Читать книгу The Letters Volume 2 - Samuel Taylor Coleridge - Страница 23

April 3, 1807.

My dear Boy,—In all human beings good and bad qualities are not only found together, side by side, as it were, but they actually tend to produce each other; at least they must be considered as twins of a common parent, and the amiable propensities too often sustain and foster their unhandsome sisters. (For the old Romans personified virtues and vices both as women.) This is a sufficient proof that mere natural qualities, however pleasing and delightful, must not be deemed virtues until they are broken in and yoked to the plough of Reason. Now to apply this to your own case—I could equally apply it to myself—but you know yourself more accurately than you can know me, and will therefore understand my argument better when the facts on which it is built exist in your own consciousness. You are by nature very kind and forgiving, and wholly free from revenge and sullenness; you are likewise gifted with a very active and self-gratifying fancy, and such a high tide and flood of pleasurable feelings, that all unpleasant and painful thoughts and events are hurried away upon it, and neither remain in the surface of your memory nor sink to the bottom of your heart. So far all seems right and matter of thanksgiving to your Maker; and so all really is so, and will be so, if you exert your reason and free will. But on the other hand the very same disposition makes you less impressible both to the censure of your anxious friends and to the whispers of your conscience. Nothing that gives you pain dwells long enough upon your mind to do you any good, just as in some diseases the medicines pass so quickly through the stomach and bowels as to be able to exert none of their healing qualities. In like manner, this power which you possess of shoving aside all disagreeable reflections, or losing them in a labyrinth of day-dreams, which saves you from some present pain, has, on the other hand, interwoven with your nature habits of procrastination, which, unless you correct them in time (and it will require all your best exertions to do it effectually), must lead you into lasting unhappiness.

You are now going with me (if God have not ordered it otherwise) into Devonshire to visit your Uncle G. Coleridge. He is a very good man and very kind; but his notions of right and of propriety are very strict, and he is, therefore, exceedingly shocked by any gross deviations from what is right and proper. I take, therefore, this means of warning you against those bad habits, which I and all your friends here have noticed in you; and, be assured, I am not writing in anger, but on the contrary with great love, and a comfortable hope that your behaviour at Ottery will be such as to do yourself and me and your dear mother credit.

First, then, I conjure you never to do anything of any kind when out of sight which you would not do in my presence. What is a frail and faulty father on earth compared with God, your heavenly Father? But God is always present. Specially, never pick at or snatch up anything, eatable or not. I know it is only an idle, foolish trick; but your Ottery relations would consider you as a little thief; and in the Church Catechism picking and stealing are both put together as two sorts of the same vice, “And keep my hands from picking and stealing.” And besides, it is a dirty trick; and people of weak stomachs would turn sick at a dish which a young filth-paw had been fingering.

Next, when you have done wrong acknowledge it at once, like a man. Excuses may show your ingenuity, but they make your honesty suspected. And a grain of honesty is better than a pound of wit. We may admire a man for his cleverness; but we love and esteem him only for his goodness; and a strict attachment to truth, and to the whole truth, with openness and frankness and simplicity is at once the foundation stone of all goodness, and no small part of the superstructure. Lastly, do what you have to do at once, and put it out of hand. No procrastination; no self-delusion; no “I am sure I can say it, I need not learn it again,” etc., which sures are such very unsure folks that nine times out of ten their sureships break their word and disappoint you.

Among the lesser faults I beg you to endeavour to remember not to stand between the half-opened door, either while you are speaking, or spoken to. But come in or go out, and always speak and listen with the door shut. Likewise, not to speak so loud, or abruptly, and never to interrupt your elders while they are speaking, and not to talk at all during meals. I pray you, keep this letter, and read it over every two or three days.

Take but a little trouble with yourself, and every one will be delighted with you, and try to gratify you in all your reasonable wishes. And, above all, you will be at peace with yourself, and a double blessing to me, who am, my dear, my very dear Hartley, most anxiously, your fond father,

S. T. Coleridge.

P. S. I have not spoken about your mad passions and frantic looks and pout-mouthing; because I trust that is all over.

Hartley Coleridge, Coleorton, Leicestershire.