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Samuel Taylor Coleridge,

poet, critic, and philosopher, was born at Ottery St Mary, Devon, 21st October 1772. He was the youngest son of the Rev. John Coleridge (born 1718), vicar of the parish, chaplain-priest of the Collegiate Church, and master of the grammar-school, and of his second wife Ann, the daughter of an Exmoor farmer named Bowdon. John Coleridge, of whose family and origin little or nothing is known, was a self-made man. He began life as a village schoolmaster, married, and in his thirtieth year matriculated as a sizar of Sidney Sussex College, Cambridge (1748). He had kept some five or six terms when the offer of the mastership of an endowed school at South Molton, and a prospect of taking orders, induced him to leave the university without a degree (1749). He moved to Ottery in 1760, and died 4th October 1781. He was a learned man, and published, inter alia, an excursus (Dissertations) on two chapters of the Book of Judges (1768) and a Critical Latin Grammar (1772). The anecdotes recorded by De Quincey and Gillman of his eccentricity and simple-mindedness are apocryphal. When he died three of his sons were officers in the army; three were, or had been, at the university; and his widow, though but poorly left, was not penniless. In the autobiographical letters addressed to Thomas Poole in 1797-98 (Letters, &c., 1895, vol. i. pp. 3-21) Coleridge describes himself as a 'poetic child,' a devourer of fairy-tales, a weaver of day-dreams, at odds with his playmates, but delighting in 'long conversations' with his father. Before he was nine years old his father died, and in the following spring (24th April) he was nominated to Christ's Hospital, and entered the 'great school' on 12th September 1782.

At first he was forlorn and unhappy, ill-fed and homesick, but as time went on there were mitigations. His schoolfellow, Thomas Fanshawe Middleton, afterwards Bishop of Calcutta, noticed and protected him from the first, and after he had taken rank as 'a Grecian' he made friends with and held his own among seniors and contemporaries. Chief among those who looked up to him as elder and superior was Charles Lamb. He believed—or, perhaps, chose to think-that he owed his faculty as writer and poet to the severities of his fierce though painstaking master, James Boyer, who forced him to use his brains and control his fancies, and who once, he said, flogged him justly when he had been reading Voltaire and 'sported infidel.' It was doubtless to the austere discipline of the Blue-coat School that Coleridge owed the command over his extraordinary talents, which neither genius nor temperament could 'utterly abolish or destroy.' When he was seventeen, on one of the monthly 'leave-days' he swam the New River in his clothes, and was punished for his folly by a sharp attack of rheumatic fever. He never completely regained his health, and it is probable

that the rheumatic gout, or what not, which attacked him at Keswick, encouraging and confirming, if it did not awaken, the indulgence in opium, may be traced to this fateful escapade. He was in the sick ward-' seas of pain waving through each limb' (see sonnet to Pain)-for several months, and after his recovery his next step was to fall, or rush, into a first love with a schoolfellow's sister named Mary Evans. She was a blue-eyed maiden, quick-tempered and quick-witted, 'nobly planned' to love and be loved; but, alas! she was not for Coleridge, and, to his loss and sorrow, married and passed out of his life. But whilst he was at school, and for long afterwards, she was a 'phantom of delight,' an influence and an inspiration.

Coleridge was entered as a sizar on the books of Jesus College, Cambridge, 5th February 1791, but did not go into residence till the following October. He received from the Hospital a donation of £40, an annual exhibition of £40, a 'Rustat' scholarship for the sons of clergymen of about £25 per annum, and an irregular allowance from his brothers. With prudence this was a bare sufficiency, but from ignorance or indifference he at once plunged into debt. At first, thanks to the presence and example of Middleton, he worked hard, and in July 1792 was Browne medallist (see The Poetical Works, 1893, pp. 476477). In the winter of 1792 he was among the select' for the Craven scholarship, but missed success. The long vacation of 1793 was spent at Ottery, and towards the close of the Michaelmas term he went up to London, spent his last guinea, and enlisted (2nd December 1793) in the 15th or King's Regiment of Light Dragoons. Debts to his college tutor and to Cambridge tradesmen prompted this counsel of despair. He had wasted his time, his talents, and his brothers' money, and he shrank from the disclosure which was at hand. 'gests and exploits' of Silas Tomkyn Comberbacke (his nom de guerre), which Cottle and Gillman retail, are more or less mythical. A less agreeable but a more probable version of the story is to be found in Charles Lloyd's novel Edmund Oliver, which was published in 1798. Coleridge was an indifferent dragoon, and soon betrayed his own secret. His brother, Captain James Coleridge, discovered that 'Sam' was quartered at Reading, wrote to him a letter of forgiveness, and after some time and trouble bought him out. His discharge is dated 10th April 1794, and on the following day he went up to Cambridge. The authorities were lenient, and he escaped with a nominal punishment.

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At the end of the summer term he started for a walking tour in North Wales, taking Oxford on his way. Then it was that he first met Robert Southey, of Balliol College, and, inspired by his sympathy and companionship, talked out a scheme for turning socialist and emigrating with a chosen band to America. Coleridge, who was great at

coining words, thought communism or socialism might be rechristened Pantisocracy. Early in August, when the tour was over, he rejoined Southey at Bristol, where he met and engaged himself to his future wife, Sarah Fricker. She was the eldest of five sisters, of whom the second, Mary, was already married to a young Quaker poet named Robert Lovell, and the third, Edith, was betrothed to Southey. Byron maintained that Sarah and Edith were 'milliners of Bath,' and, when brought to book, gave his authority for the

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the autumn they quarrelled and dissolved partnership. Southey had been the first to realise that pantisocracy was impracticable, and, to his friend's dismay and indignation, determined to pass the winter with his uncle at Lisbon. The result was that Coleridge, relying on the offer of a new friend and patron, Joseph Cottle, a Bristol bookseller, married (4th October 1793) and settled with his wife in a 'myrtle-bound' cottage at Clevedon. Here, for a brief while, 'domestic peace' was

SAMUEL TAYLOR COLERIDGE.

From a Drawing (aged 24) by Robert Hancock in the National Portrait Gallery.

degree. His first work, The Fall of Robespierre, an Historic Drama, of which Southey wrote the second and third acts, was published at Cambridge in September 1794. The first act contains the well-known lines, 'Tell me on what holy ground May domestic peace be found.'

For a few weeks he lingered in London, writing sonnets for the Morning Chronicle, and 'sitting late, drinking late' with Charles Lamb at the 'Cat and Salutation' in Newgate Street; but early in February, at Southey's instance or insistence, removed to Bristol. For some months the friends lodged together and endeavoured to make a living by lecturing on politics, history, and theology (for specimens of Coleridge's political lectures, see Conciones ad Populum, printed in pamphlet form at Bristol, November 1795, and republished in Essays on His Own Times, 1850, vol. i. pp. 1-55); but in

found, but want of books, friends, and, perhaps, the necessaries of life in less than three months led to a 'domestication' with his motherin-law at Bristol. The spring of 1796 was taken up with the publication of the Watchman, a periodical which professed to be the organ of the Whig Club and other patriotic societies. The first number appeared on 1st March, and the tenth and last on 13th May 1796 (for Coleridge's articles, see Essays, &c., 1850, vol. i. pp. 99-178). Meanwhile a volume of Poems on Various Subjects (first edition) was issued by Cottle, 16th April 1796. The summer was

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consumed in devising abortive plans for making a living at Derby and elsewhere. He was away from home 'prospecting' when his eldest son

named, but not christened, David Hartleywas born, 19th September; and two days later he returned, bringing with him as inmate and pupil Charles Lloyd, a bank clerk who preferred poetry to keeping his father's ledgers. On 31st December 1796 the Ode to the Departing Year appeared in the Cambridge Intelligencer; and on 1st January 1797 Coleridge, with his wife and baby, took up their quarters in a cottage at Nether Stowey, a market-village at the foot of the Quantock Hills.

He moved for two reasons: in the first place, he wished to be within reach of his friend Thomas Poole, a tanner of good means and of good education, whose 'mansion' and tan-yard were in the village; and secondly, because he proposed to

himself to earn his living as market-gardener. Here he stayed for twenty months, making his home in the now celebrated 'Coleridge Cottage,' and here he wrote The Ancient Mariner, the first part of Christabel, and almost all his greater poems. Here, too, grew and flourished his friendship with William and Dorothy Wordsworth, which led to their settling (July 1797) at the neighbouring manor-house of Alfoxden. For the next twelve

months the friends were constantly together, and the interchange of sentiments and ideas, or, rather, the influence of a mutual inspiration, formed the 'atmosphere' in which the Lyrical Ballads (Sep-❘ tember 1798) were conceived and composed. But Coleridge had other interests besides poetry. At Cambridge he had come under the influence of William Frend, a Fellow of Jesus College who had turned Unitarian, and in 1795 at Bristol, and afterwards at Taunton and Bridgwater, he volunteered his services as preacher in Unitarian chapels. 'Hire' or remuneration was against his principles; but, failing literature and horticulture, he was ready to accept 'a call' from the Unitarian congregation of Shrewsbury, who had invited him (December 1797) to preach on approval. At Shrewsbury, and after he had obtained the appointment, he received and accepted from the brothers Josiah and Thomas Wedgwood the offer of an annuity for life of £150; and to meet their views, if not to satisfy their requirements, he resigned the ministry and returned to Stowey. In the long-run the Wedgwood annuity proved a donum exitiale, an injurious benevolence; but for a while competence came with healing on its wings. On 15th May a second son-named, but not christened, Berkeley (died 10th February 1799) -was born to him; and on 16th September, in company with the Wordsworths, he left England for Germany. After a few days spent at Hamburg, where he visited the German Milton,' Klopstock, he parted from his friend and took lodgings (Ist October) at Ratzeburg in the house of the pastor. Having learnt to read the language with ease and to murder the accent, he left Ratzeburg on 6th February, and matriculated at Göttingen on 12th February 1799 Among the professors whose lectures he attended, and who paid him 'the most flattering attentions,' were the naturalist Blumenbach, and J. G. Eichhorn, a pioneer of the 'higher criticism.' For four months of eager studentship he worked with a will at German literature, laying the foundation, the low beginnings,' of his afterwork as critic, theologian, and metaphysician. A journal which he wrote up as letters to his friends at home was published as 'Satyrane's Letters' in The Friend (November-December 1809) and in the Biographia Literaria (1817, vol. ii. pp. 183–253). ‘A Tour through the Hartz Mountains,' &c., which he took in company with young Blumenbach and some English friends, was published in the New Monthly Magazine in 1835 (No. xlv., pp. 211-226). The descriptions of scenery and manners in these and

other letters are laboured, but precise and vivid. He looked upon the world with a poet's eye, and proceeded to put down what he saw with the particularity of an auctioneer or a house-agent. In verse he had no need, and in prose no inclination, to learn the art 'to blot.' He returned to Stowey in July. In September he accompanied Southey, once more his friend, on a walking tour over Dartmoor; and in November, under the guidance of Wordsworth, walked through the whole of the Lake District. During this memorable excursion Wordsworth revived old memories and Coleridge enjoyed a new experience. Henceforth the English lakes and mountains were married to immortal verse. At the close of the year Coleridge gave up the cottage at Stowey and moved to London. He had already contributed poems to the Morning Post, at that time the property of Daniel Stuart, whose brotherin-law, [Sir] James Mackintosh, was the friend and afterwards a connection of the Wedgwoods; but for two or three months (December 1799-March 1800) he was regularly employed as a writer of leaders and, occasionally, as a parliamentary reporter. These and other newspaper articles (of 1802, 1809, 1811, 1814, and 1817), which not only served the purpose of the moment but have taken rank as literature, were reprinted as Essays, &c. (1850, vols. i.-iii.; see, for an appreciation, H. D. Traill's Coleridge, 1884, pp. 79-86). After two months of successful journalism he bent himself to another task, the translation of the second and third parts of Schiller's Wallenstein. He seems to have turned a German poem into a great, some say a greater, English poem in about seven weeks (1st March-21st April 1800).

It was now a question where he should live, and for a while he halted, or seemed to halt, between south and north, the vicinity of Poole or the vicinity of Wordsworth; but the north prevailed. On 24th July 1800 he brought his wife and Hartley to Greta Hall, a newly-built and partly-furnished house which stands on a small eminence a furlong from Keswick,' and for fifteen months he remained at home. At first, before and after the birth (14th September 1800) of his third son, Derwent, he passed his time wandering, note-book in hand, over the hills and exploring the remoter valleys, and in some genial moment wrote the second part of Christabel; but, with the approach of winter, fell into a diseased condition of nerve and limb. He contrived to edit some articles of Poole's for the Morning Post, and he assisted the Wordsworths in the transcription of poems for a second edition of the Lyrical Ballads, but attempted nothing original. It was in the winter of 1800-1 that, in Charles Lamb's expressive phrase, the 'dark column turned,' and his promising and joyous youth passed into an unrejoicing and unfruitful manhood. Two causes are assigned for this disastrous change-opium and an unhappy marriage; but a third must be added-persistent ill-health which provoked, though it did not justify,

both stimulants and narcotics. As to the opium, Coleridge knew something of its effects at Cambridge, perhaps had been dosed with it at Christ's Hospital; but it was not till the Lake District climate brought on a complication of gouty and rheumatic ailments that he drugged himself habitually and to excess. Except for a long spell of total abstinence in 1832, he took laudanum to the last; but from April 1816 and onwards the habit was regulated, and, by his own efforts, to a great extent overcome. Of his marriage a few words must be said. His wife was a good woman, honest, veracious, and dutiful, but passionate, nervous, and querulous. Intellectually she was quick-witted and clear-headed, and above the average in knowledge and acquirements, but out of sympathy with her husband's imaginative temperament and impatient of his theological subtleties; 'she could neither share his dreams, nor laugh away his fears, nor 'make the cheerless cottage warm.' 'Home was no home for him,' and Wordsworth's cottage was both paradise and home. They stood apart,' and there was no love to lose between them or to find again with tears.' It cannot be said that there were faults on both sides-the faults' were Coleridge's-but none the less it was an unlucky as well as an unhappy marriage. Greta Hall witnessed many quarrels and many shortlived reconciliations; but from the end of 1803, though still with occasional meetings and much correspondence, there was a virtual separation.

In November 1801 Coleridge went up to London, resumed his connection with Stuart, and visited Poole at Stowey. On, perhaps because of, his return to Keswick he wrote Dejection, an Ode 4th April 1802), which has been called the swansong of his Muse. In November-December he visited South Wales as the travelling companion of his munificent co-patron' Tom Wedgwood; and once again in his absence a child, his only daughter, Sara, was born to him (23rd December 1802). In the summer Longman published a third edition of his Poems, from which the poems by Lamb and Lloyd were omitted. On Sunday, 14th August 1803, he started with Wordsworth and Dorothy in a ‘jaunting-car' on a tour through the Highlands. He found the car ill travelling, and, bonging to get by himself, he left his friends at Arrochar, near Luss, 29th August, and proceeded on foot via Glencoe to Inverness, and back by Tummel Bridge and Perth to Edinburgh. He walked two hundred and sixty-three miles in eight days, hoping to cure himself of the gout, to lull the heartache, and to still the nerves. But the remedy increased the disease, and it was at Edinburgh when the walk was over that he wrote The Pains of Sleep. A letter from Southey announcing the death of his first-born, and offering a visit, recalled him to Keswick. As it fell out, Southey remained at Greta Hall, first as guest, then as co-tenant, and finally as the sole occupier till his death in 1843; while Coleridge, from 1804 to 1810, was but an

infrequent visitor, and after 1812 slept not again under that or other roof-tree of his own. Habent sua fata-poetæ! By the end of the year Coleridge had resolved to try the effect of a warmer climate, and with means provided by the painter-baronet Sir George Beaumont and Wordsworth, he sailed for Malta on 25th April 1804. On landing at Valetta on 18th May he was received as guest or boarder by Dr (afterwards Sir John) Stoddart and his sister Sarah (afterwards Mrs Hazlitt), but before long (6th July) was offered rooms in the palace of the Civil Commissioner, Sir Alexander Ball. Ball, who had been one of Nelson's captains, took a fancy to Coleridge, and perceiving that though he talked much he talked wisely, employed him as private secretary from the first, and, on the death of the 'Public Secretary of Malta and its Dependencies,' appointed him secretary ad interim (18th January6th September 1805). At first the climate worked wonders, but in spite of a second change to Sicily (August-November 1804), the effect wore off, and sickness, dejection, and their fateful alleviators remained to stay. He proved a thorough man of affairs, and made his mark as secretary; but out of reach of his friends and cut off from his philosophical pursuits he was a lost man, and felt that he had no business there.' To make money, to gain credit, to win applause, were as dust in the balance compared with the sympathy of the Wordsworths or a possible revelation of the mysteries of being.

He left Malta on 21st September, revisited Syracuse as the guest of his friend G. F. Leckie, H. M. Consul, and made a tour through Sicily, visiting Taormina (4th October) and other places of interest. He had reached Naples before 20th November, and thence, after a prolonged stay, arrived at Rome on 11th January 1806, where he passed the spring in the society of Ludwig, Tieck, Humboldt, Bunsen, and the American painter Washington Allston. He told Gillman and others that Napoleon had given orders for the arrest of the Englishman who had attacked him in the columns of the Morning Post, and that he owed his escape to a warning conveyed to him by an emissary of the Pope. From whatever cause, he left Rome on 18th May, and, after visiting Florence and Pisa, sailed from Leghorn on or about 24th June. He wrote but little whilst he was abroad; but later works betray an intimate acquaintance with Mediterranean politics, a knowledge of Italian literature, and a speaking acquaintance with the Fine Arts.' (For Sir Alexander Ball, see The Friend, 22nd, 26th, and 27th November 1810; in the 1850 ed., vol. iii. pp. 215-286). He reached London on 17th August, but did not rejoin his family at Greta Hall till the middle of October. The winter and early spring (1806-7) were passed at a farmhouse at Coleorton with the Wordsworths, where he listened to the Prelude, which had been completed in his absence, and wrote those pathetic lines with the prosaic title (To a Gentleman), in

which he bewails his 'sense of past youth and manhood come in vain.' The summer was passed at Stowey with his wife and children, and, after their return to Keswick, the late autumn at Bristol, where he formed the close attachment to his friends the Morgans, which in later years served him in such good stead when 'old friends burned dim' and the shadows deepened. In 1808 (JanuaryJune) he delivered his first course of 'Lectures on Shakespeare,' &c., at the Royal Institution. A few notes, which were taken down at the time (5th February) by H. C. Robinson (Diary, 1869, vol. i. pp. 267-268), and a résumé of two later lectures (Notes and Lectures, &c., 1849, vol. i. pp. 323-334), constitute the sole record of this course. More than once he disappointed his patrons by missing a lecture, and on one noted occasion he incurred the censure of the Council by a personal attack on the educationist Joseph Lancaster, who was a persona grata to the royal family and the public at large (see The Jerningham Letters, 1896, vol. i. p. 316); but he attracted notice, and, on the whole, increased his reputation. His next venture revealed another side of his character. He had given proof of capacity as a journalist, a diplomatist, a public lecturer, and, instead of following up either of these callings, nothing would serve him but to compile and publish at his own cost an abstruse periodical from which 'Personal and Party Politics and the Events of the Day' were deliberately excluded. It was 'a vain endeavour!' The Friend, which was written and despatched by post from Grasmere, was printed first by W. Pennington of Kendal, and afterwards by J. Brown of Penrith. The first number appeared on 1st June 1809, and the twentyseventh and last on 15th March 1810. The public, even the literary Unitarian and Quaker public, would not buy 'Principles' at a shilling a week. The original issue of The Friend was republished in 1812, and in 1818 Coleridge expanded his weekly essays into three volumes. The Friend wants reading as it has always wanted readers, but it rewards the adventurous! For a year and six months (18th September 1808 to April 1810) Coleridge lived with Wordsworth at Grasmere, but on the demise of The Friend he seems to have returned to what was still his residence, Greta Hall. Of this period there is no record, and when the curtain lifts once more he is posting to London with Wordsworth's old friend Basil Montagu, who had offered him rooms in his house. It seems that Wordsworth, acting for the best, had warned Montagu that Coleridge was a troublesome inmate, and that Montagu indiscreetly, if not ill-naturedly, repeated a confidential hint in the form of a message or ultimatum to Coleridge. There had been differences in the past, and the return to Greta Hall points to an altered relationship; but then for the first time Coleridge heard his sentence passed, and it broke his heart. The greater the truth, the greater the libel-most of all when it is spoken by

one's own familiar friend.' The quarrel or alienation was brought to an end in May 1812 through the intervention of H. C. Robinson, but in the following December fresh offence was given and taken, and it was long before there was a lasting reconciliation. As Wordsworth had foreseen, Montagu soon tired of his charge, and Coleridge took refuge with the Morgans, who, with brief intervals, shared their home with him for almost five years -at first at Hammersmith, then in London, and finally at Calne in Wiltshire. During the summer months (April-November) of 1811 he was on the staff of the Courier writing leading articles (Essays, &c., 1850, vol. iii. pp. 733–938), and discharging the duties of sub-editor; and when this arrangement broke down or came to an end, he delivered his second course of lectures (November 1811-January 1812) on Shakespeare and Milton at the Scots' Corporation Hall in Fleet Street (for a reprint of Collier's shorthand notes, see Lectures, &c., edited by T. Ashe, 1883). The lectures were well attended. Byron, who 'came to scoff,' admits rather reluctantly that the lecturer 'is a sort of rage at present.' In February-March 1812 Coleridge paid a brief and final visit to Greta Hall, and on his return rejoined the Morgans, who had moved to No. 71 Berners Street. He delivered a third course of lectures on 'The Drama' at Willis's Rooms in May-June, and a fourth course on 'Belles Lettres' at the Surrey Institute in October. In December he was engaged in attending rehearsals of Remorse (a rewritten version of the once rejected Osorio), which, at Byron's instance, had been accepted by the committee of Drury Lane Theatre. For once his star seemed to be in the ascendant; but before the year (1812) closed Josiah Wedgwood, without assigning any reason whatever, withdrew his moiety of the annuity of £150 which had been offered and conferred ‘for life.' Wedgwood was an honourable man, but the violation of a solemn pledge was, on the evidence before us, unjustifiable. Thenceforward Mrs Coleridge's regular income was less than £70 a year, a sum which, in 1814 and possibly afterwards, was expended on the education of her sons. At a later period she contributed a small annual payment towards the expenses of Southey's household.

Remorse was produced for the first time at Drury Lane Theatre on 23rd January 1813, and ran for twenty nights. On the whole the play was a success, and Coleridge received at least £400 for his rights as author. The play was published in pamphlet form and went into a third edition. Like the fair breeze which drove the Ancient Mariner into a silent sea, this gust of fortune blew no good to Coleridge. He lingered in London through the spring and summer, and it was not till October that he started for Bristol, partly to make money by lecturing and partly to transact business for the Morgans. A course of six lectures on Shakespeare and Milton was delivered in October, a second course on the same subject in November, and, yet

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