Reminiscences of Samuel Taylor Coleridge and Robert Southey Part 27

I am glad to see, and you will be very glad to hear, that this business has called forth Coleridge, and with the recollections of old times, brought back something like old feelings. He wrote a very excellent paper on the subject in the 'Courier,' and I hope it will be the means of his rejoining us ere long; so good will come out of evil, and the devil can do nothing but what he is permitted.[65]

I am well in health, and as little annoyed by this rascality as it becomes me to be. The only tiling that has vexed me, is the manner in which my counsel is represented in talking about my being ashamed of the work as a wicked performance! "Wicked! My poor 'old uncle' has nothing wicked about him. It was the work of a right-honest enthusiast, as you can bear witness; of one who was as upright in his youth as he has been in his manhood, and is now in the decline of his life; who, blessed be G.o.d, has little to be ashamed before man, of any of his thoughts, words, or actions, whatever cause he may have for saying to his Maker, 'G.o.d be merciful to me a sinner.' G.o.d bless you, my old and affectionate friend,

Robert Southey.

I am writing a pamphlet, in the form of a letter, to Wm. Smith. Fear not, but that I shall make my own cause good, and set my foot on my enemies.

This has been a wicked transaction. It can do me no other harm than the expense to which it has put me."

"Keswick, Sept. 2, 1817.

My dear Cottle,

... I have made a long journey on the continent, accompanied with a friend of my own age, and with Mr. Nash, the architect, who gave me the drawings of Waterloo. We went by way of Paris to Besancon, into Switzerland: visited the Grand Chartreuse, crossed Mont Cenis; proceeded to Turin, and Milan, and then turned back by the lakes Como, Lugano, and Maggiore, and over the Simplon. Our next business was to see the mountainous parts of Switzerland. From Bern we sent our carriage to Zurich, and struck off what is called the Oberland (upper-land.) After ten days spent thus, in the finest part of the country, we rejoined our carriage, and returned through the Black Forest. The most interesting parts of our homeward road were Danaustrugen, where the Danube rises.

Friburg, Strasburg, Baden, Carlsruhe, Heidelburg, Manheim, Frankfort, Mentz, Cologne, and by Brussels and Lisle, to Calais.

I kept a full journal, which might easily be made into an amusing and useful volume, but I have no leisure for it. You may well suppose what an acc.u.mulation of business is on my hands after so long an absence of four months. I have derived great advantage both in knowledge and health. G.o.d bless you, my dear Cottle.

Yours most affectionately,

Robert Southey.

P.S.--Hartley Coleridge has done himself great credit at Oxford. He has taken what is called a second cla.s.s, which, considering the disadvantages of his school education, is as honourable for him as a first cla.s.s for any body else. In all the higher points of his examination, he was excellent, and inferior only in those minuter points, wherein he had not been instructed. He is on the point of taking his degree."

"Keswick, Nov. 26,1819.

My dear Cottle,

Last night I received a letter from Charles Lamb, telling me to what a miserable condition poor John Morgan is reduced: not by any extravagance of his own, but by a thoughtless generosity, in lending to men who have never repaid him, and by ----, who has involved him in his own ruin; and lastly by the visitation of providence. Every thing is gone!

In such a case, what is to be done? 'but to raise some poor annuity amongst his friends.' It is not likely to be wanted long. He has an hereditary disposition to a liver complaint, a disease of all others, induced by distress of mind, and he feels the whole bitterness of his situation. The palsy generally comes back to finish what it has begun.

Lamb will give ten pounds a year. I will do the same, and we both do according to our means, rather tham our will. I have written to Michael Castle to exert himself; and if you know where his friend Porter is, I pray you communicate this information to him. We will try what can be done in other quarters...."[66]

"Keswick, June 25, 1823.

My dear Cottle,

... I must finish my 'Book of the Church.' Under this t.i.tle a sketch of our ecclesiastical history is designed. One small volume was intended, and behold it will form two 8vos. The object of the book is, to give those who come after us a proper bias, by making them feel and understand, how much they owe to the religious inst.i.tutions of their country.

Besides this, I have other works in hand, and few things would give me more pleasure than to show you their state of progress, and the preparations I have made for them. If you would bring your sister to pa.s.s a summer with us, how joyfully and heartily you would be welcomed, I trust you both well know. Our friendship is now of nine and twenty years'

standing, and I will venture to say, for you, or for us, life cannot have many gratifications in store greater than this would prove. Here are ponies accustomed to climb these mountains which will carry you to the summit of Skiddaw, without the slightest difficulty, or danger. And here is my boat, the 'Royal Noah,' in the lake, in which you may exercise your arms when you like. Within and without I have much to show you. You would like to see my children; from Edith May, who is taller than her mother, down to Cuthbert, who was four years old in February last. Then there are my books, of which I am as proud as you are of your bones.[67] They are not indeed quite so old, but then they are more numerous, and I am sure Miss C. will agree with me that they are much better furniture, and much pleasanter companions.

Not that I mean to depreciate your fossil remains. Forbid it all that is venerable. I should very much like to see your account of them. You gave me credit for more than is my due, when you surmised that the paper in the Quarterly (on the presumed alteration in the plane of the ecliptic) might have been mine. I write on no subject on which I have not bestowed considerable time and thought; and on all points of science, I confess myself to be either very superficially informed, or altogether ignorant.

Some day I will send you a list of all my papers in that Journal, that you may not impute to me any thing which is not mine; and that, if you have at any time such a desire, you may see what the opinions are that I have there advanced. Very few I believe in which you would not entirely accord with me. G.o.d bless you.

Yours affectionately,

Robert Southey."

"Keswick, April 7, 1825.

My dear Cottle,

You have indeed had a severe loss,[68] I know not how the heart could bear, if it were not for the prospect of eternity, and the full sense of the comparative nothingness of time, which that prospect produces. If I look on the last thirty years, things seem as but yesterday; and when I look forward, the end of this mortal journey must be near, though the precise point where it will terminate is not in sight. Yet were you under my roof, as I live in hope that one day you will be, you would recognize just as much of the original Robert Southey as you would wish to see remaining;--though the body is somewhat the worse for wear.

I thought I had written to thank you for your 'Strictures on the Plymouth Antinomians;' which were well deserved, and given in a very proper spirit. Ultra-Calvinism is as little to my liking as it is to yours. It may be, and no doubt is held by many good men, upon whom it produces no worse effects than that of narrowing charity. But Dr. Hawker, and such as the Hawkers, only push it to its legitimate consequences.

At present I am engaged in a war with the Roman Catholics, a war in which there will be much ink shed, though not on my part, for when my 'Vindiciae' are finished, I shall leave the field. When you see that book, you will be surprised at the exposure of sophistries, disingenuousness, and downright falsehoods, which it will lay before the world; and you will see the charge of systematic imposture proved upon the papal church.

I must leave my home by the middle of next month, and travel for some weeks, in the hope of escaping an annual visitation of Catarrh, which now always leaves cough behind it, and a rather threatening hold of the chest. I am going therefore to Holland, to see that country, and to look for certain ecclesiastical books, which I shall be likely to obtain at Brussels, or Antwerp, or on the way thither.

A young friend, in the Colonial office, is to be one of my companions, and I expect that Neville White will be the other. It is a great effort to go from home at any time, and a great inconvenience, considering the interruption which my pursuits must suffer; still it is a master of duty and of economy to use every means for averting illness. If I can send home one or two chests of books, the pleasure of receiving them on my return is worth some cost.

How you would like to see my library, and to recognize among them some volumes as having been the gift of Joseph Cottle, seven or eight and twenty years ago. I have a great many thousand volumes, of all sorts, sizes, languages, and kinds, upon all subjects, and in all sorts of trims; from those which are displayed in 'Peac.o.c.k Place,' to the ragged inhabitants of 'Duck Row.' The room in which I am now writing contains two thousand four hundred volumes, all in good apparel; many of them of singular rarity and value. I have another room full, and a pa.s.sage full; book-cases in both landing places, and from six to seven hundred volumes in my bed-room. You have never seen a more cheerful room than my study; this workshop, from which so many works have proceeded, and in which among other things, I have written all those papers of mine, in the Quarterly Review, whereof you have a list below.[69]

The next month will have a paper of mine on the 'Chuch Missionary Society,' and the one after, upon the 'Memoir of the Chevalier Bayard,'

which Sarah Coleridge, daughter of S. T. Coleridge, has translated.

Write to me oftener, as your letters will always have a reply, let whose may go unanswered. G.o.d bless you, my dear old friend.

Yours most affectionately,

Robert Southey."

"Keswick, Feb. 26, 1826.

My dear Cottle,

I have sent you my Vindication of the 'Book of the Church,' in which though scarcely half of what was intended to be comprised, enough is done to prove the charge of superst.i.tion, impostures, and wickedness, upon the Romish Church. Whether I shall pursue the subject, in that form, depends on circ.u.mstances. I have employment enough in other ways, and would rather present my historical recollections in any form than that of controversy.... The revelations of sister Nativity are mentioned in my 'Vindiciae.' You will see an account of this impious Romish imposture in the next Quarterly. Such an exposure ought to open the eyes of those who are duped with the belief that the Roman Catholic religion is become innocent and harmless.

Have I written to you since I was bug-bitten in France, and laid up in consequence, under a surgeon's hands in Holland? This mishap brought with it much more immediate good than evil. Bilderdyk, whose wife translated 'Don Roderic' into Dutch, and who is himself confessedly the best poet, and the most learned man in that country, received me into his house, where I was nursed for three weeks by two of the very best people in the world. But the effects of the accident remain. On my way home, owing perhaps to the intense heat of the weather, erysipelas showed itself on the wounded part. The foot also has been in a slight degree swollen, and there is just enough sense of uneasiness to show that something is amiss.

My last year's journey succeeded in cutting short the annual catarrh, which had for so many years laid me up during the summer months. I shall try the same course as soon as the next summer commences.

Will you never come and visit me, and see how that hair looks, which I doubt not keeps its colour so well in Vand.y.k.e's portrait? now it is three parts grey, but curling still as strong as in youth. I look at your portrait every day and see you to the life, as you were thirty years ago!

What a change should we see in each other now, and yet how soon should we find that the better part remains unchanged.

The day before yesterday I received your two volumes of 'Malvern Hills, Poems, and Essays,' fourth edition, forwarded to me from Sheffield, by James Montgomery. You ask my opinion on your ninth essay (on the supposed alteration in the planes of the equator and the ecliptic suggested by an hypothesis in the Quarterly). I am too ignorant to form one. The reasoning seems conclusive, taking the scientific part for granted, but of that science, or any other, I know nothing. This I can truly say, that the essays in general please me very much. That I am very glad to see those concerning Chatterton introduced there;--and very much admire, the manner, and the feeling, with which you have treated Psalmanazar's story.

You tell me things respecting Chatterton which were new to me, and of course interested me much. It may be worth while, when you prepare a copy for republication, to corroborate the proof of his insanity, by stating that there was a const.i.tutional tendency to such a disease, which places the fact beyond all doubt....

Thank you, for the pains you have taken about 'Bunyan.' The first edition we cannot find, nor even ascertain its date. The first edition of the Second part we have found. An impudent a.s.sertion, I learn from 'Montgomery's Essay,' was published, that the 'Pilgrim's Progress' was a mere translation from the Dutch. I have had the Dutch book, and have read it, which he who made this a.s.sertion could not do. The charge of plagiarism is utterly false, not having the slightest foundation. When you and I meet in the next world, we will go and see John Bunyan, and tell him how I have tinkered the fellow, for tinker him I will, who has endeavoured to pick a hole in his reputation. G.o.d bless you, my dear old friend,

Robert Southey.

P. S. There are two dreams that may be said to haunt me, they recur so often. The one is, that of being at Westminster school again, and not having my books. The other is, that I am at Bristol, and have been there some indefinite time; and unaccountably, have never been to look for you in Brunswick Square, for which I am troubled in conscience. Come to us, and I will pledge myself to visit you in return when next I travel to the south."