Biographia Epistolaris Part 24

I stood on Brocken's sovran height, and saw Woods crowding upon woods, hills over hills; A surging scene, and only limited By the blue distance. Wearily my way Downward I dragged, through fir groves evermore Where bright green moss moved in sepulchral forms, Speckled with sunshine; and, but seldom heard, The sweet bird's song become a hollow sound; And the gale murmuring indivisibly, Reserved its solemn murmur, more distinct From many a note of many a waterbreak, And the brook's chatter; on whose islet stones The dingy kidling, with its tinkling bell, Leapt frolicksome, or old romantic goat Sat, his white beard slow waving. I moved on With low and languid thought, for I had found That grandest scenes have but imperfect charms Where the eye vainly wanders, nor beholds One spot with which the heart a.s.sociates Holy remembrances of child or friend, Or gentle maid, our first and early love, Or father, or the venerable name Of our adored country. O thou Queen, Thou delegated Deity of Earth, O "dear, dear" England! how my longing eyes Turned westward, shaping in the steady clouds Thy sands and high white cliffs! Sweet native isle, This heart was proud, yea, mine eyes swam with tears To think of thee; and all the goodly view From sovran Brocken, woods and woody hills Floated away, like a departing dream, Feeble and dim. Stranger, these impulses Blame thou not lightly; nor will I profane, With hasty judgment or injurious doubt, That man's sublimer spirit, who can feel That G.o.d is every where, the G.o.d who framed Mankind to be one mighty brotherhood, Himself our Father, and the world our home.

We left Elbingerode, May 14th, and travelled for half a mile through a wild country, of bleak stony hills by our side, with several caverns, or rather mouths of caverns, visible in their b.r.e.a.s.t.s; and now we came to Rubilland,--Oh, it was a lovely scene! Our road was at the foot of low hills, and here were a few neat cottages; behind us were high hills, with a few scattered firs, and flocks of goats visible on the topmost crags. On our right hand a fine shallow river about thirty yards broad, and beyond the river a crescent hill clothed with firs, that rise one above another, like spectators in an amphitheatre. We advanced a little farther,--the crags behind us ceased to be visible, and now the whole was one and complete. All that could be seen was the cottages at the foot of the low green hill, (cottages embosomed in fruit trees in blossom,) the stream, and the little crescent of firs. I lingered here, and unwillingly lost sight of it for a little while. The firs were so beautiful, and the ma.s.ses of rocks, walls, and obelisks started up among them in the very places where, if they had not been, a painter with a poet's feeling would have imagined them. Crossed the river (its name Bodi), entered the sweet wood, and came to the mouth of the cavern, with the man who shews it. It was a huge place, eight hundred feet in length, and more in depth, of many different apartments; and the only thing that distinguished it from other caverns was, that the guide, who was really a character, had the talent of finding out and seeing uncommon likenesses in the different forms of the stalact.i.te. Here was a nun;--this was Solomon's temple;--that was a Roman Catholic Chapel;--here was a lion's claw, nothing but flesh and blood wanting to make it completely a claw! This was an organ, and had all the notes of an organ, etc. etc. etc.; but, alas! with all possible straining of my eyes, ears, and imagination, I could see nothing but common stalact.i.te, and heard nothing but the dull ding of common cavern stones. One thing was really striking;--a huge cone of stalact.i.te hung from the roof of the largest apartment, and, on being struck, gave perfectly the sound of a death-bell. I was behind, and heard it repeatedly at some distance, and the effect was very much in the fairy kind,--gnomes, and things unseen, that toll mock death-bells for mock funerals. After this, a little clear well and a black stream pleased me the most; and multiplied by fifty, and coloured ad libitum, might be well enough to read of in a novel or poem. We returned, and now before the inn, on the green plat around the Maypole, the villagers were celebrating Whit-Tuesday. This Maypole is hung as usual with garlands on the top, and, in these garlands, spoons, and other little valuables, are placed. The high smooth round pole is then well greased; and now he who can climb up to the top may have what he can get,--a very laughable scene as you may suppose, of awkwardness and agility, and failures on the very brink of success. Now began a dance. The women danced very well, and, in general, I have observed throughout Germany that the women in the lower ranks degenerate far less from the ideal of a woman, than the men from that of man. The dances were reels and waltzes; but chiefly the latter. This dance is, in the higher circles, sufficiently voluptuous; but here the emotions of it were far more faithful interpreters of the pa.s.sion, which, doubtless, the dance was intended to shadow; yet, ever after the giddy round and round is over, they walked to music, the woman laying her arm, with confident affection, on the man's shoulders, or around his neck. The first couple at the waltzing was a very fine tall girl, of two or three and twenty, in the full bloom and growth of limb and feature, and a fellow with huge whiskers, a long tail, and woollen night-cap; he was a soldier, and from the more than usual glances of the girl, I presumed was her lover. He was, beyond compare, the gallant and the dancer of the party. Next came two boors: one of whom, in the whole contour of his face and person, and, above all, in the laughably would-be frolicksome kick out of his heel, irresistibly reminded me of Shakespeare's Slender, and the other of his Dogberry. Oh! two such faces, and two such postures! O that I were an Hogarth! What an enviable gift it is to have a genius in painting! Their partners were pretty la.s.ses, not so tall as the former, and danced uncommonly light and airy.

The fourth couple was a sweet girl of about seventeen, delicately slender, and very prettily dressed, with a full-blown rose in the white ribbon that went round her head, and confined her reddish-brown hair; and her partner waltzed with a pipe in his mouth, smoking all the while; and during the whole of this voluptuous dance, his countenance was a fair personification of true German phlegm. After these, but, I suppose, not actually belonging to the party, a little ragged girl and ragged boy, with his stockings about his heels, waltzed and danced;--waltzing and dancing in the rear most entertainingly. But what most pleased me, was a little girl of about three or four years old, certainly not more than four, who had been put to watch a little babe, of not more than a year old (for one of our party had asked), and who was just beginning to run away, the girl teaching him to walk, and who was so animated by the music, that she began to waltz with him, and the two babes whirled round and round, hugging and kissing each other, as if the music had made them mad. There were two fiddles and a ba.s.s viol. The fiddlers,--above all, the ba.s.s violer,--most Hogarthian phizzes! G.o.d love them! I felt far more affection for them than towards any other set of human beings I have met with since I have been in Germany, I suppose because they looked so happy!

[Footnote 1: marked with an asterisk in the proofing (not the original text), but not explained further.]

CHAPTER VIII

RETURN TO ENGLAND; "WALLENSTEIN", AND THE "MORNING POST"

On the 21st May, Coleridge wrote the following letter in which he informs Josiah Wedgwood what he had done in Germany, and what he expected to do with the knowledge which he had acquired there.

LETTER 85. TO JOSIAH WEDGWOOD

May 21st, 1799. Gottingen.

My dear sir,

I have lying by my side six huge letters, with your name on each of them, and all, excepting one, have been written for these three months.

About this time Mr. Hamilton, by whom I send this and the little parcel for my wife, was, as it were, setting off for England; and I seized the opportunity of sending them by him, as without any mock-modesty I really thought that the expense of the postage to me and to you would be more than their worth. Day after day, and week after week, was Hamilton going, and still delayed. And now that it is absolutely settled that he goes to-morrow, it is likewise absolutely settled that I shall go this day three weeks, and I have therefore sent only this and the picture by him, but the letters I will now take myself, for I should not like them to be lost, as they comprise the only subject on which I have had an opportunity of making myself thoroughly informed, and if I carry them myself, I can carry them without danger of their being seized at Yarmouth, as all my letters were, yours to ---- excepted, which were, luckily, not sealed. Before I left England, I had read the book of which you speak. [1] I must confess that it appeared to me exceedingly illogical. G.o.dwin's and Condorcet's extravagancies were not worth confuting; and yet I thought that the Essay on "Population" had not confuted them. Professor Wallace, Derham, and a number of German statistic and physico-theological writers had taken the same ground, namely, that population increases in a geometrical, but the accessional nutriment only in arithmetical ratio--and that vice and misery, the natural consequences of this order of things, were intended by providence as the counterpoise. I have here no means of procuring so obscure a book, as Rudgard's; but to the best of my recollection, at the time that the Fifth Monarchy enthusiasts created so great a sensation in England, under the Protectorate, and the beginning of Charles the Second's reign, Rudgard, or Rutgard (I am not positive even of the name) wrote an Essay to the same purpose, in which he a.s.serted, that if war, pestilence, vice, and poverty, were wholly removed, the world could not exist two hundred years, etc. Seiffmilts, [2] in his great work concerning the divine order and regularity in the destiny of the human race, has a chapter ent.i.tled a confutation of this idea; I read it with great eagerness, and found therein that this idea militated against the glory and goodness of G.o.d, and must therefore be false,--but further confutation found I none!--This book of Seiffmilts has a prodigious character throughout Germany; and never methinks did a work less deserve it. It is in three huge octavos, and wholly on the general laws that regulate the population of the human species--but is throughout most unphilosophical, and the tables, which he has collected with great industry, prove nothing. My objections to the Essay on Population you will find in my sixth letter at large--but do not, my dear sir, suppose that because unconvinced by this essay, I am therefore convinced of the contrary. No, G.o.d knows, I am sufficiently sceptical, and in truth more than sceptical, concerning the possibility of universal plenty and wisdom; but my doubts rest on other grounds. I had some conversation with you before I left England, on this subject; and from that time I had purposed to myself to examine as thoroughly as it was possible for me, the important question. Is the march of the human race progressive, or in cycles? But more of this when we meet.

What have I done in Germany? I have learned the language, both high and low German, I can read both, and speak the former so fluently, that it must be a fortune for a German to be in my company, that is, I have words enough and phrases enough, and I arrange them tolerably; but my p.r.o.nunciation is hideous. 2ndly, I can read the oldest German, the Frankish, and the Swabian. 3rdly. I have attended the lectures on Physiology, Anatomy, and Natural History, with regularity, and have endeavoured to understand these subjects. 4thly, I have read and made collections for a history of the "Belles Lettres," in Germany, before the time of Lessing: and 5thly, very large collections for a "Life of Lessing"; to which I was led by the miserably bad and unsatisfactory biographies that have been hitherto given, and by my personal acquaintance with two of Lessing's friends. Soon after I came into Germany, I made up my mind fully not to publish anything concerning my Travels, as people call them; yet I soon perceived that with all possible economy, my expenses would be greater than I could justify, unless I did something that would to a moral certainty repay them. I chose the "Life of Lessing" for the reasons above a.s.signed, and because it would give me an opportunity of conveying under a better name than my own ever will be, opinions which I deem of the highest importance.

Accordingly, my main business at Gottingen has been to read all the numerous controversies in which Lessing was engaged, and the works of all those German poets before the time of Lessing, which I could not afford to buy. For these last four months, with the exception of last week, in which I visited the Hartz, I have worked harder than I trust in G.o.d Almighty I shall ever have occasion to work again: this endless transcription is such a body-and-soul-wearying purgatory. I shall have bought thirty pounds' worth of books, chiefly metaphysics, and with a view to the one work, to which I hope to dedicate in silence, the prime of my life; but I believe and indeed doubt not, that before Christmas I shall have repaid myself. [3]

I never, to the best of my recollection, felt the fear of death but once; that was yesterday when I delivered the picture to Hamilton. I felt, and shivered as I felt it, that I should not like to die by land or water before I see my wife and the little one; that I hope yet remains to me. But it was an idle sort of feeling, and I should not like to have it again. Poole half mentioned, in a hasty way, a circ.u.mstance that depressed my spirits for many days:--that you and Thomas were on the point of settling near Stowey, but had abandoned it. "G.o.d Almighty!

what a dream of happiness it held out to me!" writes Poole. I felt disappointment without having had hope.

In about a month I hope to see you. Till then may heaven bless and preserve us! Believe me, my dear sir, with every feeling of love, esteem, and grat.i.tude,

Your affectionate friend,

S. T. COLERIDGE.

(Josiah Wedgwood, Esq.) [4]

[Footnote l: Malthas on Population, 1798.]

[Footnote 2: Should be Syssmilch.]

[Footnote 3: Cottle here omits a part of this letter about pecuniary matters.]

[Footnote 4: Letters XCIX-CIII follow Letter 85.]

It is interesting to compare this letter with that to Poole of 6th May 1796; it will be seen that Coleridge thus carried out his project of three years before. He had been able to convince the Wedgwoods of the desirability of introducing a knowledge of the German philosophy into England to refute the philosophy of Hume and expose the shallowness of the metaphysics of Locke and the Paley School of Theology. Tom Wedgwood was himself a philosopher, and saw in Coleridge the champion of a new basis of faith, and hence the friendship between them, and the support of the Wedgwoods to Coleridge in carrying out his self-education.

Coleridge returned to England about a month after the Wordsworths, in July, 1799, and he reached Stowey before the 29th, when he wrote to Southey, and the two worked in concert for the publication of an annual started as the 'Annual Anthology', of which two volumes appeared, one in 1799 and one in 1800, Coleridge contributing some of his poems to the latter. 'The Devil's Thoughts', a conjoint squib which caused some sensation was sent to the 'Morning Post' on 6th September.

Coleridge spent a part of the Autumn of 1799 at Ottery St. Mary visiting his mother and brothers. Coleridge then went to Southey at Exeter, and they visited the ash dells round about Dartmoor together ('Letters', 305). Coleridge also saw Josiah Wedgwood at his seat of Upcott on his way home; and on 15th October we find him back at Stowey ('Letters', 307). Still later he went north to see Wordsworth who was staying at Sockburn on the Tees with the Hutchinsons. Cottle accompanied them as far as Greta Bridge, where John Wordsworth joined their company. Coleridge and William and John Wordsworth then went on tour to the Lake District, visiting Grasmere, when Wordsworth made arrangements to take a house at Townend (now known as Dove Cottage), and came back to Sockburn (Knight's 'Life of Wordsworth', chap. xii).

It was at Sockburn that Coleridge first met Sarah Hutchinson; and here it is conjectured he wrote his beautiful poem 'Love', which appeared in its first form in the 'Morning Post', on 21st December 1799, prefaced with the following letter.

LETTER 86. TO THE EDITOR OF THE 'MORNING POST' WITH THE POEM 'LOVE', FIRST PUBLISHED AS 'INTRODUCTION TO THE TALE OF THE DARK LADIE'.

21 December, 1799.

Sir,

The following poem is the introduction to a somewhat longer one, for which I shall solicit insertion on your next open day. The use of the old ballad word 'Ladie' for Lady, is the only piece of obsoleteness in it; and as it is professedly a tale of ancient times, I trust that "the affectionate lovers of venerable antiquity," (as Cambden says) will grant me their pardon, and perhaps may be induced to admit a force and propriety in it. A heavier objection may be adduced against the Author, that in these times of fear and expectation, when novelties 'explode' around us in all directions, he should presume to offer to the public a silly tale of old-fashioned love; and five years ago, I own, I should have allowed and felt the force of this objection. But, alas! explosion has succeeded explosion so rapidly that novelty itself ceases to appear new; and it is possible that now, even a simple story wholly unspiced with politics or personality, may find some attention amid the hubbub of Revolutions, as to those who have remained a long time by the falls of Niagara, the lowest whispering becomes distinctly audible.

S. T. COLERIDGE.[1]

[Footnote 1: Letter CIV follows 86.]

This was followed on 10th January 1800 by the political verses 'Talleyrand to Lord Grenville', heralded by a letter as good as, if not better than, the verses.

LETTER 87. TO THE EDITOR OF THE 'MORNING POST'.

WITH 'TALLEYRAND TO LORD GRENVILLE', A METRICAL EPISTLE.

10 January, 1800.

Mr. Editor,

An unmetrical letter from Talleyrand to Lord Grenville has already appeared, and from an authority too high to be questioned: otherwise I could adduce some arguments for the exclusive authenticity of the following metrical epistle. The very epithet which the wise ancients used, "'aurea carmina'" might have been supposed likely to have determined the choice of the French minister in favour of verse; and the rather when we recollect that this phrase of "golden verses" is applied emphatically to the works of that philosopher who imposed 'silence'

on all with whom he had to deal. Besides, is it not somewhat improbable that Talleyrand should have preferred prose to rhyme, when the latter alone 'has got the c.h.i.n.k'? Is it not likewise curious that in our official answer no notice whatever is taken of the Chief Consul, Bonaparte, as if there had been no such person existing; notwithstanding that his existence is pretty generally admitted, nay that some have been so rash as to believe that he has created as great a sensation in the world as Lord Grenville, or even the Duke of Portland? But the Minister of Foreign Affairs, Talleyrand, 'is' acknowledged, which, in our opinion, could not have happened had he written only that insignificant prose letter, which seems to precede Bonaparte's, as in old romances a dwarf always ran before to proclaim the advent or arrival of knight or giant. That Talleyrand's character and practices more resemble those of some 'regular' Governments than Bonaparte's I admit; but this of itself does not appear a satisfactory explanation. However, let the letter speak for itself. The second line is supererogative in syllables, whether from the oscitancy of the transcriber, or from the trepidation which might have overpowered the modest Frenchman, on finding himself in the act of writing to so 'great' a man, I shall not dare to determine. A few notes are added by,

Your servant,

GNOME.

P.S.--As mottoes are now fashionable, especially if taken from out of the way books, you may prefix, if you please, the following lines from Sidonius Apollinaris:

Saxa, et robora, corneasque fibras Mollit dulciloquia canorus arte!

Coleridge had arrived in London in the end of November (d.y.k.e-Campbell's 'Life', 105); and Mrs. Coleridge and Hartley were also at 21, Buckingham Street, Strand, on 9th December ('Letters', 318). He was now a regular contributor to the 'Morning Post', Stuart, the proprietor paying all expenses ('Letters', 310),[1] Coleridge, too, had made the acquaintance of G.o.dwin ('Letters', p. 316), whom he had castigated in the 'Watchman', and who, he says, "is no great things in intellects; but in heart and manner he is all the better for having been the husband of Mary Wollstonecraft" ('Letters', 316). He began a correspondence with G.o.dwin, and of the eighteen letters by Coleridge to him we are enabled to give nine. Lamb was the means of drawing Coleridge and G.o.dwin together, and in Lamb's letters of this period ('Ainger', i, 111, 113, 115), we find glimpses of Coleridge while engaged on his translation of 'Wallenstein'.

While in London Coleridge did not neglect his friends elsewhere; we have interesting letters to the Wedgwoods, Poole, and Southey. The next three letters are from London.