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COLERIDGE’S FIRST ENTRY AT JESUS’ COLLEGE. — HIS SIMPLICITY AND WANT OF WORLDLY TACT. — ANECDOTES AND DIFFERENT ACCOUNTS OF HIM DURING HIS RESIDENCE AT COLLEGE INTIMACY WITH MIDDLETON — WITH SOUTHEY. — QUITS COLLEGE FOR BRISTOL.

At Cambridge, whither his reputation had travelled before him, high hopes and fair promises of success were entertained by his young friends and relations. He was considered by the “Blues,” as they are familiarly termed, one from whom they were to derive great immediate honour, which for a short period, however, was deferred. Individual genius has a cycle of its own, and moves only in that path, or by the powers influencing it. Genius has been properly defined ‘prospective’, talent on the contrary ‘retrospective’: genius is creative, and lives much in the future, and in its passage or progress may make use of the labours of talent.

“I have been in the habit,” says Coleridge, “of considering the qualities of intellect, the comparative eminence in which characterizes individuals and even countries, under four kinds, — genius, talent, sense, and cleverness. The first I use in the sense of most general acceptance, as the faculty which adds to the existing stock of power and knowledge by new views, new combinations, by discoveries not accidental, but anticipated, or resulting from anticipation.”

‘Friend’, vol. iii. p. 85, edit. 1818.

Coleridge left school with great anticipation of success from all who knew him, for his character for scholarship, and extraordinary accounts of his genius had preceded him. He carried with him too the same childlike simplicity which he had from a boy, and which he retained even to his latest hours. His first step was to involve himself in much misery, and which followed him in after life, as the sequel will evidence. On his arrival at College he was accosted by a polite upholsterer, requesting to be permitted to furnish his rooms. The next question was, “How would you like to have them furnished?” The answer was prompt and innocent enough, “Just as you please, Sir!” — thinking the individual employed by the College. The rooms were therefore furnished according to the taste of the artizan, and the bill presented to the astonished Coleridge. Debt was to him at all times a thing he most dreaded, and he never had the courage to face it. I once, and once only, witnessed a painful scene of this kind, which occurred from mistaking a letter on ordinary business for an application for money. Thirty years afterwards, I heard that these College debts were about one hundred pounds! Under one hundred pounds I believe to have been the amount of his sinnings; but report exceeded this to something which might have taxed his character beyond imprudence, or mere want of thought. Had he, in addition to his father’s simplicity, possessed the worldly circumspection of his mother, he might have avoided these and many other vexations; but he went to the University wholly unprepared for a College life, having hitherto chiefly existed in his own ‘inward’ being, and in his poetical imagination, on which he had fed.

But to proceed. Coleridge’s own account is, that while Middleton, afterwards Bishop of Calcutta, remained at Pembroke, he “worked with him and was industrious, read hard, and obtained the prize for the Greek Ode,” &c. It has been stated, that he was locked up in his room to write this Ode; but this is not the fact. Many stories were afloat, and many exaggerations were circulated and believed, of his great want of attention to College discipline, and of perseverance in his studies, and every failure, or apparent failure, was attributed to these causes. Often has he repeated the following story of Middleton, and perhaps this story gave birth to the report.

They had agreed to read together in the evening, and were not to hold any conversation. Coleridge went to Pembroke and found Middleton intent on his book, having on a long pair of boots reaching to the knees, and beside him, on a chair, next to the one he was sitting on, a pistol. Coleridge had scarcely sat down before he was startled by the report of the pistol. “Did you see that?” said Middleton. “See what?” said Coleridge. “That rat I just sent into its hole again — did you feel the shot? It was to defend my legs,” continued Middleton, “I put on these boots. I am fighting with these rats for my books, which, without some prevention, I shall have devoured.”

There is an anecdote related of Coleridge while at College, and which I have heard him frequently repeat, when called upon to vouch for its truth. His fellow students had amused themselves, when he was in attendance at Lecture, by stealing a portion of the tail of his gown, and which they had repeated so frequently, as to shorten it to the length of a spencer. Crossing the quadrangle one day with these remains at his back, and his appearance not being in collegiate trim, the Master of Jesus’ College, who was ever kind to him, and overlooked all little inattentions to appearances, accosted him smartly on this occasion—”Mr. Coleridge! Mr. Coleridge! when will you get rid of that shameful gown?” Coleridge, turning his head, and casting his eyes over his shoulders, as if observing its length, or rather want of length, replied in as courteous a manner as words of such a character would permit, “Why, Sir, I think I’ve got rid of the greatest part of it already!”

Such were Coleridge’s peculiarities, which were sometimes construed into irregularities; but through his whole life, attracting notice by his splendid genius, he fell too often under the observation of men who busied themselves in magnifying small things, and minifying large ones. About this period, that Volcano, in which all the worst passions of men were collected, and which had been for some time emitting its black smoke, at length exploded and rent society asunder. The shock was felt throughout Europe; each party was over-excited, and their minds enthralled by a new slavery — the one shouting out the blessings of liberty and equality — the other execrating them, and prophesying the consequences that were to follow: —

”There’s no philosopher but sees

That rage and fear are one disease;

Tho’ that may burn, and this may freeze,

They’re both alike tho ague.”

‘Mad Ox’.

Combustibles composed of such ardent and evil spirits soon blaze out; yet the evil does not stop when the blaze has ceased; it leaves an excitement which is constantly disclosing itself in a restless morbid vanity, a craving for distinction, and a love of applause, in its way as dangerous as the thirst of gain, and the worship of the mammon of unrighteousness.

Alas! the circulation of such anecdotes as have been here related of Coleridge when at College, and his inattention to some of the minor forms of discipline, were sufficient for illnatured persons to transform into serious offences, particularly when coupled with the disappointed hopes of zealous friends. At this period, in which all men who were not senseless, or so indifferent as nearly to be senseless, particularly the young men of our Universities, all embraced a party, and arranged themselves under their different banners. When I now look around me, and see men who have risen to the highest offices of the different professions, in the church, the law, or in physic, formerly only known by the name of Citizen John, &c. &c., now my Lord so and so, or your Grace the —— , it seems like a dream, or at least a world of fleeting shadows. Sir James Mackintosh, in a letter to Mr. Sharp, states what he conceived to be the errors of both parties, so far as they arose from errors of judgment:

“The opposition mistook the moral character of the revolution; the ministers mistook its force: and both parties, from pique, resentment, pride, habit, and obstinacy, persisted in acting on these mistakes after they were disabused by experience. Mr. Burke alone avoided both these fatal mistakes. He saw both the malignity and the strength of the revolution. But where there was wisdom to discover the truth, there was not power, and perhaps there was not practical skill, to make that wisdom available for the salvation of Europe.—’Diis aliter visum!’ My fortune has been in some respects very singular. I have lately read the lives and private correspondence of some of the most memorable men in different countries of Europe, who are lately dead. Klopstock, Kant, Lavater, Alfieri, they were all filled with joy and hope by the French revolution — they clung to it for a longer or a shorter time — they were compelled to relinquish their illusions. The disappointment of all was bitter, but it showed itself in various modes, according to the variety of their characters. The series of passions growing out of that disappointment, was the not very remote cause of the death of Lavater. In the midst of society, Alfieri buried himself in misanthropic solitude; and the shock, which awakened him from the dreams of enthusiasm, darkened and shortened his days. In the mean time the multitude, comprehending not only those who have neither ardour of sensibility, nor compass of understanding to give weight to their suffrage, but those also whom accident had not brought into close and perpetual contact with the events, were insensibly detached from the revolution; and, before they were well aware that they had quitted their old ‘position’, they found themselves at the antipodes.”

The excitement which this state of things produced might have been highly advantageous to some, and even quickened their intellectual powers, particularly those destined either for the bar or the senate, but certainly not those intended for the church.

The revolution and its consequences engrossed the thoughts of all men too much for the calmer pursuits of life; and the minds of the young especially were so absorbed by passing temporal events, as to leave but little time for the contemplation of the deeper and more serious affairs of futurity. However, Coleridge appears in his political opinions to have leaned too much to the side of democracy; but this was so prevalent and so much a fashion, particularly in those filled with enthusiasm, that it seemed a natural consequence in any young man possessing even ordinary intellect. Middleton, his friend, passed on without attaching himself to either party. His manners (as I have before noticed) were austere and sedate. He steadily persevered, without deviation, in his studies, though chance did not always favour him, nor crown him with the success he merited. He was a good and amiable man, and an affectionate friend; but early want of success in his academical exertions rendering him melancholy, this by sympathy was soon imparted to his friend. After Middleton’s departure, the keen desire which Coleridge previously felt for the possession of honours abated, and he became indifferent to them — he might at this time have been idle, but never vicious. The men who often appear to be the gayest and lightest of heart, are too frequently melancholic; and it is a well-known fact, that the best comic actors are the greatest sufferers from this malady, as if it seemed an essential qualification for that department of histrionic excellence, in which the greatest animal spirits are personated and successfully imitated. Coleridge, at this period, delighted in boyish tricks, which others were to execute. I remember a fellow-collegiate recalling to his memory an exploit of which he was the planner, and a late Lord Chancellor the executor. It was this: a train of gunpowder was to be laid on two of the neatly shaven lawns of St. John’s and Trinity Colleges, in such a manner, that, when set on fire, the singed grass would exhibit the ominous words, Liberty and Equality, which, with able ladlike dexterity, was duly performed.

The writer of the College Reminiscences in the Gentleman’s Magazine, December, 1834, a first-form boy with Coleridge at Christ’s Hospital, was well acquainted with his habits, and speaks of his having gained the gold medal in his freshman’s year for the Greek Ode, but does not notice his having been locked up in his room for that purpose.

“In his second year he stood for the Craven scholarship — a university scholarship, for which undergraduates of any standing are entitled to become candidates. This was in the winter of 1792. Out of sixteen or eighteen competitors, a selection of four were to contend for the prize, and these four were Dr. Butler, late head-master of Shrewsbury, Dr. Keate, the late head-master of Eton, Dr. Bethell, the present Bishop of Bangor, and Coleridge. Dr. Butler was the successful candidate.”

Coleridge always spoke of this decision as having been in every way just, and due to Butler’s merit as a clever and industrious scholar.

“But pause a moment,” says this writer, “in Coleridge’s History, and think of him at this period! Butler! Keate Bethell! and Coleridge! How different the career of each in future life! O Coleridge, through what strange paths did the meteor of genius lead thee! Pause a moment, ye distinguished men! and deem it not the least bright spot in your happier career, that you and Coleridge were once rivals, and for a moment running abreast in the pursuit of honour. I believe that his disappointment at this crisis damped his ardour. Unfortunately, at that period, there was no classical tripos; so that, if a person did not obtain the classical medal, he was thrown back among the totally undistinguished; and it was not allowable to become a candidate for the classical medal, unless you had taken a respectable degree in mathematics. Coleridge had not the least taste for these, and here his case was hopeless; so that he despaired of a Fellowship, and gave up what in his heart he coveted — college honours and a college life. He had seen Middleton (late Bishop of Calcutta) quit Pembroke under similar circumstances. Not quite similar, because Middleton had studied mathematics so as to take a respectable degree, and to enable him to try for the medal; but he failed, and therefore all hopes failed of a Fellowship — most fortunately, as it proved in after-life, for Middleton, though he mourned at the time most deeply, and exclaimed—’I am Middleton, which is another name for misfortune!’

’There is a Providence which shapes our ends,

Rough-hew them how we will.’

That which Middleton deemed a misfortune drew him from the cobwebs of a college library to the active energies of a useful and honoured life.”

If, as Shakespeare observes, “there be a providence which shapes our ends,” such words as “fortunate” or “unfortunate,” in their customary use, will be found, on closer attention, and deeper thought, worthless and full of error. We have each our part allotted to us in the great drama of life.

But to return to Coleridge.

”When he quitted college, which he did before he had taken a degree,

in a moment of mad-cap caprice, and in an inauspicious hour!

’When,’ as Coleridge says, ‘I left the friendly cloisters, and the

happy grove of quiet, ever-honoured Jesus’ College, Cambridge.’

Short, but deep and heartfelt reminiscence! In a Literary Life of himself, this short memorial is all that Coleridge gives of his happy days at college. Say not that he did not obtain, and did not wish to obtain, classical honours! He did obtain them, and was eagerly ambitious of them; but he did not bend to that discipline which was to qualify him for the whole course. He was very studious, but his reading was desultory and capricious. He took little exercise merely for the sake of exercise; but he was ready at any time to unbend his mind in conversation; and, for the sake of this, his room (the ground-floor room on the right hand of the staircase facing the great gate,) was a constant rendezvous of conversation-loving friends; I will not call them loungers, for they did not call to kill time, but to enjoy it. What evenings have I spent in those rooms! What little suppers, or ‘sizings’, as they were called, have I enjoyed; when Æschylus, and Plato, and Thucydides were pushed aside, with a pile of lexicons, &c. to discuss the pamphlets of the day. Ever and anon, a pamphlet issued from the pen of Burke. There was no need of having the book before us. Coleridge had read it in the morning, and in the evening he would repeat whole pages verbatim.”

Then came another disturbing cause, which altered the course of his path in life, and this was Frend’s trial.

“During it,” to resume the quotation, “pamphlets swarmed from the press. Coleridge had read them all; and in the evening, with our negus, we had them ‘vivâ voce’ gloriously.”

Coleridge has recorded that he was a Socinian till twenty-five. Be not startled, courteous reader! nor ye who knew him only in his later life, if the impetuous zeal and ardour of his mind in early youth led him somewhat wide of those fixed principles which he adopted in riper years.

To quote his own words, written soon after he left college, and addressed to the late Rev. George Coleridge,

”If aught of error or intemperate truth

Should meet thine ear, think thou that riper age

Will calm it down, and let thy love forgive it!”

There is one incident very characteristic of him, which took place during this trial. The trial was observed by Coleridge, to be going against Frend, when some observation or speech was made in his favour; a dying hope thrown out as it appeared to Coleridge who, in the midst of the Senate, whilst sitting on one of the benches, extended his hands and clapped them. The Proctor in a loud voice demanded who had committed this indecorum. Silence ensued. The Proctor in an elevated tone, said to a young man sitting near Coleridge, “‘Twas you, sir!” The reply was as prompt as the accusation; for, immediately holding out the stump of his right arm, it appeared that he had lost his hand,—”I would, sir,” said he, “that I had the power.” — That no innocent person should incur blame, Coleridge went directly afterwards to the Proctor, who told him that he saw him clap his hands, but fixed on this person who he knew had not the power. “You have had,” said he, “a narrow escape.”

The opinions of youth are often treated too seriously. The matter of most importance to ascertain when they need correction, is, whether in these opinions they are ‘sincere’; at all events, the outbursts of youth are not to be visited as veteran decisions; and when they differ from ‘received’ opinions, the advice offered should be tempered with kindliness of feeling and sympathy even with their failings. Unfortunately for Coleridge, however, he was to be exempted from those allowances made for others, and was most painfully neglected by those who ought to have sympathized with, and supported him; he was left “to chase chance-started friendships.”

Coleridge possessed a mind remarkably sensitive, so much so, as at times to divest him of that mental courage so necessary in a world full of vicissitude and painful trial; and this deficiency, though of short duration, was occasionally observed in early life. At the departure of Middleton, to whom he had always looked up, whose success he had considered morally certain, and whose unexpected failure was therefore the more painful to his feelings, he became desponding, and, in addition, vexed and fretted by the college debts, he was overtaken by that inward grief, the product of fear, which he, in after life, so painfully described in his Ode to Dejection: —

”A grief without a pang, void, dark, and drear,

A stifled, drowsy, unimpassioned grief,

Which finds no natural outlet, no relief,

In word, or sigh, or tear.”

Such “viper thoughts” did at this time coil around his mind, and were for him “Reality’s dark Dream.” In this state of mind he suddenly left Cambridge for London, and strolled about the streets till night came on, and then rested himself on the steps of a house in Chancery Lane, in a reverie of tumultuous feelings, speculating on the future. In this situation, overwhelmed with his own painful thoughts, and in misery himself, he had now to contend with the misery of others — for he was accosted by various kinds of beggars importuning him for money, and forcing on him their real or pretended sorrows. To these applicants he emptied his pockets of his remaining cash. Walking along Chancery Lane in the morning, he noticed a bill posted on the wall, “Wanted a few smart lads for the 15th, Elliot’s Light Dragoons;” — he paused a moment, and said to himself,

“Well, I have had all my life a violent antipathy to soldiers and horses, the sooner I can cure myself of these absurd prejudices the better, and I will enlist in this regiment.”

Forthwith he went as directed to the place of enlistment. On his arrival, he was accosted by an old sergeant, with a remarkably benevolent countenance, to whom he stated his wish. The old man looking at him attentively, asked him if he had been in bed? On being answered in the negative, he desired him to take his, made him breakfast, and bade him rest himself awhile, which he did. This feeling sergeant finding him refreshed in his body, but still suffering apparently from melancholy, in kind words begged him to be of good cheer, and consider well the step he was about to take; gave him half a guinea, which he was to repay at his convenience, with a desire at the same time that he would go to the play, and shake off his melancholy, and not return to him. The first part of the advice Coleridge attended to, but returned after the play to the quarters he had left. At the sight of him, this kindhearted man burst into tears—”Then it must be so,” said he. This sudden and unexpected sympathy from an entire stranger deeply affected Coleridge, and nearly shook his resolution; still considering the die was cast, and that he could not in honour even to the sergeant, without implicating him, retreat, he preserved his secret, and after a short chat, they retired to rest.

In the morning, the sergeant, not unmindful of his duty to his sovereign, mustered his recruits, and Coleridge, with his new comrades, was marched to Reading. On his arrival at the quarters of the regiment, the general of the district inspected the recruits, and looking hard at Coleridge with a military air, enquired, “What’s your name, sir?” “Comberbach,” (the name he had assumed.) “What do you come here for, sir?” as if doubting whether he had any business there. “Sir,” said Coleridge, “for what most other persons come, to be made a soldier.” “Do you think,” said the general, “you can run a Frenchman through the body?” “I do not know,” replied Coleridge, “as I never tried, but I’ll let a Frenchman run me through the body before I’ll run away.” “That will do,” said the general; and Coleridge was turned into the ranks.

The same amiable and benevolent conduct which was so interwoven in his nature, soon made him friends, and his new comrades vied with each other in their endeavours to be useful to him; and being, as before described, rather helpless, he required the assistance of his fellow-soldiers. They cleaned his horse, attended particularly to its heels, and to the accoutrements. At this time he frequently complained of a pain at the pit of his stomach, accompanied with sickness, which totally prevented his stooping, and in consequence he could never arrive at the power of bending his body to rub the heels of his horse, which alone was sufficient to make him dependent on his comrades; but it should be observed that he on his part was ever willing to assist them by being their amanuensis when one was required, and wrote all their letters to their sweethearts and wives.

It appears that he never advanced beyond the awkward squad, and that the drill-sergeant had little hope of his progress from the necessary warnings he gave to the rest of the troop, even to this same squad to which he belonged; and, though his awkward manoeuvres were well understood, the sergeant would vociferously exclaim, “Take care of that Comberbach, take care of him, for he will ride over you,” and other such complimentary warnings. From the notice that one of his officers took of him, he excited, for a short time, the jealousy of some of his companions. When in the street, he walked behind this officer as an orderly, but when out of town they walked abreast, and his comrades not understanding how a soldier in the awkward squad merited this distinction, thought it a neglect of themselves, which, for the time, produced some additional discomfort to Coleridge.

I believe this officer to have been Capt. Ogle, who I think visited him in after life at Highgate. It seems that his attention had been drawn to Coleridge in consequence of discovering the following sentence in the stables, written in pencil, “Eheu! quam infortunii miserrimum est fuisse felicem!” but his more immediate discovery arose from a young man who had left Cambridge for the army, and in his road through Reading to join his regiment, met Coleridge in the street in his Dragoon’s dress, who was about to pass him, but, said he,

“No, Coleridge, this will not do, we have been seeking you these six months; I must and will converse with you, and have no hesitation in declaring that I shall immediately inform your friends that I have found you.”

This led to Coleridge’s return to Cambridge. The same story is also related and made the ground work of some scene in a novel, without the names, by his early friend, Charles Lloyd — he who was included by Canning in the Anti-jacobin with Coleridge, Mr. Southey, and Lamb. He returned to Cambridge, but did not long remain there; and quitted it without taking a degree.

It has been observed, that men of genius move in orbits of their own; and seem deprived of that free will which permits the mere man of talent steadily to pursue the beaten path. Coleridge had very early pictured to himself many of the advantages of mechanical employment, its immunities and exemptions from the sufferings consequent on the laborious exercise of ‘thought’; but yet he never shrank from the task apparently allotted to him; he was made to soar and not to creep; even as a young man, his acquirements were far beyond the age in which he lived. With his amiable qualities, and early love of domestic life, he would have been well content to tread an humbler path, but it was otherwise ordained!

However excellent for the many, the system adopted by our universities was ill suited for a mind like Coleridge’s, and there were some who felt that a College routine was not the kind of education which would best evolve, cultivate, and bring into training powers so ‘unique’. It has been repeated, ‘ad nauseam’, that great minds will not descend to the industrious accumulation of those acquirements best suited to fit them for independence. To say that Coleridge would not ‘condescend’ would be a calumny, — nay, when his health permitted, he would drudge and work more laboriously at some of the mechanical parts of literature, than any man I ever knew. To speak detractingly of great and good men is frequently the result of malice combined with egotism. Though it would be injustice not to admit that he has had warm admirers and deeply affectionate friends, it is much to be regretted that there have been persons who have strangely maligned Coleridge, and who have attributed to him vices of which he was innocent. Had these vices existed, they would not have found any unfair extenuation in this memoir, nor would they have been passed over without notice. In answer to calumnies at that time in circulation, (and with sorrow and just indignation it is added that these reports originated with some who called themselves his friends; but, alas! most false and hypocritical!) the following minute from his notes is quoted:

“My academic adventures and indiscretions must have seemed unpardonable sins,” that is, as they were related by the tale-bearers and gossips of the day. “I mention these,” adds he, “because the only immoralities that can without the grossest slander be laid to my charge, were all comprised within the space of the last two years of my College life. As I went to Cambridge innocent, so I dare affirm, from the first week of my acquaintance with Robert Southey to this hour, Southey himself cannot stand more clear of all intention at violations of the moral law: but, in fact, even during my career at Jesus, the heaviest of my offences consisted in the folly of assuming the show of vices, from which I was all but free, and which in the comparatively few exceptions left loathing and self-disgust on my mind. Were I, indeed, to fix on that week of my existence, in which my moral being would have presented to a pitying guardian angel the most interesting spectacle, it would be that very week in London, in which I was believed by my family to have abandoned myself to debauchery of all kinds, and ‘thus’ to have involved myself in disreputable pecuniary embarrassments. God knows, so intense was my mental anguish, that during the whole time I was physically incapable even of a ‘desire’. My whole body seemed stunned and insensate, from excess of inward suffering — my debts were the ‘cause’, not the effect; but that I know there can be no substitute for a father, I should say, — surely, surely, the innocence of my whole ‘pre’ and ‘post’ academic life, my early distinction, and even the fact, that my Cambridge extravagations did not lose me, nor cool for me, the esteem and regard of a single fellow collegiate, might have obtained an amnesty from worse transgressions.”

Coleridge, who had desponded at the fate of Middleton, after the unsuccessful attempts he made to obtain a fellowship, lost all hope of procuring an income from the college, and as, through the instrumentality of Frend, with whom an intimacy had now taken place, he had been converted to what in these days is called Unitarianism, he was too conscientious to take orders and enter the Established Church. These circumstances opened to him new views, and effected a complete change in his course of life, and thus his former objects and plans were set aside. The friendship between Coleridge and Southey having greatly increased, and still continuing to increase, and Coleridge being easily led by the affection of those he loved, for which he had a constant yearning, determined to follow literature in future life as a profession, that appearing to him the only source of obtaining an honourable livelihood.

Here there was no “mad caprice,” but he calmly decided to leave Cambridge and join Southey in his plans for the future, and commence the profession on which they had mutually agreed. He went to Oxford to visit Mr. Southey, and thence to Wales, and thence to Bristol (Mr. Southey’s native place), at which city they conjointly commenced their career in authorship, and for the first few months shared the same room.

The times were still tumultuous; for although the great hurricane of the revolution ceased abroad, yet, like mighty waters that had been once agitated by a storm, tranquillity was not restored, nor was there any prospect of an immediate calm. The ‘Habeas Corpus’ act was at this time suspended, and the minister of that day, Mr. Pitt, had struck the panic of property among the wealthy and affluent. During the time of danger, when surrounded by government emissaries, these youthful poets gave lectures on politics, and that with impunity, to crowded audiences. Coleridge met with one interruption only, and that from a hired partizan who had assayed a disturbance at one of these lectures, in order to implicate him and his party, and by this means to effect, if possible, their incarceration. The gentleman who mentioned this in the presence of Coleridge (when with me at Highgate) said — He (Coleridge) had commenced his lecture when this intended disturber of the peace was heard uttering noisy words at the foot of the stairs, where the fee of admission into the room was to be paid. The receiver of the money on the alert ascended the stairs and informed Coleridge of the man’s insolence and his determination not to pay for his admission. In the midst of the lecture Coleridge stopped, and said loud enough to be heard by the individual, that before the intruder “kicked up a dust, he would surely down with the dust,” and desired the man to admit him. The individual had not long been in the room before he began hissing, this was succeeded by loud claps from Coleridge’s party, which continued for a few minutes, but at last they grew so warm that they began to vociferate, “Turn him out!”—”Turn him out!”—”Put him out of the window!” Fearing the consequences of this increasing clamour, the lecturer was compelled to request silence, and addressed them as follows: “Gentlemen, ours is the cause of liberty! that gentleman has as much right to hiss as you to clap, and you to clap as he to hiss; but what is to be expected, gentlemen, when the cool waters of reason come in contact with red hot aristocracy but a hiss?” When the loud laugh ended, silence ensued, and the rebuke was treasured and related.

The terms aristocrat, democrat, and jacobin, were the fashionable opprobrious epithets of the day; and well do I remember, the man who had earned by his politics the prefix of jacobin to his name, was completely shunned in society, whatever might be his moral character: but, as might be expected, this was merely ephemeral, when parties ran high, and were guided and governed more by impulses and passion than by principle.

”Truth I pursued, as Fancy sketch’d the way,

And wiser men than I went worse astray.”

Men of the greatest sense and judgment possessing good hearts are, on the review of the past, more disposed to think ‘well’ of the young men of that day, who, from not exercising their reason, were carried into the vortex of the revolution. Much has been written on the proposed scheme of settling in the wilds of America; — the spot chosen was Susquehannah, — this spot Coleridge has often said was selected, on account of the name being pretty and metrical, indeed he could never forbear a smile when relating the story. This daydream, as he termed it, (for such it really was) the detail of which as related by him always gave it rather a sportive than a serious character, was a subject on which it is doubtful whether he or Mr. Southey were really in earnest at the time it was planned. The dream was, as is stated in the “Friend,” that the little society to be formed was, in its second generation, to have combined the innocence of the patriarchal age with the knowledge and general refinements of European culture, and “I dreamt,” says he, “that in the sober evening of my life I should behold colonies of independence in the undivided dale of industry.” Strange fancies! ‘and as vain as strange’! This scheme, sportive, however, as it might be, had its admirers; and there are persons now to be found, who are desirous of realizing these visions, the past-time in thought and fancy of these young poets — then about 23 years of age. During this dream, and about this time, Southey and Coleridge married two sisters of the name of Fricker, and a third sister was married to an Utopian poet as he has been called, of the name of Lovel, whose poems were published with Mr. Southey’s. They were, however, too wise to leave Bristol for America, for the purpose of establishing a genuine system of property — a Pantisocracy, which was to be their form of government — and under which they were to realize all their new dreams of happiness. Marriage, at all events, seems to have sobered them down, and the vision vanished.

Chimerical as it appeared, the purveyors of amusement for the reading public were thus furnished with occupation, and some small pecuniary gain, while it exercised the wit of certain anti-Jacobin writers of the day, and raised them into notice. Canning had the faculty of satire to an extraordinary degree, and also that common sense tact, which made his services at times so very useful to his country; his powers seemed in their full meridian of splendour when an argument or new doctrine permitted him rapidly to run down into its consequence, and then brilliantly and wittily to skew its defects. In this he eminently excelled. The beauties of the anti-Jacobin are replete with his satire. He never attempted a display of depth, but his dry sarcasm left a sting which those he intended to wound carried off ‘in pain and mortfication’. This scheme of Pantisocracy excited a smile among the kindhearted and thinking part of mankind; but, among the vain and restless ignorant would-be-political economists, it met with more attention; and they, with their microscopic eyes, fancied they beheld in it what was not quite so visible to the common observer. Though the plan was soon abandoned, it was thought sufficient for the subject of a lecture, and afforded some mirth when the minds of the parties concerned in it arrived at manhood. Coleridge saw, soon after it was broached, that no scheme of colonizing that was not based on religion could be permanent. — Left to the disturbing forces of the human passions to which it would be exposed, it would soon perish; for all government to be permanent should be influenced by reason, and guided by religion.

In the year 1795 Coleridge, residing then at Clevedon, a short distance from Bristol, published his first prose work, with some additions by Mr. Southey, the “Conciones ad Populum.” In a short preface he observes,

“The two following addresses were delivered in the month of February, 1795, and were followed by six others in defence of natural and revealed religion. ‘There is a time to keep silence,’ saith King Solomon; — but when I proceeded to the first verse of the fourth chapter of the Ecclesiastes, ‘and considered all the oppressions that are done under the sun: and behold the tears of such as were oppressed, and they had no comforter; and on the side of their oppressors there was power,’ I concluded this was not the ‘time to keep silence;’ for truth should be spoken at all times, but more especially at those times when to speak truth is dangerous.”

In these addresses he showed that the example of France was a warning to Great Britain; but, because he did not hold opinions equally violent with the Jacobin party of that day, he was put down as an anti-Jacobin; for, he says, “the annals of the French revolution have been recorded in letters of blood, that the knowledge of the few cannot counteract the ignorance of the many; that the light of philosophy, when it is confined to a small minority, points out its possessors as the victims, rather than the illuminators of the multitude. The patriots of France either hastened into the dangerous and gigantic error of making certain evils the means of contingent good, or were sacrificed by the mob, with whose prejudices and ferocity their unbending virtue forbade them to assimilate. Like Samson, the people were strong, like Samson, they were also blind:” and he admonishes them at the end of the third lecture to do all things in the spirit of love.

“It is worthy of remark,” says he, in a MS. note, “that we may possess a thing in such fulness as to prevent its possession from being an object of distinct consciousness. Only as it lessens or dims, we reflect on it, and learn to value it. This is one main cause why young men of high and ardent minds find nothing repulsive in the doctrines of necessity, which, in after years, they (as I have) recoil from. Thus, too, the faces of friends dearly beloved become distinct in memory or dream only after long absence.” Of the work itself he says, “Except the two or three pages involving the doctrine of philosophical necessity and Unitarianism, I see little or nothing in these ‘outbursts’ of my ‘youthful’ zeal to ‘retract’, and with the exception of some flame-coloured epithets applied to persons, as to Mr. Pitt and others, or rather to personifications (for such they really were to ‘me’) as little to regret. Qualis ab initio [Greek: estaesae] S.T.C. When a rifacimento of the ‘Friend’ took place, at vol. ii. p. 240, he states his reasons for reprinting the lecture referred to, one of the series delivered at Bristol in the year 1794-95, because, says he, “This very lecture, vide p. 10, has been referred to in an infamous libel in proof of the author’s Jacobinism.”

When the mind of Coleridge was more matured he did not omit this truth, which has never been refuted, that the aristocratic system “had its golden side, for the noblest minds; but I

“should,” continues he, “act the part of a coward if I disguised my conviction that the errors of the aristocratic party were as gross, and far less excusable than those of the Jacobin. Instead of contenting themselves with opposing the real blessing of English law to the ‘splendid promises of untried theory’, too large a part of those who called themselves ‘anti-Jacobins’, did all in their power to suspend those blessings; and they furnished ‘new arguments to the advocates of innovation’, when they should have been answering ‘the old ones!’”

But, whatever were his opinions, they were founded on ‘principle’, and with the exception of the two above alluded to, he ought never to be accused of changing. Some years since, the late Charles Matthews, the comedian, (or rather, as Coleridge used to observe, “the comic poet acting his own poems,”) showed me an autograph letter from Mr. Wordsworth to Matthews’ brother, (who was at that time educating for the bar) and with whom he corresponded. In this letter he made the following observation, “Tomorrow I am going to Bristol to see those two extraordinary young men, Southey and Coleridge,” Mr. Wordsworth then residing at Allfoxden. They soon afterwards formed an intimacy, which continued (though not without some little interruption) during his life, as his “Biographia Literaria” and his will attest.

Mr. Coleridge’s next work was the “Watchman” in numbers — a miscellany to be published every eighth day. The first number appeared on the 5th of February, 1796. This work was a report of the state of the political atmosphere, to be interspersed with sketches of character and verse. It reached the 10th number, and was then dropped; the editor taking leave of his readers in the following address:

“This is the last number of the Watchman. Henceforward I shall cease to cry the state of the political atmosphere. While I express my gratitude to those friends who exerted themselves so liberally in the establishment of this miscellany, I may reasonably be expected to assign some reason for relinquishing it thus abruptly. The reason is short and satisfactory. The work does not pay its expences. Part of my subscribers have relinquished it because it did not contain sufficient original composition, and a still larger because it contained too much. I have endeavoured to do well; and it must be attributed to defect of ability, not of inclination or effort, if the words of the prophet be altogether applicable to me, ‘O watchman! thou hast watched in vain!’”

Mr. Coleridge has given us in the “Biographia Literaria” a very lively account of his opinions, adventures, and state of feeling during this canvass in quest of subscribers.

“Towards the close of the first year, that inauspicious hour,” (it was, indeed, and for several reasons an “inauspicious hour” for him,) “when I left the friendly cloisters, and the happy grove of quiet, ever-honoured Jesus’ College, Cambridge, to set on foot a periodical, entitled the ‘Watchman,’ that (according to the motto of the work) ‘all might know the truth, and that truth might make us free!’

“With a flaming prospectus ‘Knowledge is power,’ &c. and to cry the state of the political atmosphere and so forth, I set off on a tour to the north, from Bristol to Sheffield, for the purpose of procuring customers, preaching by the way in most great towns, as a hireless volunteer, in a blue coat and white waistcoat, that not a rag of the woman of Babylon might be seen on me; for I was at that time, though a Trinitarian (i.e. ad normam Platonis) in philosophy, yet a zealous Unitarian in religion; more accurately, I was a psilanthropist, one of those who believe our Lord to have been the real son of Joseph, and who lay the main stress on the resurrection rather than on the crucifixion. Oh! never can I remember those days with either shame or regret, for I was most sincere! most disinterested! My opinions were, indeed, in many and most important points erroneous, but my heart was single! Wealth, rank, life itself then seemed cheap to me, compared with the interests of (what I believe to be) the truth and the will of my Maker. I cannot even accuse myself of having been actuated by vanity; for, in the expansion of my enthusiasm, I did not think of myself at all.

My campaign commenced at Birmingham, and my first attack was on a rigid Calvinist, a tallow-chandler by trade. He was a tall dingy man, in whom length was so predominant over breadth, that he might almost have been borrowed for a foundry poker. O that face! a face, [Greek: kat’ emphasin!] I have it before me at this moment. The lank, black twine-like hair, pingui-nitescent, cut in a straight line, along the black stubble of his thin gunpowder eyebrows, that looked like a scorched aftermath from a last week’s shaving. His coat collar behind in perfect unison, both of colour and lustre, with the coarse, yet glib cordage that I suppose he called his hair, and which with a ‘bend’ inward at the nape of the neck, (the only approach to flexure in his whole figure) slunk in behind his waistcoat; while the countenance lank, dark, very ‘hard’, and with strong perpendicular furrows, gave me a dim notion of some one looking at me through a ‘used’ gridiron, all soot, grease, and iron! A person to whom one of my letters of recommendation had been addressed, was my introducer.

It was a ‘new event’ in my life, my first ‘stroke’ in the new business I had undertaken of an author; yes, and of an author on his own account. I would address,” says Coleridge, “an affectionate exhortation to the youthful literati on my own experience. It will be but short; for the beginning, middle, and end converge to one charge. NEVER PURSUE LITERATURE AS A TRADE. My companion,” says he, “after some imperfect sentences, and a multitude of hums and hahs, abandoned the cause to his client; and I commenced an harangue of half an hour to Phileleutheros, the tallow-chandler, varying my notes through the whole gamut of eloquence, from the ratiocinative to the declamatory, and, in the latter, from the pathetic to the indignant. My taper man of lights listened with perseverant and praiseworthy patience, though (as I was afterwards told, in complaining of certain gales that were not altogether ambrosial,) it was a melting day with him. And what, sir! (he said, after a short pause,) might the cost be? only FOURPENCE, (O! how I felt the anticlimax, the abysmal bathos of that FOURPENCE!) ‘only fourpence, sir, each number, to be published on every eighth day’. That comes to a deal of money at the end of a year; and how much did you say there was to be for the money? Thirty-two pages, sir! large octavo, closely printed. Thirty and two pages? Bless me, why except what I does in a family way on the sabbath, that’s more than I ever reads, sir! all the year round. I am as great a one as any man in Brummagem, sir! for liberty and truth, and all them sort of things, but as to this, (no offence, I hope, sir!) I must beg to be excused. So ended my first canvass.”

Much the same indifference was shewn him at Manchester, &c., but he adds:—”From this rememberable tour, I returned nearly a thousand names on the subscription list of the ‘Watchman;’ yet more than half convinced that prudence dictated the abandonment of the scheme; but for this very reason I persevered in it; for I was at that period of my life so completely hagridden by the fear of being influenced by selfish motives, that to know a mode of conduct to be the dictate of ‘prudence’, was a sort of presumptive proof to my feelings, that the contrary was the dictate of ‘duty’. Accordingly, I commenced the work, which was announced in London by long bills in letters larger than had ever been seen before, and which (I have been informed, for I did not see them myself) eclipsed the glories even of the lottery puffs; but, alas! the publication of the very first number was delayed beyond the day announced for its appearance. In the second number, an essay against fast days, with a most censurable application of a text from Isaiah, for its motto, lost me near five hundred of my subscribers at one blow.

In the two following numbers, I made enemies of all my Jacobin and democratic patrons; for, disgusted by their infidelity and their adoption of French morals, and French philosophy, and, perhaps, thinking that charity ought to begin nearest home, instead of abusing the government and the aristocrats chiefly or entirely, as had been expected of me, I levelled my attacks at ‘‘modern patriotism’,’ and even ventured to declare my belief, that whatever the motives of ministers might have been for the sedition (or as it was then the fashion to call them) the gagging bills, yet the bills themselves would produce an effect to be desired by all the true friends of freedom, as far they should contribute to deter men from openly declaiming on subjects, the ‘principles of which they had never bottomed’, and from ‘pleading ‘to’ the ‘poor and ignorant’, instead of pleading for them.’

At the same time I avowed my conviction, that national education, and a concurring spread of the gospel were the indispensable condition of any true political amelioration. Thus, by the time the seventh number was published, I had the mortification (but why should I say this, when, in truth, I cared too little for any thing that concerned my worldly interests, to be at all mortified about it?) of seeing the preceding numbers exposed in sundry old iron shops for a penny a piece. At the ninth number I dropped the work.” He never recovered the money of his London publisher, and but little from his subscribers, and as he goes on to say:—”Must have been thrown into jail by my printer, for a sum between eighty and ninety pounds, if the money had not been paid for me by a man, by no means affluent, a dear friend who attached himself to me from my first arrival at Bristol, who continued my friend with a fidelity unconquered by time, or even by my own apparent neglect; a friend from whom I never received an advice that was not gentle and affectionate.” (p. 177.)

Coleridge’s reputation from boyhood quietly increased, not through the favor, but the censure of reviewers. It was this which, contrary to their wishes, diffused his name as poet and philosopher. So long as there are readers to be gratified by calumny, there will always be found writers eager to furnish a supply; and he had other enemies, unacquainted with the critical profession, yet morbidly vain, and because disappointed in their literary hopes, no less malignant.

Alas! how painful it is to witness at times the operation of some of the human passions. — Should envy take the lead, her twin sisters, hatred and malice, follow as auxiliaries in her train, — and, in the struggles for ascendancy and extension of her power, she subverts those principles which might impede her path, and then speedily effects the destruction of all the kindly feelings most honourable to man.

Coleridge was conscientiously an opponent of the first revolutionary war, because he abhorred the principles; and it was part of his political creed, that whoever ceased

“to act as an ‘individual’ by making himself a member of any society not sanctioned by his government, forfeited the rights of a citizen.”

He was at that time “a vehement anti-ministerialist,” but, after the invasion of Switzerland, a more vehement anti-Gallican, and still more intensely an anti-Jacobin:

“I retired,” said he, “to a cottage at Stowey, and provided for my scanty maintenance by writing verses for a London Morning Paper. I saw plainly, that literature was not a profession by which I could expect to live; for ‘I could not disguise from myself’, that whatever my talents might or might not be in other respects, yet they were not of that ‘sort’ that ‘could enable me to become a popular writer’; and that whatever my opinions might be in themselves, they were almost equi-distant from all the three opposite parties, the Pittites, the Foxites, and the democrats. Of the unsaleable nature of my writings I had an amusing memento one morning from our servant girl. For happening to rise at an earlier hour than usual, I observed her putting an extravagant quantity of paper into the grate in order to light the fire, and mildly checked her for her wastefulness; La, Sir! (replied poor Nanny) why, it is only WATCHMEN.”

There was at last a pause, as each party seemed worn out; for, “the hand of Providence had disciplined ‘all’ Europe into sobriety, as men tame wild elephants by alternate blows and caresses: now, that Englishmen of all classes are restored to their old English notions and feelings, it will with difficulty be credited, how great an influence was at that time possessed and exerted by the spirit of secret defamation (the too constant attendant on party zeal!) during the restless interim, from 1793 to the commencement of the Addington administration, or the year before the truce of Amiens.”

In short, the exhaustion which had followed the great stimulus, disposed individuals to reconciliation. Both parties found themselves in the wrong, the one had mistaken the moral character of the revolution, and the other had miscalculated its physical resources. The experiment was made at the price of great, we may say, of almost humiliating sacrifices; and wise men foresaw that it would fail, at least, in its direct and ostensible object. Yet it was purchased cheaply, and realized an object of equal value, and, if possible, of more vital importance; for it brought about a national unanimity, unexampled in our history since the reign of Elizabeth; and Providence, never failing to do his part when men have done theirs, soon provided a common focus in the cause of Spain, which made us all once more Englishmen, by gratifying and correcting the predilections of each party. The sincere reverers of the throne felt the cause of loyalty ennobled by its alliance with that of freedom while the ‘honest’ zealots of the people could not but admit that freedom itself assumed a more winning form, humanized by loyalty, and ‘consecrated’ by ‘religious principle’.

During this calm and rest, and while the political fever was subsiding, Coleridge retired, as he informs us, “to a cottage in Somersetshire, at the foot of Quantock,” to devote himself to poetry, and to the study of ethics and psychology, to direct his thoughts and studies to the foundations of religion and morals.

“During my residence here,” he says, “I found myself all afloat; doubts rushed in; broke upon me ‘from the fountains of the great deep’,’ and ‘‘fell from the windows of Heaven’.’ The fontal truths of natural religion and the books of Revelation alike contributed to the flood; and it was long ere my ark touched on an Ararat, and rested. The idea (viz. the law evolved in the mind) of the Supreme Being appeared to me to be as necessarily implied in all particular modes of being, as the idea, of infinite space in all the geometrical figures by which space is limited.” He goes on to state at this period, about the latter end of the year 1796, “For a very long time I could not reconcile personality with infinity; and my head was with Spinosa, though my whole heart remained with Paul and John. Yet there had dawned upon me, even before I had met with the Critique of Pure Reason, a certain guiding light. If ‘the mere intellect’ could make no certain discovery of a holy and intelligent first cause, it might yet supply a demonstration that no legitimate argument could be drawn from the mere intellect ‘against’ its truth. ‘And what is this’ more than St. Paul’s assertion, that by wisdom (more properly translated by the powers of reasoning) no man ever arrived at the knowledge of God? Man asks what is wisdom? and whence comes it? In Job, chap. 28th, it is stated, ‘But to man he said, the fear of the Lord is wisdom for THEE! And to avoid evil, that is ‘thy’ understanding.’”

Such were his philosophical opinions before his final conversion to the whole truth in Christ. He was contending for principles, and diligently in search of truth for its own sake; — the one thing only permanent, and which carries with it its “own exceeding great reward.” Such was the state of his religious feelings and political opinions before his visit to Germany.

There is a general observation or experience he has recorded, not only so applicable to him at that time, but equally to each stage of his career in life, as not to be lost sight of by his friends and admirers, when assailed, as he was, by opposing party-spirits, which, like opposite currents, were contending for the mastery.

To avoid one party lest he should run on Scylla, he excited and provoked the jealousy and neglect of the other, who might have wrecked him on Charybdis. These were well-known dangers; but, as all navigable seas have their shoals often invisible; in order to avoid the effects of these jealousies, he selected from each party, men of experience to give him the soundings, and thus prevent him from wrecking his barque on rocks and quicksands; for, without such information, there could be little chance of escape.

In so doing, be lost his popularity with the many, though these were evils he might perhaps have conquered (but still speaking figuratively); his crew (his great inward aid) had differed too seriously among themselves, and were under the influence of conflicting feelings.

His whole mind was bent on the search after those truths that alone can determine fixed principles, and which not long after became to him an unerring guide. They were for him what the needle is to the mariner.

The observation alluded to is as follows:

“All my experience, from my first entrance into life to the present hour, is in favour of the warning maxim, that the man who opposes in toto ‘the political or religious zealots of his age, is safer from their obloquy than he who differs from them but in one or two points only’ IN DEGREE.”

This is a truth too important to pass lightly over, as in this consisted much of that feeling which prevented his being popular, (for unless an individual goes the whole length of the party who may choose to adopt him, he is discarded, and it is well for him if he is not persecuted and held up to public ridicule).

Zealots are usually superficial, but in herds they are found to support each other, and by their numbers assume an imposing air. — One weak man cannot stand, but three may. — By this mode of congregating, they are more easily managed by their leaders, whose impulses they obey, and to whom they become willing slaves. Men who sacrifice the many to the few, have been held out by almost every writer, where moral and political subjects have been introduced, as warnings to those liable to fall into their snares, but which have seemingly been put forth to little purpose. The necessity, therefore, for a continuation of instruction on such important moral truths, is still required; for, in the contending currents, so much mischief is often produced, that to divert these conflicting opinions, and to try to bring them into unity, Coleridge thought it a duty to employ his strength of intellect; he hoped to preserve a principle which he deemed so useful to mankind.

The foot of Quantock was to Coleridge a memorable spot; here his studies were serious and deep; protected by one of the kindest of friends, and stimulated by the society also of a brother poet, whose lays seemed to have inspired his song, and also to have chimed in with it; for although it has been shewn that his poetic genius first dawned in his 16th year, yet after he left College, and during his residence at this place, it seemed suddenly to have arrived at poetic manhood, and to have reached this developement as early as his 25th year. In his more serious studies he had greatly advanced, and had already planned and stored up much for his future life. It will often be repeated, but not too often for a society so full of sciolists and disbelievers, — men who are so self-satisfied as not to require teaching, — that Coleridge never was an idle man; and that, if nothing else remained, the progress he made in intellectual acquirements during his residence at Stowey and his short stay in Germany, might be instanced. Before he quitted this country to embark in fresh studies we have his own statement:

“I became convinced, that religion, as both the cornerstone and the keystone of morality, must have a ‘moral’ origin; so far, at least, that the evidence of its doctrines could not, like the truths of abstract science, be ‘wholly’ independent of the will.

It was therefore to be expected, that its ‘fundamental’ truth would be such as MIGHT be denied, though only by the fool, and even by the fool from madness of ‘heart’ alone!

The question then concerning our faith in the existence of a God, not only as the ground of the universe by his essence, but by his wisdom and holy will as its maker and judge, appeared to stand thus: the sciential reason, the objects of wit are purely theoretical, remains neutral, as long as its name and semblance are not usurped by the opponents of the doctrine; but it ‘then’ becomes an effective ally by exposing the false show of demonstration, or by evincing the equal demonstrability of the contrary from premises equally logical. The ‘understanding’, meantime suggests, the analogy of ‘experience’ facilitates, the belief. Nature excites and recalls it, as by a perpetual revelation. Our feelings almost necessitate it; and the law of conscience peremptorily commands it. The arguments that all apply to, are in its favor; and there is nothing against it, but its own sublimity.

It could not be intellectually more evident without becoming morally less effective; without counteracting its own end by sacrificing the ‘life’ of faith to the cold mechanism of a worthless, because compulsory assent. The belief of a God and a future state (if a passive acquiescence may be flattered with the name of ‘belief’) does not, indeed, always beget a good heart; but a good heart so naturally begets the belief, that the very few exceptions must be regarded as strange anomalies from strange and unfortunate circumstances.

From these premises I proceeded to draw the following conclusions, — first, that having once fully admitted the existence of an infinite yet selfconscious Creator, we are not allowed to ground the irrationality of any other article of faith on arguments which would equally prove ‘that’ to be irrational, which we had allowed to be ‘real’. Secondly, that whatever is deducible from the admission of a ‘self-comprehending’ and ‘creative’ spirit, may be legitimately used in proof of the ‘possibility’ of any further mystery concerning the Divine Nature.

“Possibilitatem mysteriorum (Trinitatis, &c.) contra insultus infidelium et hereticorum a contradictionibus vindico; haud quidem veritatem, quæ revelatione sola stabiliri possit;” says Leibnitz, in a letter to his duke. He then adds the following just and important remark. “In vain will tradition or texts of Scripture be adduced in support of a doctrine, ‘donec clava impossibilitatis et contradictionis e manibus horum Herculum extorta fuerit.’ For the heretic will still reply, that texts, the literal sense of which is not so much above as directly against all reason, must be understood figuratively, as Herod is a Fox, &c.

These principles,” says he, “I held philosophically, while in respect of revealed religion, I remained a zealous Unitarian. I considered the idea of a Trinity a fair scholastic inference from the being of God, as a creative intelligence; and that it was therefore entitled to the rank of an esoteric doctrine of natural religion: but seeing in the same no practical or moral bearing, I confined it to the schools of philosophy. The admission of the Logos, as hypostasized (i.e. neither a mere attribute nor a personification), in no respect removed my doubts concerning the incarnation and the redemption by the cross; which I could neither reconcile in ‘reason’ with the impassiveness of the Divine Being, nor in my moral feelings with the sacred distinction between things and persons, the vicarious payment of a debt and the vicarious expiation of guilt.

A more thorough revolution in my philosophic principles, and a deeper insight into my own heart were yet wanting. Nevertheless, I cannot doubt, that the difference of my metaphysical notions from those of Unitarians in general ‘contributed’ to my final reconversion to the ‘whole truth’ in ‘Christ;’ even as according to his own confession the books of certain Platonic philosophers (Libri quorundam Platonicorum) commenced the rescue of St. Augustine’s faith from the same error, aggravated by the far darker accompaniment of the Manichean heresy.”

Perhaps it is right also to state, that no small share of his final reconversion was attributable to that zeal and powerful genius, and to his great desire that others should become sharers in his own acquirements, which he was so desirous to communicate. During his residence at the foot of Quantock, his thoughts and studies were not only directed to an enquiry into the great truths of religion, but, while he stayed at Stowey, he was in the habit of preaching often at the Unitarian Chapel at Taunton, and was greatly respected by all the better and educated classes in the neighbourhood.

He spoke of Stowey with warmth and affection to the latest hours of his life. Here, as before mentioned, dwelt his friend Mr. Thomas Poole — the friend (justly so termed) to whom he alludes in his beautiful dedicatory poem to his brother the Rev. George Coleridge, and in which, when referring to himself, he says,

”To me the Eternal Wisdom hath dispensed

A different fortune and more different mind —

Me from the spot where first I sprang to light

Too soon transplanted, ere my soul had fix’d

Its first domestic loves; and hence through life

Chasing chance-started friendships. A brief while

Some have preserved me from life’s pelting ills;

But, like a tree with leaves of feeble stem,

If the clouds lasted, and a sudden breeze

Ruffled the boughs, they on my head at once

Dropp’d the collected shower; and some most false,

False and fair foliaged as the Manchineel,

Have tempted me to slumber in their shade

E’en mid the storm; then breathing subtlest damps,

Mix’d their own venom with the rain from Heaven,

That I woke poison’d! But, all praise to Him

Who gives us all things, more have yielded me

Permanent shelter; and beside one friend,

Beneath the impervious covert of one oak,

I’ve raised a lowly shed, and know the names

Of husband and of father; not unhearing

Of that divine and nightly-whispering voice,

Which from my childhood to maturer years

Spake to me of predestinated wreaths,

Bright with no fading colours!”

These beautiful and affecting lines to his brother are dated May 26th, 1797, Nether Stowey, Somerset. In his will, dated Highgate, July 2nd, 1830, he again refers to this friend, and directs his executor to present a plain gold mourning ring to Thomas Poole, Esq., of Nether Stowey.

“The Dedicatory Poem to my ‘Juvenile Poems,’ and my ‘Fears in Solitude,’ render it unnecessary to say more than what I then, in my early manhood, thought and felt, I now, a gray-headed man, still think and feel.”

In this volume, dedicated to his brother, are to be found several poems in early youth and upwards, none of later date than 1796.

The “Ode,” he says, “on the Departing Year, was written on the 24th, 25th, and 26th of December, 1796, and published separately on the last day of that year. ‘The Religious Musings’ were written as early as Christmas 1794.”

He then was about to enter his 23rd year. The preface to this volume is a key to his opinions and feelings at that time, and which the foregoing part of this memoir is also intended to illustrate.

“Compositions resembling those of the present volume are not unfrequently condemned for their querulous egotism. But egotism is to be condemned only when it offends against time and place, as in a history or epic poem. To censure it in a monody or sonnet is almost as absurd as to dislike a circle for being round. Why then write sonnets or monodies? Because they give me pleasure when, perhaps, nothing else could. After the more violent emotions of sorrow, the mind demands amusement, and can find it in employment alone; but full of its late sufferings, it can endure no employment not in some measure connected with them. Forcibly to turn away our attention to general subjects is a painful and most often an unavailing effort.

’But O! how grateful to a wounded heart

The tale of misery to impart

From others’ eyes bid artless sorrows flow,

And raise esteem upon the base of woe.’

(Shaw.)

The communicativeness of our nature leads us to describe our own sorrows; in the endeavour to describe them, intellectual activity is exerted; and from intellectual activity there results a pleasure, which is gradually associated, and mingles as a corrective, with the painful subject of the description. ‘True,’ (it may be answered) ‘but how are the PUBLIC interested in your sorrows or your description’?’ We are for ever attributing personal unities to imaginary aggregates. — What is the PUBLIC, but a term for a number of scattered individuals? Of whom as many will be interested in these sorrows, as have experienced the same or similar.

’Holy be the lay

Which mourning soothes the mourner on his way.’

If I could judge of others by myself, I should not hesitate to affirm, that the most interesting passages in our most interesting poems are those in which the author developes his own feelings. The sweet voice of Cona never sounds so sweetly, as when it speaks of itself; and I should almost suspect that man of an unkindly heart, who could read the opening of the third book of ‘Paradise Lost’ without peculiar emotion. By a law of nature, he, who labours under a strong feeling, is impelled to seek for sympathy; but a poet’s feelings are all strong. — Quicquid amat valde amat. — Akenside therefore speaks with philosophical accuracy when he classes love and poetry as producing the same effects:

’Love and the wish of poets when their tongue

Would teach to others’ bosoms, what so charms

Their own.’

‘Pleasures of Imagination’.

There is one species of egotism which is truly disgusting; not that which leads to communicate our feelings to others, but that which would reduce the feelings of others; to an identity with our own.