The Wordsworths forget them altogether!'1 A few days at Stowey succeeded. saw their guests part of the way, and they talked of the 'moral character of Democrats' (meaning their immoral character), and of pursuits proper for literary men -unfit for management of pecuniary affairs-Rousseau, Bacon, Arthur Young !' 2 This visit of Thelwall shocked the neighbourhood, which considered Poole responsible, and he was called upon to answer for Wordsworth to the owner of Alfoxden. This Poole did manfully,3 but a Government spy was sent down to watch the poets and their patron.4 Most of the stories of the spy's proceedings wear a dubious complexion, but there is no room for doubt that it was Thelwall's visit which brought about the cessation of Wordsworth's tenancy of Alfoxden. In late life he stated, in reply to assertions that he had been refused a renewal, that he had never asked for one-but his memory had failed, and the truth was that he either received notice to quit, or did not think it worth while to attempt to assert the right to remain which the agreement accorded him. Coleridge's friendship with Thelwall, begun by correspondence, was cemented by personal intercourse, and continued for some years; but later on, when the ex-citizen had become temporarily prosperous, he showed himself the poor creature he was by alternately patronising and sneering at Coleridge. After leaving Stowey, he asked Coleridge to interest Poole in securing him a farm in their neighbourhood, but the passing visit had caused Poole trouble enough, and Thelwall had to move into Wales. He ultimately procured a farm at Llyswen, in Brecon, where he was visited by the Wordsworths and Coleridge in 1798.5 The intercourse between Coleridge and the Wordsworths was almost daily. Coleridge says somewhere that they were 'three people but one soul.' The character of the intimacy is fully shown in The Nightingale: a Conversation Poem, and in Dorothy Wordsworth's Alfoxden Journal.' The entries cover the first four months of 1798, but doubtless illustrate equally the whole year during which the two families were neighbours. Feb. 11th. Walked with Coleridge near to Stowey. 12th. Walked alone to Stowey. Returned in the evening with Coleridge. 13th. Walked with Coleridge through a wood.' On the 17th they walked together. On the 19th Dorothy walked to Stowey. On the 21st Coleridge came in the morning. . William went through the wood with him towards Stowey: a very stormy night. 22nd. Coleridge came in the morning to dinner. . . . 23rd. William walked with Coleridge in the morning. 26th. Coleridge came in the morning. walked with Coleridge nearly to Stowey after dinner'-and so on. They saw as much of one another as if the width of a street instead of a pair of coombs had separated their several abodes. It was a rich and fruitful time for all three-seedtime at once and harvest; and its happy influences spread far beyond their own individual selves. The gulf-stream which rose in the Quantocks warmed and is still warming distant shores. Although Dorothy Wordsworth produced nothing directly, her influence on both men was of the highest importance. Coleridge answered to many a touch which the slower Wordsworth could not feel; but Dorothy's quiet sympathy, keen observation, and rapid suggestion-qualities she possessed in greater measure than her brother - were invaluable to both. The 1 Memoirs of Wordsworth, i. 105. 2 MS. Diary of Thelwall, July 21, 1797. 3 T. Poole and his Friends, i. 240. Life and Corr. of Southey, ii. 343. 5 Fenwick-note to Anecdote for Fathers. 6 Page 131. 'Note 121,' p. 611, post. 7 Knight's Life of Wordsworth, vol. i. chap. ix. best work of both poets was done, alike by the Quantocks and by the Lakes, under the direct influence of her companionship. Nor was the influence, in action and reaction, of the men on one another less potent. Coleridge's was by far the most active, as well as the finer and more penetrating, and the immense receptiveness of Wordsworth must have acted as a strong incentive to its exercise. And this is true, I believe, notwithstanding that there are more distinct traces of Wordsworth's influence on Coleridge's poetry than of the converse, for Coleridge, by virtue of his quicker sense, was the more imitative, while in Wordsworth's case, influences from without never reacted directly, but permeated his whole being, and were so completely assimilated as to have become part of himself before any of their results came to the surface.1 There are several indications that this summer of 1797 was not to Coleridge one of unmingled happiness. The letter of Poole to Charles Lloyd, written on 5th June, already quoted, seems to show that Lloyd was then no longer ‘domesticated' ▷ with Coleridge. The particular date at which domestication ceased, and with it the payment of the £80 a year, is unknown; but although Lloyd came and went until the final rupture in the spring of 1798, he probably ceased to contribute regularly to Coleridge's household expenses after the summer of 1797. This probably caused the fit of 'depression too dreadful to be described,' of which he wrote in an undated letter to Cottle 2: A sort of calm hopelessness diffuses itself over my heart. Indeed every mode of life which has promised me bread and cheese, has been, one after another, torn away from me; but God remains. I have no immediate X pecuniary distress, having received ten pounds from Lloyd. I employ myself now on a book of morals in answer to Godwin, and on my tragedy.' We have already seen that, in June, Coleridge was accepting pecuniary aid from Poole and other friends. Poole at that time describes him as industrious, considering the exertion of his mind necessary when he works,' adding that three acts of the tragedy are completed.3 About the 6th of September, having completed Osorio to the middle of the fifth act, he took it over to Shaftesbury to exhibit it to the god of his idolatry, Bowles.'4 Idol and worshipper then met for the first time, and if we may believe Cottle, some disillusion must have resulted-on Coleridge's part, at all events. A month later Osorio was completed and sent off to Drury Lane, without much hope that it would be accepted. Although Coleridge's memory so far failed him that, during all his later life, he made it his pet grievance that Sheridan returned him neither MS. nor reply, he really received the reply by the beginning of December. It was to the effect that Osorio was rejected on account of the obscurity of Acts III., IV., and V. The history of the play, both as Osorio and as Remorse, and of the author's views respecting it, are so fully treated in other parts of this * During his residence at Calne in 1814-1816, Coleridge saw much of Bowles, whose parsonage at Bremhill was not far off. Coleridge showed Bowles the first chapter of his Biographia, and wondered what Bowles thought of it-'if, indeed, he collated the passages concerning himself, with his own speeches, etc., concerning me. Alas! I injured myself irreparably with him by devoting a fortnight [probably about 1815] to the correction of his poems. He took the corrections, but never forgave the corrector. Nihil volume,1 that nothing need be said here. Wordsworth stated that in November 1797 Osorio was offered with his own tragedy to Covent Garden, but his statement is made doubtfully, and there is no corroborative evidence. Both tragedies were about this time proposed to Cottle for publication, and he offered thirty guineas for each, but the offer was declined-'from the hope' (says Cottle) of introducing one or both on the stage.' 3 The air, as usual, was full of projects. An epic, to which at least twenty years should be devoted, was not, strictly speaking, one of them, but the necessary preparations were suggested-ten years for collecting material, five in composition, five in correction-So would I write, haply not unhearing of that divine and nightly whispering voice, which speaks to mighty minds,. of predestinated garlands, starry and unwithering.' 4 A great poem on Man and Nature and Society, to be symbolised by a brook in its course from upland source to sea, was planned in conversation with Wordsworth, and a translation of Wieland's Oberon seems to have been actually undertaken.5 This was in November 1797. On the 13th of that month, at half-past four in the afternoon,' Coleridge and the two Wordsworths set off to walk to Watchet en route to Linton and the Valley of Stones a little tour the expense of which they meant to defray (solvitur ambulando) by a joint composition of the two poets, to be sold for £5 to the editor of the Monthly Magazine. Before the first eight miles had been covered the attempt at XX joint composition broke down, and Coleridge took the business into his own hands. The magnificent result was The Ancient Mariner.6 But it was not sent to the Monthly Magazine, and the travellers' expenses must have come from some other fund. It grew and grew' (says Wordsworth) until March came round. On the 23rd of that month (1798), Dorothy records: Coleridge dined with us; he brought his ballad finished. We walked with him to the miner's house. A beautiful evening, very starry, the horned moon.' No doubt the poet read the poem to his friends his one perfect and complete achievement—' inimitable,' as with just pride he affirmed. Of Christabel, which, he tells us, was begun at Stowey in 1797, there is no contemporary record. But the originals of the thin gray cloud,' which made the moon both small and dull,' and the one red leaf the last of its clan,' appear in Dorothy's Journal' for January 31 and March 7, 1798, respectively.'7 Sometime in 1797, possibly earlier, Coleridge had been introduced by Poole to Thomas and Josiah Wedgwood, sons of the great potter. Their brother John resided at Cote House, Westbury, near Bristol; Thomas was a patient of Dr. Beddoes, and the combined circumstances made the brothers, Thomas and Josiah, frequent visitors to Bristol. Coleridge probably often met them there and at Poole's, and both being cultivated men they could not fail to be greatly interested in the poet. In December 1797, and during the absence of the Wordsworths in London, Coleridge received an invitation to preach at the Unitarian chapel at Shrewsbury, with the view of succeeding to its pastoral charge, about to become vacant by the retirement of the Rev. Mr. Rowe. In spite of old prejudices against the preaching of the Gospel for hire, he was tempted by the emolument of £150 per annum, and became a candidate. This step coming to the knowledge of the brothers Josiah and Thomas Wedgwood, they hastened to send him a present of £100 to relieve his immediate necessities, and to dissuade him from abandoning poetry and philosophy for the ministry. This Coleridge returned with a grateful letter, explaining that the £100 would soon be consumed, and prospectless poverty recur. He therefore proceeded to Shrewsbury, and preached there with much acceptance' on the second Sunday of 1798. One of his hearers was William Hazlitt, then a youth of twenty, his father being Unitarian minister at Wem, a village ten miles from Shrewsbury. A quarter of a century afterwards, Hazlitt gave an account of his experiences of that Sunday which is immortal. He describes how he walked in to Shrewsbury from Wem on that winter morning to hear this celebrated person preach.' 'When I got there, the organ was playing the 100th Psalm, and, when it was done, Mr. Coleridge rose and gave out his text, "And he went up into the mountains to pray, Himself, alone." As he gave out this text, his voice "rose like a steam of rich distilled perfumes," and when he came to the two last words, which he pronounced loud, deep, and distinct, it seemed to me, who was then young, as if the sounds had echoed from the bottom of the human heart, and as if that prayer might have floated in solemn silence through the universe. . . . The preacher then launched into his subject like an eagle dallying with the wind. The sermon was upon peace and war: upon church and state-not their alliance, but their separation -on the spirit of the world and the spirit of Christianity, not as the same, but as opposed to one another.' 66 The discourse seemed to young Hazlitt as the music of the spheres, and he conveyed an invitation from his father to the preacher to visit the manse at Wem. On the following Tuesday Coleridge came, and spent the first two hours in talking to the youth. His complexion' (says Hazlitt) was at that time clear, and even bright. His forehead was broad and high, light as if built of ivory, with large projecting eyebrows, and his eyes rolling beneath them like a sea with darkened lustre. A certain tender bloom his face o'erspread," a purple tinge as we see it in the pale thoughtful complexions of the Spanish portrait - painters, Murillo and Velasquez. His mouth was gross, voluptuous, open, eloquent; his chin goodhumoured and round, but his nose, the rudder of the face, the index of the will, was small, feeble, nothing-like what he has done. . . . Coleridge in his person was rather above the common size, inclining to the corpulent. . . . His hair . . . was then black and glossy as the raven's, and fell in smooth masses over his forehead.' The day passed off pleasantly, and the next morning Coleridge was to return to Shrewsbury. 'When I came down to breakfast, I found that he had just received a letter from his friend T. [J.] Wedgwood, making him an offer of £150 a year if he chose to waive his present pursuit, and devote himself entirely to the study of poetry and philosophy. Coleridge seemed to make up his mind to close with this proposal in the act of tying on one of his shoes. It threw an additional damp on his departure. . . . He was henceforth to inhabit the Hill of Parnassus, to be a Shepherd on the Delectable Mountain. Alas! I knew not the way thither,' mourned Hazlitt; but Coleridge invited him to Stowey. He accompanied Coleridge part of the way back to Shrewsbury, and observed that he continually crossed me on the way by shifting from one side of the footpath to the other. . . . He seemed 1 The Liberal, No. III. (1823): 'My first acquaintance with Poets.' Part had been printed in The Examiner for Jan. 12, 1817. unable to keep in a straight line.' * But the talk was divine. The very milestones had ears, and Harmer Hill stooped with all its pines to listen to a poet.' The letter which Coleridge had received, and which had been written by Josiah Wedgwood, on his own and his brother Thomas's behalf, is printed in full in T. Poole and his Friends (i. 259-261). The terms of their offer, which had not previously been made known, were contained in these sentences: After what my brother Thomas has written [with the present of a hundred pounds], I have only to state the proposal we wish to make to you. It is that you shall accept an annuity for life of £150, to be regularly paid by us, no condition whatever being annexed to it. Thus your liberty will remain entire. . . . I do not now enter into the particulars of the mode of securing the annuity, etc.-that will be done when we receive your consent to the proposal we are making; and we shall only say that we mean the annuity to be independent of everything but the wreck of our fortune.' + Coleridge delayed not a post in accepting the proposal (January 16), and in announcing this to Poole, he wrote: High benevolence is something so new, that I am not certain that I am not dreaming.' He adds that he is obliged to remain two Sundays longer at Shrewsbury. The congregation is small, and my reputation had cowed them into vast respectfulness, but one shrewd fellow remarked that he would rather hear me talk than preach.' On the 19th, Coleridge sent in his official resignation of candidature,1 and at the earliest possible moment (January 29) went off to meet his benefactors at Cote House. With the letter mentioned in the footnote, there went one from Daniel Stuart, proprietor of the Morning Post, suggesting subjects for contributions in prose and verse, the remuneration for which (as we gather from an allusion in Poole's accompanying letter) was to be a guinea a week. Stuart's letter incidentally reveals the fact that Coleridge had been already a contributor to his paper. Poole urges Coleridge to attend at once to Stuart's request, but on the 27th he tells Poole he will be 'vexed to hear that he has written nothing for the Morning Post-but shall write immediately to the editor.' He has been much fêted at Shrewsbury, he says; and I suspect that his detention there beyond the date of his resignation was voluntary. It was certainly unwise to postpone his visit to the Wedgwoods, and his contributions to the newspaper. The introduction to Daniel Stuart, who had become proprietor and editor of the Morning Post in 1796, must have come from the Wedgwoods, either directly or through their intimate friend (Sir) James Mackintosh, who in 1789 had married Stuart's sister Catherine. I have not detected any of Coleridge's contributions to the Morning Post before the beginning of 1798, but between January 8 and the departure for Germany several poems of various merit appeared.3 The magnificent Ode to France was by far the most important of these. In calling it The Recantation, Coleridge meant, of course, that he recanted his previous loudly-expressed belief in the French Revolu * Compare Carlyle in the Life of Sterling: of the garden-walk would suit him best, but con- It is unaccountable how the unconditional secured legally, and was paid regularly until Coleridge's death. 1 His letter is printed in full in the Christian Reformer for 1834, pp. 838. 2 Cottle's Rem. p. 172; but Cottle mistakes in supposing the letter there printed to be Coleridge's acceptance of the annuity. It was in reply to an invitation from T. Wedgwood dated 'Penzance, January 20,' which had been for warded by Poole. 3 Fire, Famine, and Slaughter (pp. 111, 527) === |