room with peculiar feelings. They had seen a very worthy Christian, and kindly old man, " with legs enormously swollen, and without upper teeth " ; but they visited no second German poet. Wordsworth, who cared only for the quiet and reverent enjoyment of nature, retired to Goslar in the Hartz, where his slight knowledge of German, his dislike to tobacco-smoke, his own reserved manners, and his attention to his sister, who was always with him, entailed even greater unsociability than he liked. It was different with Coleridge, to whom the same expression that he coined on a later occasion for Shakespeare, " the myriad-minded," may be applied. V 234 J IF J'- OF COLERIDGE. chap. v. He was delighted with the " feminine grandeur " of the landscape ; enjoyed the picturesque twilight colours of the North German evening sky over the broad lake, which in winter presented a brilliant field of ice covered with skaters. He threw himself also, as the Germans say, " with both feet " into social intercourse ; took his meals with his excellent host, the pastor ; followed him every morning from cellar to garret, through field and garden ; learned viva voce the word for every object, like a child. He associated with the Amtmann, with the Amtmann's secretary, and with the Amtmann's secre- tary's wife. He invited people into his room, even with the inevitable pipe, till the smoke almost put out the candles. He played and chattered with the children, took part in the Christmas festivities, observed with emotion how the young ones surprised their parents with little presents, and remembered to his latest years the " Knecht Ruprecht," with his white sheet, his top boots, and enormous flaxen wig. He read advertise- ments, jest-books, and all the little literature of the day. The consequence was, that though never acquir- ing a perfect pronunciation, for which he was perhaps too old, he talked German with ease, and could inter- pret the most difficult passages. Not content with this practical result, he sought to go further, and to appre- ciate the beauty and appropriateness of the language. He enfranchised himself from the prejudice which the English entertained against " the harsh sounds " of German — a prejudice directed against most languages I 1 798-1800. LIFE OF COLERIDGE. 235 at first. He studied the spirit of the tongue, appre- ciated its rich combinations, and placed it, in point of aptness, on a level with Greek ; in short, he penetrated to the very core of the language, such as it has become by the development of the Romantic school. The same feeling dominated his choice in reading ; he wrote to his wife, at the beginning of November, " Lessing's works are at present the chief object of my admiration ; " and in Lessing's works, it may be acknow- ledged, are to be found the chief germs of modern German poetry. He had first made acquaintance with Lessing, as a writer, in 1796, on theological ground, and after reading his " Fragmente eines Ungenannten," called him " the most formidable of infidels." Otherwise he knew no more of him than that he was "a German writer of eminence." Then, in the house of Klopstock's brother, he had seen a portrait of Lessing, which attracted him much. It struck him as a physiognomy "of quick and voluptuous feelings, of active fancy, acute in the questions of the ideal world." With this picture of the man fresh before his eyes, he threw himself into his works, and especially into his "Dramaturgic." It contributed actual examples to his platonic ideas of unity in variety, in the construction of a work of art. It opened to his declining imagination a new and appropriate field of activity — that of reasoning on the Beautiful, instead of creating it. It helped him to sounder views on the criticism of English art. 236 LIFE OF COLERIDGE. chap. v. Steadily as the English nation had cultivated aesthetics — well described, it may be added, by Robert Zimmer- man — they had not essentially departed from the pseudo- classic standard. The English philosophers looked upon taste in art, partly as the immediate judgment of the senses, partly as an inward sense ; and proceeded accordingly to analyse art from a sensual point of view, rather than to search for the laws which govern aesthetic creation and enjoyment. Axioms, founded on experi- ence, which the Greeks had developed for their own special circumstances — such as the Aristotelian unity of place and time in the drama — were, after the French example, adopted as everlasting rules. On the other hand, principles of universal validity, such as unity of treatment and character, received such a fantastic Interpretation as to be virtually useless. Every stroke, every verse, every expression was considered, not in relation to the whole, but only according to its own individual beauty. The shortsightedness of this pro- ceeding became most manifest when applied to Shake- speare. Everybody could find out his faults. If one of his personages, from impatience or absence of mind, contradicts himself, Shakespeare is accused of careless- ness. If he lets simple people talk simply, common people commonly, he is called trivial. At the same time, after the appearance of Young's letters to Richardson, " On Original Composition," and after the time of Johnson and Garrick, a certain improvement became evident. People perceived that what was merely correct 1 798-1800. LIFE OF COLERIDGE. 237 did not please, while Shakespeare, in spite of all in- correctness, enchanted everybody. Exceptions to rules began to be allowed, especially in respect of unit}' of time and place, if greater edification or pathos was attained thereb}-. Still, the system of criticism remained, and Shakespeare continued to be thought a wild and incomprehensible genius. He was not understood as an artist, though worshipped as an idol. Johnson, his careful editor, reasoning on the scene where Hamlet finds the King praying, and yet does not kill him, fearing that taken at such a moment he might escape hell, calls the expression of his forbearance " savage- ness," and altogether too wicked in the mouth of a Christian. It did not strike him that this speech was in harmony with the character of the v/eak, whimsical Prince, who is glad of another excuse for delay. Garrick compared Shakespeare's plays — which he was the first to produce on the stage in their integrity — to the beauty of a Dutch picture of Peasants. Even in the critics of the decade 1780-89 — Professor Richardson and H. Whitley — I can find no genuine appreciation of the great artist ; they adored him on their knees, but only in order to abuse with greater freedom what they conceived to be his faults ; his carelessness in conception of character, his ignorance of geography and history, his recklessness in the mixture of comedy and tragedy. It is true that towards the beginning of the nineteenth century, the appreciation of the Elizabethan poets rose in the same measure as the Romantic school at large ; 238 LIFE OF COLERIDGE. chap. x. but it had as yet produced only antiquarian disquisitions. The laws of beauty were as little defined as in Johnson's time. Coleridge, we know, when in Oxford, had placed Shakespeare's concrete personifications above Gray's abstract ones (Bio. Lit. cap. i). At Stowey also he had penetrated his physiological conception of Hamlet's character, and yet even in 1798 he had expressed himself to Hazlitt quite in Johnson's manner ; namely, that, as far as regarded art, Shakespeare was "a mere stripling." What Coleridge had gained from Lessing he un- reservedly owned. In the ' Biographia Literaria ' he maintains "that it was Lessing who first proved to all thinking men, even to Shakespeare's own countrymen, the true nature of his apparent irregularities." Also, that, not only in truth of nature but even in the principles of art, he had come far closer to Aristotle than cither Corneille or Racine, with all their high-sounding regularity. He must have said as much to Wordsworth as early as the beginning of 1800. Otherwise, Words- worth, with his ignorance of Lessing, could not have stated in that year, in the preface of his 'Lyrical Ballads,' that the Germans had preceded the English in proving that Shakespeare was not only a wild genius, but a great artist. Lessing had arrived at that conclusion by maintaining, in opposition to the classicists, that form is always in reference to fundamental plan, variety to unity For Coleridge, and through him for his countr}-- men, this admission was a step in advance, if not in poetic taste, yet in the foundations of taste. 1798-iSoo. LIFE OF COLERIDGE. 239 Coleridge was so absorbed in his new master that he determined to write his life, partly to repay many a financial help on the part of the Wedgwoods, and partly " to convey under a better name than my own ever will be, opinions which I deem of the highest importance " But for this object Ratzeburg offered him no materials. He removed therefore, by the end of January 1799, to the flourishing university of Gottingen, and studied with little interruption for five months. Burger, the author of " Leonore," who had died there five years before, and Lichtenberg, the half-English humourist, and intelligent expositor of Hogarth, who died that very February, are never alluded to by him. On the other hand, he read every pamphlet of Lessing's, bought several of them, and made extracts from others. He made ac- quaintance also with two men who had known Lessing when librarian of Wolfenbiittel, in order to obtain unpublished materials. And he himself took a trip thither for the purpose of research. At one time he even proposed to translate Lessing's collective works into English, an idea at which his friends laughed rather incredulously. In short, Lessing played the same part with him as to the theory of poetry, as Bowles had done in its practice, that of giving the first kindling spark. And as with Bowles, so also with Lessing, traces ot his influence are clearly to be seen. The occasion was given by the arrival of some Englishmen in Gottingen. They consisted of Clement Carlyon, a young medical man from Cambridge, who had obtained a travelling 1^ 240 LIFE OF COLERIDGE. chap. v. scholarship, and who in his old age wrote his reminis- cences ; and of Charles Parry, who held dissertations in Gottingen in 1799 upon the moral forces of the ancient religions, and who was later known as a physio- logist, poet, and defender of the corn laws ; also Parry's brother, Frederick. These gentlemen soon became friends with Coleridge ; he read their verses, spouted his own to them, and composed a criticism on his own drama, " Osorio." The unmerciful way in which Coleridge pulls his own work to pieces, is as significant of his own modest thirst for knowledge, as of his respect for Lessing, to whom he looked up for the rest of his life as a model of acute, spirited, sometimes stinging, but always argumentative and honourable criticism. He did not stop with Lessing. That would neither have suited his own many-sidedness nor the compre- hensive modes of research which prevailed in Gottingen. The reigning professor there was Christian Heyne, the admirer of Ossian and the eulogist of Winkelmann. He had shown by examples from Homer that a poet is not to be judged only by himself, but by all the con- ditions preceding him ; by his language and religion, and by the literary and political history of his race. Tieck, and both the Schlegels — the champions of the German Romantic school — were scholars of He}'ne. Coleridge was already acquainted with his edition of Virgil, which had made its way to Stowc}', and which, it is quite possible, had helped to attract this insatiable student to Gottingen. At this time Christian Heyne 1798-1S00. LIFE OF COLERIDGE. 241 was lecturing on the learning, constitution, religion and domestic conditions of the Greeks ; " by way of intro- duction to the comprehension of their writers." Cole- ridge went to him after his matriculation, which is dated 1 6th February, 1799, in order to obtain an order for the library, and forthwith commenced a regular study of philology from the earliest time down to that of Lessing. At the same time he carried on the study of early English literature (by Warton), and of the poets of different nations ; if Heyne was not always at hand to sign the guarantee, his son-in-law Reuss, who lectured on general literature, did it for him. This was persistent and regular work, entirely self- imposed ; Professor Tychsen, Heyne's favourite scholar, a dry, but far-reach- ing interpreter of Hebrew poetry, helped him to master Gothic philology and the translation of the Bible. No wonder that such a busy builder of schemes should have contemplated an exhaustive account of German belles Icttrcs in two quarto volumes. It was not long before his boldest dreams in that direction were worked out in the very place by Gervinus and the brothers Grimm. But the limits of German literature were too con- fined for him. He attended Blumenbach's lectures on Zoology, in which the lecturer maintained the historical methods of comparative anatomy, and so far upheld the affinity between the whole animal creation as to feel it necessary at the same time to warn his hearers against the error of placing man and brute in the same category. He also obtained the lectures of Eichhorn the R 242 LIFE OF COLERIDGE. chap. v. theologian, who applied the test of philological criticism to the Scriptures ; rejecting what he considered popular tradition, or intentional allegory, and filling his hearers with rationalistic doubts as to all literal interpretation. But his most important studies were in the regions of philosophy. The order of the day in Gottingen, as in every German university, was the study of Kant. One of the youngest, most cultivated and attractive of the professors — Bouterweck — was at this time holding a series of lectures on Logic and Esthetics on the Kant lines, which were enormously attended. Two other doctors (of philosophy) also held forth upon the " Kritik der reinen Vernunft " and the " Kritik der Urtheilskraft " (the " Critique of Pure Reason " and the ** Critique of the Faculty of Judgment "), the one five, the other four hours a week — sufficient proofs of the popularity of the new dogma. The old metaphysical ideas as to the knowledge of things was now replaced by a critical examination of the human understanding. These ethics were founded anew upon the ideas set apart, in almost too lofty isolation from human interest, of duty and good-will. The domain of the supernatural — God, Freedom, and Immortality — at the point where it ceases to be intelligible, was considered necessary for the completion of the higher being of man. Finally, between the laws of nature and those of morality, a common ground was admitted where they meet in har- mony ; the kingdom, namely, of the Fitting and the 1798-1800. LIFE OF COLERIDGE. 243 Beautiful. For a man of philosophical tendencies, it was absolutely impossible to escape from so famous and re- volutionary a system. Coleridge had already heard of it in Cambridge. He at that time firmly resolved to study the " great metaphysician " in his own country. The very designation shows how little he then under- stood him ; for Kant was under the impression that he had given the finishing-stroke to all metaphysics. What means of enlightening him existed in England at that time? Two German bookworms, Nitsch and Wellich, had published certain dry extracts (i 796-1 798), which savoured more of scissors and paste than of any real comprehension. No verbal help, were it only to explain the difficult vocabulary of the unwieldy philosopher, was to be had. The more earnestly did he take advantage of the present opportunity. A young Gottingen lady was utterly astonished at the know- ledge he displayed of these books " with seven seals." Was not she a German, and she did not understand them ! Readily did he enter a path of thought which he himself had already inwardly almost discovered, and from which he was destined never again to extricate himself. The side from which he first approached Kant was, as it appears, that of art criticism. This was intelligible, for this was the subject on which he had of late principally occupied himself. The view he took of the Sublime and Beautiful (1799) shows itself, on closer examination, to partake of the principles of Kant. He R 2 244 LIFE OF COLERIDGE. chai-. v. knew the sensual opinions which his countrymen had pronounced on them, but endeavoured to supersede them by rational and " critical " deductions. More especially did he place himself in opposition to Burke, who had endeavoured to identify the Beautiful with the agreeable, and the Sublime with terror and pain (1757). Coleridge did not believe the Sublime to be connected with terror, but rather with beauty ; and that it operated not on the powers of the body, but on those of the soul, by " bring- ing about a suspension of the power of comparison." Evidently the " Kritik der Urtheilskraft " was in his mind. Kant here also places the Sublime and the Beautiful together. He describes the pleasure we take in both, ascribing it to no sensual charm, but to the sense of the purpose involved, which in the Sublime appertains to the nature of quantity, and in the Beautiful to that of quality. But Coleridge did not forget society in work. He visited in the Blumenbach house ; argued sometimes with Eichhorn ; but found the professors upon the whole " so high learned, and so wholly engaged in their academical occupations," that nothing was to be done with them. In truth, it is delightful to see in Blumenbach's letters to Sommering how almost ex- clusively Blumenbach interests himself in bones ; with what "childlike, extravagant joy" he rejoiced over a six- fingered hand, which had been given him ; with what tender care he provided for a three-legged goat which was fed in his court-yard. 1 798-1800. LIFE OF COLERIDGE. 245 All the more did Coleridge associate with the students. He wrote in their albums ; he took part in their processions ; he went to their beer-houses, and joined with heart and voice in the song, " Ein freies Leben fiihren wir." He attended no church, but he preached in his own way upon Pitt, whose diplomatic judgment he greatly condemned ; upon Giordano Bruno, whose doctrine of the world's soul quite sorted with his pla- tonic stock in hand ; and upon Spinoza, whose systern he now ingenuously enough summed up as " Everything has a life of its own, and we are all one life." It was a time of serious work, and of exuberant spirits. In order to see something more of the German people, and of their mountain scenery, he took a trip for the Whitsun week — commencing on the nth May — ' to the Hartz Mountains, accompanied by his English friends and one of Blumenbach's sons. They journeyed first by Andreasberg to the Brocken, and then took a long round by Elbingerode, Blankenberg, Harzburg, and Goslar — all of which the Wordsworths had visited in the spring — and back to Gottingen. He wore a short jacket of common stuff. He lived for days upon potatoes and pancakes, and slept at night upon straw in village inns which had nothing better ; for his aim was to know all classes and all circumstances. In Hessendreisch he saw how the beer was made, which was bad in proportion as the peasants were poor, and the times disturbed. At Rudolfhausen he went through the great dairy-farms which are at the disposal of the superintendent of the 246 LIFE OF COLERIDGE. chap. v. State roads, and gathered from their admirable arrange- ment that the gentry of the country do contribute to the improvement of agriculture. He remarked how hard the people laboured in the fields, and yet how gaily they danced on holidays, and shot at the stuffed pigeon. When in Roman Catholic parts, he was equally as interested in the village children running about, clad in little more than ragged shirts and an amulet ; healthy and fat, as in the fine picture of the Twelve Apostles by Lucas Cranach which hung in the cathedral of Goslar, next an altar to the ancient heathenish idol Kroto. At the frontier, on an isolated part of Hesse Cassel, he found a great slab inscribed ^^ Pays netitre" as a precaution in case of French invasion, and could not thank God enough for having given him an island for his fatherland. His impressions of outer nature were pleasant — fertile plains and rocky hills. The woods struck him as finer, the hills more diversified, the peasant houses far more interesting, and extreme misery rarer than in England. At the same time, the scenery lacked the park-like character of his own land — the water, the luxuriant verdure, the hedges, the single cottages, and the gentlemen's seats. All this is preserved in the letters he wrote home (printed in the New Monthly Magazine, vol. 45), and which are expressed with a vivacity which brings before us the very life he witnessed. He thoroughly learned the character of Germany. All tin's enlightened him much on the subject of 1 798-1800. LIFE OF COLERIDGE. ziTi German poetry. During these months, or soon after, he translated a number of poems into English. These are simply unpretending exercises. Coleridge did not willingly rush into print, except for purposes of profit or friendship ; doing so at that time, partly in the Monmig Post (after August i'/Cl9)y partly in the "Annual Anthology," founded by Southey and Cottle in 1800, after the pattern of the German " Musen Almanach," partly also — though not till 18 17 — in the "Sibylline Leaves." This Coleridge called "emptying my desk," and sometimes even omitted to state where such emptyings were published. And even these chippings contribute to the history of his development ; they .show the depth and abundance of his sympathies ; they are precursors of his classical translation of Wallenstein. Above all, though not intimately acquainted with the writers of the German Romantic school, he shared with them the love of mediaeval and popular subjects. He translated a passage from the earliest German epic poem — Otfried's " Evangelienbuch " — where the Virgin is nursing the new-born Saviour. Its chief charm in his eyes was doubtless that combination of warm and naive human feeling with the sense of the Supernatural which he himself had often invoked. This fragment is directly connected with the night scene in " Christabel." Soon it supplied him with a subject, under the title of the " Christmas Carol." He applied the idea to his own wife and to the little Berkeley — thought he saw her kiss- ing the child, " something more than babe — a floating 248 LIFE OF COLERIDGE. presence of its darling father." What in "Christabel" was conceived in a fairy sense, is here childlike. In a similar way he indulges with peculiar zest, in his " Mutual Passion," in an imitation of the old-fashioned rhymes which introduce " Minnesang's Friihling"; also in "A Westphalian Song," which he caught from the lips of a peasant. But his unconscious agreement and sympath}- with the German Romantic school is most seen at the beginning of his poem to his wife, taken from the old song, " Wcnn ich ein Voglein war," which appeared in the collection called " Des Knaben Wunderhorn." The title of the poem is, " Something childish, but very natural." As regards the modern Lyrical school, he made a peculiar selection, adhering principally to the pathos of Klopstock. He began a " Mahomet " in hexameters, modelled apparently from the "Messiah," as evident from the first lines : " Utter the song, O my soul ! the flight and return of Mahomet." From Stolberg's poems he translated "Tell's Birth-place," also "das I.icd eines deutschen Knaben," — British Stripling's War- song (as Coleridge calls it), and the " Plymn to the Earth " ; the two\last also in stiff hexameters, as Southey used to turn them out, till at last it became evident that the English language, with its manv monosyllabic words, was more unsuited for them c\cn than the German. He paraphrased also the Klopstock- like ode, " Chamouni before Sunrise," by the same Frederica Brun whose " Siebcn Hiigel " is said to have given Wordsworth the idea for " We are Seven." Cole- 1798-1S00. LIFE OF COLERIDGE. zs,C) ridge went very freely to work, introducing many a reminiscence of his Hartz journey. Next, after the school of Klopstock he was most influenced, as we know, by Lessing, and that in the line of light lyrical comedy. Till this time Coleridge's aim at humour had consisted in grotesque '■'■diablerie" rhetorical caricature, and pleasing description with broad canvas and brush. The epigram, with its delicate point, and sober brevity, only occurs in some passages in the WatcJiman ; and as these, on account of their personalities, had brought him much annoyance — having robbed him, it was said, of an inheritance from a grandmother — he forswore their further use. At this time, however, he took up the epigram again, and wrote a number of apothegms, which on nearer examination may almost all be traced to Lessing, as he himself admitted to Cottle. From the same source proceeded the Anacreontic trifle, " Names," while his poem against the French, " From an old Ger- man Poet," was prompted by Wernicke, a precursor of Lesslng's. He neglected the more modern writers. He retained a liking for Goethe's lyrics, but nothing more. From Schiller, once his idol, he only translated the distiches on hexameters and pentameters, and the " Visit of the Gods." Finally, he took a fancy to the description, in CatulHan hendecasyllables by Matthison, of an ancient Milesian temple, placed high above the sea, and surrounded with myrtle groves ; and translated it in the same metre. It was evident that he preferred to confine himself to those writers on whom time had 2SO LIFE OF COLERIDGE. chap. v. already passed its approving sentence. He was more anxious to obtain correct judgment, than to enter into any creative rivalry. Theory was preferred to practice. Such original poetry as he wrote in Germany is small in amount and monotonous in kind, being simply the expression of longing for wifC; child and country. Here and there beautiful thoughts appear, as, for instance, " Lines composed in a Concert Room." New views also occurred to him, as in " Lines written in the Album at Ellingcrode," a poetical description, nameh;. of the Brockcn, of the far " surging woodland " as seen from the summit ; of the sunny beds of moss under the fir- trees, and of " an old romantic goat, his beard slow waving." But the parts no longer fitted together. Coleridge felt himself alone and out of his element, and saw no way but to return to England, where his little Berkeley had meanwhile died (loth February, 1799), and where the lonely mother needed comfort. The 24th June was fixed for his departure from Gottingen. He celebrated his leave-taking by spending the evening with Professor Blumcnbach, and then returned by the Brockcn to Blankenberg and Wolfcnbiittel, By the 30th June he was in Brunswick ; visited the pro- fessors there, inspected the Mineralogical Museum, and listened to the most violent attacks upon Kant. " What does he mean," said Professor Bernard von Zimmermann — the aged naturalist, traveller, and Frenchman-hater, — " by saying first that the existence of God cannot possibly be proved, and then that this impossibility is the best 1798-1800. LIFE OF COLERIDGE. 251 proof of His existence ? " But Coleridge was thoroughly home-sick, and had no longer any interest in Kant. Ac- cordingly, by the 20th August his longing was assuaged. He had been away only ten months, and had learned more in those months than in all the four years at Cambridge ; nor did he ev^er omit to acknowledge his obligations to Blumenbach and Eichhorn. He returned to his family and to his benefactors with a conscience at ease. In order to pursue his studies he had purchased and brought with him ;i^30 worth of " metaphysical books." Not only had he arrived at new thoughts on philosophical subjects, but also on political questions. He had seen the Holy Roman Empire of German}- sunk in the lowest degradation, though on the eve of its liberation ; smitten by France, and " cursed with a base and hateful brood of nobles and princelings. A fine people, but enslaved and helpless ; taxes high, justice venial, and public opinion despised." In Gottingen he had often seriously doubted whether mankind were really advancing in wisdom and goodness, or whether they only revolved in a circle. The more glorious — seen then from a distance, and after the brilliant victoiy of Aboukir — did his own once despised England appear to him. From the heights of the Brocken he had exclaimed : " Thou Queen ! thou delegated Deity of earth ! O dear, dear England ! how my longing eye. Turned westward, shaping in the steady clouds, Thy sands and high white cliffs." But a year before he had condemned the tyrannical 252 LIFE OF COLERIDGE. cii-vr. v. corrupt island to destruction. Now he could say with Wordsworth, " We have learnt England's value." He returned therefore to his native land a confirmed patriot, though not a blind one. He had become, in an English acceptation, a tolerably moderate Conservative ; and circumstances were so ordered that this result of his German journey came first to light in his literary work. Coleridge had now to consider how best to turn his newly-acquired knowledge to account. He went for a short time to Stovvey, and then with his wife and Southc}' to his relations at Ottery, where the pleasure of reunion obliterated for a time all former disagreements. On the 27th November, 1799, he took his way by Bristol to London, and appeared again in the Editor's room of the JSIorning Post, no longer an occasional, but a permanent contributor. That paper was growing in importance, being useful, though with a certain lati- tude, to the Government. The editor, Stuart, offered favourable terms, and Coleridge even secured the ex- plicit concession of carte blanche in political subjects. Here, for several months, he steered his way with lead- ing articles and poetry, which may be described as cautious preparations for joining the Tories. In the poems which he wrote on these occasions he resumed liis usual character of burlesque satire in the ode form ; but the matter had become tame. How passionatcl)'. in his " Devil's Thoughts," had he scourged "the great minister" Pitt, and the hypocrisy of the 1798-1800. LIFE OF COLERIDGE. 253 upper classes ! Now, in a pretended letter from " Tal- leyrand to Lord Grenville," he contented himself, and again in doggerel verse, with ridiculing the style of both ministers. With what fiery language had he pleaded in his " France " for the liberty of Switzerland ! Now, in his " Ode to Georgiana, Duchess of Devonshire," he cries it up as something extraordinary that this noble lady should have honoured the deed of Tell with a stanza. With this change, the power of his style departed ; his letters teem with diffuse rhetoric, and his odes with barren repetitions. The political poetry of Coleridge had reached its close. A similar difference may be remarked in his leading articles (printed in the " Essays on His Own Times ") as compared with the burning outpourings in the Watch- man. At that time he preached the rights of man ; now, on the other hand, he was all in favour of the sacredness of vested rights, and therefore of the domi- nant position of the nobility ("that leprous spot," 1794) and of the Court. Then he had compared the French Revolution with the beginning of the great Rebellion ; now he prophesies an analogous result, namely, the return of the Bourbons. He gives a characteristic sketch of Pitt, and describes him as a statesman ; one made, not grown ; not as a genius, with feeling and imagination, but of sober talent ; not a deep thinker, like Burke, but a superficial financier. But the more violently he attacks Burke personally, the more tem- perately does he reason on the continuation of the 254 LIFE OF COLERIDGE. chap. v. war with France. We learn also through a chance in- cident that he was even ready to defend the polic}' of the Government. On the evening of the seventeenth of Februar}-, he attended the House of Commons as a reporter ; Pitt spoke as fluently as ever for an hour and longer — an endless torrent of words. Coleridge fell asleep ; but finding on his return that Stuart was particularly anxious to know what Pitt had said, he forthwith improvised a supposed speech. The zeal with which he defended the war cannot be all invention. " They are telling us that ministers disregard peace, that they are prodigal of blood, insensible to the miseries, and enemies to the liberties of mankind ; that personal ambition is their motive ; that we have squan- dered two hundred millions. Sir, will men be governed by mere words, without application ? This country, sir, will not ! It knows that to this war it owes its pros- perity, its constitution, whatever is fair or useful in public or domestic life, the majesty of its laws, the freedom of its worship, and the sacredness of our fire- sides" (Gillman p. 211). The trick was of course found out, but it deceived many. Reporting was not the careful art it has become since. Burke, then not long dead, seemed to revive in Coleridge. Could the author of "Fire, Famine, and Slaughter" contradict himself more flatly ? The style of his reasoning was also altered. Not flaming enthusiasm but logical refinement is now his weapon. He indulges in hair-breadth distinctions ; for example, as between Napoleon the 179S-1S00. LIFE OF COLERIDGE. 255 restorer of order, and Napoleon the usurper. He uses no stock term without expounding its meaning. Hence arose his definition of "a Jacobin," in which his aversion for " the levellers " was enunciated with mathematical precision. He endeavoured to replace by system the inward power which he had lost. The regulation of policy by principle, which he had always most admired in Burke, he now sought to carry to the highest extreme of philosophical thoroughness, as a sort of defence for his own new-born toryism. These articles excited great attention ; partly because they agreed with the great change in public opinion, partly on account of their individual, thoughtful, and easy style. Their effect outlived the peace of Amiens (March 1802), and contributed — according to the evidence of Fox — to the resumption of the war with Napoleon ; this time with the almost unanimous ardour of the nation. The particular number of the paper which contained the character of Pitt was for weeks enquired for. Numerous enquiries were made by letter as to who the gifted reporter of Pitt's speech might be ; the subscribers also increased. Stuart was proud of his contributor, and treated him liberally. He hired a room for him — 21 Buckingham Street, Strand — in order to facilitate his access to the House ; provided for all his personal needs, so that he should have no thought but for his public employment ; and would have taken him into partnership, a position worth about ;!^2000 a year, if he could have bound himself to work regularly 256 LIFE OF COLERIDGE. chap. v. from three to four hours a day. But Coleridge had no power over his pen. He would hold forth to Stuart upon the current incidents of the day in the finest speeches imaginable, but never wrote them down. His thoughts revolved like visions in his brain, rich, large brilliant, and then vanished, leaving only nervous ex- haustion behind. He was entirely a man of moods. He despised Stuart's love of business ; characterised him as knowing many men but with little knowledge of Man ; and met his advantageous offer with the reply that he would not give up a life in the country, and the lazy readings of old folios, for twice ;^2000 a year ; adding, in a letter to Poole, that a larger income than ;^350 was only " a real evil." The same careless surrender to his own genius which winged his pen in hours of inspiration, made him incapable of regular work, and must greatly have tried the patience of his wife, who at that time was in London on a visit His own words best describe his need for this fitful form of inspiration : "Life were so flat a thing without enthu- siasm, that if for a moment it leaves me, I have, with all my thoughts, that same kind of feeling as when the pleasant effects of a dose of opium goes off" (Cottle, Jan. 1800). As early therefore as March 1800, he quitted Stuart, and went to his easily reconciled old friend Lamb ; and in April he broke off all regular work for the paper, and only sent occasional contributions, till the Peace of 1802 brought the Morning Post to an end. I79^i8oo. LIFE OF COLERIDGE. 257 But if his political activity was thus for the time exhausted, Coleridge was now to accomplish the chief achievement, in a poetic sense, which he owed to his German journey ; namely, the translation of " Wallen- stein." He was far from being really indolent, only he liked to choose his own work. For six weeks — from the beginning of March — he sat with spasmodic industry, wrapped in an old dressing-gown, in which he looked like an astrologer, seeing no one but Lamb, till he finished both " Piccolomini " and "Wallenstein's Death" — a won- derful performance, both as to amount and execution. Whenever Coleridge produced anything important, it was always by fits and starts, as by a sudden ebullition of intoxication. The immediate cause of this work was accidental. For the sake of profit Schiller had allowed his MS. to be offered through his native publisher (Cotta), for the purpose of translation, to Bell, an English pub- lisher, and this even before he had brought it into final order for publication (3rd September, 1798) ; the worldly success of Kotzebue's works having created a rage in London for the German drama. It is true Schiller had had just as favourable an offer from Miller, another publisher, for the copyright of translation of " Fiesco " and "Don Carlos"; but, as Miller made it a condition that the English translation should appear a fortnight before the German one, the untried Bell was preferred. This was done out of regard for Cotta — a fact which Schiller had soon cause to regret. Bell received a copy in November 1799, of which Schiller — September 30th — • s 2S8 LIFE OF COLERIDGE. CHAP. v. had attested the authenticity. Then ensued a long interval of silence on the part of Bell, when suddenly, in September 1800, Schiller hears that a translation by one Mr. Coleridge — an entire stranger to him — published by a firm equally unknown to him — Messrs. Longman — had appeared in London : " Piccolomini," namely, at the beginning of April, and " Wallenstein's Death " in June r the original German being also published by Cotta in June. Schiller immediately wrote to Coleridge to know how he had obtained the MS. The answer was, that he had obtained it from the Messrs. Longman, with the author's own attestation of authenticity ; Longmans having purchased it — quite innocently — from Bell. The further solution was that Bell had been unable to pay the sum agreed on — £60 — and two years elapsed before the author received it. Schiller's correspondence with Cotta gives an account of the whole transaction. The translation of German works was at that time a regular industry in London. Monk Lewis, Benjamin Thompson, Mrs. Inchbald, and Mrs. Plumptree, all now well-nigh forgotten, were the chief purveyors. The}^ .took up works, good or bad, just as the circulating- libraries ordered ; they diluted them, altered them, and spoiled them. Outside this clique, it is true, there was some earnest work, but seldom the needful ability. Of prose pieces none but the " Robbers " and " Gotz von Berlichingcn " had been so translated — the one by Mr. Fraser Tytler, known as Lord Woodhouselee — the other by Walter Scott — as to retain something of the rac}" 1798-1S00, LIFE OF COLERIDGE. 259 style of the originals ; but of poems, nothing at all. William Taylor's "Iphigenia" (1792) was powerful but wooden. The different forms in which " Leonore " ap- peared are old-fashioned and tame ; while " Don Carlos " was actually rendered in prose. While Coleridge was engaged on " Wallenstein," Holcroft tried his hand at " Hermann and Dorothea," but with an old-maidish nicety of style which contrasts with his known free and revolutionary opinions. Hermann dares not long to embrace his beloved's *' Brust und Schultern," but only "that fine form"; the apothecary is, from a sense of propriety, not allowed his pipe ; and mine host of the Golden Lion is made much more polite to his guests. All these writers tampered with their originals, without, in the higher sense, nationalising them, Coleridge was especially a faithful translator : but in order to prove this, we must not compare his copy with the current text. The version which Schiller had sent agrees with none of the numerous other versions. This is easily seen in the collated edition of his works, vol. 12. The wording, upon the whole, may be said to stand half-way between the author's first conception, and the alterations which he gradually added. At that time it is evident these had not occurred to him. Many of them agree with a copy which Schiller placed at the disposal of the German Court Theatre — abbreviations — paraphrases of the scene with the servants in prose — and more copious stage directions ; namely, in the astrological ceremonies, and in the camp ; also a few additions to the S 2 26o LIFE OF COLERIDGE. chap. v. text, intended for greater theatrical effect ; for instance, the incident of the bottle of wine which one of the servants steals in the scene of the banquet. The arrange- ment of the scenes, however, is the same as in a second stage edition (published by Maltzahn 1861). Schiller seems therefore to have composed the version intended for the English translation with great care, and also with a view to its representation. According to Freili- grath's account, who revived the subject in the English Athencewn in 1861,* the author read through the copy- forwarded to Bell, corrected the mistakes of the copyist, and in " Piccolomini " struck out one word. This was the copy translated by Coleridge, and with such fidelity, that, eclectic as it is, it could, if lost, be reconstructed from the English text. And not only did he give the sense of the words, but also their beauty and force. He preserved indeed the lofty splendour of the style. He allowed his blank verse no greater liberties than are found in the original, only that at the conclusion of the scenes the rhymes were abandoned, and that a trochee often replaces an iambus. Where he was unable to preserve the entire poetic form of the original — as in "Thecla's Song" — he states it openly in a note. The preamble in the " Camp " he entirely omitted ; the short lines puzzled him as much as the broad humour, and he * This account refers to the "Piccolomini" and to " Wallenstcin's Tod." The preamble in " Wallenstcin's Camp " was at that time not to be found. The copy of the " Piccolomini " has since then passed from the possession of Dr. Gillman of Highgatc into that of Mr. Alex. W. Gillman, Chalmers Park, Hill Road, Croydon. 1 798-1800. LIFE OF COLERIDGE. 261 did not want to become prosaic. But his work, as far as it goes, does justice not only to Schiller's mind but to his imagination. He would never have caught his spirit so profoundly had he not visited Germany. A number of verbal mistakes committed by Coleridge must not be made too much of. Some of them were only from absence of mind, as, for instance, where he says " here, Brother," instead of " Herr Bruder," Nor can an Englishman be much criticised for giving wrong- meanings to foreign names, as " huge mountains " to " Riesengebirge," and " minstrels " (tambourine players) to " Taboriten." What is preserved is the spirit of the whole. Schiller had good cause to be satisfied with his translator, and was so in every sense, till a travelling Englishman directed his attention to " some ridiculous mistakes " (' Crabb Robinson's Journal '). Then for the first time he complained of the " schandlichsten Uber- setzungsfehler " (the most shameful faults in the translation) in the " Piccolomini," an expression which must be ascribed to the nervous condition of the then sickening dramatist. On the other hand, Coleridge did not bind himself slavishly to the original text at the cost of his own national and individual feeling. He wished not only to render "Wallenstein" conscientiously into English words, but to suit also the drama itself to its English form. He kept carefully in mind the manners of his own country, left out formal compliments, turned kisses into embraces, and embraces into shakes of the hand. He took his 262 LIFE OF COLERIDGE. CHAr. v. countrymen's love of liberty also into account, adding many an expression of contempt for " those minions of Court favour, those Court harpies who dance to the tune of every minister." Pathetic tirades are sometimes moderated ; explanatory paraphrases are often inserted ; abstract expressions turned into concrete or, if possible, proverbial expressions ; and ponderous sentences broken up into lively dialogue. The most important innovation, however, occurs in the scene where the lovers for the first time speak out. In Schiller's version Max defends the reliance on the stars. In love as he is, he likes to fancy himself surrounded by divine influences. He complains, " The}' live no longer in the faith of reason ; " and then Coleridge adds in his own person, with pathetic recol- lection of his own platonic landscape reveries : " The fair humanities of old rehgion, The power, the beauty, and the majesty That had their haunts in dale or airy mountain. Or forest, by slow stream, or pebbly spring, Or chasms, or watery depths ; all these have vanished." One can understand the view taken by the English when they maintain that Coleridge's " Wallcnstein " is superior to Schiller's. The wonder is why they occupied twenty years before arriving at this opinion. At first the work fell dead from the press, the translator him- self setting the example of indifference. When he undertook the translation he promised the public, in his glowing enthusiasm, to write an essay on Schiller. But 1 798-1800. LIFE OF COLERIDGE. 263 ■even in the preface to the first part it is evident that he had much cooled ; and in the second part he actually began to criticise the play ; saying that Wallenstein, with his long speeches, could not be compared with Othello or Lear, but at most with Richard IL or Henry VI. In his letters of the time he regularly abuses the " dragged, dull, heavy play." Nor was his increasing hatred for Napoleon without influence in his disgust for the •character of the hero who, with grand but dissembling words, aims at the highest power. The public were not more favourable. The German drama, which had come into fashion with the revo- lutionary ideas, was now equally gone out of fashion with them. The Anti- Jacobin Review covered it alter- nately with ridicule and abuse. No idea of bringing " Wallenstein " on to the stage was entertained. The reviewers cried it down : Wallenstein's inordinate pride was "disgusting," his attempted treason "profligate"; the whole drama full of tediousness, extravagances, and absurdities ; the translation lame, devoid of har- mony and elegance {L'lontJdy Reviezv and British Critic). To such lengths can the contact of poetry with politics lead ! It is significant of the standard of opinion at that time that Coleridge himself protested against the verdict of the MontJily Review, which called him " by far the most rational partisan of the German theatre." "The mere circumstance," he wrote, "of translating a manuscript play is not even evidence that I admired that one play, much less that I am a general admirer 264 LIFE OF COLERIDGE. chap. v. of plays in that language." This work, like almost every one published by him, was for long only a failure ; and after a few years was treated by the publisher as waste paper, in spite of Coleridge's advice to him to keep the copies till the fever of anti-Jacobinism should have passed away. Few had poetiy and independence enough to appreciate the piece. Southey preferred it to all Schiller's other works ; Wordsworth and Campbell both borrowed from it. Walter Scott took many a motive from it ; for instance, the astrological accessories in Kenilworth. This circle of poets kept the drama in mind, and after the fall of Napoleon helped to make it known. Walter Scott was also the first, as far as I see, who placed the translation before the original. The quotations which he introduced in his novels contributed to draw the attention of the public to the work. The London Magazme declared it, in 1824, to be the only sufferable translation from the German. "If 'Wallen- stein ' had been written in English," said Blackwood^ s Magaziiie in 1823, "it might have done wonders ; but wc were at that depraved time too proud to be kindled by a foreign torch." Nowadays Coleridge is the acknow- ledged authority for " Wallenstein " in England, as Schlegel and Tieck are for Shakespeare in Germany. By the end of April 1800, having finished "Wallen- stein," Coleridge felt himself no longer at home in London. The meadows were green, he was again sick of town life, and having brought books with him from German)-, desired to turn his German studies to account. In the 1 798-1 Soo. LIFE OF COLERIDGE. 265 first days of May we find him at Grasmere, on a visit to his "god, Wordsworth," as Lamb, who remained be- hind, jealously said. He contemplated the enchanting- beauty of the Lake district. How infinitely did this nature surpass that at Stowey ! and the delightful society of Wordsworth and his sister to boot ! Coleridge was all for remaining there. He returned once more to Bristol and Stowey in order to convince himself that his former tenancy was impossible ; Poole moreover, was planning a visit to the Continent. On the same occasion he paid a visit to Liverpool, where he had become acquainted with Roscoe, the banker, and his- torian of Lorenzo de' Medici. Then he packed up his worldly goods, and with wife and child followed Words- worth to the Lakes. Nearly two years of fruitful work lay behind him. This was to be continued, nay, increased, in the new neighbourhood. Country air was to strengthen his health, and family life to afford a cheerful stimulus for poetic creation. Unhappily, the very reverse took place just at the time and place from which he had expected the most. 266 LIFE OF COLERIDGE. CHAPTER VI. AT THE LAKES. ILL AND RESTLESS. SUMMER OF l8CX) TO AUTUMN 181O. " Reality's dark dream." — Dejection. ■Grela Hall — Decline of Poetic Inspiration — Mrs. Robinson — Domestic Alienation — Southey at Greta — " Ode to Dejection" — Metaphysics — London — Stoddart — Basil Montague — Humphrey Davy — Wales and Devonshire with Thos. Wedgwood — 111 — Liverpool — Malta — Sir Alex. Ball — Becomes his Secretary — Naples — Rome — Proscribed by Napo- leon — Pope Pius VII. — Leaves Rome in Disguise — Genoa — Smuggled on Board Ship — Returns to England — Bristol — De Quincey — Lec- turing in London — The /'r/tv/o'—" Christopher North "—Goethe's " Faust " — Immoderate use of Opium — Unhappy Family Relations — Leaves Keswick, never to return. At the Lakes all seemed at first to fulfil his hopes. A commodious. house was found, an easy day's stroll from the Wordsworths', arid this remained the home of his family as long as he lived. It was called Greta Hall, and is now a girls' school, standing at the west end of the little town of Keswick, upon a wooded hill, sur- rounded by the Greta, which discharges the Lake of Keswick into that of Bassenthwaite. The breadth of water is greater here than at Grasmere, the circle of hills more imposing, the valleys richer ; while the conveniences of a town were closer at hand. The house was new-built and roomy ; properly speaking, iSoo-io. LIFE OF COLERIDGE. 267 two houses under one roof, the smaller of which was inhabited by Mr. Jackson, the proprietor. This was another advantage, for Mr. Jackson conceived a hearty friendship for his tenants. He had raised himself from the condition of a common carrier to that of a wealthy man ; lived frugally, but the more liberally towards others ; loved books and honoured their authors. He charged Coleridge half the rent he would ordinarily have demanded. He had a good old housekeeper, Mrs. Wilson, who took every care of Mrs. Coleridge and of little Hartley, and of the still smaller Derwent (born September 14, 1800). Mr. Jackson even stood godfather for Hartley, both children being baptized in 1802, and remembered him in his will — 1809. Under these circumstances Coleridge could sit undisturbed in his study — his own books, and as many as he pleased from Jackson's library, around him — an old organ next him, an enchanting view before him, mountains and clouds so meeting " as if Heaven and Earth were for ever talking to each other" (Cottle). A few days after his arrival, he wrote to Mr. Sam Purkis, the landscape painter, at Brentford, describing his delightful surround- ings. The original letter is in the British Museum (Addit. 27457), ^^'^ is here published for the first time. " Greta Hall, Keswick, "Dear Purkis, — "Cumberland. " I write to you from the leads of Greta Hall, a tenement in possession of S. T. Coleridge, Esq., gentle- man, poet, and philosopher, in a mist ! This Greta Hall 268 LIFE OF COLERIDGE. chap. vi. is a house on a small eminence, a furlong from Keswick, in the county of Cumberland. Yes, my dear sir, here I am, with Skiddaw at my back — on my right hand the Bassenthwaite Water, with its majestic case of mountains, all of simplest outline. Looking slant, direct over the feather of this infamous pen, I see the sun setting. My God ! what a scene ! Right before me is a great camp of single mountains — each, in shape, resembles a giant's tent ; and to the left, but closer to it far than the Bassenthwaite Water to my right, is the Lake of Keswick, with its islands and white sails, and glossy lights of evening — crowned with green meadows ; but the three remaining sides are encircled by the most fantastic mountains that ever earthquakes made in sport ; as fantastic as if Nature had laughed herself into the convulsion in which they were made. Close behind me flows the Greta ; I hear its murmuring distinctly. Then it curves round, almost in a semicircle, and is now catching the purple lights of the scattered clouds above it directly before me. . . . " Till now I have been grievously indisposed, and I am enjoying the godlikeness of the place in which I am settled, with the voluptuous and joy-trembling nerves of convalescence. . , . At Liverpool I was very much with Roscoe — a man of the most fascinating manners : if good sense, sweetness, simplicity, hilarity, joining in a literary man, who is a good husband and the excellent father of nine children, can give any man's manners the claim of that word. iSoo-io. LIFE OF COLERIDGE. 269 " Sara Coleridge is well . . . Hartley is all health and ecstasy — he is a spirit dancing on an aspen leaf — un- wearied in joy — from morning till night indefatigably joyous. . . . We have pleasant acquaintances here ; and I shall have free access to the magnificent library of Sir Wilfred Lawson. Yet you may well suppose I did not quit Stowey without dejection, and that I cannot now think of my separation from Poole without a pang. Now, while I gaze, there is one dark slip of cloud that lies across the bright sun on the mountain top ! and such, my dear Purkis, is that thought to me ! . . . " My wife will not let me stay on the leads — I must go and unpack a trunk for her. God bless you and " S. T. C." There is no doubting the enjoyment of life expressed in these lines. Coleridge was once more in his element. He looked on his indisposition as merely temporary. He desired to use this happy mood for poetical purposes, and applied himself to the second part of " Christabel," which Wordsworth wanted him to finish in order to in- clude it in the second volume of ' Lyrical Ballads.' But the Muse refused to obey him. He took many a walk "in the clouds, in the mountains." The wind from Skiddaw and Borrowdale was often as loud as wind need be, but all would not do. But on one occasion of a visit, when he had drunk too freely, his verse-making faculties returned, though, as we have already shown, not with LIFE OF COLERIDGE. the same fairy lightness as before. The power, too, was soon exhausted ; and the ballad remained a fragment, and unprinted. A string in the mental machinery of the poet had given way, and from reasons previously evident in Stowey. The same delight in nature which had inspired his finest poems, led him to ramble about in all weathers, bringing on his old inherited enemy of rheumatism, and this again he fought with that fatal remedy which turned his pathological symptoms into poetic dreams. This calamity, as might be expected, entailed others not difficult to foresee. Mrs, Coleridge was the one who suffered most by the literary inactivity of her husband, and understood it least. She was an excellent house- keeper, a devoted mother, and a good woman, but she knew not how to manage a man of moods. She had early exchanged the gaiety of girlhood for the anxieties of matronhood. She was rather given to fears and complaints, so that Southey nicknamed her "Thisbe." Hardly an hour passed without little de- sponding ejaculations: "The cow is about to calve;" " The cow does not cat ; " " The cow must be ill ; " " We shall lose the cow." " Southey earns such-and-such, and my husband, with his superior talents, never bestirs himself," &c. &c. Thus she used to worry him with a swarm of little cares. Coleridge, however, unless actually driven to it, thought it almost sinful to disturb himself about so low a thing as money, and then he i8oo-io. LIFE OF COLERIDGE. 271 asked for it from the nearest and surest source, namely,, from the Wedgwoods. All the urgings in the world did nothing more than make him waste his time in fruitless plans, put him out of humour, and ask himself if this were really the woman for whom, while in Germany, he had so ardently longed. It was the old story of a poet- husband. Perhaps he would not have been so keenly aware of what he missed, had he not been flattered by the enthusiastic sympathy of another lady. The person in question was Mrs. Robinson, called " Perdita," one of those literary ladies who associated with Godwin. Fascinating and gifted, she had been married at sixteen to a reputed rich American, whom, after a short period of luxury, sire had followed to a debtors' prison. Having been helped on to the stage by Garrick, she had the misfortune to please the Prince of Wales in the character of Perdita ; and heartless desertion was her reward, or penalty. Then she came out as a poetess ; imitated Petrarch, bewailed Werther, and, under the name of " Laura Matilda," formed a society of mutual admiration, to which a cruel satirist put an end. She was now poor, sickly, and above forty years old, but still full of intellectual energy, editing the belles-lettres department of the Morning Post, and translating from Klopstock. Compassion opened Coleridge's heart to her, and the more readily from his contempt for the too notorious prince. Nor did he conceal his interest for her, nor his desire to comfort and to raise her. This is 272 LIFE OF COLERIDGE. chap. vi. seen in his lines, " To an unfortunate woman at the theatre " : " Thou hast known deceit and folly, Thou has felt that vice is woe ; With a musing melancholy Inly armed, go, maiden, go." The poem was written in London, and appeared (1800) in the "Annual Anthology." Also, when absent, he enquires for her in a letter to Godwin : " How is Mrs. Robinson ? Remember me in the kindest and most respectful phrases to her." This sympathy was perhaps the last pleasure that fell to her lot. She thanked him in an ode with that feverish exuberance which indicates her own use of opium : " Spirit divine ! with thee will I wander.' I'll mark thy sunny dome, and view Thy caves of ice ; thy fields of dew " — evidently alluding to his " Kubla Khan " ! Like the beloved one in that poem, she strove to sing blissfully of " Thee, O favoured child of minstrelsy, sublimely wild." Signed " Sappho," Being ordered by her doctor into the country, she went to Keswick in the late summer, and there, in a second ode, invoked all good influences on the head of the new-born babe, Derwent, so named after Derwent Water ; and this time her thoughts followed Coleridge's "Frost at Midnight." She possessed in the highest degree that ready and imaginative sympathy which the poet longed for from his wife. Early one Sunday morning he plundered his i8oo-io. LIFE OF COLERIDGE. 273 landlord's garden of a nosegay for the benefit of the poor patient — a breach both of the third and eighth commandments, as he remarks in some humorous verses (Pickering, vol. ii.). And Sara had already been jealous of Miss Wordsworth ! Mrs. Robinson left in November 1800. Coleridge be- wailed her departure in the elegy, "A Stranger Minstrel," describing her as " a lady of sweet song, and soft blue eyes." She died a few weeks after. The elegy appeared as a supplement to her Memoirs in 1801. This was followed a few years later by the publication of her poems, on which occasion Coleridge wrote another plaint, de- scribing what he felt at her loss, called, " The Mad Monk." For ten years he had passed through a constant succession of excitement ; and the reaction now became more and more marked, the alienation between the pair always more evident. There was no quarrel, no harshness, no bitter word, but the relation between them was one of duty, rather than affection. Two poems illustrate the change — "The Night Scene" and "The Picture." The subject of both is love disillusioned, but with enduring fidelity. He, resigned to the condition, breathed freer, as if released from an inward pang, though, at the same time, very unhappy that his domestic castles in the air should have fallen to the ground, " and lazy snakes trail o'er the level ruins." He tried to recover himself by his own strength. " Yet art thou never great," he said to himself, " but by the inspiration of great passion." T 274 LIFE OF COLERIDGE. chap. vi. The political events of the day now also ceased to stir him. He became indifferent to the long-desired overthrow of Pitt (February 1801) and to the anxiously mediated peace with France (March 1802). When Fox, his former favourite, paid a friendly visit to Paris, Coleridge called him a Jacobin, and more Gallic than British in his sentiments — a declaration which the gentle Lamb disapproved and regretted. He now looked on the strife of nations and parties the more " with hermit eye " — as expressed in the " Ode to Tran- quillity" — in the Morning Post (2nd Nov. 1802), " A wild and dream-like trade of blood and guile, Too foolish for a tear, too wicked for a smile." Even the pleasure he took in his children and friends did not cheer him. Hartley developed a pre- cocious power of fancy and thought ; understood at five years of age to distinguish between " Real Hartley, Shadow Hartley, Picture Hartley, Looking-glass Hartley, and Catch-me Hartley ;" lived in wondrous dreams, and was admiringly celebrated by Wordsworth. Derwent throve perceptibly, and ran about in a little yellow coat, which procured him the name of "Stumpy Canary." Sara, the only daughter, was born on 2ist December, 1802. It is significant that her name was inscribed in the Family Bible by the mother, not by the father, and that through her whole childhood she showed great shyness of her father, and the most devoted attachment to her mother. The marriage of Wordsworth to his gentle wife, in 1802, increased the friendly circle. LloydJ' ' iSoo-io. LIFE OF COLERIDGE. 275 also came into the neighbourhood, and Southey, with wife and little daughter, came to reside with his brother- in-law, and filled Greta Hall with cheerful work. Agreeable visitors passed also that way ; in the summer of 1 80 1, the poet Rogers ; a year later, Lamb and his sister ; in 1803, William Hazlitt, haughtier and gloomier than he had been in Shrewsbury, but with the same reverence as ever for great men, and especially for Coleridge, whose portrait he was now taking. Occasion- ally, too, th^ Quaker, Thomas^ Clarkson, the indefatigable apostle for the abolition of slavery, came with his highly cultivated wife. And on every occasion the brothers Wedgwood showed their generosity. Had he been in health Coleridge could not but have been happy. But he was martyred with gout ; his fingers swelled and his feet swelled, and then it went to his eyes, and then to his stomach. A Mr. Edmondson, from whom he borrowed a number of medical books, strengthened him in the use of opium. It helped to benumb the pain, but only for the moment. He had consequently to take more and more, till he became irretrievably dependent on it His nerves now began to shake. Guiltless as he was, his nights were visited by the most horrible dreams, which he described in the poem, " The Panic of Sleep " — an elegiac pendant to " Kubla Khan," — while by day his imagination was proportionately inactive. Powerless for emulation, he had now to acknowledge the perfection to which Wordsworth had attained in the second volume of the * Lyrical Ballads.' " If I die," he wrote in a letter T 2 276 LIFE OF COLERIDGE. CHAr. vr. to Godwin, " and the booksellers will give you anything for my Life, be sure to say, ' Wordsworth descended on him like the 7i/w&t aeavrov from heaven ; and by showing him what true poetry was, he made him know that he himself was no poet.' " His pen now became unpro- ductive ; for months he did not even write a letter, and when some solitary note of cheerfulness broke from him^ as in his " Ode to Rain," we read in it also the sad indifference of a commonplace life. In 1803, a third edition of his poems was called for. It was sent, unreviscd by him, to Lamb for revision. His face, by nature blooming, was now pale. One day would pass in heavy stupefaction, the next in childlike games, as if two different men dwelt in him. He feels that Wordsworth's stanzas written in his pocket copy of Thompson's ' Castle of Indolence ' apply to himself. At thirty years of age Coleridge was a broken man. The most touching expression of this barren mood is the " Ode to Dejection " (April 1802). As in his "Ode to France," Coleridge begins with the mighty features of nature — the winds, the clouds, and the Moon : " as fixed as if it grew In its own cloudless, starless lake of blue." Again he dwells pathetically on the delight with which landscape beauty once inspired him. Still, it sounds more like the echo of Schiller's dithyrambic to Joy than a tone from his own breast. And at the conclusion he renounces all hope of joy in Nature, as in " France " all hope of popular freedom. He is bowed down with i8oo-io. LIFE OF COLERIDGE. , 277 misery; each visitation suspends more and more his power of imagination ; devils yell to him in the winds, in the clouds he sees fighting battalions with gaping wounds, and in the still pauses he hears the moans and screams of a child who has lost her way. " Fare- well, joy ; " " remain true to the happier friend, and show him eveiything from pole to pole in a higher life." This friend — in later editions, "a lady" — was meant doubtless for Wordsworth, whose cheerful, living mode of observation had much affected Coleridge ; for the image of the crescent boat, " among the stars, Through many a breathless field of light, Through many a long blue field of ether," was already given in " Peter Bell," while the idea of the little girl who had lost her way may be traced in " Lucy Gray." And from Coleridge's ode in turn did Words- worth receive inspiration. He took up the fundamental idea — the contrast, namely, between the enjoyment of the young in the outer world, and the joylessness of the aging poet, — and so treated it in his " Intimations of Immortality in Childhood " (1803-6), that by Coleridge's entreaty he gave it a consoling and encouraging termi- nation. At the same time, the preamble to " The Mad Monk," and the celebrated concluding lines, " Thoughts that do often lie too deep for tears," were suggested by Coleridge's " Ode to Tranquillity." Coleridge, even in his decline, had a glow which kindled others. His " Depression " . even threw some sparks into 278 LIFE OF COLERIDGE. chap. vi. Shelley's " Lines written in dejection near Naples ;" for instance, the sweetness of despair in sight of a fine landscape, the deep despondence without a name, and the comparison with a tired child that cries itself to death. The next years — 1803, 4, and 5 — produced no note- worthy poems, and " Dejection " may be considered as the poet's dirge to his own imagination. He now sought for alleviation in philosophy, as he expresses himself in the same ode : " And haply by abstruse research to steal From my own nature all the natural man ; This was my sole resource, my only plan." A year before that he had already expressed this same openly in a letter to Godwin, owning that he felt " unfit to decide on any but works of severe logic. I look now on the mountains (that visible God Almighty that looks in at all my windows) only for the curves of their outlines." From poetry, which had become too sad an occupation, his mind now turned to speculation, simply because of the absorbing labour which it de- manded. The great question for Coleridge, as for all philo- sophers, was how to reconcile the mind of man with outer nature. Hitherto his best directed attempts had remained fruitless. Either he had declared — with Plato,, riotinus, and Berkeley — the Real to be the offspring of the Ideal ; or he had admitted the materialism of Hartley, or the corporeal and realistic pantheism of i8oo-io. LIFE OF COLERIDGE. 279 Spinoza, or the mystical self-alienation theory of Jacob Bohme. A condition of equilibrium had to be found, and this was offered him by Kant. It was in Keswick that Coleridge first began to study Kant's writings regularly. As an introduction to them he made use of a small octavo volume of two or three sheets, entitled 'Kant's Logic,' a piratical print from the MS. of a lecture. He found it very convincing, and had nothing to censure, except that two-thirds of the book were, as usual, " accommodated to the old ideas." This he wrote himself in the regular edition of ' Kant's Logic ' in the British Museum. From such popular versions he passed on to the prefaces to the systematic works, and finally to these themselves. This cleared away, to his view, the old antithesis of words and things ; " words became elevated into things, and living things too," till both presented themselves to him in " a simple organic union, like the parts and germinations of a plant " (to Godwin, 22nd September, 1800). And now Coleridge set himself to investigate the groundwork "of this new world of intellectual forms." He planned a quarto volume of 600 pages, entitled ' Organum Vere Organum,' — " a collection of all possible modes of true, probable, and false reasonings, with a strict analysis of their origin and operation." The work was to supersede the ' Organum Novum ' of Bacon, and all dogmatic philosophy in general. A month later the undertaking assumed a more gigantic form. The whole realm of human knowledge was to 28o LIFE OF COLERIDGE. chap. vi. be compressed into a ' Bibliotheca Britannica'^of eight volumes ; not only, as hitherto executed, a great omniuvi gatlierum, with an alphabetical index, but divided into subjects with exhaustive thoroughness, and reduced to ultimate principles. He wrote, it is true, nothing more than a few letters to friends in preparation for the work, and especially to Southey. He then buried him- self in Kant, as formerly in Plotinus. And although thus devoted to the Kantian system, he could not refrain from introducing as far as possible his old pantheistic views ; he doubted, namely, whether Kant really re- garded "the thing in itself" as without all form what- soever, and brought in something of the platonic realism of an impersonal God, which he believed Kant could not have openly professed without incurring the martyrdom of a Giordano Bruno, or Wolff ; the literal fact being that Kant believed himself to have provided the strongest argument in defence of the faith in the personal God of Christianity, by enfranchising us from all acknowledgment of " the thing in itself" This misconception of Kant shows how much Coleridge was inclined to reason through his imagination, instead of through his understanding. He thought less of confirming a system, than of harmonising his own concrete ideas. His logic was of no very strict kind, and any contradiction soon unhorsed him. According to Madame de Stael, who made his acquaintance a dozen years later, " he was rich in monologue, but poor in dialogue." He had often mixed up philosophy in iSoo-io. LIFE OF COLERIDGE, 2S1 his poems, and now he mixed up poetry with his philosophy. These speculations occupied him so much that he altogether neglected his interest in Lessing. The plans of translating him and writing his life were now given up. He returned at most to the Lessing track when, after the appearance of Godwin's work on Chaucer, he proposed to undertake a critical analysis of that father of English poetry by comparing him with his contem- poraries, predecessors, and successors. This plan of course also came to nothing ; and meanwhile his study of Kant procured him that dreamy, passive forgetful- ness of all worldly things in which it was his nature to indulge. But this state was far from satisfying his friends, or, in his saner moments, himself. Philosophy presented a source of alleviation, but had no healing power. From time to time, therefore, he tried what change of place could do. He went for some months to London in November 1801, where he was less plagued with gout, and somewhat cheered by society. The iriends with whom he chiefly associated there, were Poole, who had left Stowey for the Metropolis, in order to watch over some Parliamentary affairs concerning the Poor Laws ; Jqhn__Stoddart^ a clever young barrister, who was ap- pointed "King's advocate" in Malta in 1803, and who, later, contributed by his writing to the world-wide reputation of the Times ; Basil Montague, a barrister of literary fame, an authority in the Bankruptcy Court, 282 LIFE OF COLERIDGE. chap. vi. and an adherent to Godwin's views, to which he would have sacrificed his position, had not Mackintosh pre- vented him ; and finally and especially, Humphrey Davy, the great chemist, a friend of Cottle, and Beddoe's most learned scholar. He was then engaged in in- vestigating the effects of laughing-gas, which he made Coleridge inhale, who was always ready to philoso- phize on the universal connection between all the laws of nature. Had he not even composed a pious poem on Spinoza's system? By January 1802, Coleridge was again in this circle ; offering a publisher an Essay on Jeremy Taylor, which of course he never finished. In the spring of 1803, also, we find him in London, in the society of Sotheby, the translator of " Oberon " ; and in that of the then comparatively unknown collector of ballads, Walter Scott ; always ready to read " Christabel " aloud, and always eager to banish the memory of his youthful radicalism. From time to time, too, making trips to Bristol, and to Gunville, the residence of the brothers Wedgwood.^ In November and December 1802, he had sauntered through Wales and Devonshire with Mr. Thomas Wedgwood, exerting all his winning cheer- fulness to dissipate the melancholy with which his benefactor was afflicted. But no sooner did he return to Keswick from these excursions than all their good effects disappeared, equally from mind and body. And it was worse in Scotland, whither he accompanied the Wordsworths in August 1 803 ; the weather was abom- inable, and brought on his worst rheumatism, so that i8oo-io. LIFE OF COLERIDGE. 283 after a fortnight at Loch Lomond he had to return alone. He had already, in January 1801, formed the plan of visiting some land of the sun, where he might work against his enemy, opium, by a grape cure, and renovate himself among a southern people. And every fresh attack fortified this idea. First he thought of taking a voyage with Thomas Wedgwood to Sicily or the Canar}^ Islands, and then of touring alone through France and Italy. At last he made up his mind, and left Keswick for Madeira on the 20th December, 1803. Sadly did he part from his family, and yet was " glad to break loose," believing, much more than was really the case, that he was a burden to his wife. After the winter was over he hoped to return well and fit for work. Coleridge had all the bad luck of Ulysses, without his wisdom. He had gone to Grasmere in fog and rain to take leave of Wordsworth. Scarcely had he arrived when his limbs began to swell, his digestive powers failed,, and he was confined to his room for a fortnight, till dry frosty weather set him free. Wordsworth regarded him with the deepest compassion, and compelled him to- accept ;^ioo towards his travelling expenses. On the 20th January, 1804, he set out for Liverpool, where he was taken in for a week by his old Unitarian friends, was nursed and listened to. Then in London, where he lived with Poole, he remained for two months,, allowed Northcote to take his portrait, and continued to suffer from swollen hands and benumbed senses till the 284 LIFE OF COLERIDGE. chap. vi. winter was well over. All thought of the future yielded to the temptation of the moment. His evil genius turned all his best and most honest intentions to nought. It was not till the beginning of April that, by Stoddart's^ pressing invitation, he took ship for Malta. Five years before, he had embarked for Germany with the most ardent thirst for knowledge ; now he left his country weary and strengthless. From the 8th April, 1804, to the 27th September, 1805, almost a year and a half, he stayed in Malta; but the chief object of his stay remained unfulfilled. At first he improved ; but as soon as the novelty of change of air was over, he felt oppressed with the monotony of the eternal blue sky, while the summer heat upset his nerves. But little cheerful companionship was to be had ; and though he mastered the Italian tongue, he took neither to the country nor to the people as he had done at Ratzeburg and Gottingen. His first impression on landing had been only that of strangeness, and this impression continued till he left. The landscape, with its dazzling lights and sharp outlines, the brilliant luxuriance, without woods or twilight, were unsym- pathetic to him. The sandstone which forms the material of the Maltese fortifications, and of the rectan- gular streets and pavements, offended his eye with its dazzling untoned colour. The Romantic school loves a patina ! The natives, however nimble their movements, however plastic their forms, gave him only a passing interest ; they lacked cleanliness outwardly, and from the i8oo-io. LIFE OF COLERIDGE. 2S5 sadly abused celibacy of the knights, they lacked purity inwardly. In addition to this, their bad, half-Arabic Italian interrupted all intercourse. ^ The English colony consisted almost entirely of consumptive patients, whom Coleridge only saw declining more and more, of traders for whom he was too honest, and of soldiers. Stoddart, as it appears, was absorbed in the duties of his office. No popular song, no suggestive picture reached Cole- ridge, so he stuck the closer to his opium, to foreign politics, and to abstract philosophy. Malta itself, more than any other place, was calcu- lated to exemplify the bloody game of diplomacy. The island was considered the key to Egypt and to the East. First taken by Napoleon, and then by the English, her importance to England increased in pro- portion as Italy fell more and more under French rule. According to the Peace of Amiens, the island was to be restored to the knights. But the Union Jack held its place pertinaciously in the harbour of Valetta while the ambitious schemes of the First Consul threatened danger both to north and south. It became indeed the occasion for the renewal of the war — May 1803. Even the Radical party in England, who at one time opposed the war with the Republic, now sided with the Govern- ment. It was evident that no greater enemy to freedom existed than the recently -crowned Soldier - Emperor. Coleridge found himself suddenly on the very site of the apple of discord, and could but interest himself in the conflict. In Stoddart he found a thoroughly sound 286 LIFE OF COLERIDGE. chap. vi. teacher. He was presented to the Governor, Admiral Sir Alex. Ball, who had not only captured the island, but now held it against friend and foe, and who at once appointed our eminent author his secretary. Sir Alexander was a brave old sailor. From a haughty rival of Nelson's he had become the preserver of his life, and his " right arm." He had blown up the French admiral's ship at the battle of the Nile. By his own people, and by the Maltese, he was honoured like a father. He showed Coleridge great respect, but did not hesitate to evince impatience when the secretary on one occasion propounded the distinction between " an unorganised mass of matter," and " a mass of un- organised matter." He did not dispute the problem, but he employed him to purchase grain in Sicily, pro- posed to send him to the Morea to bargain for oxen, and indoctrinated him gradually with the politics of matter-of-fact. Coleridge, in return, upon Sir Alex- ander's death, was the first to record his life and deeds in the Friend with all the warmth of " an humble and ever grateful friend." His spare hours were spent by Coleridge in Kantian speculations. In the midst of orange groves and pepper- trees — with venerable structures on the one hand, and men-of-war on the other — he buried himself in the books he had brought with him. As there was no one with whom he could talk over his studies, he took up the habit of jotting down on the margin his doubts, suggestions, or approval— a habit he indulged more and iSoo-io. LIFE OF COLERIDGE. 287 more with increasing years. Numerous volumes thus en- riched have made their way to the British Museum (see Helen Zimmern — BlackwoocVs Magazine, 1882), and thus afford welcome finger-posts to his further development. At the same time, it must not be forgotten that Coleridge studied the adversaries of Kant as well as the master himself. What he scribbled on the .margin of Herder's * Kalligone ' — the keenest and severest polemic against Kant's './Esthetik' — is peculiarly characteristic. He regretted that Herder, who in the main had adhered to the sound but empirical standard of Locke, should have connected the general forms of human thought with individual ideas. He inveighed against Herder's immoderate enthusiasm for the Greeks, — "that endless rant about the Greeks and Homer, with no love of truth, no feeling of reality, no connection of those fineries with the real history of those eulogised Greeks, their manners, ignorance, cruelty, treatment of women, &c. &c." He called the whole book, "A six-inch-deep gutter of muddy philosophisms, from the drainings of a hundred sculleries," and worse still. Coleridge's enthusiasm for Kant made him unjust towards others. On questions of religion also, and on private and public morality, he took part with Kant. In September 1800, he had imparted to Godwin his indecision about the little Hartley — whether, namely, he should bring him up as a believer, or " without solemn lies." He was then in a state of hesitation. This desire to reconcile faith and knowledge was as yet 288 LIFE OF COLERIDGE. chap. vi. unfulfilled, because he wanted to apply faith and know- ledge in the same degree to one and the same thing. Kant, by defining the limits of human knowledge, had abundantly enjoined the exercise of faith. Where objective conviction ceases, subjective conviction must and can only commence, and the means to this end is the separation between the understanding and the reason. With the one, we form our opinion as to the world of outer appearances ; with the other, we grasp those ideas of freedom, immortality and God, which in themselves can neither be proved nor denied, but yet arc practically indispensable for social morality. " Reason," henceforth, was the magic word with which Coleridge invoked the secrets of religion, and always, as far as I can judge, on the principles of Kant ; not, as John Stuart Mill maintained, with the vaguer sentimentality of Jacobi. On this principle of reason, and not on any external authority, did he base Christianity ; main- taining the truth of miracle and prophecy because he believed in Christianity, not the reverse. In accord- ance with this principle he again lifted up his soul and prayed, not for any direct aid, but for grace and strength. From this principle of reason, in strongest opposition to any profit or pleasure, he deduced the laws of morality, and simply taught his hearers to follow Kant's categorical principle that " we are to obey duty for its own sake, and in direct opposition to our inclinations. To find his duty in the enjoyment of perfect harmony between every part of man, would I iSoo-io. LIFE OF COLERIDGE. 289 not be human, but angelic happiness." (Gillman, p. 177.) The relation of the State, also, to the indi- vidual citizen should be determined by reason, free from all selfishness. " Political, true freedom consists not merely in the enjoyment, but in the security of the enjoyment of equal laws." Constitutional monarchy is therefore in every respect to be preferred to abso- lute monarchy. Thus reconciled with the Church and Constitution in which he had been brought up, Coleridge returned from Malta. He now no longer comprehended the fact of his former adherence to Hartley, and to the Unitarians. Thus it was to Kant — the much-abused of all the orthodox — that he owed his conversion. His journey home was marked by more delay and embarrassment than his journey out. At first, and in spite of his increasing ill-health, he was detained by Sir Alex, Ball, who had found no successor to him. When at last at liberty to leave, he took the land route through Italy ; climbed both Etna and Vesuvius ; stayed for a time in Naples, where the tidings of Nelson's victory and death reached him, and where he played the part of a patriot spectator at a muster of the allied troops. His remark on that occasion was, that in the Russian regiments all faces were alike ; in the English, all different. At the beginning of 1806 he was in Rome, luxuriating in the treasures of art, and still more in the society of living artists and patrons of art. He made acquaintance with U 290 LIFE OF COLERIDGE. chap. vi. Alston, the American painter, who so enchanted him with his works, that he let him take his portrait ; with Migliarini, the Italian critic, who lectured to him on Dante, which Coleridge returned by doing the same on Shakespeare ; vvath Tieck, the German writer, to whom he expatiated on the spurious plays of Shakespeare ; with Cardinal Fesch ; with the Prussian ambassador. Baron Wilhelm von Humboldt, who kept a great house, where he received Thorwaldsen, Koch, Angelica Kauffman, Rauch and others, and was then engaged in writing an elegy on Rome. He was also interested in the Papal ceremonial ; in the manage- ment of the Propaganda ; and in the superstitions of the people ; showing that healthy and happy interest in everything about him, which, from his scant and complaining letters from Malta, no one would have expected. Thus all went well until the summer, when Humboldt suddenly received intelligence that Coleridge had been proscribed by Napoleon. The articles in the Morning Post had not been overlooked in Paris. The order for his arrest had already arrived, and the Pope had been instructed to deliver up every Englishman in Rome within thirty-six hours. Good old Pope Pius Vn. was himself in great embarrassment, but had still the courage and humanity to save Coleridge. He sent a Benedictine monk to him next morning, with pass and carriage, in which, disguised as the chaplain of Cardinal Fesch, this bitter enemy of all priestcraft immediately left Rome at full gallop (' Caro- 3800-IO. LIFE OF. COLERIDGE. 291; line Fox's Journal '). He reached Genoa in fog and darkness. There he accidentally found an American captain, and practised on him his wonted powers of persuasion so successfully, that he rigged him out with jacket, knee-breeches, and a basket of vegetables, took him on board ship as steward, and smuggled him out to sea. Even there he was in danger from a French man-of-war. All his Roman papers had to be thrown overboard. The passage to England lasted fifty-five days ; during that time he was so ill that his life was twice given over. It was in August 1806, that, with empty pockets, increased rheumatic pains, a deeper despondency, and with hair turning grey, he touched his native soil after a year and a half's absence. Lamb called him " an archangel, a little damaged." In England new worries awaited him. Thomas Wedgwood had died in the interim ; his brother natu- rally wished for some tribute to his memory from the pen of Coleridge, who fully acknoAvledged this duty of gratitude, but never found the right mood. He thus lost the most generous of patrons. Other friends dis- covered that he had become too orthodox. The Government applied to him for information as to the state of things in the Mediterranean, but answered his well - founded appeal for stricter measures with an insulting refusal. But the worst pain of all was the thought of his poor, careworn wife. For weeks he did not venture to open her letters, far less to write to her. Disillusion, weakness of purpose, and stings of con- U 2 292 LIFE OF COLERIDGE. chap. vi. science combined to bring on a condition of dejection which bordered on cowardice. Slowly, and in dread, he approached his home. Wordsworth, then at Grasmere, was on the point of finishing that poetic account of his own youthful development which is given in " The Prelude." He had dedicated it to Coleridge, and read it aloud to him with honest pride. It describes an active, firm mind in harmony with its high aims. It was no wonder that Coleridge's verse broke out in gratulation for his friend, and pity for himself (Pickering, vol. ii, p. 224) ; that he felt that his youth was gone, and his manhood unproductive ; and that he gave vent to his feelings in the poem called " The Tombless Epitaph." In Keswick he felt himself almost a stranger. The chil- dren were grown and promising. So precocious a child as Hartley demanded superior teaching, and for him he drew up a new kind of Greek ' First Lessons ' — grammar and lexicon in one — wishing his son to learn the language of Homer earlier than that of Virgil. But the warm affection he had once borne his wife now seemed to him like a dream. His " Farewell to Love," and other small poems of this time, are evidences of the utter lack of energy which now possessed him. An anecdote of the time (' W. Collier's Journal') relates how one day he called on a medical man, and with tears in his eyes, complained that his wife was really beside herself; for, on the coldest mornings, and with icicles anging from the roof, she would require him to get up iSoo-io. LIFE OF COLERIDGE. 293 in his nightshirt and light the fire, before she dressed her- self and the children. In vain did he seek to cultivate little Sara — she clung timidly to her mother. At this time he came across a young lady with those intellectual sympathies which Mrs. Coleridge failed to give him — perhaps Mrs. Clarkson ? — and with her he resumed his old walks. Gossip and jealousy soon compelled him to give this up. He spent more time with Words- worth, who understood him, than with his own family. Humanity, Coleridge had in abundance, but too little manliness. The year 1807 passed in restless searchings for help and employment. Before then, he had left Keswick again, taking little Hartley with him, his wife and the two other children following in a few months. He went first to Sir George Beaumont at Coleorton, a painter and great lover of art, and intimate with Wordsworth ; thence to London, to Basil Montague's, to show his little boy the Tower and the theatre. Hartley at once wrote a tragedy, and was indignant that his father took but little notice of it. Thence to Bristol, where Cottle could only admire the abundance of his plans and the piety of his talk, and then to Stowey, where Poole was astonished at the purposelessness of his ways. Again he reclined upon the Quantock Hills ; again he listened to the rippling of the streams ; again he sought the spot where imagination and happiness had once smiled on him, and there he wrote his hopeless " Recollections of Love." He would have visited his relations in Ottery, % 294 LIFE OF COLERIDGE. chap. vi. but that his brother George was suffering so severely from gout — the family ailment — as to oblige him to give up his school. Later in July we find our poet in a friend's house in Bridgwater, where an unexpected gleam of good fortune smiled upon him. He made the acquaintance of a young man of independent means, Thomas De Ouincey, afterwards known as a writer of Essays, an opium eater, a compiler of memoirs more interesting than trustworthy, and a highly gifted dreamer like Coleridge himself, whose acquaintance he had long ardently desired. From him Coleridge received much flattering homage, and through the good offices of Cottle, an anonymous present of ^^"300. But that was only a nail in a tottering wall. He had to rouse himself to exertion, and requested De Ouincey to convey his family back to Keswick, while he himself went to London and was enrolled by Stuart as contributor to his new paper, the Courier. An uncomfortable room in the Strand, three stairs high, was placed at his disposal, a dirty old woman waited upon him, and the noise and racket of the city surrounded him ; Napoleon was to be fought, not one of our Continental allies holding their own against him — no enviable time for a writer. He contributed, as it appears, only a few verses to the Courier. A more congenial occupation was still to be found. Humphrey Dav>' discovered one. Immediately after Colcridgc's return from Malta, he had invited him not to confine his critical dissertations to private society, but to iSoo-io. LIFE OF COLERIDGE. 295 let them be heard in the form of public lectures. The Royal Institution, founded in 1799, offered place and opportunity for this purpose. Davy himself was heard there every Saturday forenoon, surrounded by his tremendous voltaic battery, and at his suggestion, Cole- ridge was invited. He agreed to the proposal, but, after renewed importunity from Davy, only proceeded to fulfil the engagement in February 1808. ' Five courses, with five lectures each, were announced. Shakespeare, Spenser, Milton, Dryden, Pope, and the more modern poets were to be treated " in illustration of the general principles of poetry." The pay was to be one hundred guineas. This, at all events, was a way of extrication for talents, pocket, and honour. But our poet did not show himself to be in earnest. Physical and mental excuses were allowed to intervene. He absented himself without due notice, while a number of fashionable carriages and pedestrians crowded the entrance in Albemarle Street. After a delay of half an hour he was reported as ill — just the same as in 1794, when he had undertaken to lecture on the Fall of Rome for Southey. On the first occasion, the announcement was received with unfeigned regret ; but the second time the crowd became angry, and the third, they stayed away. Instead of giving two lectures a week, as had been announced, he spread his eighteen deliveries over more than four months — indeed, up to 13th June, 1808, and then broke off suddenly on plea of ill-health, and went north. The lectures were a disappointment. He 296 LIFE OF COLERIDGE. chap. vi. delayed the requisite preparation for them, and took the whole matter too carelessly ; altered his programme, and in no way made up to his hearers for the alteration ; and with his parched lips, pale face, awkward action, poor voice, and bad delivery, created a most uncomfortable impression. At the same time, when in stimulating society, all the old charm of his conversation returned ; it was only regular work and duty which seemed impossible to him. " Despite his exalted genius," said Davy, " his enlarged views, sensitive heart and en- lightened mind, he will be the victim of want of order, precision and regularity." " His lectures adopted in all respects the German doctrines, clothed with original illustrations, and adapted to an English audience." These were the words of Henry Crabb Robinson, a young barrister, a votary of Wordsworth, thoroughly acquainted with German literature, who had just returned from Weimar, and had been introduced to Coleridge by Mrs. Clarkson. This verdict is confirmed in his own letters and journals ; the only source whence the real character of these lectures can be gathered. According to these, Coleridge lectured the second day, February 5th, on the doubly consecrated origin of the drama, from Greek mythology and Christian humanity. His facts were taken from the works of Wharton and Malone, but their mode of application clearly recalls Herder's * Ideen zur Philosophic dcr Geschichtc.' It was the peculiarity of Herder, in common with all many-sided minds, to impart know- iSoo-io. LIFE OF COLERIDGE. zcj-j ledge even to his bitterest adversaries. Coleridge descanted on the breadth and largeness which should enter into all poetic delineation of character, and on the universality of Shakespeare in this respect ; and it is evident that Kant's * Kritik der Urtheilskraft ' and the 69th number of the HamhirgiscJie Dramaturgie were here floating before his mind. On another day (May 7th) he lectured on the educa- tion of children,' maintaining that the child acquires the moral sense rather through his feelings than through any clearly explained motives ; rather through loving incitement to thought, than through argument. Practice and habit must also be enlisted to attain any sound knowledge and power of self-control. These educational principles were probably his own, and founded on experience. At the same time, it may be mentioned that they are already inculcated in Kant's ' Metaphysik der Sitten.J^ In the next following lectures he deduced the inven- tion of the fine arts from the necessities of primeval man, tracing it in such close connection with Herder's ' Kalligone,' that Crabb Robinson's notes of the lecture read almost like the index to the first chapter of that work. He further, in the manner of Kant, drew the distinction between poetry and eloquence ; the one leading to " special acts," while the other obeys only a general impulse. Finally, he pointed out the " naive " as the essential quality of poetic genius ; defining it exactly as Kant has done, as the outbreak of natural 298 LIFE OF COLERIDGE. chap. vr. truth against that art of dissembling which becomes second nature. On the 14th May he entered upon Shakespeare. High moral feeling was to be gathered from his dramas, from the very fact of their often gross but never vicious naiv^ti. Richardson, with all his moralising, is vulgar, and " only interesting "; but Shakespeare is always har- monious and elevating. This thought, even if not its application to Shakespeare and Richardson, is taken from Schiller's treatise, " Ueber naive und sentimentalische Dichtung." Coleridge was not likely to have overlooked that remarkable paper, which most contributed to approximate Kant's criticism on art to that of the Romantic school. Other remarks on Shakespeare, upon the freedom with which he borrowed his characters from Nature, thus preserving truth of art, in spite of the improbability of his plots, agree in the main points with Nos. 19 and 93 of the Hanibiirgische Dramatiwgie, Lessing's discovery that Shakespeare was not only a great genius, but an equally great artist, was now for the first time openly asserted in England. With intelligible national pride, Coleridge went further still. He wanted to acquit Shakespeare of every human imperfection ; declared that the repulsive character of Lady Anne in "Richard HI." was a spurious interpolation, and placed the dramas of the Elizabethan time in point of passion and moral feeling above the choral tragedies of the Greeks — as if the very difference in their respective aims did not sufficiently forbid any such comparisons. iScx3-io, LIFE OF COLERIDGE. 299 Finally, he carried Lessing's somewhat narrow contempt for French tragedy so far as to call Voltaire a " petty scribbler." To insure the successful reception of such views, Coleridge ought to have prepared an exposition of a far more careful, connected, and exhaustive kind. But all he offered were a series of intellectual fragments, more startling than convincing. Nor did the modern poets come in even for a notice, while, on the other hand, he expatiated without end on Lord Nelson and Sir Alex. Ball. He was quite conscious of his comparative failure, and quitted the field hastily. No sooner, however, had he returned to the Lake country, than, in spite of his melancholy experience in the form of the WatcJunau, he resumed his intellectual activity by setting up a new periodical. The Friend — such was Its name — was a weekly paper, the object of which was " to aid in the formation of fixed principles in politics, morals, and religion," and in the higher education of mankind, by means of examples from every source of Western literature. The chief representatives of this widely extended field — Addison, Johnson, Mackenzie — were now ardently ex- plored by Coleridge, in order to collect from them some popular exposition of philosophical thought. Nor was this enough ; he aimed to be more philosophic still, and to mix up, on the one hand, transcendental criticism with admonitions on practical wisdom ; while, on the other hand, he acknowledged the necessity of the greater 300 LIFE OF COLERIDGE. chap. vr. pains in clothing such matter in an attractive style. Leading articles, the news of the day, reviews, et hoc germs omne by which the Watchman, in his opinion, had been swamped, were banished from the Friend. In the first week of December — a year after his first •conception of the project — he sent out the printed announcements, dated from Grasmere, where he was residing with the Wordsworths, and in January 1809 the first number was to appear. It appeared on the 1st July! It was not calculated for popularity, nor were the succeeding numbers. "Qui trop embrasse, mal etreint." Coleridge again tried to compass too much. The thoroughness with which he sought to present his subject, betrayed him into terrible diffusenesses. He rambled so far wide and aside, and left the chief topic so long waiting, that all interest took flight. He revelled also in abstract expressions, and built up the most involved periods in the attempt to forestall every variety of objection. The paragraphs are so perversely arranged that the point is difficult to find ; and the arrangement of the chapters lacks all order. Never had Coleridge desired to write with more vivacity, and never had he written more heavily ; and this style he never again threw off. He credited his laconic countrymen with the same unwearied power of thought, for thinking's sake, that in times of de- pression he had himself acquired. He was aware of his mistake, for his friends and contributors took care to let him know it. He began therefore to vary the iSoo-io. LIFE OF COLERIDGE. 30 z dull matter by an occasionally more entertaining chapter ; parables from Jewish devotional works, poems by Wordsworth and by himself, letters that he had written from Germany, and recollections of Admiral Sir Alex. Ball, who had died on the 25th October, 1809, &c. : but these do not amalgamate with the didactic portions, and only appear here and there, like scant plums in a cake. There is a want of direct and clear aim in the work ; so that, with all its logic in detail, it is difficult to define its real contents. /^Diffuse and circumstantial preliminaries take the lead. The author expatiates on the necessity of referring "men's opinions to their absolute principles" — a favourite expression of his ; and, again, not alone to those of the intellect, but also to those of the heart. He defends the right of the feelings, and of the (theoretically) obscure ideas of freedom, immortality, and of God, because they are necessary for the perfection of the human race — Kant's practical postulate. He upholds also the right of the imagination, and defines it,, as Kant did, as the prerogative of genius as compared with mere talent;/ carrying the child's sense of wonder forward into the ripeness of manhood. As regarded politics, he sided neither with absolute authority, nor with blind Jacobinism ; neither with "the asfue of a Hobbes, nor with the fever of a Rousseau." His ideal in this field of thought, lay not in the eighteenth, but in the seventeenth century ; namely, in the persons of Hampden, Milton, and Sidney. Finally, 302 LIFE OF COLERIDGE. CHAr. vr. he upheld the duty of nations to act towards each other according to the laws of conscience ; as an example of the departure from which he instanced the recent bombardment of Copenhagen by the English, without the previous observance of a declaration of war. He lamented that an English statesman should in this respect have separated the laws of morality from those of diplomacy, though at the same time, in spite of all his philosophy, the Tory peeps out in his avowal that he approved the measure. At this point — 15th March, 1810 — Coleridge an- nounced the termination of his Introduction ! Twenty- seven numbers had appeared, without his having reached the chief object of the publication. Only twice had he slightly touched upon it ; the first time in allusion to Dr. Johnson's definition of an epitaph ; namely, that the laws of a poetic speciality were to be deduced, not from its usage, but from its destina- tion. The second criticism was directed against the reigning reviewers, especially against those of the Edinburgh Reviezv, which, since its foundation in 1802, had loaded the " Lake poets " with abuse and ridicule. His opportunity ended here ; his subscribers left him in the lurch, and the undertaking was silently con- demned, ninety out of the original hundred having dropped off at the fourth number. It was not only the dryness of the contents, and their disagreeable form, which had repelled them, but the irregularity with which the work appeared. In spite of the warning i8oo-io. LIFE OF COLERIDGE. 303 experience of the Watchman, Coleridge had under- taken to be his own publisher. He even bought his own paper and type, because he thought Southey had been cheated by his printer ; and as the stamp on each sheet cost fivepence, a considerable outlay was required before a word was printed. Thus it was that the third number, which should have appeared on the 15th July, only came out on the loth August, and the fourth number only on the 7th September. Nor were other causes of delay wanting. Grasmere gave him the advantage of intercourse with the Wordsworths ; with De Ouincey, who had faithfully followed him thither ; with John Wilson, the " Christopher North " of Black- wood's Magacijic, and the professor of moral philo- sophy in Edinburgh ; and also with Bishop Watson, who was helpful as a politician and land proprietor, if not as a theologian. And many other names might be mentioned. But, on the other hand, it was nineteen English miles from the nearest post town — Kendal — and twenty-eight from the printing-office, Penrith. With such mistakes in its management, the undertaking, de- spite much labour and many night watches, must have entailed a heavy loss. Still, the historical significance of the Friend must not be under-valued. It was one of the first protests against the merely useful, the merely moral, which had been the fashion till now. It recommends not only prudence, but wisdom ; not only verbal truth, but veracity ; not only legality, but rectitude. It is a 304 LIFE OF COLERIDGE. chap. vr. laudation of the long neglected forces of the soul ; of " the mysterious mother of conscience ; " of the Kantian principle of reason in its most romantic interpretation, " the best and holiest gift of Heaven, the bond of union with the Giver." In the very vagueness of the poetical language, the newest principles were characteristically shown. The Romantic school was not only a movement in literature, but it extended its influence into the domain of public morality. Far from thinking there was anything new in this, Coleridge only claimed the merit of recalling what was good in the past. He sought to indicate this by numerous mottos appended to the single chapters. His views were attributed to the teachers of his own youth, and to the teaching of preceding centuries ; the distinction between the under- standing and the reason, to St. Paul ; the ideas which, according to Kant, we possess by the aid of reason, independent of all experience, to the eternal verities of Plato and Descartes ; the claims of conservative policy, to the saying of Spinoza, " Animi libertas, seu fortitudo, privata virtus est, ac imperii virtus securitas." In one respect it would have been more right and just if he had quoted Kant himself. But Coleridge did not care so much about the origin of his doctrines, as about their ^ universal connection. In his own development he had, like Goethe, branched off from the cultivation of poetry — his chief vocation — into other and most various lines ; thus his aim in the education of a people was for universality. With all his piety, he had something i8oo-io. LIFE OF COLERIDGE. 305 of that Titanic impulse which had been so mightily- symbolised in the first part of " Faust," now just published, in 1807. In this drama, or rtiore'properly, " mystery," he took immediate and direct interest. He read it first while occupied with the Friend, determined to translate it, and set to work on it after the appearance of Madame de Stael's "Allemagne." Meanwhile the Friend had given him an opportunity to describe in a note the scene where Faust is beginning the translation of the Bible, and is interrupted by Mephistopheles. A number of features, — the student's old-fashioned room, the midnight lamp, the apparition of the devil out of the wall, — all these are so exactly given as to have attracted the remark of an English writer {Edinburgh Reviezu, vol. Ixi. p. 147). But just at the point where the two writers drew nearest to each other, the different view of the problem of the French Revolution, as taken respectively by the German and by the Englishman, became most evident. In the place of the Naturalist, in whom Goethe represented himself, Coleridge unceremoniously em- ployed Luther ; the scene is changed to the Wartburg, and the inkstand is thrown at the devil's head. Goethe trusted to the inborn goodness of man ; Coleridge took his stand on the Church, the reformation of which was all he desired. The one returned to a genial paganism ; the other, with true Anglo-Saxon tenderness, held to Christianity. The one was in his inmost nature a Humanist the other a Protestant, satisfied with the X 3o6 LIFE OF COLERIDGE. chap. vr. liberty of private judgment, and granting all liberty to the investigation of the Scriptures. The one simply wished man to be noble, beneficent, and good ; the other wished him, in addition, to use prayer. Hence the criticism on Goethe which Coleridge uttered in, conversation, "his want of moral life, religion and enthusiasm." His Mephistopheles, to his view, was a creation of no character ; his Faust, " a wretched creature, heartlessly planning the ruin of Gretchen, and who, rather than be finitely good, wanted to be infinitely better" (Robinson, vol. i.). The same feeling against Goethe was expressed by Wordsworth, Southey, Lamb, and De Ouincey ; and it cost Crabb Robinson no small trouble to make them understand the symbolic meaning of Goethe's characters. Coleridge even talked of setting up an opposition "Faust." Michael Scott,, the old magician of Sir Walter Scott's " Lay of the Last Minstrel," was to be possessed by the modern thirst for unlimited knowledge and power, and to suc- cumb to the temptations of a humorous devil by trying to betray a young and loving maiden. But she was to stand firm ; " the conviction of a salvation for sinners,, through God's grace," was to dawn within her, and so preserve her for final triumph. Rightly did Crabb Robinson protest against the moralising triviality of the project ; little better than the warming up of Richardson's " Pamela," with magical and philosophical additions. And rightly did he make sure that the plan would come to nothing ; that Cole- i8oo-io. LIFE OF COLERIDGE. 307 ridge would " lose himself in dreams." The power of grasping the Promethean idea was first reserved in England for Byron and Shelley. A practical pendant to the utterly theoretical Friend, may be studied in the eight letters on the rising in Spain by Coleridge, which appeared in the Courier at the same time (17th December, 1809, to 20th January, 1 8 10). Here he also treats of the pre-eminence of / the reason above the mere understanding — of the power of the unfettered feelings over the most skilful calcu- lations. The fortune of war had returned to Napoleon on the Ebro ; the English troops had been forced to retreat to the coast. Many a cotton-spinner at home, at the closing of the Continental markets, asked whether, in case of victory, trade would return ; and the Liberals prophesied that all further resistance to the conqueror would end ill. On this Coleridge came forward, and contended for Conservative freedom ; as Wordsworth at about the same time did in his sonnets to Hofer and to Toussaint I'Overture, and Southey in the just- founded Quarterly Review. Emphatically did Cole- ridge point to the mighty impulses of honour and right ; to the wonderful tenacity with which our fancy clings to old customs ; and to the sacred instinct which, in the course of centuries, loyalty had become. He cited the example of the resistance of the Netherlands to Philip H. ; how a nation, so animated, can triumph over the most experienced generals and the best dis- X 2 3o8 LIFE OF COLERIDGE. chap. vi. ciplined armies ; and how much she gains internally in return for external sacrifices. Such discussions on moral principles appeared to him to unfold the very- spirit of genuine foresight, and the result proved him to be right. Involuntarily are we reminded of the then recent ' Reden an die Deutsche Nation ' by Fichte (1807), which called upon the German people to make a similar resistance to the invader. It is true Cole- ridge did not possess Fichte's clear and tremendous energy ; but, on the other hand, the Englishman is marked by that appreciation of the instinctive which Germany was only to learn from her through the Romantic school. And here we may speak of a critical treatise by our author ; an Introduction to an "Essay on Taste" (1810). He here occupies himself with the fundamental question of the doctrine of beauty. How is it possible, he asks, that a verdict on Taste, depending as it ever does on likes and dislikes, and therefore strictl}^ subjective, should pretend to universal acceptation } This Essay is a proof that Coleridge had no sooner buried the Friend than he formed the plan of composing a funda- mental work on .Esthetics. He at last became convinced of the impossibility of continuing to reside at his beloved Lakes. An im- moderate use of opium gave him momentary relief from his pains ; nor was his appearance, to superficial observers, other than healthy and robust ; but his brain showed signs of suspicious irritability. He made not iSoo-io. LIFE OF COLERIDGE. 309 only the most unheard-of plans, but imagined that he had already in great part carried them out. Thus he offered the printer of the Friend the publication of a large Greek grammar and Greek-English dictionary (1809). The letter is in the Forster Library at South Kensington. Neither had any other existence than in the httle work put together for Hartley's use, which we have already mentioned. A spontaneous impulse led him to mask the indolence of the moment with coloured plans for the future, which in turn lapsed into the most exaggerated self-torment. One day he would care as little for worldly matters as " the lilies of the field," and the next be sunk in the deepest melancholy, doubting even the friendship of Wordsworth. And yet things went on comparatively well as long as he remained with that sympathising friend. But towards the close of the summer of 18 10 that residence came to an end, and he returned to Keswick. Southey, practised as a critical reviewer, laid bare all the faults of the Friend to him ; found fault with his " hair- splitting imitation of the Germans," and altogether showed more of the brother-in-law than of the friend. Mrs. Coleridge was in perpetual grief. As contribu- tor to the newly-founded Quarterly Review, Southey earned more money than ever. Jeffrey, the editor of the Edinburgh Review, to whom Coleridge had read his " Christabel," was ready to do him service ; other periodicals were open to his pen ; and yet, utterly crushed in spirit, and not daring to own to his wife 3IO LIFE OF COLERIDGE. ciiAr. vr. that the Friend was a failure, he went about doing nothing. On both sides there was good will, but little self-control. He had all the good and all the bad qualities of a man of imagination, especially that help- less fluidity of emotion which undermines all power of will ; she, on the other hand, owned to a friend (M. Betham, Fraser's Magazine, 1878) how difficult it was for her to assume a cheerful countenance, and yet she knew "by sad experience that to expostulate, or even to hazard an anxious look, would soon drive him hence." The separation between them had long existed within, before taking an outward form. "The Pang more Sharp than All " is the title of a poem of about this time. And wherein did it consist ? " In kindness counterfeiting absent love." As winter approached, Coleridge left the Lake country on plea of health — no falsehood ! — never more to return. Wordsworth justified the step ; Southey condemned it. The relations towards his family remained amiable, although slight. There was no regular separation, only an ever-prolonged absence. Coleridge, now as before, made over to his family the entire allowance from the Wedgwoods, and was deeply concerned when Josiah Wedgwood withdrew his half in 181 1, on the plea of a numerous family of his own, and also because Cole- ridge failed to fulfil those conditions of literary work on which the allowance had been given. Mrs. Coleridge had partly to depend on Southey's support ; nor, con- sidering the many services in his house which her iSoo-io. LIFE OF COLERIDGE. 311 sister's health required from her, could this be considered as mere charity. Her letters to her husband preserved the same tone, and often he had not the courage to open them — he could do nothing to help ! But the ■education of the children was not neglected. The schoolmaster at Ambleside considered it an honour to teach them in his own home, and would take no re- muneration. By 1 8 14 Hartley was old enough to be sent to the University, and friends immediately supplied the necessary funds. Later, when it came to Derwent's turn, Coleridge was doing more, and defrayed the expenses himself Besides this, he insured his life for a thousand pounds. Gradually the healing effects of time ensued. In 1822 the wife paid a visit to the husband, and a reconciliation between them took place, though not a reunion. He was at this time more solitaiy than if he had never had wife or family. And now that he was a sincere Christian and a loyal citizen, he stood in worse repute than when he had rebelled against Church and King. Just when he most admitted the supremacy of Reason, he departed most widely from her precepts, both in act and thought. In all practical matters of life he was weak and incapable to the last degree. The man and the author are not so essentially one that their personal and public doings should necessarily stand on the same level ; though this would be the natural theory, did not the impartial lives of many a poet and artist too often contradict it. To all appearance Coleridge was 312 LIFE OF COLERIDGE. chap. vi. a lost man, when he suddenly entered a new period of creative activity. He had nothing more to sacrifice to the demon of unsteadiness. Domestic joys and cares had departed from him ; he was banished from the glories of lake and mountain, and he devoted himself the more to the philosophy of the Beautiful. \ i8io-i6. LIFE OF COLERIDGE. 313 CHAPTER VII. IN HAMMERSMITH, AND AT CALNE. ESTHETIC WORKS. (AUTUMN OF 1 8 10 TO SPRING OF 1816.) "Faith asks her daily bread, And Fancy must be fed." — The two Founts. With the Morgans at Hammersmith — Writing for Courier and jMorning Post — Lectures on English Philosophy and Literature — Crabb Robin- son — -Jean Paul — Maass — Successful Lectures on Shakespeare and Milton — Schlegel's Work on Shakespeare — Letter to Crabb Robin- son — The Times — Second Course of Lectures on Shakespeare — Lord Byron — " Remorse " — Removal to Calne — Lectures at Bristol — Laudanum become his Bane — 'Biographia Literaria' — How received — "Zapolya" — Essays on the Fine Arts — Letters to Justice Fletcher on the Irish — With the Gillmans at Highgate. Good people welcomed the homeless Coleridge, and watched over him like guardian angels for five years. John Morgan was the only son of a wealthy coal merchant in Bristol ; a man of noble sentiments, not remarkable for intellect, but well read, modest, and univer- sally respected. He lived in Hammersmith, then a quiet suburb of London, opened his house to the lonely man^ and refused to let him go while he had a home to offer him. Mrs. Morgan, in her way, did more. Supported by her sister Charlotte, she treated the patient with that sensible and resolute kindness which enforces without 314 LIFE OF COLERIDGE. chap. vii. wounding. First of all, she laid her hand on the laudanum bottle ; and when he protested he should die, she retorted, *' Better die than live as you do." At the same time she surrounded him with the kindest care, accustomed him to order and punctuality, laid appropriate books on his table, listened sympathetically to his talk, and invited ■congenial guests to meet him. With returning health, his power of work also returned ; his imagination craved for fres^l food, and his thoughts disposed themselves for important undertakings. In those days of Continental embargo and of the expedition to Moscow by the French, politics were the natural topics of society. Coleridge took his part, and wrote both for the Courier and Moruinsc Post. He preached crusades against Napoleon, and prophesied as early as 23rd May, 181 1, that the just-born son of the conqueror — "the babe for whose acquisition he had outraged the laws of God and man, for w^hose nursing he seems almost to neglect the reins of Government, will live an exile, and die an outlaw." But such writing he only practised exceptionally, and by way of earning money. His chief interest lay in aesthetic researches. Nor was there any dearth of companions with whom to converse on such subjects. We find him much at Godwin's, for whose juvenile library — how tame the old revolutionist had become ! — he wanted to paraphrase Gessner's " First Navigator " ; at Alston's, the American painter, whom he had seduced from Rome, and whom he honoured like another Titian ; at Lamb's, who, i8io-i6. LIFE OF COLERIDGE. 315 with his sister, had just arranged the ' Tales from Shake- speare,' and was now transformed into a Shakespearian critic; at Collier's, whose son, John Payne, was later known for his Shakespearian investigations ; at Hazlitt's, who had just renounced his unsuccessful course as a painter, and had now begun — January 18 12 — a successful career as Lecturer on English Philosophy and Literature ; and finally, at Crabb Robinson's. The last-named was an Important ally. He was thoroughly versed in the German Romantic school, possessed many of their works, and became a guide for him in this respect, as he did for Carlyle twenty years later. He and young Collier took notes of Coleridge's most remark- able sayings, which serve as landmarks to the next steps of his development. Li the preceding twelve years his leaders in the science of criticism had been Lessing, Kant, Schiller and Herder. The last three now pass into the back- ground, and even Lessing retained but small influence. Coleridge no longer needed to escape from himself, and therefore no longer required the Lethe of dry logic. He now revived, and looked eagerly round for partisans of the imaginative power. These he found in certain writings of the scholars of Kant, and of the Romantic school, who accorded to the poetic imagination a rank far higher than that of the understanding. The teach- ing of Kant and Schiller, which maintains that genius gives rules, instead of receiving them, led to this change. The first work in this direction which suggested 3i6 LIFE OF COLERIDGE. cUAr. vii. itself to him was Jean Paul's 'Vorschule der yEsthctik ' (1804), ^ book which is intellectual to whimsicality, and nowadays undeservedly forgotten. Coleridge was greatly taken with the old humorist, and wrote, De- cember 181 3, in a letter yet unpublished, to Crabb Robinson : " I should be glad to exchange almost any of my books — the philosophical works always ^/ excepted — for selections from J. P. Richter" — Mr. Crabb Robinson having then translated some speci- mens. In his ' Biographia Literaria ' he also alludes to many a racy bit ; as, for example, to the question how St. John of Nepomuc should have been the patron- saint against danger by water, when he himself had been drowned. That he was then well acquainted with the ' Vorschule ' is shown by a remark made to Robinson, 29th January, 181 1, that the fools played the same part towards Shakespeare's plays as Chorus did in the old Greek tragedies ; for Jean Paul makes the same remark ; and the same idea can hardly have occurred independently to two different men. But what he especially gathered from the ' Vorschule ' was the distinction between the power of conception in the " lower sense, which is fancy, and that in the higher and creative sense, which is imagination." The one \ arbitrarily combines the pictures stored in the memory ; ' the other fuses them into a whole, and thus creates new forms of its own. The one, when over-excited leads to delirium ; the other, to mania (Crabb Robin- son, 15th November, 1810). This distinction between I i8io-i6, LIFE OF COLERIDGE. 317 the two words, which Coleridge had not previously- made, became after this the corner-stone of his thc( ■)- of beauty. A second work he now studied was ' Versuche iiber die Einbildungskraft,' by G. Maass (1792). He was perhaps attracted to this now little known psycho- logist by the admiration for Kant expressed in the Preface. At all events, he translated whole passages from him, especially his confutation of Hartley's me- chanical idea of the process of thought. The result of all this was an enormous estimation of genius as 1 compared with talent To genius Coleridge attributed ' every pre-eminence of the imagination. He esti- mated it (17th October, 181 1), almost in Jean Paul's very words, as the power which calls forth organic life, while talent is " only a piece of ingenious me- chanism ; " comparing the one with the eye of a man, the other with a watch. He was delighted to see how his old platonic creed of the " totality " of poetic con- ception was cleared and lighted up by German help. These ideas assisted him henceforth in his glorification of Shakespeare, and in his comparative condemnation of Southey and Scott, who contained too little that was philosophical and permanent for him. The Beautiful / floated before him again, as years before at Christ':; Hospital. After he had been a year with the Morgans, he began another course of public lectures ; this time " On Shake- speare and Milton in Illustration of the Principles 3i8 LIFE OF COLERIDGE. chap. vii. of Poetry." These showed a sh'ght alteration in his method. But Lamb's well-known answer, on being asked by Coleridge whether he had ever heard him preach, " I never heard you do anything else," remained true. He preached still. Nor was he prepared for any contradiction to his theories, even from Shakespeare himself. "Titus Andronicus," and certain parts of "Richard III." which did not please him, he declared not to be genuine. His talk was usually a lecture, and, vice versa, his lecture was talk. When he mounted the rostrum he often placed some closely-written sheets before him, though he soon ceased to refer to them. He yielded rather to the mood of the moment, to the certainty of his memory, to the vivacity of his fancy \ and the hearty applause of his audience showed him to be right. His friends sometimes abstracted his notes, knowing that he did best when entirely left to himself. It was not his nature to persuade his hearers, but to carry them off their feet. It is true that many a digression from his subject had to be endured. In his sixth lecture he even went so far as to defend the practice of flogging in schools. Con- servative ideas prevailed over all recollections of Boyer. One point he advocated was to keep musical time both in the delivery of poems and of speeches, and this, by a comparison between the intellectual conditions under Elizabeth and those under Charles I., led him back to his real subject, Shakespeare. His transitions were bold and rapid, and a practised reporter com- iSio-i6, LIFE OF COLERIDGE. 319- plained that Coleridge's perpetual surprises in the choice of his words, the construction of his sentences, and the succession of his thoughts, made his task almost im- possible. Despite this, connectedness will always be found, if attention be paid, not to the details, but to the main points. His fancy often entangled the threads of his arguments, but never broke them. These lectures were conducted with far more order than those he had given three years before. From the i8th November he appeared, Mondays and Thursdays, punctually at half-past seven, in the Lecture-room of the Royal Institution ; and at the conclusion of the course, he gave two or three lectures gratis, and was thus so fortunate as to exhaust his subject, for which he was doubtless indebted to the Morgans. The contents of these lectures — of Nos. i, 2, 6, 9, and 12 — were preserved by young Mr. Collier, who followed the lecturer with his pen, and published them in 1853. Further confirmation and completion will be found in the newspapers of the day, and in Mr. Crabb Robinson's work. Coleridge commenced with a fear- less attack upon the partial, shallow, uncourteous forms of criticism as they existed in the early time of the Edinburgh Review. He then sought to follow Shake- speare dramas chronologically, according to Malone, but was constantly tempted to dwell on the steadily ascending development of the great dramatist's art till it culminated in its highest beauty. It was a triumphal march in honour of the immortal poet, in 320 LIFE OF COLERIDGE. chap. vii. which Johnson, as a critic of the old common-sense school, had to play the part of the captive in chains. Coleridge even called him once "that fellow"! For Milton he had less time and enthusiasm left, and the poets of the eighteenth century were not even named. With far more decision did Coleridge now proclaim '.he views of the Romantic school than in 1808. The teacher upon whom he drew throughout his eight first lectures was Jean Paul. The * Vorschule dor ^sthetik ' defines it as the chief aim of the poet "to surround finite nature with the infinity of the Idea." Coleridge also declared that the grandest aim of poetry consists in producing not a distinct form, but a strong action of the mind ; " not a mere image, but a sublime feeling of the unimaginable." As a means to this end both writers recommend the poet to let his fancy hover between sorrow and joy, tragedy and comedy, between the utmost extremes of emotion ; and, as a prior condition, to remember that the poet must unite with the power of the man not only the simpli- city of the child, but the childlike feeling of devout wonder. He should be not only a seer, and a prophet — that had been Coleridge's own view for twenty years, — but he was to " raise himself to the dignity of a god." The glorification of Shakespeare was carried a step further by these doctrines. He was made to appear not only a great artist, but a rapturous mystic. His plays — enthusiastically admired on the boards, and, till i8io-i6. LIFE OF COLERIDGE. 321 recently, there alone — -were now declared to contain revelations too profound to be worthily performed. His style was defended against all censure. Wordsworth's opinion that the speech of peasants is that of poetry ('Lyrical Ballads,' 1800) was opposed by Coleridge, who contended that poetical speech should have a certain "aloofness from the language of real life." On this occasion he maintained, with Jean Paul, that passion, when given in verse, should employ stronger and more elevating words. With the aid of the ' Vorschule,' he undertook also to vindicate the pun- nings of Shakespeare in his youthful works, as " not only the emanation of talent but of genius ; not of fashionable wit, but of something permanent." Both in the theory as in the practice of poetry, Coleridge carried to an extreme the revolt against the cool common-sense of the eighteenth century. At all events, his exaggera- tions had the merit of teaching a deeper insight into Shakespeare's real worth. This was the substance of his first eight lectures. Shortly after the delivery of the eighth, and through Crabb Robinson's intervention, Coleridge made ac- quaintance with another German work on aesthetic subjects, which deeply impressed him — 'Lectures on Dramatic Literature and Art,' by August Wilhe'ru von Schlegel, delivered in 1808, printed in 1809-11. In spite of the closed state of the Continent, this work reached him, and when he next addressed his audience he announced his entire agreement with the opinions of Y 322 LIFE OF COLERIDGE. chap. vii. the writer, though without mentioning Schlegel's name. This is accounted for by the fact that both Schlegel and himself had gone to school with the same master. " I should have praised the book the more, were it not that in so doing I should in a manner have praised myself" A private letter to Crabb Robinson speaks more openly. "If all the comments that have been written on Shakespeare by his editors could have been collected into a pile and set on fire, that by the blaze Schlegel might have written his lectures, the world would have been equally a gainer by the books de- stroyed as by the book written." Accordingly, in the ninth lecture Schlegel's direct influence appears. Shakespeare is compared with the ancient dramatists, not as their imitator, but as a poet of a totally different order. The ancients worked like sculptors ; few characters, and those abstract in feature. Shakespeare arranged his with all the harmonious abund- ance of the painter. He brings portraits of individuals before us, and yet lifts us over time and space into the regions of fancy. The ancients followed a mechanical regularity ; Shakespeare an organic one. Schlegel had expressed this, especially in his third volume, and Cole- ridge, who had long guessed the same, now spoke it freely out. But Schlegel applied the term " romantic " both to the poetry of the Middle Ages and to that of the Renaissance, while Coleridge hesitated for a time to baptize his favourite poet after himself. Both further developed their poetic ideal upon the example of the i8io-i6. LIFE OF COLERIDGE. 323 " Midsummer Night's Dream." Both denied to the ancients the power of artistic individuality, and both ventured at most to place Dante and Milton by the side of Shakespeare. Both also showed that Shakespeare was far better appreciated in his own time than by the arrogant critics of the French Classic school — " Monkeys, shaped like men," as Coleridge called them. How far he adhered to his new teacher in the remainder of the course is, owing to defective reports, not ascertainable. No great result of these lectures had been expected by Coleridge. On November 6th, 181 1, he reduced the entrance price from three guineas to two, and begged Crabb Robinson in a very modest letter to intercede with Walter — the editor of the Times — for a short notice. This being refused, he once more applied, and almost beseechingly, to Crabb Robinson — on the first day — to attract the notice of the public by some early notice. Both these letters, hitherto unprinted, are in the Robinson papers in Dr. Williams's library, London. The last of the two begins with a circumstantial account of his state of health, then continues with an over- conscientious anxiety as follows : "My dear Robinson, — ..." A digression this was ; and now to busi- ness. Stuart seems to wonder at Walter's making anything of a favour of inserting in to-morrow's Times an account of the Lecture, at this dead time of the year ; and added, that if a birthday entertainment had Y 2 324 LIFE OF COLERIDGE. chap, vii. permitted him to be present, he would have written a paragraph of twenty or thirty lines, sent it to Walter with his compliments, and should have been surprised, as at a mark of unusual discourtesy, if it had not been inserted, there being nothing political or personal in the subject. Much more then to me, who have always thought and written in the same tone of feeling with the Times, and when the chief writer in it has sometimes quoted and very often written in the exact spirit of Wordsworth's pamphlet, and twice quoted sentences which I myself wrote. The only prose essay I have, I fully determined to send to Mr. Walter when I had polished the style a little, merely as a mark of my high esteem for a paper which I not only think incomparably the best Journal that is, or has been, in Great Britain, but the only one which without impudence can dare call itself indepen- dent or impartial ; and this I assuredly shall do still, because the compliment was intended to the Times itself, and was not personal. But yet I do not like the notion of chaffering a work of my most serious thoughts and of my inmost convictions against a compliment or disguised advertisement, for the sake of money — though this is perfect purity to my feeling compared to doing it from vanity. Heaven knows ! I never feel my poverty so painful as when I see my name and a puff tacked to it, and know that I knew it beforehand, my poverty and not my will consenting. " I am convinced, my dear R., you will do all you i8io-i6. LIFE OF COLERIDGE. 325 can for me. After the lecture, write about twenty lines' notice that it was not in etymological severity a lecture ; for though the reasoning, the arrangement, the etceteras bore the clearest marks of long premeditation, yet the language, illustrations, etc., were evidently the children of the moment — in short, what strikes yourself. A precious recipe for a puff! Oh, Jesus! embarrassment, like misery, makes us bedfellows with strange mean- nesses ; but that my soul will not allow herself to be so reviled, I should have said businesses. " This paragraph should be in to-morrow's Times, or not at all. Doubtless it would be of the greatest service to me. I brought my essay with me, and, if you wish, will give it you, rude as it is, at the lecture. God bless you. " S. T. C. " i8th November, 181 1." Crabb Robinson got the desired notice into the Times. But all fear of the indifference of the public was unfounded. The novelty of the thoughts to an English ear, their magical charm, perhaps their bril- liant one-sidedness, and, not least, the happy patriotic moment for the glorification of the great national bard at a time when the country was engaged in war and conquest — all this combined to produce an unfore- seen success. The Times, Morning Post, and Dublin Correspondent contended with each other in announcing the other lectures. Every drawing-room in London dis- cussed them. On the 30th January came even Lord Byron — then just about to publish " Childe Harold " — 326 LIFE OF COLERIDGE. chap. vii. accompanied by Rogers, and stood muffled up in the background, " to hear the new art of poetry by the re- formed schismatic " — a two-edged hit at what Coleridge had said against Wordsworth's theory of the rustic style. The last evening — 27th February — was a regular festival ; the hall crowded, the audience enthusiastic, and the receipts as considerable as they were needful. So profitable a mine was worth working again. On the 19th of May, 1812, Coleridge commenced another course — on Shakespeare again — with a general introduction upon the history of poetry. Unfortu- nately, the contents only of the first four lectures have been preserved to us by Crabb Robinson. They treated of the ancient drama, and of its distinction from the Romantic school. Coleridge meanwhile had become more versed in his subject, and used the German terms. His syllabus was probably taken from the essays, "Greek Drama" and "Progress of the Drama," published later by his daughter, with other matter, as " Notes and Lectures," and which she owns were a mere fresh working up of the chapter in question by Schlegel. Whether it was this want of independence in conception, or the less attractive locality of Willis's Rooms, or a less happy mood on the part of the lecturer, it would be difficult to say ; or because ladies, especially, were absent ; certainly he was not so successful. For all that, he began a fourth course in the December of the same year ; the syllabus for which exists among Mr. Robinson's papers, but i8io-i6. LIFE OF COLERIDGE. 327 is too long to introduce here. Altogether it was fortunate for Coleridge that he had found a rich store of materials in Germany of which his hearers — Mr. Robinson excepted — knew just nothing. Even in his second series of lectures he had repeated many an observation from the first. In these last he seems to have crowded together all he had ever gathered from all his different teachers. Still, he had not lost his popu- larity with his audience, who welcomed him on the last evening with three cheers. These lectures brought him in addition many an indirect advantage. The attention of the reading public was now for the first time attracted to his earlier works. The Friend became much in demand, and his poems were quite bought up. Even Byron, passionately as he had abused the mixture of bombast and childishness in the young Coleridge in his ' English Bards and Scottish Reviewers,' and much as he was opposed to the conservative opinions and abstract style of the now older Coleridge, yet could no longer refuse him his respect. From a hot adversary he became a warm patron. He called on him, got him to read his " Kubla Khan " aloud to him, regretted his expressions in the satire above mentioned, excusing them on the plea of his youth at that time, and of his irritability. He praised " Christabel " in a remark in the " Siege of Corinth " — of course without acknow- ledging his obligations to that poem, as indeed poets, in such cases, generally neglect to do. He urged Cole- 32S LTFE OF COLERIDGE. chap. vii. ridge also to bring this chef-d'mLvre before the public, and procured him the services of Mr. Murray as a publisher. The greatest satisfaction, however, for the long-neglected man was the readiness with which the manager of Drury Lane now came forward. At first our author was requested to write light melodramas for the stage, and went the length of borrowing Goethe's plays from Crabb Robinson. Then the manager de- cided to bring forward the tragedy of " Osorio," which, ever since Sheridan's contemptuous rejection, had lain unnoticed ; and in fact Coleridge was granted the pleasure — on the 23rd January, 1813 — of seeing the characters of his youthful piece put into living action in the presence of a full house. Coleridge had worked hard for this success. True to his self-criticism at Gottingen, he transposed the scene between the returned lover and his confidant, placing it at the beginning, and thus made the intro- ductory story clear. The villain is also no longer led off from the scene, but is made, with dramatic effect, to die on the boards. He now also curtailed the episode of the Moors, bringing forward the lover portions the more prominently, after the example of Max and Thecla in " Wallenstcin," from which he borrowed a passage almost literally (" Wallenstein's Tod," IV. 5). In order also to adapt the piece to the political events of the day, he made the good brother fulminate against the oppressor of the national liberty, as if he were just come from the battle of Leipsic. In the ( i8io-i6. LIFE OF COLERIDGE. 329 concluding scene the old father performs the always touching and welcome role of embracing and blessing the rescued lovers. The description of the Inquisi- tion was carefully revised, so as to disarm all criticism by any Spanish student. Finally, the original title " Osorio " was changed for that of " Remorse." Thus the tragedy found its way on to the boards, intro- duced by a sprightly prologue by Lamb, and brought its author well - merited applause. Byron especially was satisfied ; " For many years," he said, " we have had nothing remarkable in the way of Remorse." The piece ran for twenty nights, and on Coleridge's appearing one evening in the actors' box, the whole pit rose and clapped him — an honour which, since the time of Voltaire, had been paid to no dramatist in London. The profits also amounted to three times as much as for all his previous works put together. With this his sphere of activity and his stay in London came to an end. Circumstances now obliged Morgan to quit Hammersmith, and retire to a small house at Calne, in Wiltshire. This took place in the spring of 18 13. Coleridge accompanied the family for three years. Calne was not so picturesque as Keswick — not even as Stowey. It is an irregular little town of 3000 inhabitants, surrounded with chalky fields and gentle hills, without any trees of importance. Still, there were many strips of wild heath land, varied with hedgerows and copse, and enriched with many a 335 LIFE OF COLERIDGE. chap. vii. prosperous farm. The inhabitants were civil, and a strolling band of players even performed " Remorse " there. In the neighbouring living of Bremhill, his old friend Bowles was incumbent — now more devoted to the theory than to the practice of poetry. Cole- ridge's son Hartley visited him in the autumn of 1814, and spent his first college vacation with his father. Mr. Morgan was always ready to write from his friend's dictation ; and of rheumatism we hear little. It was a most favourable place for quiet literary work, and here Coleridge was destined to reach his latest stage of development in aesthetic thought. ' Through his friend Robinson, who had heard Schelling lecture in Jena, and had supped with him, Coleridge had become acquainted with the successors of Kant. He had extolled Schiller's " Dreams of a Ghostseer," and had promised to translate his treatise, " IJber das Schone und Erhabene " — naturally, only promised. He had warmly commended Jacobi's work on Spinoza, pronounced Fichte to be a great logician, and Schelling " perhaps a greater man still." But Kant still took precedence of all. Now, however, in the re- tirement of Calne, he first fell under the influence of Schelling — the one platonist among Kant's followers. In December 181 3, he besought Crabb Robinson (in an unpublished letter) to procure him Fichte's Niet- Jianimer- Fichte Magazine, in which Schelling first came forward independently, and also his essay, " Uber die Methode des Academischen Studiums." How deeply i8io-i6. LIFE OF COLERIDGE. 331 he plunged into Schelling at that time is shown by his own marginal comments in Mr. Robinson's ' Spinoza/ now preserved in University College Hall — hitherto almost unknown. For all purposes of lecturing — our author's best lite- rary resource — Calne offered too limited an audience. Bristol was his nearest theatre ; and here, on the 28th October, 181 3, he commenced another course on Shake- speare — or rather, a popular rechauffe of his London lectures. They were well reported in the Bristol Gazette, and procured him the applause both of old and new admirers. But the interest they created was more personal than general. A second series, on Milton, which he delivered the following April, were so scantily attended as hardly to pay the expenses. In addition to this, Coleridge soon found out that without the control of the Morgans he fell more and more into his old unpunctual ways, and under the tyranny of the laudanum bottle, the banefulness of which he now with terror acknowledged. So he remained in Calne, and began his three essays " On the Fine Arts," published in Hartley's Bristol Journal. Napoleon was now a prisoner at Elba ; Europe seemed at peace ; and the readers of the newspapers seemed to be sufficiently starved to bear, if not to relish, the cogitations of Schelling. Coleridge placed himself in decided opposition to those views on the theory of the Beautiful generally held by his countrymen ; to the old school of the 332 LIFE OF COLERIDGE. chap, vii. Sensualists, as well as to the new theory which had been founded by Alison's work on the ' Nature and Principles of Taste,' in 1810, and which had been defended by Jeffrey in the Edinburgh Reviczv ; namely, that the impression of the Beautiful was produced by various extrinsic associations. Against the one he quoted Kant's distinction of the Beautiful from the Agreeable, and this with such close adherence to the often men- tioned ' Kritik der Urtheilskraft,' that he even gave the instance of the Iroquois Indian, who admired the "cook-shops" in Paris more than anything else. Against the other he applied that distinction between the Beau- tiful and the Good which in Kant immediately follows. / Milton, from a puritan point of view, may have deemed the Cathedral of York useless, and popish, and yet have taken pleasure in its beauty. The pearl is the disease as well as the ornament of the oyster ; while, vice versa, an awkward posture in the portrait of a friend may recall pleasing memories of him, without being beautiful. At the end of these essays he gave the reader to understand, that as regarded the relation of the artist to the absolutely Good he had further disclosures to make, entitled to the highest respect, which he reserved " for a loftier mood, a nobler subject, and a more appropriate audience." Instead of appearing in a weekly journal, these deserved rather a book to themselves, and one of an autobiographical kind ; for, like Schclling, he repeatedly asserts that these doctrines are far more to to be gathered from the inner sense than from outer I iSio i6. LIFE OF COLERIDGE. 333 proof; that they must arise from the depths of the poet's soul, as in Coleridge himself they had in fact arisen. Hence arose his ' Biographia Literaria.' Without his usual roundabout ways and preparations, even without consulting his friends, he now commenced that work which became his most profound achievement in prose. Southey, who shortly before had in vain sought to enlist his help for his motley and rather super- ficial collection of anecdotes and fragments, ' Omniana ' — (Coleridge furnished only a few insignificant contri- butions), — now complained to Cottle (April 18 14) of his indefensible indolence. Meanwhile the culprit sat at his writing-table from 1 1 to 4 and from 6 to 10, absorbed in his task, and not even allowing himself the relaxation of letter-writing. What was to have been the Introduction to a literary autobiography now grew under his hand into two volumes, in which he at last fulfilled the promise made in the Friend, namely, that of reconciling art and religion. By the 29th July, 181 5, he was ready, all but the Introduction ; in the course of that year the greater part was printed, and only the fact that the original publisher, Gutch of Bristol, made the work over to the firm of Rest, Fenner & Curtis, in London, delayed its appearance till 18 17. Whoever would read the ' Biographia Literaria ' with- out false expectations, must keep the second part in view, called, 'Biographical Sketches of My Literary Life and Opinions.' By its emphasis upon the latter, it departed altogether from the traditions of English 334 LIFE OF COLERIDGE. chap. vii. memoirs. And yet this departure was both natural and justifiable ; for did not Coleridge devote his whole life, in a most un-English fashion, to thought as an end in itself, without any practical end in view? Simply to tell his story seemed to him the best way to vindi- cate the views he held. " Intelligence," he says, in the twelfth chapter, " is a self-development, not a quality attached to a substance." In this deeply individual trait lies the value of the work, which, without any doctrinaire obtrusiveness, offers a wealth of sugges- tions — and, it is true, their weak side as well. And these, in addition, were accompanied by such histories of experiences, such a number of apologies, such judg- ments upon friend and foe, and such warnings to youth, &c., that the first perusal readily gives the impression of utter disorder. In truth the whole must be read several times in order to trace the straight line through all the flourishes. In the first volume the essence of the Beautiful is generally discussed. Coleridge shows how, from his youth onward, he was opposed to the mechanical rhetoric of the pseudo-classic poets ; how he came to feel, with Wordsworth and Southey, the mere caprice of the leading reviewers ; and that the only means to stem this double mischief was to lay down " fixed canons of criticism, previously established and deduced from the nature of man." For this end Hartley's researches into the association of ideas first seemed to offer a fit solution but he soon felt that iSio-i6. LIFE OF COLERIDGE. 335 only a blind mechanism would be the result. He turned therefore to the idealists, and worked his way through Spinoza and the mystics, through a martyr- dom of personal disappointments and journalistic miseries, up to Kant, and, as the highest point, to Schelling after him. How closely he approaches to the decisions of Schelling in that philosopher's work on ' Transcendental Ideality ' has been pointed out b}- 1 Sara Coleridge in her remarks in the second edition of the ' Biographia Literaria ' (1847). Coleridge has only the merit of having formally recast Schelling's ideas and permeated them with new elements. In the second part (from ch. 14) this definition of the Beautiful is developed somewhat more practically, and illustrated with examples. The part of the poet is to bring the extremest qualities into harmony, the Typical and the Individual, Agitation and Order, familiar objects and the freshness of a first impression ; Nature and Art. This was the intention both of Wordsworth and our author in their ' Lyrical Ballads,' and this was what the poets of the Renaissance did accomplish; for instance, Shakespeare in "Venus and Adonis," and in " Lucrece." Wordsworth did the same in his poems, although in his preface to the ' Lyrical Ballads' his defence of a homely and realistic form of language upheld a wrong theory. And here Cole- ridge begins to extol his friend as a Poet while correct- ing his aesthetic theory. He shows that Wordsworth walked on step by step by the very force of his genius LIFE OF COLERIDGE. in opposition to his own creed. Thus terminates the programme of the so-called Lake school, even on its critical side. From that moment neither Wordsworth nor Coleridge laid down any essentially new standards, nor did Southey or Lloyd ever devote themselves to any severe labour of thought. At this part (ch. 22) Coleridge ought to have concluded his work. What he added to it in 18 17 has no connection with the rest. It consists of a few letters written from Germany in 1798 (first printed in the Courier, 1816); a severe notice of the drama called "Bertram," repre- sented in 1 8 16 — a sort of Don Juan tragedy by Byron's eccentric friend Maturin — which, to the view of our moral sesthetician, was a pattern of Jacobinical lawless- ness ; and lastly, of a pious lament over various literary failure^ and disasters which happened to himself at about this time, concluding with an apostrophe to the great "I am." He already displayed that oracular- theological spirit which characterised the works of his last period. The reception accorded to this work was the worst that can be conceived. It was impossible for Words- worth to agree with it — that, Coleridge knew before- hand. The ever-steadfast friend, however, understood that it had been dictated by an inward sense of duty, and refrained from all public expression ; Lamb, in a letter to Wordsworth (1819), writes : " C. is very foolish to scribble on books." Byron was indignant at the attack on Maturin. and replied to it in "Don Juan" with i8io-i6. LIFE OF COLERIDGE. 337 broadsides of ridicule. The Liberal papers, from political reasons, spat out venom and gall. The Monthly Review took malicious pleasure in showing how Coleridge by his criticism on Wordsworth had thrown over his own school, and regretted only that Wordsworth, " the greatest piece of folly and arrogance .... which has disgraced the ^XQStni prodigious aera of our poetical literature," should still carry off so much praise. The new-founded Black- wood's Magazine pronounced the work to be " most execrable, treating the most ordinary commonplaces so as to give them the air of mysteries ; " that Cole- ridge himself was " nothing but a fantastic braggadocio, full of self-admiration, with little feeling and no judg- ment;" that he contradicted himself, showed no real comprehension of Kant, and that his distinction be- tween the imagination and the fancy was a laughable performance. The Edinbitrgh Review looked upon all speculation as hair-splitting nonsense, called him a bad philosopher and a worse politician, picked out all the biographical part, turned it into derision, in order to say at the end, " See the contradictions and follies of your reformed anti-Jacobin poet ! " His adversaries were as active as clever in showing up all the weak parts of the work, and his Conservative friends remained silent ! The Quarterly Review had been founded in great measure in opposition to the Edinburgh Review, and Southey, its chief contributor, had been praised in the ' Biographia,' but not a word was uttered in its defence. None of the attacks gave Coleridge such pain as this absence of all I 338 LIFE OF COLERIDGE. chap. vii. support from the old friend ; the more so as Coleridge had, of his own free will, written in the Courier a long and warm rejoinder on Southey's account, to the critics who openly taunted him with his youthful communistic drama " Wat Tyler." Only an anonymous writer, who signed himself " J. S.," had the courage to send a remonstrance to the editor of Blackzvood' s Magazine, to the effect that he had succeeded in imitating the worst style of the Edinburgh Revieiu. Certainly it was not wise to bring such a complicated and nebulous system before the countrymen of Newton and Locke, and in so dull a form. After finishing the ' Biographia,' or perhaps while still engaged on it, Coleridge wrote a drama entitled " Zapolya," in which these aesthetic conceptions also found vent. He was urged by Byron, as well as encouraged by the success of his " Remorse," to try his hand again in a dramatic form ; and since the Muse, as he himself confessed, was sparing of inspiration, he made it par- tially the vehicle for his favourite forms of reflection. Schelling, Shakespeare, the " Robbers," Wallenstein, and the latest political events were enlisted ; and though the plot is more fabulous in character still than " Remorse," yet a didactic vein runs through it almost as conspi- cuously as in his early " Fall of Robespierre." Such mixtures of fancy, philosophy and politics were in those disturbed daj^s more in vogue than now. Both Napoleon and Prometheus, foi instance, figured largely in Byron's contemporary poems. The only way to i8io-i6. LIFE OF COLERIDGE. 339 neutralise the prosaic impression such mixtures were calculated to produce was by the introduction of the most romantic accessories. Coleridge borrowed pro- fusely, not only, as he admits, from " The Winter's Tale," but from "As You Like It." He took the Forest of Ardennes for his background, made his fugitives play hide-and-seek in it, put soft utterances on the transitoriness of love into their mouths, and brought heroine and clown into awful entanglements. He borrowed also from the "Tempest" the dread of " mooncalves " and the belief in friendly spirits of the air ; nor is the extravagant fable which is interwoven without poetic intention. For the rest, the piece, with its sylvan atmosphere and spirit machinery, its rugged contrasts of innocence and vice, with its songs, and other features, reminds us of the " Freischutz," which at about this time occupied the boards in Germany ; and " Zapolya " might perhaps have succeeded if the author had better understood the nature of opera. It is as such, rather than as a poetic history, that it ought to be, and has been, understood. The readers for Drury Lane declined it ; the metaphysical tendency now currently imputed to the author was made the excuse, and the frequenters of the theatre were left to entertainments of the then usually trivial and empty kind. But the reading public did justice to the author. The first edition no sooner appeared (1817) than it was caught up. Within six weeks 2000 copies were sold. Walter Scott, in his " Peveril of the Peak," z 2 340 LIFE OF COLERIDGE. chap. vii. borrowed from \\. {Quarterly Review, 1834, p. 27). Even the press spontaneously praised it as the " tenderest " work Coleridge had produced. " If it is too unimpas- sioned and too obscure," said Scotfs Magazine, " it is still a beautiful poem." A book of two volumes and a drama in four acts, with a prologue, was work enough for the three years which Coleridge spent at Calne. But he was not satisfied. It appears from the third essay " On the Fine Arts " that he had commenced a large volume on 'The Logos, or the Communicative Intelligence in Nature and in Man, which, from various indications in the ' Biographia,' was to have divulged and demonstrated the whole depth of Schelling's mystical system. This often-promised work, which Coleridge flattered himself would be ready in 18 14 never saw fulfilment. He continued also his contributions to periodicals, and wrote now and then leading articles in the Government organs. He did these, it is true, principally for the sake of pay. Now that Napoleon was fallen, he found little more to desire or to say in the way of politics ; still, he did not give up an atom of his convictions and independence, and on occasions when his articles censured the mistakes of the ministers, he would leave them unprinted rather than alter them. The six letters to Mr. Justice Fletcher in the Courier — towards the end of 18 14 — upon the freedom of the Catholic Irish, are specimens in question. His old feel- ing for the oppressed inhabitants of the Green Isle is here curiously interwoven with his dislike to all popular iSio-i6. LIFE OF COLERIDGE. 341 rule, and with the strongest aversion to the Roman Cathohc Church, as a State within the State — both showing how Httle even the personal kindness of the Pope, which had probably saved his life, availed to change the principle on which his opinions were founded. He also composed a hymn to the Creator, which shows more piety than poetic power, and planned "a series of odes to the different sentences of the Lord's Prayer," which, however, were never written ; for he wrote to Cottle, loth March, 181 5 : "I cannot, as is feigned of the nightingale, sing, with my breast against a thorn." Nor did the joyfulness of youth return, even with the im- provement in his outer circumstances. At this time he undertook a fresh edition of his collective poems under the title of 'Sibylline Leaves,' which he polished and smoothed more than altogether desirable. He also inserted certain philosophical verses — for instance, the "Eolian Harp," 30-35 — which had been better away. His industry was occasionally even harmful. And now, by no fault of his own, he had, at the beginning of 18 16, to leave the home at Calne. Mr. Morgan's means were too much reduced, and though Coleridge contributed amply his share, he could not remain with the family. Well knowing his own infir- mity, he determined not to trust himself alone. Many reasons banished him from Keswick, where his wife and daughter still resided. At one time he even thought of entering a private lunatic asylum (Cottle, p. 368), in itself a proof of his disordered mind. In his perplexity, he went to London, where he immediately fell under the 342 LIFE OF COLERIDGE. ciiAr. vn. tyranny of his enemy, and became ill. Upon this, his medical attendant, Dr. Adams, took a remarkable step, and stated the case to Mr, Gillman, a medical man, who occupied a quiet residence with a garden at High- gate. The name of the patient was not given ; only his miserable sufferings, his intellectual character, and his determination to submit for a time to the control of a doctor. Mr. Gillman was in good circumstances, happily married, and felt no inclination for an inmate — wondering not a little at so bold a proposal on the part of a fellow- practitioner whom he knew but little. Still, out of com- passion,'he permitted a call from the patient. Coleridge accordingly called — it was the evening of the loth April, l8i6 — and the refinement of his manner, the spell of his talk, and the repute of his name, vanquished the Gillmans at once. From that time he became the inmate and friend of the family, and remained so till his end. In London, in the centre of the smoky, roaring City, he had, properly speaking, begun his life ; and in the precincts of the great metropolis, finely situated above it, he was now anchored in peace. At heart he was not much less of a boy, nor outwardly much less of an orphan, than when he wore the blue coat and yellow stock- ings ; but thirty-six years of ripening and enlightening trials lay between. Once more a kind and quiet refuge was opened to him. In life, as in thought, he had been driven by roundabout roads back to near his starting- point, but the road had always tended upwards. Schel- ling's inward culture was now not only his theory, but his experience. i8i6-34. LIFE OF COLERIDGE. 343 CHAPTER Vni. AT HIGHGATE. THEOLOGY. (1816-1834.) "Life is but thought." — Youth and Age. Highgate — Happy Life with Gilhnans — Numerous Visitors — Public Re- spect for Him — Reconciled to the Church — ' Lay Sermons ' — Second Edition of Friend — Publication of " Christabel" — Bankruptcy of Fenner — Letter to Judge Coleridge — Seventh Course of Lectures — "Essay on Beauty" — Royal Literary Society — Tieck — 'Aids to Reflection' — Irving — Basil Montague — His "Confessions" — 'On Constitution of Church and State ' — ' History of Jests of Maxilian, Satyrane's Cousin ' — His own Epitaph — Death — High Estimate of Him — Accusations of Plagiarism — Summary of Character, The Gillmans gave our poet a more luxurious refuge at Highgate than he had had with the kind Morgans at Hammersmith. They had a portion of the roof raised in order to gain a room where he could place his great book-chests and work undisturbed. His windows over- looked — and overlook still — a beautiful view of the Nightingale Valley, with the green heights behind, the shady walks and half-hidden villas of Hampstead. In the depth to the left lies the great metropolis — through the smoky cloud of which many a soaring tower is visible ; while the sky spreads forth all the rich colours of the Western sun. The Gillmans' manner towards him was all that was sensible and hearty. Their 344 LIFE OF COLERIDGE. chap. viu. granddaughter, Mrs. Henry Watson (St. Leonard's Vicarage, Tring), who admitted me with utmost kindness to the family traditions, possesses portraits of Mr. and Mrs. Gillman — he with brown eyes and hair, and manly expression ; she, a pretty blonde, with rosy cheeks and blue eyes. It is easy to understand that with these good people Coleridge felt himself at home for sixteen long years. Mr. Gillman had an extensive practice ; still, he found time to enter gladly and eagerly into the philo- sophical discussions of his guest. Before this he had written, in a professional way, 'A Dissertation on the Bite of a Rabid Animal ; being the substance of an essay which received a prize from the Royal College of Surgeons.' (London, i8 12.) Now he turned to Schelling's comprehensive speculations, and worked out, with the help of Coleridge, a 'Theory of Life' (printed 1848), seeking in it an idea of life capable of being enrolled in the sphere of natural science. Mrs. Gillman was a good listener, but first and foremost she was an excellent manager ; their servants remained with them for years. She was proud of ministering to the comfort and happiness of the celebrated and much-to-be-pitied poet : nor did she forget the ornaments of life, and had always some of his favourite plants — geraniums and myrtles — in his room. No opium entered the house unless pre- scribed by the doctor for very severe pains. On the other hand, relations and friends were welcomed at all times. Mr.s. Coleridge came for Christmas 1822, and after that, maintained a confidential correspondence 1 8 16-34- LIFE OF COLERIDGE. 345 with Mrs. Gillman — in so far an advantage to her husband, who when he did venture to open her letters, was usually dispirited for days. Lamb dined with them almost every Sunday. Strangers also, from all parts, anxious to know Coleridge, were readily introduced. It would take long to enumerate the names of those who sought him ; from that of Emerson, the brilliant American essayist, to that of Joseph Green, the celebrated surgeon, who acted almost the part of an amanuensis ; from Hookham Frere, the refined ex-minister, and Byron's humorous precursor, to the naive and often over-enthusi- astic Thomas Allsop, who would willingly have played the part of a Boswell if he had had the talent for it. Dressed all in black, as he moved through house and garden, Coleridge might have been taken for a clergy- man. He shared his breakfast with the birds, and his knowledge with his friends, without greatly concerning himself about either class of guest. On being asked by Gillman's son for help in a school exercise, he was known to give him a lecture an hour long on the pro- foundest principles of the subject, beginning from our first parents, till the boy took care not to apply to him again. He would still also from time to time discourse so enchantingly, that the whole circle of visitors sat silent, and hung more or less bewitched on his words. The trembling of his limbs, it is true, did not cease ; his gait remained unsteady, and the habit of walking first on one side of his companion, and then on the other, which Hazlitt had remarked even at Stowey, never left 346 LIFE OF COLERIDGE. chap. viii. him. But the tottering limbs became rounder, the large grey eye and full lips retained a childlike expression, and his luxuriant white hair was like a crown of honour. Wherever he appeared, whether in the flowery fields or woods of Highgate, old and young took off their hats. It is well known how Keats — already with the seeds of consumption in him — addressed him on such an occasion with gushing veneration, and asked to be allowed to press his hand. Coleridge never quitted this refuge for long. He went regularly every summer for a few weeks to the nearest seaside — Ramsgate — and once, in 1828, when the Gillmans were in Paris, he accompanied Wordsworth on a visit of three weeks to the Rhine. Otherwise he remained faithful to his beautiful High- gate, where the clock of the Gothic church struck the hours of his increasing age, and where he lived to the last in dignified leisure. The worship of Shakespeare might now have been resumed, as before in Hammersmith. But the study of Schelling had led Coleridge to that point where aesthetics and theology meet ; public affairs had also taken a turn which seemed to demand religious rather than political zeal. Napoleon, as we have said, was safe at St. Helena, the peace of the world restored, and the English army covered with laurels ; but an internal foe now arose not to be met with bayonets. Machinery, steamboats, and factories had sprung up. More wares were produced with fewer workmen, at first, than before. Foreign nations also resumed the arts of peace, and to a i8i6-34. LIFE OF COLERIDGE. 347 certain extent supplied their own markets. Wages sank and demand declined ; the ' hands ' became discontented, the more so as the spiritless service of the machines reduced them to little more than machines in turn. There were riots and disturbances. In the retirement of Calne, Coleridge had heard little about these things ; but here, close to London, and in the house of a medical man, who told the tale of many a poor patient treated gratis by him, he could not avoid looking the social Maenad in the face. He saw with deepest sympathy that the condition of young children in the factories was more pitiable than that of the negro slave, the purchase and sale of whom had been already (1807) prohibited. Involuntarily he looked round for a remedy, and found none but that which he had advocated from the beginning of his political activity, namely, genuine Christianity. But this was a different kind of Christianity from that which he had once preached in the Corn Hall at Bristol. In that revolutionary time he was all for individual creeds; now he was for that of the Church. At that time he had thundered against the powerful prelates, the well- paid priests of that " Babylonian woman " the State Church. Now he was reconciled to all these things, and indeed was proud of the uninterrupted Apostolic descent of the Anglican episcopacy. He had convinced himself that the English Church, by its faith in tradition, and by the character of its service, had exactly taken the happy medium between Protestantism and Rome, and in his 348 LIFE OF COLERIDGE. chap. viii. * Biographia Literaria ' he hailed her with his famous " Esto perpetaa." In spiritual as in domestic matters he had submitted himself to her guardianship; and as it was well with himself under these conditions, he wished the same to all. Political economy was for him another name for humbug. Adam Smith and Malthus were hateful to him as representatives of short-sighted common-sense ; his ideas all centred in the laws of Christianity, and these he set forth in two ' Lay Sermons,' written at the suggestion of his publisher Fenner, soon after his arrival in Highgate. The first of these sermons is addressed to " the higher classes of society," the second to "the higher and middle classes ; " the third was at all events intended for the lower classes, true to the text, " Blessed are ye, \\ho sow beside all waters." Rich and poor alike are admo- nished to love their neighbour, and to look for no help from the State, but only from practical faith. A greater respect for high rank might even be desired, he said, as a counteraction to the worship of the golden calf The people ought to learn to think philosophically, and not merely as partisans ; all lotteries were to be banished ; and where, finally, nothing seemed to help, we were to console others and trust in God. The detestable thirst for money and enjoyment was to be met by an elevated frame of mind ; the " wealth of nations," by the welfare of nations ; the sceptical statesmen of the eighteenth century, by the believing ones of the seventeenth century, such as Milton, Jeremy Taylor, Sidney and Donne. i8i6-34. LIFE OF COLERIDGE. 349 It was thus that our romantic poet struggled to put old wine into new bottles. It was not society alone, but knowledge also which Coleridge wished to found on religion. This great second stage in his mental history is dated by the new edition of his Friend. This was commenced in Calne, carried on in 18 17, and appeared in 18 18. The already existing numbers of the unfortunate old periodical underwent certain alterations ; such autobiographical passages as occurred in the ' Biographia ' had become superfluous and were omitted. Many a proposition re- quired clearer definition, and was enlarged into a treatise ; political allusions were modernised ; entertaining parts were called "landing-places"; edifying parts collected in essays, and the whole turned into a book. A new section was also added, entitled, " Grounds of Morality and Religion." Meanwhile one misfortune after another contributed to bring Coleridge down from his speculations in the clouds. For years he had reaped great applause from his readings of " Christabel " ; scarcely was it printed (1816) — an anonymous hand having already written no contemptible termination to it in the European Magazine a year before* — than it was assailed by the reviewers with sneers and ridicule. The MontJily Review called it whimsical without genius, wild without taste, and wondered that "such rude unfashionable stuff" should have attracted the admiration of Byron. The Edinburgh * Martin Farquhar Tupper. 350 LIFE OF COLERIDGE. chap. viii. Review treated it more roughly. They were also astonished that Byron could recommend such a piece of twaddling coxcombery, and only saw in the ballad "one of the most notable pieces of impertinence of which the press has been lately guilty." Who the amiable reviewer might be is of secondary importance. Cole- ridge believed him to be Jeffrey, and complained of such treatment in the last chapter of the ' Biographia/ and the more bitterly because a few years before, at Keswick, Jeffrey had highly praised the work. We know, however, accidentally (Dibdin, p. 340) that no other than the celebrated author of the ' Irish Melodies,' Tom Moore, was the author. At all events, this review greatly injured Coleridge, for though the ballad reached a second edition in the same year, Mr. Murray, the only good publisher he had had since Cottle's retire- ment, withdrew his hand from him. The result was that Coleridge entered into an en- gagement with another publisher, who took advantage of his good-nature to cheat him. On the recommenda- tion of a Rev. Mr. Curtis — a worthless character — he entrusted (18 16) to the firm of Fenner the following works : — The ' Biographia Literaria,' " Zapolya," the ' Sibylline Leaves,' the ' Lay Sermons,' the new edition of the Friend, and the "Essay on Method." In 18 17 Fenner became bankrupt, and Coleridge — like Walter Scott soon after — not only lost all his profits, but was charged with considerable debts. Whether with or without publisher, he was sure to lose the reward of his 6-34- LIFE OF COLERIDGE. 351 labours. He relates the whole story in an hitherto unpublished letter to his nephew Judge Coleridge, kindly furnished to me by the son of the same, the present Lord Chief Justice Coleridge. '•'Sth May, 1825. " My very dear Nephew, — Grove, Highgate. " When, between eight and nine years ago, I came from Calne to London with the ill-starred * Zapolya ' — written Musis et Apolline nidlo for the theatre at Lord Byron's instance — I had from change of diet, over-excite- ment, agitating anxieties on poor Morgan's account, and, to seal all, indiscreet attempts to stave off a coming evil — i.e., to keep up the strength or rather power of my spirits and animal motion, and so defer the inevitable ebb and dead low water — I had from all these causes a fit of sickness which confined me to bed for about three weeks. My object was to come to some settlement and certainty with regard to pecuniary matters by means of the play ('Zapolya'), my / Biographia Literaria,' 'Sibyl- line Leaves ' (then printed but not published), and the rifacciamento of the Friend (as it now is). This sickness in its consequences led to my settlement at Highgate with Mr. Gillman, originally intended for no more than three months, but which in common probability will only end with my life, or (which God forbid !) with their lives. Look ! While yet in London (Norfolk Street, Strand), and in the first days of my convalescence, Mr. Murray called on me in consequence of some flashes of praise which Lord Byron had uttered respecting the fragment of the 352 LIFE OF COLERIDGE. chap. viii. ' Chi'istabel.' Murray urged me to publish it, and offered me eighty guineas, or pounds. The publication was utterly against my feelings and my judgment. But poor Morgan's necessities, including Jiis zvife and Jus sister, were urgent and clamorous, and I never yet possessed even a decent quantity of fortitude in withstanding dis- tress in the favour of persons who, I had reason to think, loved me, and who in better days (or rather what they themselves had mistaken for such) had manifested attach- ment to me and mine. With many a pang and many a groan — when I could groan unheard — I concluded the bargain, and gave the ^80 to Morgan, who was already debtor, rather than creditor, on all former accounts of board, &c. It was likewise understood by me that Mr. Murray was to be my publisher for my works generally. The sale of the 'Christabel ' sadly disappointed him. It was abused and ridiculed by the EdmburgJi Reviezv, the Quarterly refused even to mention it. Sir W. Scott might have served me if he had at that time said only one half of what he has since avowed in large companies, as at Sir George Beaumont's, Mr. Rogers', Mr. Sotheby's, &c., all, however, persons who knew the fact almost as well as Sir Walter himself. In this mood Mr. Murray expressed himself in such words as led me, nervous and imperfectly recovered as I was, to suppose that he had no pleasure in the connection ; at least, that he would have nothing to do with what he called Diy metaphysics, which were in truth my all. At this time, and under that impression, I was found out by that consummate iSi6-34. LIFE OF COLERIDGE. 353 piece of scoundrelism the Reverend Mr. Curtis, who by a shilling license had so transmogrified himself from Mr. C, the Paternoster Row bookseller, I never liked the man, but his pretensions to religion were such — you should have the particulars from Mr. Gillman, who was present at the greater number of our interviews — that I literally did not dare disbelieve him and his solemn asseverations of zeal and friendship. Nay, I was shocked at Mr. Gillman for his avowal that he thought him a hypocrite. However, let that pass. I trusted him, and lost ^1,100 clear, and was forced to borrow ;^I50 in order to buy up my own books and half-copy- rights, a shock which has embarrassed me in debt (thank God, to one person only) even to this amount." The mischief did not end even with this serious loss. Again the reviewers — who are supposed to have murdered Keats — fell upon him. The ' Sibylline Leaves' only found an occasional word of acknowledg- ment in the Conservative organs ; Scotfs Magazine, for instance, rated them far above the other products of the Lake school, praised their healthier tone, their wildness and freshness, their picturesque grouping, and ranked them among the finest creations of modern times. All the more reckless in abuse were the Liberal organs. The Monthly Review charged him with the style " of a sexton ; " with outdoing even the Germans in tales of horror ; with being full of platonic, metaphysical in- comprehensibilities ; they complained that his aesthetic lectures had had a pernicious effect, had held up the 2 A 354 LIFE OF COLERIDGE. chap. viii. golden age of Pope to contempt, and contributed more than any cause to "medievalise" the taste of his countrymen. The Radical Examiner went further still ; declared the poems to be dishonest and affected, though not without genius ; while of the 'Lay Sermons' they declared that " greater nonsense the author could not write, even though he were inspired expressly for the purpose." The Edinburgh Revieiv compared the thoughts of the author to the sails of a wind- mill — rather a dangerous comparison for themselves, if they remembered 'Don Quixote.' But the severest stroke of all came, as usual, from a faithless friend. The fact that Coleridge had at one time been the most radical of them all, and that now he ventured to preach to his old allies, was taken by Hazlitt as a per- sonal affront. "What right had the man to tell me lies, whether then or now ! " Even Coleridge's review of "Bertram" had been answered by this incorrigible Unitarian with a hit at his exaggerated anti-Jacobinism. Finally, when the 'Lay Sermons' appeared, he entirely broke with the old and once honoured friend, and attacked his personal honour by accusing him of neg- lecting his family. Let us hear how Coleridge defended himself in a letter to Crabb Robinson — preserved in the Robinson papers. "3rd December, 1817. " My dear Sir,- " J' Tillman's, Esq., Highgate. " I can readily imagine that your avocatipns are such as to permit you little leisure cither of time or i8i6-34. LIFE OF COLERIDGE. 355 thought to attend, as you would otherwise willingly do, to one who comes to you both as a lawyer and an adviser, but yet as a friend rather than a client. For twenty years successively I have endured without re- monstrance a regular system of abuse and detraction as remorseless as unprovoked. But in opposition to what- ever is best, and to all that is infirm and faulty in my mental and bodily disposition, I am compelled by posi- tive experience, by the sudden and not to be mistaken influence on the sale of my works, to admit the doctrine of Cecil, Lord Burleigh, on which, in spite of all his stupendous labours, he never failed to act, that calumnies suffered to pass uncontradicted, are active poisons, never completely neutralised either by the innocence of the slandered individual, or even by their own extravagance or absurdity. For, as Hooker observes, what is wanting in the writer is made up for in the predisposition of the reader; and we both know and lament the degrading taste of the present public for personal gossip. " Now my earnest request is that you will be so good as at your first leisure hour to peruse the article con- cerning your humble friend in the last Edinburgh Magazine, and give me, as to a friend, your private and confidential advice and opinion concerning the practi- cability and expediency of bringing to legal justice the publisher of the atrocious calumny therein contained. This work was undertaken on the plan of grossly abusing men of any name in the literary world, and then modestly informing the victim of the lie that any reply 2 A 2 3S6 LIFE OF COLERIDGE. chap. viir. would be received and inserted, as a sure means of forcing the Magazine into sale. It is mournful to know that it was far from being a bad speculation. I have even heard that the probable damages and other con- tingencies of action at law were taken into the calcula- tion, just as bad debts are, &c. I need not say how many instances there are in which the person slandered could not defend himself and expose the groundlessness of the charge — nay, its absolute contrariety to the truth — without the most cruel indelicacy and injustice to the feelings and interests of others. But, in the present instance I can prove by positive evidence, by the written bargains with my booksellers, &c., that I have refused every offer, however convenient to myself, that did not leave two-thirds of the property secured to Mrs. Coleridge, and that I have given up all I have in the world to her — have continued to pay yearly thirty pounds to assure to her what, if I live to the year 1820, will be nearly;^ 2000. That beyond my absolute necessities (in which I count those things that are indispensable to my being able to do anything) I have held myself accountable to her for every shilling ; that Hartley is with me, with all his expenses paid, and now I am labouring hard to procure the means of having Derwent with me. "Perhaps you may take a ride on some Sunday morning and let me see you ; at all events let me have a line from you. For now is the time when I really need friends, for I work like a slave from morn to night, and receive as the reward less than a me- 1816-34. LIFE OF COLERIDGE. 357 chanic's wages, in position and gratitude. And finally, as if I were the most enviable darling of fortune, instead of being in body and estate one of the most pitiable, systematic slander in exact proportion to my fair claims on approbation, as far as my evident objects are concerned, from all; and instead of protection and encouragement from those who agree in the importance of the truths, enforced as the means of those objects, and in my ability to exhibit them. Believe me, my dear Sir, with every affectionate regard and respect, your obliged friend, " S. T. Coleridge." Nothing came of the proposed appeal to law. Mr. Crabb Robinson knew the difficulties too well, and Coleridge was too passive. And as he had done when annoyed about the "Essay on Method," so he now revenged himself by a satirical poem which he never finished or published. This essay, which Coleridge placed above all his other prose works, was " so be-deviled, interpolated, and topsy-turvied " by the publisher, that the author scarcely recognised his own views. And again we have his own account of this dis- agreeable affair in a hitherto unpublished letter (Brit. Mus. MS. Addit. 26111). "My dear Morgan, — , . . "Mr. Fenner promised me through Mr. 'Gillman that I should have a few copies of the 358 LIFE OF COLERIDGE. chap. viii. introduction to the ' Essay on the Science of Method/ from the Et Ceteri Club. If they mean openly to insult me, it is time, Morgan, that I should know it ; and if they will not let me have a copy, at all events let the Rev. J. Curtis let me have my MSS. From lO in the morning till 4 in the afternoon, with an hour only for exercise, I shall fag from to-morrow at the third volume of the ' Friend.' I hope to send off the whole by the first February. As I cannot starve, and yet cannot with ease to my own feelings engage in any work that would interfere with my day's work till the MS. of the third volume of the ^Friend'' is out of my hands, I have been able to hit on no mode of reconciling the difficulties but by attempting a course of Lectures ; of which I wish very much to talk with you. As soon as the ' Friend ' is out I shall set tooth and nail to ' Puff and Slander.'* If I publish it with my name, I shall prefix a chapter entitled 'Anticipation of a Chapter of my Private Life, from Jan. i, 1816, to Jan. i, 1818 ' — the early part of a larger work intended for posthumous publication, which I shall think proper to publish during my life. The lines I have as yet composed for ' Puff and Slander ' are, in my own opinion, the most vigorous and harmonious I ever wrote. So pray let me see you as soon as possible, and hear from you at least im- mediately. " My best love, and I would add ' happy new years to Mary and Charlotte,' if the word 'happy' did not * The satirical poem above-mentioned. i8i6-34. LIFE OF COLERIDGE. 359 sound like Arabic, Diabolice, for ' wretched ' out of my mouth. However, there is that within — thank God! — which is at peace. So may God bless you, and your sincere and faithful friend, " S. T. Coleridge. "Monday, 5th January, 1818." It was much against his will that, in consequence of these serious losses, Coleridge now proceeded to give another course of aesthetic lectures; for his heart was far more with religion than with poetry. "Woe is me! that at forty-six I am under the necessity of appearing as a lecturer, and obliged to regard every hour that I give to the permanent, whether as a poet or as a philo- sopher, an hour stolen from others, as well as from my own maintenance" {Canterbury Magazine, 1835). "With a broken heart " he begged Mr. Crabb Robinson to arrange for the necessary advertisements. On the 27th January, 181 8, in the hall of the Philosophical Society he commenced his seventh course of lectures — the last he ever gave, for his intention to read soon after on the History of Philosophy (at Mr. Allsop's) came to nothing. On this occasion he gave fourteen lectures in regular succession. A numerous and cultivated audience sat before him, he saw careful notes taken, and was praised and well reported in the papers. But neither the applause nor the liberal receipts restored his old zest. In point of philosophical principle he chiefly repeated the views taught in his former lectures. What 36o LIFE OF COLERIDGE. CHAr. viir. was new were the definitions of the laughable, the satirical, the odd, and the humorous taken from Jean Paul, and, further, Schelling's idea of " absolute poesy/' This last was to be traced according to the nature of things through the most various peoples, times, and intellectual departments ; he therefore swept over and beyond Shakespeare and Milton, and treated of Chaucer and Petrarch, Dante and Cervantes, of tales of witch- craft and of the Arabian Nights. On the same grounds he was less anxious to analyse the characteristics of each poet. He sought rather to set Shakespeare free from the conditions of all time and place, and threw himself willingly into the domain of moral mysticism. When we follow these lectures in his daughter's edition, where the suggestions borrowed from Schelling are clearly followed, it is impossible to suppress a sense of weariness. They are rich in application, example, and psychological observation of an original kind. To the enthusiast they may be more pleasing and more in- telligible than many of his former lectures ; but to the biographer, whose first object it is to trace develop- ment of mind, they appear only as later blossoms of the same tree. A plan of working them up into three quarto volumes of 500 pages each was never carried out. With the rest of his aesthetic activity I must make short work. An " Essay on Beauty," which appeared in 1818, probably on occasion of these lectures, may be characterised as an attempt to combine Kant's doctrine 1 8 16-34. LIFE OF COLERIDGE. 361 and Herder's more sensual one with Schelling's prin- ciple of Identity. Once more after this did Coleridge treat the subject of art criticism, and in wider connec- tion. This was on the i8th May, 1825, in his inaugural address, on occasion of his election as Fellow of the Royal Literary Society ; the subject, the "Prometheus" of .^schylus. According to him .^schylus sought in this tragedy, allegorically, or rather tautegorically, to repre- sent the secret principles of the Eleusinian mysteries, in order to counteract the corrupt influence of the super- stitious State religion. The position of Fellow of this society entailed the obligation of delivering one lecture annually. Coleridge accepted this for the sake of the honorarium of one hundred guineas ; but the attitude of the public on this first occasion was not encouraging. He reported it in a letter of the 20th May, 1825, to his nephew John (afterwards Judge Coleridge). "I inflicted the whole essay (an hour and twenty-five minutes) on the ears of the Royal Society of Literature with most remorseful sympathy with the audience, who could not possibly understand the tenth part. For let its merits be what they may, it was not a thing to read to, but to be read by." Once more also did he address the same public on being unexpectedly summoned to deliver a lecture on "The Growth of the Individual Mind" (Gillman, p. 355). This was reported to have been a very brilliant ex- tempore performance, but no record of its contents remains. 362 LIFE OF COLERIDGE. chap. viii. How much he now turned from the study of aesthetics to that of religion is evident from what we know of his intercourse with Tieck, who had come to London for a month, at the end of May 1817, to pursue his researches upon Shakespeare. The German author copied old plays in the British Museum, revelled in the performances of Kemble and Kean, and, thanks to the recommendations of Madame de Stael, was welcomed in London society. Coleridge, who had formed a high opinion of him in Rome, spent an evening with him, from ten to midnight. He listened in silence to Tieck's views of the course of Shakespeare's development, and of his relation to his contemporaries. The next day he said to him, " I think you right in many respects. For all that, I cannot adopt your views, because I will not adopt them ; for they contradict all that we in England have hitherto thought and said of Shakespeare." He had evidently lost all power of receptivity on this .subject. At the same time he requested, through Mr. Crabb Robinson, another visit from Tieck, in order to discuss the subject which now interested him most — that of Christian mysticism. "20th June, 1 8 17. " Highgate. "My dear Robinson, — " Surely I have not offended you by the fami- liarity of my letter ? . . . The main object was to entreat you to exert your interest in arranging a dies attica- gcrvianica at Highgate with Mr. Tieck; and as soon as i8i6-34. LIFE OF COLERIDGE. 363, I know on what day I should be gratified I would write to Mr. Green to join the party, and I would endeavour to secure Mr. Frere. Should this weather continue, what think you of a fete cJiampetre in the Caen Wood, north of Highgate, Lord Mansfield's private grounds, if I should obtain permission ? It is beyond compare the loveliest place so near London, I have only to add that it would grieve me sadly not to sec Mr. Tieck again, and that any day would suit me except the 28th of this month, that being the anniversary of Mr. and Mrs. Gillman's marriage, when they have always a party of friends. " Mr. Tieck mentioned an old German divine — was it Tauler? I find in Heinsius three works under this name. Would you be so good as to ask Mr. Tieck if this be the man ? Likewise whether there were any followers of Jacob Bohme of any note or worth, about the same time ? Whether he can mention any Spanish divines of mystic theology of any theosophical value \ And lastly, and chiefly, whether I am likely to meet with and where any ^^dotes or ^/^ecdotes of Giordano Bruno's sojourn in Germany? His Ash Wednesday 'Table Talk' contains a highly curious and interesting account of his adventures in London. Also whether there is any letter or other authority for his martyrdom at Rome in 1600 than the letter of Scioppius ? " I have only been able to procure Tieck's * William Lovell,' and his friend Wackenroder's * Fantasies,' edited separately by him. I have read a few pages of the 364 LIFE OF COLERIDGE. chap. viii. latter, and was much interested ; but somehow or other the fiction (as I supposed) of Raphael's nightly visita- tion, as recorded by Bramante, made me feel uncom- fortable, as all engraftments on history do. What shall I say ? In Klopstock's ' Messiah,' for instance, the truths, the glorified facts being connected with more than historic belief in the minds of men, the fictions come upon me like lies. . . . "God bless you, and S. T. Coleridge." This letter, the result of which is not known, shows the increasing sphere of his theological interest. From Schelling's mysticism, of which we hear nothing in this letter, he turned to the popular ideas, A number of expressions in the next few years indicate the same road. They are scribbled as glosses, not only in his own books but in those of his friends, who in truth were grateful for them. From this time his literary activity chiefly consisted in these fragments. Several volumes of them were published, and still there are masses unpublished in the British Museum. There, among others, we find a notice in Swedenborg's * De Cultu et Amore Dei,' to the purport that Swedenborg was a philosophical genius, and that what was valuable in Schelling and his contemporaries had been in great measure anticipated by him. And Coleridge emphati- cally added the date of this remark — "22nd December, 1 821" (printed in 'Theological and Political Glosses,' 1853). In the next year he began his first attacks 1816-34. LIFE OF COLERIDGE. 365 on his former oracle, Kant. He read Tennemann's ' Geschichte der Philosophie,' and was provoked (vol. i. p. 216) that this writer, "as a good Kantian, can look down ' ganz vornehm' on the old religious realists, in the complacent possession of his own newly-acquired V erminftglaiibe (reason-belief) — i.e., belief in a God — under an acknowledged incapability of attaching to the word a single notion not demonstrably absurd ; a Venumftglaitbe, for which the believer professes him- self unable to advance eiu einsiges verni'mftiges Wori/" (one single reasonable word !). He maintained that Kant's critical methods were to be kept, but not his results. On the 17th February, 1824, in face of Kant's ' Vermischten Schriften,' he expressed in so many words his horror at a " Begrijf von Gott von 7ins selbst gejnacht " (a conception of God made by ourselves), and called it " an unsufificing performance, hardly to be distinguished from moral and modest atheism." At different times also, and in the severest language, he attacked Schelling ; accused him of being a Jesuit ; of multiplying objections only by way of literary sport ; of not having brought forward a single instance where consciousness and unconsciousness, activity and pas- sivity, were really combined ; suggested that perhaps the positive Pole performed the miracles of the Old and New Testament ! " Positive Pole is a positive sort of chaff that deals in negation and won't work, though we were before informed that he, or it, is the only Jack-of- all-work." On the other hand, he took every oppor- 366 LIFE OF COLERIDGE. chap. viii. tunity of lauding the fathers of the English Church. To them the old, much-tried man clung. In the whole stream of philosophy, from Plato to Hegel, he now saw only a confusion of hypotheses. It was not an abstract Christianity that he wanted, but a practical one. From this last mood there sprung a work which has gained for him a great name in the history of English religion — the 'Aids to Reflection' (1825; nth edition, 1866). The 'Friend' and the ' Biographia Literaria' aimed to be scientific treatises, and the ' Lay Sermons ' had still a worldly air ; but the ' Aids to Reflection ' is an edifying book. It rests on the pro- position that " Christianity is not a theory, or a learned speculation, but a life." It contains hardly anything about Schelling, and of Kant little more than the distinction between the reason and the understanding, and that only sufficing to make philosophy the hand- maid of the Church. Every Sunday one may hear from hundreds of pulpits, and every working day one may read in hundreds of tracts, " believe, in spite of reason," or " believe because it is wise and useful to believe." Coleridge's call is to believe upon grounds — and those not external, but internal grounds. Let us not believe in Christianity because of the miracles, but, vice versd, in the miracles because of Christianity. As he admits the competence of genius to be a law unto itself in matters of art, so he admits the same unlimited com- petence in the believer in matters of theology. He expressly takes the opposite side to the rationalistic i8i6-34. LIFE OF COLERIDGE. 367 idea which since the expulsion of the Stuarts has reigned in the Church, reaching its highest point in Paley. He was just as dissatisfied with the pagan moraHty of the first half of the eighteenth century, as with " the watchmakers' scheme of prudence " in the second half What he insists on is spiritual self- devotion — childlike, but not blind, as in the Anglican champions of the seventeenth century. These men are his real examples, and he delights to show from the works of Leighton and of John Smith similar ideas of the definition of* the understanding as those by Kant. He accordingly follows their steps, in a particular part, on the doctrines of original sin, salvation, and baptism, in which it is not so much a question of dogma as of feeling. The more Coleridge advanced in life the more he suited his programme to the approximation of man — both heart and head — to the likeness of God. The ' Aids to Reflection * created no immediate effect. The reviewers hung back, and the author complained for more than a year of the unprofitableness of his works. " I cannot and will not write for reviews, and what I write, the public will not read. ... I live neither for nor in the world " {Canterbury Magazine). But the book took the deeper hold at last. The aphorisms are naturally put together and perceived ; the work contains the religion of the many and the logic of the cultivated ; and where logic fails, the poetic beauty of the language fills the void. James Rigg, James Martineau, and more recently John Tullock, have described the impression 368 LIFE OF COLERIDGE. chap. viii. the work made on the religious life of England, so that I may leave these facts to those excellent writers who have gone before me, and only shortly state the results. In most instances the foundations of the influence of the 'Aids to Reflection' had been laid beforehand. Similar movements had come to the surface years before, both in England and Scotland. Erskine of Linlathen had treated the ' Internal Evidences of Revealed Re- ligion,' and represented Christianity as no longer a question of dogmatic authority, but of experience and life. Two years later Whateley of Oriel College, Ox- ford, had come forward with a work on ' The Use and Abuse of Party Feeling in Religion.' He, his friend Arnold, and other members of the Oriel school had urged the substitution of a practical conception of the Christian spirit for the cold logic, the petty literalism, and the orthodox formality of the day. At the same time young Newman, at that time Fellow of Oriel, was beginning to work his way to that utter scepticism in regard to mere understanding which led later to his joining the Church of Rome. All these men would have accomplished much the same even had the 'Aids to Reflection ' never appeared, but that work hastened and facilitated their task. They have owned as much in various ways. Arnold, though far from blind to the unsteadiness of Coleridge's thinking, still called him, on the strength of its results, the ablest man in Eng- land ; and Cardinal Wiseman, who could least forgive his habit of uncontrolled inquiry and his passionate i8i6-34- LIFE OF COLERIDGE. 369 resistance to Catholic Emancipation (Coleridge would sooner have given the Irish " Home Rule "), still openly and impartially praised him as the propagator of a "high philosophy." Still, direct adoption of character- istic propositions as between Coleridge and the German philosophers was not to be expected here. In England it was a free movement — a strong current — branching off in different directions, warming, animating and stimulating as it went. At the same time there were also certain men of religious note who may be said to have emanated direct from Coleridge, and may be properly designated as his followers. Maurice, who, with Kingsley's strong help in word and deed, founded the Broad Church, was converted by the ' Aids to Reflection ' from Unitarianism to the ■. Anglican creed. He maintained that his understanding had first been cultivated by Coleridge. Like his teacher, he united inward faith and childlike self- surrender to God with aversion to outward confessions, and hoped that in time all sects and philosophies would unite in one large Church of Christian unity. He only kept clear of the everlasting abstractions of our friend at Highgate, and developed for himself a system of active philan- thropy. Julius Hare, however, gave himself over more completely to the "great religious philosopher and poet." It was through him that the activity of Coleridge most directly benefited the Church. Indeed Coleridge and Hare together may be said to have overmuch in- fluenced the youthful John Sterling, a delicate, amiable 2 B 370 LIFE OF COLERIDGE. chap, viii, and really poetic mind, but "a passive genius," as Jean Paul would have called him. Sterling came to Highgate, a freethinking idealist, but could never from that time shake off the personal charm of the " Ancient Mariner." At Coleridge's death he gave up his literary vocation and was induced to enter upon a clerical career, which, brief as it was, involved him in tragical self-contradictions ; and shackled power, stunted achievements, wearing irrita- tion, and an early death were the consequences. Some- thing less of goodness would have been better for him. Contradiction was not wanting. While Coleridge was engaged in writing his 'Aids to Reflection,' Thomas Carlyle, then twenty-nine years of age, came to Lon- don, full of earnest admiration for him, and with great expectations made his acquaintance. But the two were too much akin to learn from each other, and yet too alien to take to each other. They both fought against shallow enlightenment, conscious calculations and narrow-minded materialism, and both fetched their weapons by preference from Germany. But Carlyle was sceptical, and Coleridge believing. The one had just translated "Wilhelm Meister," and was full of enthusiasm for Goethe's harmonious and free modes of thought ; the other turned from him, as from a modern heathen. The one came rough and unbending from his northern heather, and found a literary invalid. Both were prophets — the one the prophet of power, the other of fancy — and no beings in the world are so incompatible. Cole- ridge concealed his disappointment with his customary i8i6-34. LIFE OF COLERIDGE. yji gentleness ; Carlyle wrote his betrothed a description in which some remains of admiration and a vast amount of contempt are grotesquely mingled. This opinion was about as follows. A great genius, without any self- control, without any certain aim, without energy, without use (Froude, vol. i. p. 222). In his later reports, also, he continually returns to this melancholy contrast. He compares Coleridge at one time with a great ship, the mast, sails and rudder of which have rotted away, and now with a mass of precious spices in a state of decay. He would like to respect him, and at the same time he would like to toss him in a blanket. When, at a later time, he stood by the grave of Sterling, whom he had in vain endeavoured to set right, his recollection of Coleridge was still mixed with bitterness, and the (to him) canting biography which Hare drew up of the de- ceased goaded him into an angry passage of arms. He wrote a second Life of Sterling (185 1), in order to show how " bottled moonshine " could affect what he called a fermenting young mind. " Coleridge, a warning for all of us," is the significant burden of his table of contents. The world meanwhile had found other wants and other ideals ; Coleridge had become antiquated, and Carlyle, in his stead, led the intellectual life of the nation. Half a century after a man has done his best, the shadow side of his ministry, as a rule, becomes the most con- spicuous, and the new generation, satiated with that which he did for their fathers, turns against him. Carlyle has still in our days to meet this crisis. 2 B 2 372 LIFE OF COLERIDGE. chap. viir. On a second occasion Coleridge saw this shadow side of his labours with his own eyes. Edward Irving, a Presbyterian preacher, and a youth- ful friend of Carlyle, was moved to London in 1822, and immediately became an object of public attention. With long black locks, a deep and powerful voice, with a solemn and peculiar action, and antiquated expressions, his whole appearance apostolic, combined with a slight and unconscious theatrical tinge, he stood before his congregation with all the ardour of a John the Baptist. A great disappointment in love, for he was attached to Carlyle's betrothed, had driven him to seek compen- sation for his ruined happiness in religious eccentricity. Like other Christian reformers, he wanted to restore the early times of Christianity. Basil Montague introduced him to Coleridge, who naturally opened his heart in long discourses to him. He succeeded in interesting the Presbyterian minister in the hierarchy and services of the English Church ; and before the ' Aids to Re- flection ' had appeared, he indoctrinated him with its contents. Urged on by Coleridge, Irving determined to study German metaphysics ! The stirring preacher now, for a time, became fuller of thought, laid aside his theatrical air, and publicly evinced his gratitude by dedicating to Coleridge his work on the Missionary Society as to the man " from whom I have learned more for my spiritual understanding of the Word of God, and of the right conception of the Christian Church, than from any other of my contemporaries." i8i6-34. LIFE OF COLERIDGE. 373 But soon the scholar became more consistent than the teacher approved. Why all this philosophy, if only for the purpose of convincing man that he must believe ! Accordingly, when Coleridge held forth on philosophical subjects, Irving was always observed to be inattentive and absent : but when he quoted Scripture or any well-known religious phrases, he again became his attentive and delighted hearer. And further, why should he not combat the despised prudence and scepticism of the eighteenth century still more boldly with the very Bible itself? Accordingly he accepted every word of the Bible as literally as a child does those of his mother. The reign of Christ on earth, as prophesied in Revelations, appeared to him to be due in one hundred years : it was time therefore to form a community worthy to welcome Him. For the first time Coleridge now suspected some mischief — his wits sharpened by the recollection of his own youthful ex- perience : accordingly he sent him a kind warning through Mr. Basil Montague. " 1st February, 1826. "My dearest Montague, — " I was truly grieved to hear from that Mr. Irving looked shockingly ill, and had preached two hours. He will surely shorten his life, and will find too late that he has been unjustifiably prodigal of rever- sionary property. He robs mankind of his future self I confess / do not tmderstand our friend's late ex- cursions into the prophecies of a sealed Book, of which 374 LIFE OF COLERIDGE. chap. viir. no satisfactory proof has yet been given whether they have already been, or still remain to be fulfilled. Cocceiiis, the best and most spiritual of all our learned commentators, interprets the chapter on the millennium as of events already past. But as I do not understand, I do not judge ; but am willing to believe that, as preached by Mr. Irving it will be to edification ; though for myself I am not ashamed to say that a single chapter of St. Paul's Epistles or St. John's Gospel is of more value to me in light and in life, in love and in comfort, than the books of the Apocalypse, Daniel, and Zachariah, all put together. In fact I scarcely know what to make even of the second coming of our Lord. Is He not ' my Lord and my God ' ? Is there aught good in the soul, and He not a dweller there ? I am aware of the necessity of a mid-course between Quakerism and a merely Jdstorical Christianity. But I dare not conceal my conviction that on certain points we may have clearer views of Christianity than some of the Apostles had. God bless you, and " S. T. Coleridge." In clearer terms even than in this letter we find a marginal note in Luther's 'Table-Talk' lamenting Irving's " extravagances and presumptuous sayings." As his hint through Basil Montague had not answered, he took him openly to task — June 1826 — for his reveries about the prophecies, and called him a " Bibliolator." Irving agreed with him, but still went his own way. Coleridge j8i6-34. life OF COLERIDGE. 375 himself felt his influence, discoursed in a more orthodox vein than ever, and wrote — I2th April, 1827 — in Irving's just published work on the ' Coming of the Messiah ' (from the Spanish of Juan Josafa Ben Ezra) the following re- mark : — " Now so far, in all deep and concerning points which Mr. Irving has most ably maintained against the current dogma of both Churches — his own and ours — in all the great moments of his warfare, I am his fellow- oombatant, and prepared to fight under his banner. Up to this time he and I are one. Shall we differ then respecting our Lord's kingly office ? Scarcely, I trust. Or on Christ's second coming to possess His kingdom ? I have no foreboding of dissent on this either. It is to the personal coming of Jesus and the re-creation of an earthly monarchy, an imperial theocracy under Jesus, as the visible head and sovereign, that my fear points. Fears that I shall find myself called on to withstand Irving, to attack his position, and despoil him of his faith ? O, no ! no ! no ! But that I may not be able to partake of it. There will be no resistance, but a yearning and a predisposition. If reason does not hold me back, my will will : At all events, Daniel and the Apocalypse shall not part us." And some fifty pages further on, when Irving boasts that through the incarnation and sufferings of Christ, " Reason is set at nought, and her inability demonstrated to attain unto any part of the mystery of Divine Love," Coleridge broke out angrily, " This is the sort of sen- tence of too frequent recurrence in this discourse, to 376 LIFE OF COLERIDGE. chap, viii.. which I so impatiently object. What is my friend's object in all this reasoning but to set forth the perfect and exalted Reason of this economy that sets reason at nought ! ! ! What predilection can Irving have for the term Reason ? what prejudice against understanding 1 that he should prefer the ambiguous, the almost sure-to- be-misconceived former, to the safe and wholly unobjec- tionable latter term. These passages always strike me as if his amanuensis (some pupil of the modern Cal- vinistic School, who had stolen into my friend's good opinion) had by a piotis fraud interpolated what my friend was dictating with bits and scraps out of his own favourite divines, and that my friend in the ardour of preaching had read them straight forward, without ad- verting to their dissonance from his own style of thinking." The ghost of Kant stood between Coleridge and Irving, and the conflict of their principles was not long covered by their personal attachment. When Irving next appeared at Highgatc, Coleridge stated all his objections unreservedly. He thought " to steady him," but he only "stunned him." Irving kept away, showed all his fanatic nature, and preached that the time for signs and wonders, and unknown tongues had. come. Coleridge was helpless to restrain him. " He is a good man," he said — June i8th, 1828 — to Crabb Robin- son, "but his brain has been turned by the shoutings of the mob. I think him mad, literally mad." Irving came once more to Highgate — in 183 1 — after he had broken down the bridges behind him. Coleridne looked. iSi6-34. LIFE OF COLERIDGE. ZIT at him with sorrowful admiration and loving displea- sure, and pathetically lamented that such a man should throw himself away. But in vain. The gifted preacher was dismissed from the Scotch Church, and, worn out with excitement, he died on the 6th December, 1834, a few months after Coleridge. His sect still exists, and in an honoured and respected form. It would be unjust to charge Coleridge in the first instance with responsibility towards Irving, as Carlyle has done with regard to Sterling. Mrs. Carlyle used to say, " If I had married Irving there would have been no tongues." Still, Coleridge took the loss of his pupil much to heart, and with a view to obviate any such unreasonable misinterpretation, he wrote his last theo- logical treatise, * Confessions of an Enquiring Spirit,' published in 1840 from his remains. With all assertion of his faith, Coleridge had never given up the standards of Reason. He never said with Tertullian, " I believe in spite of reason," but with Kant, "Reason makes me believe where I know that I can know nothing." He attributed, therefore, no power of proof to the external evidences of Christianity, namely, to the miracles. " Dubious questioning," he says in his ' Aids to Reflection,' " is a much better evidence than that senseless deadness which most take for believing." " I believe Moses, I believe Paul ; but I believe in Christ." In contradiction to Irving, he was now first conscious of the distinction between blind acceptance and living conviction. Further materials for thought and an 378 LIFE OF COLERIDGE. chap. viii. appropriate form for a treatise on these points were furnished him by several German works. But most of all he derived from Lessing's ' Fragmente eines Un- genannten.' Coleridge had not only read these ' Frag- ments ' thirty years before, but " year after year ; " he wrote in his old age, on a fly-leaf of a volume of Lessing, ■" I have made a point of reperusing Die kleinen ScJiriften as master-pieces of style and argument." The ' Confes- sions ' have something in common with these desultory instructions to a supposed literary friend. He was quite aware that these ' Confessions ' would find no favour with narrow, orthodox minds. " Our theologians," he says (p. 102), "seem to act in the spirit of fear, rather than in that of love." But he estimated Truth far too highly not to break a way to it through the wall of the Temple, wherever a chink betrayed a ray of light. He says in his 'Aids to Re- flection,' " He who begins by loving Christianity better than Truth, will proceed by loving his own sect or Church better than Christianity, and end by loving himself better than all." He maintained his life long the deepest conviction that the Truth could only benefit both his own and every other mind. Without acknow- ledging this fundamental feature of his nature, which often came to light in a revolutionary form, neither his wonderful activity of mind nor his regrettable unsteadi- ness can be rightly judged. He never adhered to any particular views or party. As a boy, when fancying himself an atheist, he never relinquished the idea of a i8i6-34. LIFE OF COLERIDGE. 379 Christian God, nor that of angels. When a Unitarian, he condemned his fellow-Unitarians for their rash inter- pretations of the Bible. Even in his most radical time he broke a lance in defence of Burke. So now, in spite of his Church principles and toryism, he was unpre- judiced enough to see the failings of each, and to seek to remedy them. If he let his ' Confessions ' remain for years in his desk, it was not from fear of any annoy- ance their publication would give him — for in that case he would either have burnt them, or not written them at all — but because he waited for a favourable constellation of religious conditions ; also perhaps he thought the words would come with the greater weight from the lips of a dead man. In confidential letters, and in his marginal glosses, are found expressions that one might attribute to a Chartist, or to a Nonconformist. He denounced the disorders of the Court, pronounced an hereditary monarchy not to be absolutely necessary, and sympathised far more with the French Revolution than with the arbitrary Government that had preceded it. He was indignant when Southey called such a noble dissenter as John Bunyan " The King of the Tinkers." He differed slightly in some respects from the dogma of the Trinity, the Atonement, and the Sacrament, as held by the Anglican Church ; picked holes in the Athanasian Creed, and in the form of Infant Baptism ; blamed the illiberality of the Church in the seventeenth century, and adhered to Milton as much in his old age as he had done to Jeremy Taylor in 38o LIFE OF COLERIDGE. chap, viir, his youth. It was not his habit to go to church ; he spoke openly on the faults of the clergy, and of the unnatural creed of Hell-fire. His independent position in the midst of contending parties cost him, as he says at the beginning of his ' Confessions,' much happiness, and at all events the credit of being a useful man. Each party found him unreliable. It happened even that after the death of George IV. (1830) the hundred guineas, which he had derived annually since 1825 as Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature, was with- drawn. However, his activity was not confined to questions of the day. That want of continuity which makes us sceptical of all his achievements, taken singly, redounds perhaps to his greatest honour. For it was not a volun- tary unsteadiness. He systematically stormed one fort after another, in order to penetrate into the citadel of truth, and never looked for a victor}/ which he felt to be unattainable by man. He was never satisfied with him- self — the mere attempt to express himself more clearly drove him further forwards — and even had it pleased God to give him the choice between Truth, and the restless Search for it, he would, like Lessing, have bent his knee modestly before the Search. " Father, give ; the pure Truth is only for Thee alone ! Not Truth itself, the possession of which a man has, or thinks he has, but the earnest effort to gain it, makes the worth of the man." Th c last large prose work by Coleridge, 'On the i8i6-34. LIFE OF COLERIDGE. 381 Constitution of the Church and State,' appeared in 1830, on occasion of the Catholic Emancipation, and forms a kind of continuation of the ' Lay Sermons.' It contains several historical errors. Niebuhr's severe criticism was also acknowledged by Arnold. It is however so far characteristic of the peculiarity of the writer, that it exhibits him at that extreme point of Anglican and Conservative opinion which meets the opposite extreme of his Pantisocratic free-thinking. Then he had desired to separate Church and State ; now he is all for their union, but a union in which the Church should give up her dogmatic position and undertake the social educa- tion of the citizen, as proposed in his 'Lay Sermons' — in other words, become a great National Institution for the promotion of morality. Then he had thundered against the clergy ; he now shows them the greatest respect. But he would include in this class all occu- pied with intellectual things — princes and medical men, mathematicians and musicians — so that the apparent contradiction proves to be merely a case of the altered use of a word. Then he condemned the subdued con- dition of Ireland ; now he would oppose the admission of the Catholic Irish into Parliament, as being only half an emancipation, so long as the law does not place the Catholic subject on the same footing as the Protestant one. Coleridge wished for perfect equality of rights, on a pre-Reformation basis. With an air of system which is elsewhere due to the artistic manipulation of a clever biographer, he found his way back to his original starting- 382 LIFE OF COLERIDGE. chap. viii. point. Thus it was with no small pleasure that he caught himself expressing- the same convictions, only more matured, which he had held in earlier times. He said of himself four weeks before his death, "It is wonderful to myself to think how infinitely more pro- found my views now are, and yet how much clearer they are withal. The circle is completing — the idea is coming round to, and to be, that of common-sense." Among his smaller essays may be mentioned " The History and Jests of Maxilian, Satyrane's Cousin," published 1822, in Blackwood's Magazine. With a Jean Paul-like humour he describes how he had concealed his real pride under the disguise of gancherie and absence of mind. This sketch is connected on the one hand with his portrait of himself in the "Tombless Epitaph," and on the other with Carlyle's " Sartor Resartus." Coleridge felt himself to be old, and looked g-ladly back at the road he had left behind him. And finally there were a handful of small and mostly eccentric poems strewn over this latter period. They arc unpretending, but noble in feeling and form — varied memories, with the light of autumn upon them. Like as to a glorious, far-ofif vision does he look back to the May of life, "when the joys of Friendship, Love and Liberty came down shower-like," but now feeling himself to be only " Like some poor and nigh-related guest, That may not rudely be dismissed. Yet hath outstaid his welcome while, And tells the jest without the smile." i8i6-34. LIFE OF COLERIDGE. 383 "Youth and Age" is the title of this poem. Bees and birds are stirring busily in spring-time about him, but he can no longer build or sing: his soul "is drowsed, as with a spell." "Work without Hope" is another. Ghosts of former love come back to him, and sad thoughts of an alienated friend, "like a rib of dry rot in the ship's stout side;" also sweet children, on whose tender heads the old man prayerfully lays his hand, and rising talents, on whom he invokes Love, Hope, and Patience ; and noble women, whose anger he deprecates should he — Plato-like — deny them souls; "for what you are, you cannot possess." One of his most lively recol- lections of the luxuriant imagination of his boyhood was conjured up by the picture of an Italian landscape — the "Garden of Boccaccio" — which a friend gave him; then came scenes from the "Penseroso" and the "Allegro,'^ as once in Cambridge, with "the city pomp of bright Florence — forests with sullen boars — the gods of Greece — the mythic forms of the Middle Ages — satyrs and winged saints — vestal maids between the ranks of the trim vines — and wild strains of the ancient scalds, all whirring strangely together." Miltonian contemplation also visits him, though now in the robe of Schelling's "Philosophie-Poesie." The possibility that Death might meet him in this rich labyrinth of pathetic recollec- tions had no terror for Coleridge. His mind had lived beyond the confines of this world long before his bodily frame gave way. With significant allusion to the nisrhtmare "Life in Death" in the "Ancient 3S4 LIFE OF COLERIDGE. CHAr. viir. Mariner," he composed on the 9th November, 1833, his own epitaph : " Stop, Christian passer-by ! — stop, child of God, And read with gentle breast. Beneath this sod A poet lies ; or that which once seemed he. O lift one thought in prayer for S. T. C. ! Mercy, for Praise — to be forgiven, for fame. He asked and hoped, through Christ. Do thou the same." In addition to the inflammatory pains in his joints and to the dyspepsia occasioned by opiates, he now suffered from an affection of the heart, which caused great physical distress. This suffering bent his figure, furrowed his face, and hindered his work. But his robust constitution long resisted. He survived the French July Revolution and the struggle for the Reform Bill ; he also survived Walter Scott and Goethe. Up to the last he pursued the literary and political occurrences of the day with keen interest, and was never tired of enunciating his favourite views. This is proved by his 'Table Talk,' which his nephew and son-in-law, Henry Nelson Coleridge, published in 1836. As time went on the distress of the breathing became so great that for the last thirteen months he spent seventeen hours every day walking up and down. His patience never failed, but he sometimes feared his mind would give way. He arranged all his worldly affairs — left his pictures to Mrs. Gillman, distributed books as keepsakes among his numerous relatives, ordered mourning rings for his most intimate friends, and then wished to be no further disturbed. In June 1834 Wordsworth paid him a visit, and found his i8i6-34. LIFE OF COLERIDGE. 385 countenance beaming with cheerfulness ; the pains had spent themselves, and a marvellous peace had taken their place. He passed away a month later — on the 25th June, 1834, at 6 A.M., sixty-two years of age. With his last strength he commended the faithful nurse who had attended him to the Gillmans, and explained a portion of his philosophy to Mr. Green. The post-mortem examination showed an abnormal enlargement of the heart, which pressed on the lungs on both sides. The heart was full of water ; the walls so thin that they broke as soon as touched. He was interred without pomp — his aversion to which was well known — in the church close by, attended only by his relatives and nearest friends. A letter he had written five days before, to a godchil d, was read from the ^iulpit the Sunday after, to the edification of all. The grave was covered with a simple stone — shown to visitors by the clerk for thirty years, when a more befitting monument was erected in the chapel of the neighbouring school. An obelisk also was raised by the Gillmans to the memory of their beloved inmate. Coleridge did not leave his family unprovided for; his widow received £2600, which he had insured for her benefit. She died in 1845, a"cl is buried in the church- yard at Keswick, close to the Southeys. Their son Hartley was most like the father in gifts and also in his negligent mode of life. He was fellow of a college at Oxford, but deprived on account of intemperate habits — a sentence which his father in vain endeavoured to 2 C 3S6 LIFE OF COLERIDGE. ciiAr. viii. get reversed. He was especially cared for in the will. He died at Grasmcre, fifty-two years of age, admired as a lyrical poet, and welcomed in the farm-houses around as a most cheerful and amusing companion. Derwcnt took orders in 1826, and became head of the Chelsea Training College of St. Mark's. He was afflicted with the same inflammatory pains as his father. I saw him myself in 1882, in Torquay — a venerable old man, full of Christian patience and etymological enthusiasm. Sara, a gifted woman, with beautiful eyes, was carefully educated by Southey, proved herself an excellent translator both of Latin and French, married in 1829 her cousin Henry Nelson Coleridge, and is chiefly known by her interesting fairy-tale, " Phantasmion." Derwcnt, Sara, and Henry Nelson laboured gratefully to preserve the memory of the great man by fresh and annotated editions of his works, and by biographical notices of himself And we are led to hope that Derwent's son — the only grandson surviving — will ere long open to the public hitherto undivulged family papers. The warm attachment of his friends survived his death. Of this 'Crabb Robinson's Journal' gives many a touching proof The Gillmans were quite heart- broken (sec 'Caroline Fox's Journal'); Mr. Gillman sought to beguile his sorrow by a biography of his fricml ; while Mr. Green, his literary legatee, devoted his life to a work on 'Spiritual Philo.soph}', founded on the teaching of the late S. T Coleridge,' published l8i6--34. LIFE OF COLERIDGE. 387 after his death, 1865; a work which proves hew Httle this more suggestive than conclusive teaching could be reduced to a system. Cliarles Lamb, the old school- fellow, was the most overpowered by the loss of his friend. He " could think of nothing but Coleridge." Even in society he would sigh and say, " Coleridge is dead." He followed him two years later. The public, for the first time, became thoroughly aware after his death of the value of what they had lost. The first general edition of his poems and dramas (1828) had been succeeded by a second, without any alteration, in 1829. In 1832 a third edition ap- peared, greatly enlarged, and a fourth in 1836. The dates of the many succeeding editions are best found in the Catalogue of printed books in the British Museum. The fragments he left found willing publishers, volume after volume, and Coleridge's writings came gradually so much into request that Mr. Green had to defend him- self publicly for not throwing the remaining papers — fragmentary and unconnected and full of repetition as they were — upon the market. The living prophet could starve ; the dead one was idolised. The critics seemed to have only waited for his death to sound his praises. Fraser's Magazine, however, had enumerated his merits in the cause of philosophy in 1832, and the year after even praised his ' Biographia Literaria ' as " a queer and pleasant book." In the year of his death a flood of similar articles appeared, the Quarterly Reviezu triumphantly taking the lead; and in 1835 the Edinburgh 38S LIFE OF COLERIDGE. chap. viii. Review acknowledged that he had " great and noble aims, and a deep insight into the connection between the material and the spiritual world," and that he " perhaps wanted only steadiness and industry to have founded in England a new school of physiological science." Still more significant, from the totally opposite direction he pursued, was John Stuart Mill's tribute. He designated Coleridge as the most influential teacher of English youth in the years between 1820 and 1840; "as the great awakener of the spirit of philosophy within the bounds of traditional opinion ; as the revolt of the human mind against the cne-sidedness of the eighteenth century." He held his views to be erroneous, but his appearance on the world's stage not the less necessary, and his influence beneficial {^London and Westminster Revieiv, 1840). And finally, as in confirmation of this opinion, a bust of the poet was solemnly installed to his memory as the emancipator of the imagination, in Poets' Corner, Westminster Abbey, on the 7th Ma}-, 1885, imagination being, in Mr. Lowell's words, "an important factor, not only in the happiness, but in the destiny of mankind." On the other hand, after his death, when he could no longer defend himself, the most serious accusations were brought against him. Even in September, 1834, De Ouincey had charged him with plagiarism from various German poets and philosophers {Taifs Magazine). Although Julius Hare had sought to neutralise these assertions by recalling the well-known experiences of iSi6-34. LIFE OF COLERIDGE. 389 Coleridge's forgetfulness {British Magazine, 1835), yet the charge was violently renewed by Professor Ferrier . five years later {Edinburgh Magazine, 1840). It is the fact that many an unconfessed bit of translation will be found among his poems ; that many a paragraph in the ' Biographia ' is an impression struck off from Maass or Schelling, without sign of quotation ; and that many a chapter from his Lectures is also an unacknowledged loan from Schelling; to say nothing of other and literally innumerable borrowings of a freer kind. Sir William Hamilton expressed his wrath the most severely of all, averring that Coleridge was simply a gross literary pirate, whose plunderings were only limited by his ignorance (edition of ' Reid's Philosophical Works,' p. 890). Sara Coleridge and her husband were fully right in combating the low interpretation thus given to his borrowings, while at the same time they added to their number (Preface to 'Biographia,' 1847; Notes, Lect. 1849), and Freiligrath took the same line in the Tauchnitz edition. As regards his poetic translations, there is no doubt that mere carelessness was the cause; a fact which the restlessness of his life, outward and inward, readih^ explains. He passed, for instance, through Bristol ; gave Cottle some verses to read, remarking incidentally that they v/ere taken from a German source. Suddenly he found that the Morning Post wanted a contribution, and off went the poem to the printer. From that paper it subsequently passed into his collected poems, hastily put 390 LIFE OF COLERIDGE. chap. viii. together and not always supervised by himself, without any sign of quotation being appended. But as regards the translations from Maass and Schelling in the ' Bio- graphia,' the first of the two is once mentioned, while Schelling is alluded to with even exaggerated modest}'. " For readers in general, let whatever shall be found in this or any future work of mine that resembles the doctrines of my German predecessor — though contem- porary — be wholly attributed to Jiiui ; provided that the absence of distinct references to his books be not charged on me as ungenerous concealment, or intentional plagiarism " (chap. 9, end). He cannot, again, be made answerable for the absence of all acknowledgment towards Schlegel in the Lectures printed after his death. For the rest, though he was not the discoverer of his philosophical principles, yet he showed great independence in selecting, arranging, combining, explaining, and formulating them; and he never made a pretension to any higher service or praise. " I regard truth," he says expressly in his 'Biographia Literaria ' (chap. 9), as a divine ventriloquist. I care not from whose mouth the sounds arc supposed to proceed, if only the words be audible and intelli- gible." His openly announced aims were not so much to find anything new, as to give fresh life to the past, and forcibly bring home to his countr}'men the views of foreigners of kindred spirit with himself. What indeed would become of the poet — of the expounder of scientific discoveries — of the journalist and the orator, i8i6-34. LIFE OF COLERIDGF. 391 if every opinion had to be labelled with a certificate of origin, like the specimens in a collection of mineralogy ! From no one did Coleridge learn more than from Schelling, and no one would have had a greater right to complain ; instead of which, Schelling rejoiced over his English pupil, owning even his obligations to him in the ' Essay on Prometheus,' where Coleridge in one happy word, "tautegory," defined that distinction be- tween mythology and allegory which Schelling had only reached in a roundabout way. Coleridge was a great eclectic, but no one who conscientiously weighs his expressions will call him a plagiarist. If these views are just, a concise and final judgment as to the originality of the remarkable man who is the subject of this work, and of the additions he made to the intellectual treasures of his nation, will take the following forms : — As a theorist in philosophy, or more perhaps aesthetics and theosophy, it was not his forte to deduce laws directly from facts, or even to bring them into scientific relation with facts. He had not the objectivity of an investigator. But all the more keen was his eye for every kind of subjective observation, the more freely did he bring what he observed into eloquent accord with his own individual being and with the tendencies of the time, and all the richer was the warp with which he interwove the alien woof. He was a mighty educator of his countrymen, and full of devotion to this object. Undiscouraged by ill-success, he traversed the narrow, commercial, half-sceptical, 392 LIFE OF COLERIDGE. cii.vr. vin. half-pictistic domestic prejudices of the English people of that time with a many-sided, inspiring, Hellenic- Germanic method of thought, which to this day offers the remedy worth taking to heart for many a social abuse. As a poet, also, he began by servile imitation ; but so must all ; for poetry is nowhere now a mere matter of invention. Directed both by foreign and home examples, he took Nature, after a fashion and later, for his model, but only to modulate her music with wonderful genius to his own key. In this region he is truly a creative spirit, and immortal. The poems written with his full po\\crs may perhaps be compressed into twenty pages, but these, as Mr. Stopford Brooke has happily said, are worthy to be bound in pure gold. And richly fruitful as were his various writings, more fruitful still was his personality. His life was spent in that love for his fellow-creatures and in that platonic exaltation of mind that his works display. He dis- coursed like one who had authority, seraphically and ardently, equally without compulsion and without re- serve ; an enemy to all routine custom, an apostle in the service of harmonious thought. He seemed an embodiment of that genius of imagination whose gospel he preached in a wilderness of thorny, pedantic rules. Thus, through successive phases of his life he gradually gave utterance to the entire wealth of his mind ; and of the many great works which he has left, the greatest is that of his own development. . , ^ LONDON: WM. CLOWES AND SONS, LIMITED, STAMFOItD STKEliT AKD CHAUIKG CE02S. m 14 DAY USE RETURN TO DESK FROM WHICH BORROWED WED LOAN DEPT. RENEWAIS ONLY— TEL NO. 642^405 This book is due on the last date stamped below, or on the date to which renewed. 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