much more than I have earned, and this must not be. . . . I will certainly fill you out a good paper on Sunday.'1 How long Coleridge remained with Lamb is unknown, for the next glimpse we have of him is in a letter written to Josiah Wedgwood on the 21st April, from Wordsworth's cottage at Grasmere: To-morrow morning I send off the last sheet of my irksome, soul-wearying labour, the translation of Schiller. Of its success I have no hope,' he says, adding but with all this I have learnt that I have Industry and Perseverance-and before the end of the year, if God grant me health, I shall have my wings wholly un-birdlimed.' He expects to be back in London in a week. But he went to Stowey 2 instead. To Godwin he writes from Poole's house on May 21st:3 I left Wordsworth on the 4th of this month; if I cannot procure a suitable house at Stowey, I return to Cumberland and settle at Keswick, in a house of such prospect, that, if, according to you and Hume, impressions constitute our being, I shall have a tendency to become a god, so sublime and beautiful will be the series of my visual existence. . . . Hartley sends his love to Mary. "What, and not to Fanny?" Yes, and to Fanny, but I'll have Mary [afterwards Mrs. Shelley]. In Bristol I was much with Davy [afterwards Sir Humphry]-almost all day.'* No house was procurable at Stowey, and some time in June Coleridge took his wife and child to Dove Cottage. On the way thither they stayed eight or nine days at Liverpool as the guests of Dr. Crompton (a connection of Mrs. Evans of Darley Abbey), and saw much of the remarkable group of which Roscoe, Rathbone, and Dr. Currie (editor of Burns) were the principal members-all Liberals in politics and religion. The Coleridges remained with the Wordsworths from the 1st July until the 24th, when they moved into Greta Hall. On the 11th of that month Coleridge writes to Stuart of a sort of rheumatic fever, the result of a cold caught on the journey north, from which he was hardly then recovered, and, making this the excuse for having sent no contributions for two months, promises the second part of Pitt' and 'Buonaparte' immediately. He will at same time say whether or no he will be able to continue any species of regular connection with the paper'; and closes by announcing that his address henceforward will be Greta Hall.' 5 On the day on which he entered that famous dwelling, he wrote to J. Wedgwood: I parted from Poole with pain and dejection, for him, and for myself in him. I should have given Stowey a decided preference for a residence. . . but there was no suitable house, and no prospect of a suitable house.' Coleridge, however, was by no means inconsolable. As far back as March, Poole had grown jealous of his ever-growing attachment to Wordsworth-accusing him even of 'prostration,'7 and I share Mrs. Sandford's view that Coleridge would never have been contented to live in the west of England whilst Wordsworth was living in * Davy had been, since October 1798, at Bristol, in charge of Dr. Beddoes's Pneumatic Institution. Coleridge was introduced to him in 1799 before going to London. In January 1800 Coleridge tells T. Wedgwood, who took much interest in Davy, that he had 'never met with so extraordinary a young man' (Cottle's Rem. p. 431). . 1 Letters from the Lake Poets . . to Daniel Stuart. 1800-1838. Printed for private circulation, 1889, pp. 5, 6. 2 Letters to the Lake Poets, p. 7. 3 Portions of Coleridge's letters to Godwin were printed in Macmillan's Magazine for April 1864. These, with some additions and some omissions, were reprinted in William Godwin: his Friends and Acquaintances, by C. Kegan Paul. 2 vols. 1876. Vol. ii. Coleridge and Godwin had become very intimate in the winter of 1799-1800. 4 Knight's Life, i. 266. 5 Letters from the Lake Poets, p. 11. 6 July 24th, 1800; in Cottle's Rem. p. 436. 7 T. Poole and his Friends, ii. 8, 9. the north.' Coleridge, no doubt, believed himself to be regretful at the necessity which carried him to the north, and the two men parted the best of friends; and so they continued for some years longer. But Coleridge had always some one chief friend, generally the one nearest to him, to whom he gave away so much of himself as to find it impossible to meet other claims which, not the less, he eagerly acknowledged. There is no need to describe Greta Hall. The house and its surroundings are well known, and Coleridge's impressions may be found recounted at length in his published letters.1 He was simply enchanted with everything. 'I question if there be a room in England which commands a view of mountains and lakes, and woods, and vales, superior to that in which I am now sitting. I say this because it is destined for your study if you come.' So he wrote to the unlovely Godwin.2 To Poole he wrote, after three weeks' experience: 'In gardens, etc., we are uncommonly well-off, and our landlord,* who resides next door in this two-fold house, is already much attached to us. He is a quiet, sensible man, with as large a library as yours, and perhaps larger, well stored with Encyclopedias, Dictionaries, and Histories, etc.,3 all modern. The gentry of the country, titled and untitled, have all called, or are about to call on me, and I shall have free access to the magnificent library of Sir Gilfrid Lawson, a weak but good-natured man. I wish you could come here in October, after your harvesting, and stand godfather at the christening of my child. We are well, and the Wordsworths are well. The two volumes of the Lyrical Ballads will appear in about a fortnight.' But they did not appear for about six months, and in the interval there was much coming and going between Dove Cottage and Greta Hall, as may be seen even in the few extracts from Miss Wordsword's Grasmere Journals,' printed in Prof. Knight's Life of Wordsworth. The interchange of visits was so frequent that the friends seem to have thought little more of the twelve miles which lay between Grasmere and Keswick, than they had of the three between Stowey and Alfoxden. Having left Dove Cottage on the 23rd, Coleridge was back again on the 31st, bringing with him the second volume of the Annual Anthology. The party spent two days walking, rowing on the lake, and reading one another's poems in the breeze and the shade,' and, on the 2nd September, the two poets walked back to Greta Hall, Wordsworth returning home on the 6th. Two days after, Wordsworth and his sister went over on a week's visit. As it has been said that Coleridge never went to church, one may oppose to that scandalous report Miss Wordsworth's entry for Sunday, August 10th: Very hot. The C.'s went to church. We sailed upon Derwent in the evening.' Three Sundays later, Miss Wordsworth records: At II o'clock Coleridge came when I was walking in the still, clear * Jackson, a retired carrier. He was the master of Wordsworth's Waggoner, and admirable in all relations of life. † Derwent-born September 14th, 1800, three weeks after the letter was written. Coleridge had also asked Godwin (of all men in the world !) to be godfather, meeting with a refusal. See a curious passage on Coleridge's then very unsettled views respecting Baptism, in a letter to Godwin (W. Godwin, ii. 9). Derwent, when a little baby, was supposed to be dying, 'so,' writes Coleridge to Davy, 'the good people would have it baptized.' This was doubtless a private rite. In November 1803 all three children were publicly baptized-but only, again, 'to please the good people,' not the father. 1 To Wedgwood in Cottle's Rem. p. 436, and to Godwin in William Godwin, ii. 6-8. 2 William Godwin, ii. 8. 3 To Godwin, he describes Jackson's books as 'almost all the usual trash of Johnson's, Gibbon's, Robertson's, etc.' to Coleridge, full of sympathy, but regretting that the multiplicity of claims on him at the time disable him from lending more than £20, and suggesting that Wade and some other friends might make up the rest. Coleridge was deeply hurt. He allowed six weeks to pass before replying; and though his letter is not without bitterness, it concludes with some assurances of affection, and some details as to his health and the impossibility of staying in this climate.' He has asked John Pinney if he may go and stay for a while on his estate in Nevis (West Indies). 'My spirits are good, I am generally cheerful, and when I am not, it is because I have exchanged it for a deeper and more pleasurable tranquillity.' (Is it possible that this is a periphrasis for opium dreams?) A fortnight after this Coleridge tells Godwin 1 he has had to give up going abroad for want of money, and if a last effort to get to Mr. John King's estate in St. Lucia fail, he may perhaps go up to London and maintain himself as before, by writing for the Morning Post." Poole was painfully affected' by Coleridge's letter of September 7, though it had been followed quickly by one of affectionate sympathy on the occasion of his mother's death. Coleridge replies by one in which honey and gall are mingled in almost equal proportions. Poole thought both letters outrageous,' but the friendship stood the strain, and Poole lent Coleridge £25 to enable him to pay a visit to London and Stowey. Coleridge promises not to stay there less than two months; the remainder of the time till March he will pass with the Wedgwoods and other friends in the west country. The plan, one need hardly say, was not fully accomplished. He arrived in London on the 15th November.2 He tells Davy 3 he means to stay a fortnight there, and Godwin that he 'planned a walk into Somersetshire,' but he remained in London until Christmas, first with Southey and then at a lodging in Covent Garden.* On December 14 he wrote to Poole 4: I am writing for the Morning Post, and am reading in the old libraries, for my curious metaphysical work, but I hate London.' He left for Stowey on Christmas Day,5 returning to Howell's about January 21st.6 Thomas Wedgwood had been his fellow-guest at Poole's during the visit. Poole went to London with Coleridge, and both attended Davy's popular lectures at the Royal Institution, Coleridge saying that his object was to increase his stock of metaphors.' 8 On February 6, 1802, Southey informs W. Taylor 9 that T. Wedgwood and Mackintosh are hatching a great metaphysical work, to which Coleridge has promised as preface a history of metaphysical opinion,' for which he is reading Duns Scotus and Thomas Aquinas. But during all this time Coleridge was writing heart-rending 'I took a first floor for him in King Street, Covent Garden, at my tailor's, Howell's, whose wife was a cheerful good housewife, of middleage, who I knew would nurse Coleridge as kindly as if he were her son. . . . My practice was to call on him in the middle of the day, talk over the news, and project a leading paragraph for the next morning. In conversation he made a brilliant display . . . but I soon found he could not write daily on the occurrences of the day' (D. Stuart in Gent. Mag. May 1838, p. 487). As before pointed out, Stuart here misdates the Howell period. He does not say here that Coleridge gave him hardly any contributions, but in Essays on his own Times there is nothing between December 3, 1801, and September 21, 1802, 1 Letter of September 22, 1801. William Godwin, ii. 81. 2 William Godwin, ii. 83. 3 Frag. Rem. p. 92. 4 See also T. Poole and his Friends, ii. 73. 5 Unprinted letter to Poole of Christmas Eve; also undated and misplaced letter to Stuart in Letters of Lake Poets, p. 7. 6 Ib. p. 24, and Knight's Life of Wordsworth, i. 288. 7 T. Poole and his Friends, ii. 102. 8 Paris's Life of Sir H. D. i. 138. 9 Mem. of W. T. i. 398. A week after this Coleridge informs Poole that his 'health has been on the mend ever since Poole left town, nor has he had occasion for opiates of any kind' (T. Poole and his Friends, ii. 77). accounts of his health to the Wordsworths,1 and on 19th March, 'on a very rainy mor. ing,' he appeared at Dove Cottage.2 His eyes were a little swollen with the wind. was much affected by the sight of him, he seemed half-stupified.' Next day the part 'had a little talk of going abroad.' 'William read The Pedlar. Talked abou various things-christening the children, etc. etc.' When Coleridge had gone, hi. hosts 'talked about' him, as they paced the orchard walk. We may be sure that when, on the 19th March, Coleridge walked over to Dove Cottage, he had not been long at Greta Hall. He was in sad case of body and mind and sought Dove Cottage as naturally as the thirsty hart seeks the water-brooks What he thought of himself and of Wordsworth at this time we may read in 'Dejection an Ode, written on April 4, 1802.'3 But let the ode be read in its original form,* before the frosts of alienation had withered some of its tenderest shoots. For it wa addressed to Wordsworth, and, before printing, addressed to him by name. No sadde cry from the depths was ever uttered, even by Coleridge, none more sincere, nonmore musical. Health was gone, and with it both the natural joy' which had been his in rich abundance, and that rarer kind which, as he tells us, dwells only with the pure; nor was this all, for he discovered that he had lost control of his most precious endowment, his 'shaping spirit of imagination'-and that his 'sole resource' was the endeavour to forget, in metaphysical speculations, that it had ever been his. He felt that poetically he was dead, and that if not dead spiritually, he had lost his spiritual identity. I make no quotations, for the ode is a whole, and must be read as a whole. But it is incomplete. The symptoms of the disease are stated wit! great and deeply-affecting fulness, but the causes are only vaguely hinted at. I addressing Wordsworth, there may have been no need for more. Besides the bodil ailments, there were at least two causes-fatal indulgence in opium, and growing estrangement between his wife and himself. If the opium-eating was unknown to th Wordsworths, it may have been suspected, and Coleridge may have known that it wa suspected. The domestic trouble must have been known to them. In these earlie days the discord was not constant,† there were intervals of peace, but even then Cole ridge had accustomed himself to seek happiness, or, at least, relief from cares, else where than in the house which should have been his home. By the end of this year the estrangement had made considerable progress, and Greta Hall knew those habitual ills That wear out life, when two unequal minds If there be any mystery here, I shall not attempt to fathom it ; but I do not think there is any mystery at all. The marriage had not been made in Heaven, but in Bristol, and by the meddlesomeness of Southey, a man superlatively admirable, but self-sufficient and sometimes obtuse. Attachment there had been, strong enough to bear a good deal of strain; but if there had been love, its roots had found no sustenance, and when it withered away, root and branch, there was nothing left, no bond of community of mind and tastes-nothing but the unsheathed material fetters * ' APPENDIX G,' p. 522. April 4 was probably the day on which the poem was completed. The Wordsworths were at Greta Hall on the 4th and 5th, and doubtless it was read to them. 'I am at present in better health than I have been, though by no means strong and well-and at home all is Peace and Love' (original under lined). S. T. C. to Estlin, 26th July 1802, in Estlin Letters, p. 82. 1 See Miss Wordsworth's Journals in Knight's Life of W. W. i. 288 et seq. 2 Ib. i. 302. 3 Page 159. See also 'Note 162,' p. 626. which galled, and which, when the galling became intolerable, were laid aside. There s nothing in this simple theory inconsistent with the view that Coleridge was a diffi- X Cult man to manage, and that his wife was unequal to the task. It is doubtless a torrect view, but it does not go deep enough. Coleridge's many faults as a husband have been made patent enough, perhaps more than enough; of Mrs. Coleridge's as a wife, I have heard of none save that sometimes she was 'fretful.' Had she not fretted, and often, it would have been a miracle, for she had provocation in abundance; but 'fretting' is one of the habits which bring about consequences that seem disproportionate, and which are apt rather to propagate than to abate the *provocation. Although evidence of Coleridge's undue indulgence in opium, and of some of its consequences, comes earlier than that of conjugal estrangement, I am inclined to believe that both began about the same time. Of each the predisposing cause had dong been latent, but whether the quickening of the one brought the other to life, and if so, which was cause, and which effect, it would now be idle to inquire. What may be considered as certain is, that each acted and reacted to the aggravation of both. I have thought it best to deal somewhat fully with these painful matters at their first appearance, seeing that as they coloured Coleridge's subsequent life, so must their existence be assumed (for I shall mention them as seldom as possible) in what remains of this narrative. The winter of 1801-1802 was the turning-point in Coleridge's life. After his home-coming about the middle of March, Coleridge spent much of his ime at Dove Cottage,1 and when he was not there, correspondence was frequent. On the night of April 29th Wordsworth could not sleep after reading a letter from his friend. On May 4th Coleridge looked well and parted from his friends cheerfully' -evidently an exception which proves the rule. On the 9th Wordsworth began his verses about C. and himself,'* on the 11th he finished them, but they were not sent O Coleridge until June 7. On May 15th 'a melancholy letter from Coleridge' took kind Dorothy over to Greta Hall, but four days later he was able to walk half-way back with her. On the 22nd he met the Wordsworths at a favourite trystingplace and they had some interesting, melancholy talk' about his private affairs. Two days before that they had warning not to come to Keswick. When the Wordsworths left Dove Cottage for Gallow Hill on their way to the Continent, they spent the first two nights at Greta Hall, and when they left (July 11) Coleridge walked with them 'six or seven miles. He was not well, and we had a melancholy parting after having * Stanzas written in my pocket copy of Thomson's Castle of Indolence, in which Coleridge is described as 'a noticeable man with large grey eyes.' 'Composed in the orchard, Town-end, Grasmere, Coleridge living with us much at the time,' is the Fenwick-note.' But these were not the only verses regarding Coleridge which Wordsworth wrote at this time. On the 3rd May he began, and on the 7th completed, The Leechgatherer; or, Resolution and Independence. It is impossible to doubt that Stanza VI. refers not to the poet himself, but to Coleridge, who had lived as if life's business were a summer mood.' 'But how can he expect that others should build for him, sow for him, and at his call love him, C who for himself will take no heed at all.' See, on this point, Canon Ainger in Macmillan's Magazine, June 1887, p. 86. Possibly Mrs. Coleridge may have hinted some passing disinclination to another visit. But I seize the opportunity of remarking that De Quincey's story (Works, 1863, ii. 63) about a young lady (evidently Miss Wordsworth) of whom, shortly after her marriage, Mrs. Coleridge was furiously jealous, has, I believe, little or no foundation. So far as I am aware, friendly relations between Mrs. Coleridge and Miss Wordsworth were never seriously interrupted. 1 Knight's Life, i. 302 et seq. e |