Reminiscences of Samuel Taylor Coleridge and Robert Southey Part 32

As a conclusion to these honourable testimonies, it may be added, the wish has often been expressed, that more were known respecting Mr.

Coleridge's school and college life, so briefly detailed in his "Biographia." There was one friend of whom he often used to talk, and always with a kind feeling, who sat next to him at Christ Church School, and who afterwards accompanied him to Cambridge, where their friendship was renewed, and their intercourse uninterrupted. This gentleman was the Rev. C. V. Le Grice, the respected and erudite inc.u.mbent of a living near Penzance. Mr. Le G. might contribute largely toward the elucidation of Mr. Coleridge's school and college life; but as the much has been denied, we must be thankful for the little. The following are Mr. Le Grice's brief, but interesting notices of his friend:

"Mr. Urban,

In the various and numerous memoirs, which have been published of the late Mr. Coleridge, I have been surprised at the accuracy in many respects, and at the same time their omission of a very remarkable, and a very honourable anecdote in his history. In the memoir of him in your last number, you do not merely omit, but you give an erroneous account of this very circ.u.mstance, to which I mean to allude. You a.s.sert that he did not obtain, and indeed did riot aim to obtain, the honours of the University. So far is this from the fact, that in his Freshman's year he won the gold medal for the Greek Ode; and in his second year he became a candidate for the Craven scholarship, a University scholarship, for which undergraduates of any standing are ent.i.tled to become candidates. This was in the winter of 1792. Out of sixteen or eighteen compet.i.tors a selection of four was made to contend for the prize, and these four were Dr.

Butler, now the Head Master of Shrewsbury; Dr. Keate, the late Head Master of Eton; Mr. Beth.e.l.l, the late Member for Yorkshire; and S. T.

Coleridge. Dr. Butler was the successful candidate.

Pause a moment in Coleridge's history, and think of him at this period! Butler! Keate! Beth.e.l.l! 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 cla.s.sical Tripos; so that if a person did not obtain the cla.s.sical medal, he was thrown back among the totally undistinguished; and it was not allowable to become a candidate for the cla.s.sical 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 his schoolfellow and dearest friend, Middleton, (late Bishop of Calcutta) quit Pembroke under similar circ.u.mstances.

Not _quite_ similar, because Middleton 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 you 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. But to return to Coleridge. When he quitted College, which he did before he had taken a degree, in a moment of mad caprice--it was indeed an inauspicious hour! 'In an inauspicious hour I left the friendly cloisters, and the happy grove of quiet, ever honoured Jesus College, Cambridge.' Short, but deep and heart-felt 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 cla.s.sical 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 _sizing_, as they were called, have I enjoyed; when Aeschylus, 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. Freud's trial was then in progress. Pamphlets swarmed from the press. Coleridge had read them all; and in the evening, with our negus, we had them _viva voce_ gloriously. O Coleridge! it was indeed an inauspicious hour, when you quitted the friendly cloisters of Jesus. The epithet 'friendly' implied what you were thinking of, when you thought of college. To you, Coleridge, your contemporaries were indeed friendly, and I believe, that in your literary life you have pa.s.sed over your college life so briefly, because you wished to banish from your view the 'visions of long-departed joys.' To enter into a description of your college days would have called up too sadly to your memory 'the hopes which once shone bright,' and would have made your heart sink.

Yours, &c.,

C. V. Le Grice.

P. S.--I was a witness to the breathless delight with which he hastened to give his friends intelligence of his success. The following lines, in his "Verses written in Early Youth," are a memorial of the pleasure, which he felt in the sympathy of one who was then most dear to him:--

"With faery wand, O bid the maid arise, Chaste joyance dancing in her bright blue eyes, As erst, when, from the Muse's calm abode, I came with learning's meed not unbestowed."

See Poems, Edit. 1805, p. 34.

He wrote, to my certain knowledge, for the prize in the ensuing year; but it was most deservedly given to Keate's beautiful Ode. The subject Laus Astronomiae. No one was more convinced of the propriety of the decision than Coleridge himself. He used to repeat Ramsden's Greek Ode on Gibraltar, and Smith's Latin one on Mare Liberum, with incessant rapture. It would have been his glory to have caught their spirit,--he was absorbed in these things. A Cla.s.sical Tripos would have changed Coleridge's destiny."--_Gentleman's Magazine_, Dec.

1834.

The reader's attention will now be directed to Mr. Coleridge, after he left Malta, when he visited Bristol, in the year 1807. I accidentally learned that Mr. C. had returned to England, not in good health, and that he was at Mr. Poole's, when I addressed a letter to him, expressing a hope that his health would soon allow him to pay me a visit, in Bristol.

To this letter he thus replied:

"Dear Cottle,

On my return to Bristol, whenever that may be, I will certainly give you the right hand of old fellowship; but, alas! you will find me the wretched wreck of what you knew me, rolling, rudderless. My health is extremely bad. Pain I have enough of, but that is indeed to me, a mere trifle, but the almost unceasing, overpowering sensations of wretchedness: achings in my limbs, with an indescribable restlessness, that makes action to any available purpose, almost impossible: and worst of all, the sense of blighted utility, regrets, not remorseless. But enough; yea, more than enough; if these things produce, or deepen the conviction of the utter powerlessness of ourselves, and that we either perish, or find aid from something that pa.s.ses understanding.

Affectionately,

S. T. C."

The preceding letter of Mr. Coleridge led me to antic.i.p.ate a worse state of health, on his arrival in Bristol, than appearances authorized. I knew nothing of opium, and was pleased to notice the clearness of his understanding, as well as much struck with the interesting narratives he gave of Malta, Italy, and his voyage to England. I knew that Mr. C. was somewhat in the habit of accommodating his discourse to the sentiments of the persons with whom he was conversing; but his language was now so pious and orthodox, that the contrast between his past and present sentiments was most noticeable. He appeared quite an improved character, and was about, I thought, to realise the best hopes of his friends. I found him full of future activity, projecting new works, and particularly a 'New Review,' of which he himself was to be the Editor! At this time not one word was said about opium, Colerton, Ottery, or Mrs. Coleridge, and I thought the prospect never appeared so cheering.

In my state of exultation, I invited Mr. Foster to come to Bristol, from Frome, to renew his acquaintance with the improved and travelled Mr.

Coleridge. Mr. Tester's reply is here given.

"Frome, June, 1807.

My dear sir,

I am very unfortunate in having made an engagement, two or three weeks back, to go just at this time on a very particular occasion, to a distant place in this county, and therefore being deprived of the very high luxury to which you so kindly invite me. I shall be unavoidably detained, for a very considerable time, and my imagination will strongly represent to me the pleasure and advantage of which an inevitable necessity deprives me. But I will indulge the hope, that I shall sometime be known to Mr. Coleridge, under more favourable circ.u.mstances, in a literary respect, than I can at present, after a regular application to the severer order of studies shall in some measure have retrieved the consequences of a very loose and indolent intellectual discipline, and shall have lessened a certain feeling of imbecility which always makes me shrink from attempting to gain the notice of men whose talents I admire.

No man can feel a more animated admiration of Mr. Coleridge than I have retained ever since the two or three times that I was a little while in his company; and during his absence in the south and the east, I have very often thought with delight of the immense acquisitions which he would at length bring back to enrich the works, which I trust the public will in due time receive from him, and to which it has an imperious claim. And still I trust he will feel the solemn duty of making his very best and continued efforts to mend as well as delight mankind, now that he has attained the complete mastery and expansion of his admirable powers. You do not fail, I hope, to urge him to devote himself strenuously to literary labour. He is able to take a station amongst the most elevated ranks, either of the philosophers or the poets. Pray tell me what are his immediate intentions, and whether he has any important specific undertaking in hand. For the sake of elegant literature, one is very glad, that he has had the opportunity of visiting those most interesting scenes and objects which you mention. Will you express to him in the strongest terms, my respect and my animated wishes for his health, his happiness, and his utility. You can inform me what is the nature of that literary project to which you allude. Tell me also, what is the state and progress of your own literary projects, and, I hope I may say, labours. I behaved shabbily about some slight remarks which I was to have ventured on Mr. Southey's 'Madoc,' in the 'Eclectic Review.' On reading the critiques in the 'Edinburgh Review,' on 'Thalaba' and 'Madoc,' I found what were substantially my own impressions, so much better developed than I could have done, that I instantly threw my remarks away.

Let me hear from you when you have half an hour of leisure, and believe me to be, with every kind remembrance to your most excellent, family, my dear sir,

Most cordially yours,

John Foster.

To Joseph Cottle."

Some weeks after, Mr. Coleridge called on me; when, in the course of conversation, he entered into some observations on his own character, that made him appear unusually amiable. He said that he was naturally very arrogant; that it was his easily besetting sin; a state of mind which he ascribed to the severe subjection to which he had been exposed, till he was fourteen years of age, and from which, his own consciousness of superiority made him revolt. He then stated that he had renounced all his Unitarian sentiments; that he considered Unitarianism as a heresy of the worst description; attempting in vain, to reconcile sin and holiness; the world and heaven; opposing the whole spirit of the Bible; and subversive of all that truly const.i.tuted christianity. At this interview he professed his deepest conviction of the truth of Revelation; of the Fall of Man; of the Divinity of Christ, and redemption alone through his blood. To hear these sentiments so explicitly avowed, gave me unspeakable pleasure, and formed a new, and unexpected, and stronger bond of union.

A long and highly interesting theological conversation; followed, in which Mr. C. proved, that, however weak his body, the intellectual vigour of his mind was unimpaired. He exhibited, also, more sobriety of manner than I had before noticed in him, with an improved and impressive maturity in his reflections, expressed in his happiest language; and which, could it have been accurately recorded, would have adorned the most splendid of his pages;--so rare and pre-eminent was the powerful and spontaneous utterance with which this gifted son of genius was endowed.

Mr. Coleridge, at his next visit, related to me some of his Italian adventures; one or two of which I here introduce.

After quitting Malta, he had landed in Sicily, and visited Etna; his ascent up whose side, to the crater, he graphically described, with some striking features; but as this is a subject proverbially enlarged upon by all travellers, I waive further notice, and proceed to state, that Mr. C.

after leaving Sicily pa.s.sed over to the south of Italy, and journeyed on to Rome.

Shortly after Mr. Coleridge had arrived in this city, he attracted some notice amongst the literati, as an English "Man of Letters." Cardinal Fesch, in particular, was civil, and sought his company; but that which was more remarkable, Jerome Buonaparte was then a resident at Rome, and Mr. C.'s reputation becoming known to him, he sent for him, and after showing him his palace, pictures, &c. thus generously addressed him: "Sir, I have sent for you to give you a little candid advice. I do not know that you have said, or written anything against my brother Napoleon, but as an Englishman, the supposition is not unreasonable. If you have, my advice is, that you leave Italy as soon as you possibly can!"

This hint was gratefully received, and Mr. Coleridge soon after quitted Rome, in the suite of Cardinal Fesch. From his anxiety to reach England, he proceeded to Leghorn, where a circ.u.mstance occurred which will excite every reader's sympathy. Mr. Coleridge had journeyed to this port, where he rather hoped, than expected to find some conveyance, through the medium of a neutral, that should waft him to the land, "more prised than ever." The hope proved delusive. The war was now raging between England and France, and Buonaparte being lord of the ascendant in Italy, Mr.

Coleridge's situation became insecure, and even perilous. To obtain a pa.s.sport was impossible; and as Mr. C. had formerly rendered himself obnoxious to the great Captain by some political papers, he was in daily and hourly expectation of being incarcerated in an Italian prison, which would have been the infallible road to death!

In half despair of ever again seeing his family and friends, and under the constant dread of apprehension by the emissaries of the Tuscan government, or French spies; he went out one morning to look at some ruins in the neighbourhood of Leghorn, in a state of despondency, where, certainty, however terrible, would have been almost preferable to suspense. While musing on the ravages of time, he turned his eye, and observed at a little distance, a seafaring looking man, musing in silence, like himself, on the waste around. Mr. Coleridge advanced towards him, supposing, or at least deeming it possible, that he also might be mourning his captivity, and commenced a discourse with him; when he found that the stranger was an American captain, whose ship was then in the harbour, and on the point of sailing for England.

This information sent joy into his heart; but he testified no emotion, determined to obtain the captain's good will, by showing him all the civilities in his power, as a preliminary to any future service the captain might be disposed to render him, whether the power were united with the disposition or not. This showed adroitness, with great knowledge of human nature; and more winning and captivating manners than those of Mr. C. when called forth, were never possessed by mortal! In conformity with this almost forlorn hope, Mr. Coleridge explained to the American captain the history of the ruin; read to him some of the half defaced Latin and Italian inscriptions, and concluded with extolling General Washington, and predicting the stability of the Union. The right keys, treble and tenor, were touched at the same moment. "Pray young man," said the captain, "who are you?" Mr. C. replied, "I am a poor unfortunate Englishman, with a wife and family at home; but I am afraid I shall never see them more! I have no _pa.s.sport_, nor means of escape; and, to increase my sorrow, I am in daily dread of being thrown into jail, when those I love will not have the last pleasure of _knowing_ that I am dead!" The captain's heart was touched. He had a wife and family at a distance. "My young man," said he, "what is your name?" The reply was, "Samuel Taylor Coleridge." "Poor young man," answered the captain. "You meet me at this place to-morrow morning, exactly at ten o'clock." So saying, the captain withdrew, Mr. C. stood musing on the singular occurrence, in which there was something _inexplicable_. His discernment of the stranger's character convinced him there existed no _under plot_, but still there was a wide s.p.a.ce between _probability_ and _certainty_.

On a balance of circ.u.mstances, he still thought _all fair_, and, at the appointed hour, repaired to the interior of the ruins.

No captain was there; but in a few minutes he appeared, and, hastening up to Mr. Coleridge, exclaimed exultingly, "I have got your pa.s.sport!" "How!

What!" said Mr. C. almost overpowered by his feelings. "Ask me no questions," replied the captain; "you are my _steward_, and you shall sail away with me to-morrow morning!" He continued, giving him his address, "You come to my house to-morrow early, when I will provide you with a _jacket_ and _trowsers_, and you shall follow me to the ship with a _basket of vegetables_" In short, thus accoutred, he _did_ follow the captain to the ship the next morning; and in three hours fairly sailed out of Leghorn harbour, triumphantly on his course to England!

As soon as the ship had cleared the port, Mr. Coleridge hastened down to the cabin, and cried, "my dear captain, tell me how you obtained my pa.s.sport?" Said the captain, very gravely, "Why, I went to the authorities, and _swore_ that you were an _American_, and my steward! I _swore_ also, that I knew your father and mother; that they lived in a red-brick house, about half a mile out of New York, on the road to Boston!"

It is gratifying to add, that this benevolent little-scrupulous captain refused to accept any thing from Mr. C. for his pa.s.sage to England; and, behaved in many other respects, with the same uniform kindness. During the voyage, Mr. Coleridge told me, he was attacked with a dangerous illness, when he thought he should have _died_, but for the "_good captain_," who attended him with the solicitude of a father. Mr. C. also said, had he known what the captain was going to _swear_, whatever the consequences might have been, he would have prevented him.[82]

The following long letter will be read with interest.

"Bristol, 1807.

Dear Cottle,