Summary:
MY FIRST ACQUAINTANCE WITH POETS
1. Wordsworth, on which he remarked to them—“He
strides on so far before you, that he dwindles in the distance!” Godwin had
once boasted to him of having carried on an argument with Mackintosh for three
hours with dubious success; Coleridge told him—“If there had been a man of
genius in the room, he would have settled the question in five minutes.” He
asked me if I had ever seen Mary Wolstonecraft, and I said, I had once for a
few moments, and that she seemed to me to turn off Godwin’s objections to
something she advanced with quite a playful, easy air.
2. It had[Pg 293] to me something of the effect
that arises from the turning up of the fresh soil, or of the first welcome
breath of Spring, “While yet the trembling year is unconfirmed.” Coleridge and
myself walked back to Stowey that evening, and his voice sounded high “Of
Providence, foreknowledge, will, and fate, Fix’d fate, free-will, foreknowledge
absolute,” as we passed through echoing grove, by fairy stream or waterfall,
gleaming in the summer moonlight! He lamented that Wordsworth was not prone
enough to belief in the traditional superstitions of the place, and that there
was a something corporeal, a matter-of-fact-ness, a clinging to the palpable,
or often to the petty, in his poetry, in consequence.
3. Returning that same evening, I got into a
metaphysical argument with Wordsworth, while Coleridge was explaining the
different notes of the nightingale to his sister, in which we neither of us
succeeded in making ourselves perfectly clear and intelligible.
4. Coleridge has told me that he himself liked to
compose in walking over uneven ground, or breaking through the straggling
branches of a copse wood; whereas Wordsworth always wrote (if he could) walking
up and down a strait gravel-walk, or in some spot where the continuity of his
verse met with no collateral interruption.
5. There is a chaunt in the recitation both of
Coleridge and Wordsworth, which acts as a spell upon the hearer, and disarms
the judgment.
6. Coleridge told me that he and Wordsworth were
to have made this place the scene of a prose-tale, which was to have been in
the manner of, but far superior to, the Death of Abel, but they had
relinquished the design.
7. Indeed, his thoughts had wings; and as the
silken sounds rustled round our little wainscoted parlour, my father threw back
his spectacles over his forehead, his white hairs mixing with its sanguine hue;
and a smile of delight beamed across his rugged cordial face, to think that
Truth had found a new ally in Fancy![143]Besides, Coleridge seemed to take
considerable notice of me, and that of itself was enough.
8. He “followed in the chace, like a dog who
hunts, not like one that made up the cry.” He had on a brown cloth coat, boots,
and corduroy breeches, was low in stature, bow-legged, had a drag in his
walk[Pg 296] Notes like a drover, which he assisted by a hazel switch, and kept
on a sort of trot by the side of Coleridge, like a running footman by a state
coach, that he might not lose a syllable or sound, that fell from Coleridge’s
lips.
9. Here he passed his days, repining but
resigned, in the study of the Bible, and the perusal of the Commentators,—huge
folios, not easily got through, one of which would outlast a winter! Why did he
pore on these from morn to night (with the exception of a walk in the fields or
a turn in the garden to gather brocoli-plants or kidney beans of his own
rearing, with no small degree of pride and pleasure)?—Here were “no figures nor
no fantasies,”—neither poetry nor philosophy—nothing to dazzle, nothing to
excite modern curiosity; but to his lack-lustre eyes there appeared, within the
pages of the ponderous, unwieldy, neglected tomes, the sacred name of JEHOVAH
in Hebrew capitals: pressed down by the weight of the style, worn to the last
fading thinness of the understanding, there were glimpses, glimmering notions
of the patriarchal wanderings, with palm-trees hovering in the horizon, and
processions of camels at the distance of three thousand[Pg 283] Notes years;
there was Moses with the Burning Bush, the number of the Twelve Tribes, types,
shadows, glosses on the law and the prophets; there were discussions (dull
enough) on the age of Methuselah, a mighty speculation! there were outlines,
rude guesses at the shape of Noah’s Ark and of the riches of Solomon’s Temple;
questions as to the date of the creation, predictions of the end of all things;
the great lapses of time, the strange mutations of the globe were unfolded with
the voluminous leaf, as it turned over; and though the soul might slumber with
an hieroglyphic veil of inscrutable mysteries drawn over it, yet it was in a
slumber ill-exchanged for all the sharpened realities of sense, wit, fancy, or
reason.
10. My soul has indeed remained in its original
bondage, dark, obscure, with longings infinite and unsatisfied; my heart, shut
up in the prison-house of this rude clay, has never found, nor will it ever
find, a heart to speak to; but that my understanding also did not remain dumb
and brutish, or at length found a language to express itself, I owe to
Coleridge.
11. As we taste the pleasures of life, their
spirit evaporates, the sense palls; and nothing is left but the phantoms, the
lifeless shadows of what has been! That morning, as soon as breakfast was over,
we strolled out into the park, and seating ourselves on the trunk of an old
ash-tree that stretched along the ground, Coleridge read aloud with a sonorous
and musical voice, the ballad of Betty Foy.
12. Johnson for striking the stone with his foot,
in allusion to this author’s Theory of Matter and Spirit, and saying, “Thus I
confute him, Sir.” Coleridge drew a parallel (I don’t know how he brought about
the connection) between Bishop Berkeley and Tom Paine.
13. I told Coleridge I had written a few remarks,
and was sometimes foolish enough to believe that I had made a discovery on the
same subject (the Natural Disinterestedness[Pg 288] Notes of the Human
Mind)—and I tried to explain my view of it to Coleridge, who listened with
great willingness, but I did not succeed in making myself understood.
14. I complained that he would not let me get on
at all, for he required a definition of every the commonest word, exclaiming,
“What do you mean by a sensation, Sir? What do you mean by an idea?” This,
Coleridge said, was barricadoing the road to truth: it was setting up a
turnpike-gate at every step we took.
15. Coleridge rose and gave out his text, “And he
went up into the mountain 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.
16. Coleridge in his person was rather above the
common size, inclining to the corpulent, or like Lord Hamlet, “somewhat fat and
pursy.” His hair (now, alas! grey) was then black and glossy as the raven’s,
and fell in smooth masses over his forehead.
17. The one still lingers there, the other has not
quitted my side! Coleridge in truth met me half-way on the ground of
philosophy, or I should not have been won over to his imaginative creed.
18. Coleridge was to return to Shrewsbury.
19. Coleridge came to Shrewsbury, to succeed Mr.
20. He afterwards followed Coleridge into Germany,
where the Kantean philosophers were puzzled how to bring him under any of their
categories.
21. A thunderstorm came on while we were at the
inn, and Coleridge was running out bareheaded to enjoy the commotion of the
elements in the Valley of Rocks, but as if in spite, the clouds only muttered a
few angry sounds, and let fall a few refreshing drops.
22. It ought to belong, as a character, to all who
preach Christ crucified, and Coleridge was at that time one of those! It was
curious to observe the contrast between him and my father, who was a veteran in
the cause, and then[Pg 282] Notes declining into the vale of years.
23. Coleridge, Nether-Stowey, Somersetshire; and
that he should be glad to see me there in a few weeks’ time, and, if I chose,
would come half-way to meet me.
24. How was the map of my life spread out before
me, as the map of the country lay at my feet! In the afternoon, Coleridge took
me over to All-Foxden, a romantic old family-mansion of the St.
25. This was the first observation I ever made to
Coleridge, and he said it was a very just and striking one.
26. On this occasion Coleridge spoke of Virgil’s
Georgics, but not well.
27. Coleridge, asking for a pen and ink, and going
to a table to write something on a bit of card, advanced towards me with
undulating step, and giving me the precious document, said that that was his
address, Mr.
28. Coleridge added that Mackintosh and Tom.
29. Coleridge had agreed to come over to see my
father, according to the courtesy of the country, as Mr.
30. Coleridge even denied the excellence of Hume’s
general style, which I think betrayed a want of taste or candour.
31. The scholar in Chaucer is described as going
——“Sounding on his way.” So Coleridge went on his.
32. Coleridge seemed to make up his mind to close
with this proposal in the act of tying on one of his shoes.
33. He told me his private opinion, that Coleridge
was a wonderful man.
34. Coleridge somehow always contrived to prefer
the unknown to the known.
35. We set off together on foot, Coleridge, John
Chester, and I.
36. I was to visit Coleridge in the spring.
37. He held the good town of Shrewsbury in
delightful suspense for three weeks that he remained there, “fluttering the
proud Salopians like an eagle in a dove-cote;” and the Welch mountains that
skirt the horizon with their tempestuous confusion, agree to have heard no such
mystic sounds since the days of “High-born Hoel’s harp or soft Llewellyn’s
lay!” As we passed along between W—m and Shrewsbury, and I eyed their blue tops
seen through the wintry branches,[Pg 278] or the red rustling leaves of the
sturdy oak-trees by the road-side, a sound was in my ears as of a Siren’s song;
I was stunned, startled with it, as from deep sleep; but I had no notion then
that I should ever be able to express my admiration to others in motley imagery
or quaint allusion, till the light of his genius shone into my soul, like the
sun’s rays glittering in the puddles of the road.
38. Instead of living at ten miles distance, of
being the pastor of a Dissenting congregation at Shrewsbury, he was henceforth
to inhabit the Hill of Parnassus, to be a Shepherd on the Delectable Mountains.
39. I could easily credit the accounts which were
circulated of his holding forth to a large party of ladies and gentlemen, an
evening or two before, on the Berkeleian Theory, when he made the whole
material universe look like a transparency of fine words; and another story
(which I believe he has somewhere told himself) of his being asked to a party
at Birmingham, of his smoking tobacco and going to sleep after dinner on a
sofa, where the company found him to their no small surprise, which was
increased to wonder when he started up of a sudden, and rubbing his eyes,
looked about him, and launched into a three-hours’ description of the third
heaven, of which he had had a dream, very different from Mr.
40. He mentioned Paley, praised the naturalness
and clearness of his style, but condemned his sentiments, thought him a mere
time-serving casuist, and said that “the fact of his work on Moral and
Political Philosophy being made a text-book in our Universities was a disgrace
to the national character.” We parted at the six-mile stone; and I returned
homeward pensive but much pleased.
41. So if we look back to past generations (as far
as eye can reach) we see the same hopes, fears, wishes, followed by the same
disappointments, throbbing in the human heart; and so we may see them (if we
look forward) rising up for ever, and disappearing, like vapourish bubbles, in
the human breast! After being tossed about from congregation to congregation in
the heats of the Unitarian controversy, and squabbles about the American war,
he had been relegated to an obscure village, where he was to spend the last
thirty years of his life, far from the only converse that he loved, the talk
about disputed texts of Scripture and the cause of civil and religious liberty.
42. Wordsworth for having made one for me! We went
over to All-Foxden again the day following, and Wordsworth read us the story of
Peter Bell in the open air; and the comment upon it by his face and voice was
very different from that of some later critics! Whatever might be thought of
the poem, “his face was as[Pg 295] Notes a book where men might read strange
matters,” and he announced the fate of his hero in prophetic tones.
43. The next day Wordsworth arrived from Bristol
at Coleridge’s cottage.
44. He talked of those who had “inscribed the
cross of Christ on banners dripping with human gore.” He made a poetical and
pastoral excursion,—and to shew the fatal effects of war, drew a striking [Pg
280]contrast between the simple shepherd boy, driving his team afield, or
sitting under the hawthorn, piping to his flock, “as though he should never be
old,” and the same poor country-lad, crimped, kidnapped, brought into town,
made drunk at an alehouse, turned into a wretched drummer-boy, with his hair
sticking on end with powder and pomatum, a long cue at his back, and tricked
out in the loathsome finery of the profession of blood.
45. Was this a time to think of such a
circumstance? I once hinted to Wordsworth, as we were sailing in his boat on
Grasmere lake, that I thought he had borrowed the idea of his Poems on the
Naming of Places from the local inscriptions of the same kind in Paul and
Virginia.
46. I sat down to the task shortly afterwards for
the twentieth time, got new pens and paper, determined to make clear work of
it, wrote a few meagre sentences in the skeleton-style of a mathematical
demonstration, stopped half-way down the second page; and, after trying in vain
to pump up any words, images, notions, apprehensions, facts, or observations,
from that gulph of abstraction in which I had plunged myself for four or five
years preceding, gave up the attempt as labour in vain, and shed tears of
helpless despondency on the blank unfinished paper.
47. He spoke slightingly of Hume (whose Essay on
Miracles he said was stolen from an[Pg 287] Notes objection started in one of
South’s sermons—Credat Judæus Appella!) I was not very much pleased at this
account of Hume, for I had just been reading, with infinite relish, that
completest of all metaphysical choke-pears, his Treatise on Human Nature, to
which the Essays, in point of scholastic subtlety and close reasoning, are mere
elegant trifling, light summer-reading.
48. A line of communication is thus established,
by which the flame of civil and religious liberty is kept alive, and nourishes
its smouldering fire unquenchable, like the fires in the Agamemnon of Æschylus,
placed at different stations, that waited for ten long years to announce with
their blazing pyramids the destruction of Troy.
49. Sweet were the showers in early youth that
drenched my body, and sweet the drops of pity that fell upon the books I read!
I recollect a remark of Coleridge’s upon this very book, that nothing could
shew the gross indelicacy of French manners and the entire corruption of their
imagination more strongly than the behaviour of the heroine in the last fatal
scene, who turns away from a person on board the sinking vessel, that offers to
save her life, because he has thrown off his clothes to assist him in swimming.
50. He said, however (if I remember right), that
this objection must be confined to his descriptive pieces, that his philosophic
poetry had a grand and comprehensive spirit in it, so that his soul seemed to
inhabit the universe like a palace, and to discover truth by intuition, rather
than by deduction.
51. We walked for miles and miles on dark brown
heaths overlooking the channel, with the Welsh hills beyond, and at times
descended into little sheltered valleys close by the sea-side, with a
smuggler’s face scowling by us, and then had to ascend conical hills with a
path winding up through a coppice to a barren top, like a monk’s shaven crown,
from one of which I pointed out to Coleridge’s notice the bare[Pg 297] Notes
masts of a vessel on the very edge of the horizon and within the red-orbed disk
of the setting sun, like his own spectre-ship in the Ancient Mariner.
52. Wordsworth, looking out of the low, latticed
window, said, “How beautifully the sun sets on that yellow bank!” I thought
within myself, “With what eyes these poets see nature!” and ever after, when I
saw the sun-set stream upon the objects facing it, conceived I had made a
discovery, or thanked Mr.
53. Wordsworth himself was from home, but his
sister kept house, and set before us a frugal repast; and we had free access to
her brother’s poems, the Lyrical Ballads, which were still in manuscript, or in
the form of Sybilline Leaves.
54. He told me in confidence (going along) that he
should have preached two sermons before he accepted the situation at
Shrewsbury, one on Infant Baptism, the other on the Lord’s Supper, shewing that
he could not administer either, which would have effectually disqualified him
for the object in view.
55. There was a severe, worn pressure of thought
about his temples, a fire in his eye[Pg 294] Notes (as if he saw something in
objects more than the outward appearance) an intense high narrow forehead, a
Roman nose, cheeks furrowed by strong purpose and feeling, and a convulsive
inclination to laughter about the mouth, a good deal at variance with the
solemn, stately expression of the rest of his face.
56. We had a long day’s march—(our feet kept time
to the echoes of Coleridge’s tongue)—through Minehead and by the Blue Anchor,
and on to Linton, which we did not reach till near midnight, and where we had
some difficulty in making a lodgment.
57. It might seem that the genius of his face as
from a height surveyed and projected him (with sufficient capacity and huge
aspiration) into the world unknown of thought and imagination, with nothing to
support or guide his veering purpose, as if Columbus had launched his
adventurous course for the New World in a scallop, without oars or compass.
58. Aubins, where Wordsworth lived.
59. This long pendulous hair is peculiar to
enthusiasts, to those whose minds tend heavenward; and is traditionally
inseparable (though of a different colour) from the pictures of Christ.
60. Rowe had scarce returned to give an account of
his disappointment, when the round-faced man in black entered, and dissipated
all doubts on the subject, by beginning to talk.
61. I had been reading Coleridge’s description of
England, in his fine Ode on the Departing Year, and I applied it, con amore, to
the objects before me.
62. Rowe, who himself went down to the coach in a
state of anxiety and expectation, to look for the arrival of his successor,
could find no one at all answering the description but a round-faced man in a
short black coat (like a shooting jacket) which hardly seemed to have been made
for him, but who seemed to be talking at a great rate to his fellow-passengers.
63. H.’s forehead!” His appearance was different
from what I had anticipated from seeing him[Pg 281] Notes before.
64. Coleridge’s manner is more full, animated, and
varied; Wordsworth’s more equable, sustained, and internal.
65. I remember eyeing it wistfully as it lay below
us: contrasted with the woody scene around, it looked as clear, as pure, as
embrowned and ideal as any landscape I have seen since, of Gaspar Poussin’s or
Domenichino’s.
66. This Chester was a native of Nether Stowey,
one of those who were attracted to Coleridge’s discourse as flies are to honey,
or bees in swarming-time to the sound of a brass pan.
67. Jenkins of Whitchurch (nine miles farther on)
according to the custom of Dissenting Ministers in each other’s neighbourhood.
68. The last, he said, he considered (on my
father’s speaking of his Vindiciæ Gallicæ as a capital performance) as a clever
scholastic man—a master of the topics,—or as the ready warehouseman of letters,
who knew exactly where to lay his hand on what he wanted, though the goods were
not his own.
