As an infant, Coleridge once “crawled to the fire and pulled out a live coal, badly burning his hand.” I’m reminded of an incident from Tolstoy’s childhood: Tolstoy jumped out of a 3rd-floor window, hoping to fly.1 Perhaps these incidents point to an unusually strong will, or an unusually strong love of the world.
As a young boy, Coleridge was unpopular with his peers. He later wrote,
| I became fretful, and timorous, and a tell-tale, and the schoolboys drove me from play, and were always tormenting me, hence I took no pleasure in boyish sports, but read incessantly. I used to lie by the wall, and mope.2 |
One of the books he read was Philip Quarll, The English Hermit. An episode in this book was doubtless the inspiration for the albatross episode in Coleridge’s “Rime of the Ancient Mariner.” Philip Quarll lived alone on a SouthSea island. “One of Quarll’s adventures was the shooting of a large and beautiful sea-bird with a home-made bow, an action he immediately regrets: ‘I have destroyed that as was certainly made for Nature’s Diversion with such a Variety of Colours.’”3
Coleridge’s father died when he was 8, so Coleridge was sent to a boarding school in London. He looked back on this “exile” in a poem called “Frost at Midnight”:
I was reared
In the great city, pent ’mid cloisters dim,
And saw nought lovely but the sky and stars....
I dreamt
Of my sweet birthplace, and the old church-tower....
Death often announces itself in advance, it says “I’ll stop by soon.” Before he died, Coleridge’s father
| dreamed a strange allegorical dream, that Death “as he is commonly painted” had touched him with his dart. He drank a bowl of punch, went to bed, and died that same night of a massive heart attack. Coleridge always remembered his mother’s “shriek” in the night, and his instant realization that “Papa is dead.” |
Even during school vacations, Coleridge rarely went home.4 After his father’s death, he saw himself as an orphan.5
Coleridge wasn’t happy at boarding school, he was
| one small boy among 600, with his private world reduced to an iron bedstead in a “ward” or dormitory of fifteen others. For the next three years his existence was remembered with self-pity and righteous indignation: “Oh, what a change! depressed, moping, friendless, poor orphan, half starved.” |
So his early years were trying, both at home and at school. As he later said to a friend, “I was hardly used from infancy to Boyhood; and from Boyhood to Youth most, MOST cruelly.”6
In his last years of boarding school, however, he was an academic star, and his social position was secure. Charles Lamb was two years behind Coleridge at the same school.
| For Charles Lamb [Holmes writes] the genius of Coleridge was not solitary at all. He saw him already as a public figure, finding his natural audience in the gregarious cloisters of Christ’s Hospital — not exiled amidst the clouds but thoroughly at home amidst a circle of admiring boys, urbane, eloquent and sociable.7 |
At Cambridge, Coleridge’s situation was similar, though he had a new problem to deal with: debt. He often had to ask his brothers for money.
The young Coleridge was drawn to radical views of politics and religion. “By 1793 his rooms were a renowned center both for political and literary discussions held long into the night.”8 One of the topics of political discussions was the situation in France — the latest episode in the French Revolution.
One of the most astute observers of the French Revolution was Edmund Burke. Burke was more than 40 years older than Coleridge, and more conservative than Coleridge. But Coleridge read his writings eagerly, and eventually became a conservative himself. A classmate of Coleridge’s remembered, “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.”
Burke’s best-known pamphlet was Reflections on the Revolution in France, published in late 1790. Burke isn’t as deep a thinker as Coleridge, but perhaps for that very reason, Burke’s writings are read and discussed today, while Coleridge’s philosophical writings are forgotten.
In late 1793, Coleridge joined the army, perhaps to escape his debts, perhaps for the bounty paid to new recruits. He joined under a false name, Silas Tomkyn Comberbache; his false name had the same initials (STC) as his real name. After a few months, his brothers arranged his discharge. The records of his regiment state, “Discharged S. T. Comberbache, Insane; 10 April 1794.”
In 1794, Coleridge met an Oxford student, Robert Southey, who was two years younger than Coleridge. Southey later became a prominent poet, a writer of biographies, and the target of Byron’s satire. Coleridge and Southey hatched a plan for a utopian community in Pennsylvania, a community in which property would be held in common; they called their community Pantisocracy (Greek for “everyone possesses equal power”).
Though the plan was never put into practice, it provided material for countless hours of discussion and debate. In later years, Coleridge looked back at Pantisocracy as “a peculiar product of the French revolutionary excitement.”9 Holmes calls it, “a heady cocktail of all the progressive idealism of the Romantic Age.”
Coleridge debated Pantisocracy with various people, including William Godwin; Godwin was a political philosopher, novelist, husband of Mary Wollstonecraft, and father of Mary Shelley. Coleridge and Godwin remained friends for years to come. Coleridge felt that he learned much from the Pantisocracy scheme:
| To the intense interest and impassioned zeal, which called forth and strained every faculty of my intellect for the organization and defense of this Scheme, I owe much of whatever I at present possess, my clearest insight into the nature of individual Man, and my most comprehensive views of his social relations. |
Compared to most philosophers, Coleridge was outgoing. Richard Holmes speaks of “his wild expenditure [as a Cambridge student] on books, drinking, violin lessons, theater and whoring (he later described this as the time of his ‘unchastities’) alternating with fits of suicidal gloom and remorse.” When he traveled to Germany at age 25, he made friends on the boat and also in the country.
The essayist Charles Lamb was one of Coleridge’s oldest and closest friends. They spent many evenings together at a London tavern called “The Salutation and Cat.” Coleridge made friends easily. Holmes speaks of “Coleridge’s almost hypnotic effect on new acquaintances.”
Coleridge acquired not only friends but patrons. Successful businessmen recognized his ability as a poet, journalist, and public speaker, and were willing to provide him with a steady income. In 1796, his patrons arranged an income of 40£ per year, and he could rent a house for just 5£ per year.10 But he provided 20£ per year to his mother-in-law, and his expenses often exceeded his income.
In 1798, he received an annuity of £150 per year from the Wedgwoods, whose fortune came from pottery. It seemed that he was becoming financially stable.
While Coleridge had friends and patrons, his relationship with his family was rather distant. His publisher, Joseph Cottle, said,
| He appeared like a being dropped from the clouds, without tie or connection on earth; and during the years in which I knew him, he never once visited (that I could learn) any one of his relations, nor exchanged a letter with them. It used to fill myself and others with concern, and the deepest astonishment, that such a man should, apparently, be abandoned. |
Holmes speaks of, “the painful division in the family and Coleridge’s deepening sense of being ‘abandoned.’”11
In the summer of 1797, Coleridge walked from Nether Stowey to Racedown to visit Wordsworth, eager to get Wordsworth’s feedback on his latest work, and see Wordsworth’s latest work. After walking about 35 miles over two days, he finally caught sight of the house where Wordsworth and his sister (Dorothy) were living. Forty years later, Wordsworth said, “We both have a distinct remembrance of his arrival. He did not keep to the high road, but leaped over a gate and bounded down a pathless field.”
Coleridge spent two weeks with the Wordsworths. Afterwards Dorothy wrote to a friend,
| You had a great loss in not seeing Coleridge. He is a wonderful man. His conversation teems with soul, mind and spirit. Then he is so benevolent, so good tempered and cheerful, and, like William, interests himself so much about every little trifle.... His eye is large and full... it speaks every emotion of his animated mind; it has more of the “poet’s eye in a fine frenzy rolling” than I ever witnessed. |
Coleridge was so excited about his new friends that he not only urged them to join him at Nether Stowey, he also urged Charles Lamb, Robert Southey, and other friends to come to Nether Stowey. Coleridge was trying to create a community of literati.
William and Dorothy Wordsworth rented a house near Nether Stowey, and some of the other literati visited. Some neighbors viewed the group as radicals and atheists. When the literati gathered for a dinner at Wordsworth’s house, the government paid a waiter to spy on the group. The group was suspected of French sympathies (the French Republicans were at odds with Britain’s conservative government). The group was suspected of helping the French to prepare an invasion of England.
Coleridge had long been critical of the conservative Prime Minister, William Pitt the Younger. But Coleridge was moving toward the center politically; perhaps he was troubled by the excesses of the French Revolution. Though he was no longer a radical, his early reputation as a pro-French radical followed him for many years.
Coleridge and the two Wordsworths took many walks in the Quantock Hills. Often they made notes about the landscape as they walked, like painters making sketches; they planned to use their notes to write poems. They even took walks on winter nights.
When Coleridge was in Germany with the Wordsworths, he visited Klopstock, the grand old man of German letters. Klopstock had greeted the French Revolution with enthusiasm, but was later dismayed by the Revolution’s violent turn. Coleridge felt much the same way; Coleridge was especially troubled by France’s invasion of Switzerland in 1798. Coleridge became disillusioned with the Revolution, like those who became disillusioned 130 years later with the Russian Revolution, especially after Stalin’s pact with Hitler, and Stalin’s invasion of Poland.
Coleridge described the essence of the French Revolution, and his description seems to fit Communism. He said that the French Revolution exaggerated reason, instead of balancing reason with religion and will; a healthy individual, like a healthy nation, is a balance of forces. The French Revolution, like Communism, overlooked the individual, sacrificed the individual to society, whereas a healthy religion respects both the individual and society. Coleridge wrote,
| The comprehension, impartiality, and far-sightedness of reason... taken singly and exclusively, becomes mere visionariness in intellect, and indolence or hard-heartedness in morals. It is the science of cosmopolitism without country, of philanthropy without neighborliness or consanguinity, in short, of all the impostures of that philosophy of the French Revolution, which would sacrifice each to the shadowy idol of all.12 |
The exaggeration of reason leads to forgetting the individual. On the other hand, art and religion embrace the individual and the universal:
| In all the ages and countries of civilization Religion has been the parent and fosterer of the Fine Arts, as of Poetry, Music, Painting, &c., the common essence of which consists in a similar union of the Universal and the Individual. |
In 1799, Coleridge wrote to Wordsworth:
| My dear friend.... I wish you would write a poem, in blank verse, addressed to those, who, in consequence of the complete failure of the French Revolution, have thrown up all hopes of the amelioration of mankind, and are sinking into an almost epicurean selfishness. |
When Coleridge was in Germany, one of his children died. Coleridge felt that, if he’d been in England, he might have kept his child alive by will power. Coleridge wrote,
| There are moments in which I have such a power of Life within me, such a conceit of it, I mean — that I lay the Blame of my Child’s Death to my absence — not intellectually; but I have a strange sort of sensation, as if while I was present, none could die whom I intensely loved.13 |
In an earlier issue, I discussed the film director Werner Herzog, and his connection with the film historian Lotte Eisner. I wrote,
| In 1974, when Eisner was sick in Paris, Herzog walked from Munich to Paris during the winter, believing that Eisner couldn’t die if he made this pilgrimage. Eisner lived. Herzog wrote a book about the journey, Of Walking in Ice. Since his childhood, Herzog had been a great walker, and had taken many long walks in Germany. “Eight years later [Eisner] complained to [Herzog] of her infirmities and said: ‘I am saturated with life. There is still this spell upon me that I must not die — can you lift it?’ [Herzog] says that he did, and she died eight days later.” I’m reminded of Proust’s mother, who asked Proust for “permission to die.” He granted permission, she died soon afterwards. |
Could Coleridge have kept his son alive if he were with him, or (like Herzog) traveling to him?
Coleridge enjoyed his stay in Germany, and felt that he learned a lot about the German language, German customs, German literature, etc. He said that all the women wanted to dance with him, and the professors treated him with respect since he was older than the other students, and he was a published writer. Though he had planned to stay three months, he ended up staying ten months.
But his wife struggled in his absence, and probably felt that Coleridge wasn’t fulfilling his family responsibilities. Was Coleridge suited to be a husband and father? Charles Lamb said that Coleridge “ought not to have a wife or children; he should have a sort of diocesan care of the world, no parish duty.”14 Nietzsche felt that the philosopher should resist the temptation to be a husband and father; Nietzsche felt that the philosopher wasn’t suited for these roles.
When Coleridge and Wordsworth returned from Germany, Coleridge went back to his family in the “West Country,” and Wordsworth and his sister went back to their “home country” in the Lake District. After a few months, Coleridge visited the Wordsworths.
Coleridge was ecstatic at exploring this new, wild area for the first time, and Wordsworth enjoyed showing his old haunts to Coleridge. They were joined by Wordsworth’s brother, John, but not by Wordsworth’s sister, Dorothy (Dorothy was probably visiting friends). Coleridge wrote to Dorothy, “You can feel... how deeply I have been impressed by a world of scenery absolutely new to me.” Holmes speaks of, “this dazzling discovery of the Lakes, with its high fells, its rocky waterfalls, its spreading waters.” Wordsworth hoped to entice Coleridge to move to the Lake District (eventually Coleridge did move there).
After leaving the Lake District, Coleridge settled with his wife and son in London, and took up the trade of journalist. He was in debt (as usual), and hoped to pay off debts. The political climate in London was highly polarized; Coleridge tried to stake out a position between the two poles, and he tried to encourage the Left to be more moderate. Coleridge’s theme, writes Richard Holmes,
| was an attack on the fanaticism which now increasingly polarized British war-time politics into Jacobin and anti-Jacobin wings.... His argument was that extremism on the left only encouraged extremism on the right, leading to oppressive and hard-line attitudes and measures. |
Coleridge enjoyed being at the center of affairs, and having an impact on public opinion. He wrote, “It is not unflattering to a man’s Vanity to reflect that what he writes at 12 at night will before 12 hours is over have perhaps 5 or 6000 Readers!” Coleridge’s editor, Daniel Stuart, thought he was a first-rate journalist. Stuart said,
| To write the leading paragraph of a newspaper, I would prefer him to Mackintosh, Burke, or any man I ever heard of. His observations not only were confirmed by good sense, but displayed extensive knowledge, deep thought and well-grounded foresight.15 |
His best newspaper-essay, according to Holmes, was his essay on William Pitt the Younger. Coleridge argued that Pitt had been raised in an unnatural environment, like a greenhouse plant. His father, who was himself a Prime Minister, treated his son as a statesman-to-be.
| From his early childhood [Coleridge wrote] it was his father’s custom to make him stand up on a chair, and declaim before a large company; by which exercise, practiced so frequently, and continued for so many years, he acquired a premature and un-natural dexterity in the combination of words, which must of necessity have diverted his attention from present objects, obscured his impressions, and deadened his genuine feeling. |
While working as a journalist, Coleridge agreed to translate Schiller’s Wallenstein plays. He found translating to be tedious work. One might compare his translating to Carlyle’s translation of Goethe’s Apprenticeship of Wilhelm Meister.
After a few months as a journalist and translator, Coleridge began to feel burned out. He longed for the country, he longed for “the lazy reading of Old Folios.”
He decided to collaborate with Wordsworth on a new edition of Lyrical Ballads. He found a large house (Greta Hall) in the Lake District (Keswick), about fourteen miles north of Wordsworth’s house in Grasmere. Holmes writes,
| Greta Hall had originally been built as an astronomical observatory. Positioned on a small but commanding hill... it offered spectacular views of the surrounding fells and a huge, ever-changing dome of Cumberland sky. To this day, its white facade can be seen shining out of Keswick from almost every peak of the encircling fells... a sort of landlocked lighthouse, upon which the lonely fell-walker can always get an accurate compass fix in his wanderings. |
Coleridge wrote to Godwin, “I question if there be a room in England which commands a view of Mountains & Lakes & Woods & Vales superior to that, in which I am now sitting.” After completing a section of his poem “Christabel,” Coleridge was eager to read it to the Wordsworths (William and his sister Dorothy), so he walked the fourteen miles to Grasmere, climbing Helvellyn and other peaks as he went, pausing to make notes on the scenery, the trail, etc. (These notes have survived; a Coleridge biographer has a wealth of material to work with.) He didn’t reach the Wordsworths’ house until 11pm (perhaps he knew that the moon would throw some light on the trail).
Dorothy wrote in her Journal, “Coleridge came when I was walking in the still clear moonshine.... William was gone to bed.... We sat and chatted till half-past three, William in his dressing gown. Coleridge read us a part of ‘Christabel.’ Talked much about the mountains etc.”16
But as the weeks passed, Wordsworth began to wonder if “Christabel” was appropriate for the new edition of Lyrical Ballads. Lyrical Ballads was originally a collaboration between Wordsworth and Coleridge, but Wordsworth had written most of the poems. Wordsworth probably hoped that the new, two-volume edition of Lyrical Ballads would make his reputation.
Coleridge had various “irons in the fire”: political writing, books about Germany, translations, etc. But Wordsworth was focused on Lyrical Ballads. Wordsworth was developing a new sort of poetry, poetry that dealt with simple life in simple language. Was a medieval story like “Christabel” appropriate? Or did it introduce a discordant element?
Wordsworth expressed his new vision of poetry in pastoral poems that dealt with contemporary life, and he also expressed his new vision in his “Preface to the Lyrical Ballads,” which became famous as a poetic manifesto. Coleridge later said,
| Wordsworth’s “Preface” is half a child of my own Brain & so arose out of Conversations, so frequent, that with few exceptions we could scarcely either of us perhaps positively say, which first started any particular Thought.17 |
One scholar said that the Preface “is a more remarkable theoretical document than we usually associate with Wordsworth.” In other words, it’s the sort of document that we associate with a great critic/philosopher like Coleridge. Holmes shows how Coleridge was probably the source of the famous remark, “Poetry... takes its origin from emotion recollected in tranquility.”18
Wordsworth persuaded Coleridge that “Christabel” should be left out of the new edition, and that “The Rime of the Ancient Mariner” should be moved from the front of the volume to the back (more precisely, to the back of the first volume of this new two-volume edition). “On Coleridge’s insistence, the collection was now to be published under Wordsworth’s name alone.”
Coleridge had moved to the Lake District largely to collaborate with Wordsworth, and prepare a new edition of Lyrical Ballads, and now Coleridge was being left out, shunted aside. Wordsworth even attached a critical comment to Coleridge’s “Ancient Mariner,” without Coleridge’s approval:
| The Author [i.e., Wordsworth] was himself very desirous that [“The Ancient Mariner”] should be suppressed. This wish had arisen from a consciousness of the defects of the Poem, and from a knowledge that many persons had been much displeased with it. The Poem of my Friend has indeed great defects. |
Holmes says that Wordsworth’s criticisms led Coleridge to doubt his own work, and to doubt himself: “Most disturbing of all,” Holmes writes, “Coleridge later took on these criticisms as comments on the weakness, not of his poem, but of his own personal character.”19
Coleridge began to refer to Lyrical Ballads as “his Lyrical Ballads.” “As to our literary occupations,” Coleridge wrote, “they are still more distant than our residences. He is a great, a true Poet. I am only a kind of Metaphysician. He has even now sent off the last sheet of a second Volume of his Lyrical Ballads.”
Coleridge began to experience “writer’s block,” perhaps as a result of the rejection of “Christabel.” Holmes says, “Wordsworth had shown extraordinary insensitivity to the effect that this rejection would have on Coleridge’s powers and self-confidence.” Coleridge described his blockage thus: “He knew not what to do — something he felt, must be done — he rose, drew his writing-desk suddenly before him — sat down, took the pen — and found that he knew not what to do.”
Meanwhile, Wordsworth himself was experiencing an illness that seemed to be psycho-somatic. Holmes says that, when Coleridge arrived in the Lake District,
| it was Wordsworth who most worried Coleridge, seeming rather depressed and withdrawn, troubled with pains in his side when he attempted to write, and weighed down by the amount of work to be done on the new edition. |
Several months later, Dorothy wrote in her journal, “William and I were employed all the morning in writing an addition to the preface. William went to bed very ill after working after dinner.”
It isn’t easy to launch a career as a poet. It’s natural to have doubts about one’s own work, and about the work of one’s collaborator. In retrospect, it may have been a bad idea to put the poems of Wordsworth and Coleridge in the same volume; their styles were different.
Coleridge had a weak ego, Wordsworth had a stronger personality, so Wordsworth could impose his will, his vision, on Lyrical Ballads. Coleridge said of Wordsworth, “He is all man.”20 Perhaps we shouldn’t blame Wordsworth for imposing his will on Lyrical Ballads; perhaps he was concerned about his health problems; perhaps he felt that this was his only chance to gain recognition.
Coleridge’s low mood didn’t disappear quickly; in the years to come, he was often depressed. Sometimes he succeeded in transmuting his low mood into literature, as in the poem “Dejection: An Ode,” where he wrote of,
A grief without a pang, void, dark, and drear,
A stifled, drowsy, unimpassioned grief,
Which finds no natural outlet, no relief,
In word, or sigh, or tear....
Sometimes Coleridge took to the hills to shake off a low mood. He went on long hikes by himself, trying to dispel mental clouds with physical challenges. After ascending a peak called Carrock Fell, he wrote to Humphry Davy,
| I descended by the side of a Torrent, & passed or rather crawled (for I was forced to descend on all fours) by many a naked Waterfall, till fatigued & hungry (& with one finger almost broken, & which remains swelled to the size of two Fingers) I reached the narrow vale, & the single House nested in Ashes & Sycamores.21 |
But when winter came, hiking was more difficult. Holmes says, “Opium took its hold, [and] he began to have a recurrence of those terrible nightmares which had seized on him in childhood.” Finally Coleridge “feared the onset of sleep itself, a characteristic of opium addiction, also described at length by De Quincey [in his Confessions of an English Opium-Eater].” Coleridge managed to transmute these nightmares into a poem called “The Pains of Sleep”:
Yester-night I prayed aloud
In anguish and in agony,
Up-starting from the fiendish crowd
Of shapes and thoughts that tortured me....
So two nights passed: the night’s dismay
Saddened and stunned the coming day.
Sleep, the wide blessing, seemed to me
Distemper’s worst calamity.
The third night, when my own loud scream
Had waked me from the fiendish dream,
O’ercome with sufferings strange and wild,
I wept as I had been a child....
Perhaps one reason why Coleridge and Wordsworth were close friends for so long is that they were deeply impressed with each other’s abilities. Coleridge appreciated Wordsworth’s greatness as a poet, Wordsworth appreciated Coleridge’s greatness as a philosopher and literary critic. After Coleridge published Biographia Literaria, Wordsworth altered his poems in response to Coleridge’s criticisms.
But Wordsworth was keenly aware of the weaknesses of Coleridge’s character, of Coleridge’s lack of will. Wordsworth wrote, “He has no voluntary power of mind whatsoever, nor is he capable of acting under any constraint of duty or moral obligation.”22 In one of his poems, Wordsworth seemed to refer to Coleridge:
But how can He expect that others should
Build for him, sow for him, and at his call
Love him, who for himself will take no heed at all?
These lines are from a poem called “Resolution and Independence.” Resolution and Independence — aren’t these the very traits that Coleridge lacked? McFarland argues that Wordsworth wrote “Resolution and Independence” in response to Coleridge’s “Dejection: An Ode,” as if Wordsworth were saying to Coleridge, “Don’t be dejected, pull yourself together.” Thus, disagreements between Coleridge and Wordsworth sometimes inspired them to write “counter-poems.” The Thesis drew forth The Antithesis.
Many scholarly articles are written in response to other articles; a Thesis calls forth an Antithesis. McFarland’s article, “The Symbiosis of Coleridge and Wordsworth,” is a response to Norman Fruman’s argument that Coleridge was dependent on Wordsworth, it wasn’t an equal partnership. McFarland counters, It was an equal partnership, a 2-way street, a symbiosis.
In August 1802, Coleridge took a 9-day hike alone, starting from his home at Keswick in the Lake District, going west to the sea at St Bees, then circling back to Keswick, climbing various peaks and fells, and admiring various waterfalls. No sooner had he returned home than Charles Lamb and his sister Mary Lamb knocked on his door, and spent three weeks as his guest. Of course, he had to show them his peaks and waterfalls. This was a revelation to Lamb, who later told Coleridge, “I shall remember your mountains to the last day I live. They haunt me perpetually.”23
Coleridge wrote about his hikes in letters and notebooks. He also wrote poetry about his hikes, poetry that he submitted to the same newspaper for which he wrote political pieces. Holmes thinks that his letters/notes are more vivid and natural than his landscape-poetry.
One of the poems he published in the fall of 1802 was called “Hymn before Sunrise, in the Vale of Chamonix.” In a prefatory note, he said he’d written the poem at Chamonix, though he’d never been there. The poem draws on a poem by Friederike Brun, a Danish woman who wrote in German. Coleridge doesn’t acknowledge Brun’s influence, even in letters that he wrote about the poem.
This is an early example of Coleridge’s tendency toward plagiarism, a tendency that later appeared in his prose as well as his poetry. Holmes ascribes Coleridge’s plagiarism to “self-doubts about his own poetic authority.”24 It seems that Coleridge had a weak ego and a weak super-ego. He could read German, and he seemed to feel that he could borrow from German-language books, and no one would know. His borrowing from Brun wasn’t exposed until after his death.
Coleridge’s weak ego and self-doubts prompted him to pretend to be more than he was, to plagiarize other writers, and to play a role in social situations. One acquaintance, Kitty Wedgwood, said of Coleridge, “an excessive goodness and sensibility is put too forward, which gives an appearance, at least of conceit, and excites suspicion that it is acting.”
Coleridge had a reputation as an outstanding talker and an outstanding writer, so he tried to live up to that reputation, he tried not to disappoint his “audience.” A writer named Richard Warner published Tour Through the Northern Counties, and spoke of meeting Coleridge — “the gigantic Intellect & sublime Genius of COLERIDGE.” Warner described Coleridge as “animated, enthusiastic, & accomplished.”25 Coleridge seemed to feel that he couldn’t “be himself,” be natural, and live up to such a reputation. When the show was over, and the audience had left, he had to face himself, with all his flaws, and he was sometimes acutely depressed.
“The stimulus of conversation,” Coleridge wrote, “suspends the terror that haunts my mind; but when I am alone, the horrors... almost overwhelm me.”26 Coleridge was at the mercy of “Life-stifling Fear, Soul-stifling Shame.”
When Coleridge traveled to Malta in 1804, health problems depressed his spirits, and made the voyage an ordeal. He went to Malta because he thought it would improve his health, but opium caused constipation, a problem that plagued Coleridge for years to come. He often vowed to give up opium, but the withdrawals were so difficult that he always went back to it. He probably had an “addictive personality,” he was probably addicted to alcohol and snuff, as well as opium.
One of the best Coleridge commentators, Walter Pater, says that Coleridge takes an upbeat attitude, and notices the beauty around him, despite the challenges he faced. Pater quotes from “A Tombless Epitaph,” a poem that Coleridge wrote around 1809:
Sickness, ’tis true,
Whole years of weary days, besieged him close,
Even to the gates and inlets of his life!
But it is true, no less, that strenuous, firm,
And with a natural gladness, he maintained
The citadel unconquered, and in Joy
Was strong to follow the delightful Muse.
Coleridge sailed to Malta on the Speedwell. Wordsworth wrote about Coleridge’s travels in The Prelude, his longest and most highly-regarded poem:
Far art thou wandered now in search of health
And milder breezes...
Speed thee well!
The Prelude is dedicated to Coleridge, and sometimes addresses him by name, or addresses him as “friend.”
Of rivers, fields,
And groves, I speak to thee, my friend....
Thou hast sought
The truth in solitude, and Thou art one,
The most intense of Nature’s worshippers
In many things my Brother, chiefly here
While worshipping nature, Wordsworth never forgot that the mind is as important as the mountain. When he writes about the Alps, Wordsworth says that the scene alone can’t enrich our lives:
not
In hollow exultation, dealing forth
Hyperboles of praise comparative;
Not rich one moment to be poor forever;
Not prostrate, overborne — as if the mind
Itself were nothing, a mean pensioner
On outward forms — did we in presence stand
Of that magnificent region.
Coleridge was an accomplished political writer, a respected and well-paid journalist. In Malta, he wrote reports for the British governor, reports on Britain’s Mediterranean strategy; the governor forwarded these reports to his superiors. Thus, Coleridge enjoyed a prestigious position, good pay, elegant accommodations, etc. He also won the heart of a young opera singer, but when she wanted to take the relationship further, he drew back. He spent sixteen months on Malta. He spent much time with naval officers, and collected many sea stories, some of which later appeared in The Friend and other works.
While he was on Malta, he took a side-trip to Sicily, and climbed Mount Etna. He also took walks in the Sicilian countryside, and passed through fields of opium poppies. Hemp/marijuana was also grown in Sicily. Holmes says, “the whole island was a paradise of narcotics.”27
Coleridge’s youth and health gradually ebbed away as a result of his addiction. While on Malta, he confessed to his notebook, “No night without its guilt of opium and spirits.” When he returned to England, Dorothy Wordsworth wrote, “Never did I feel such a shock as at first sight of him.... He is utterly changed.... He has been so dismally irresolute in all things since his return to England.” By 1810, he was hardly leaving his room, though he was just 38. “He lies in bed,” wrote Dorothy, “always till after 12 o’clock, sometimes much later, and never walks out. Even the finest spring day does not tempt him to seek the fresh air.”28
Coleridge finally left Malta in September 1805. Before returning to England, he spent several months in Italy. There he became friends with the German poet Tieck, and the American painter Washington Allston. Holmes says that Allston
| loved to stay up all night talking. A friend said Allston could never paint the reflections of dawn sunlight on water, because he had never seen a sunrise.... Allston and Coleridge were soon walking all over Rome together — to the Forum, the Castello San Angelo, the Borghese Gardens — talking and comparing notes.... Years later Allston would say that he owed more “intellectually” to Coleridge than to any other man in Italy. “He used to call Rome the silent city; but I never could think of it as such, while with him; for, meet him when or where I would, the fountain of his mind was never dry... its living streams seemed especially to flow for every classic ruin.... And when I recall some of our walks under the pines of the Villa Borghese, I am almost tempted to dream that I once listened to Plato, in the groves of the Academy.”29 |
One of the pleasures of studying Coleridge is that he uses language very well. Whether he’s writing a poem, a treatise, a letter, or a notebook-entry, his language is always superb, his metaphors always striking. However, Coleridge’s terminology can be difficult. He sometimes uses the term “reason” to mean “intuition” or “unconscious.” And I’m still not sure what he means by “imagination.” Sometimes he seems to use “imagination” to mean “appreciation of scenery,” appreciation of the aesthetic qualities of a scene, grasping how a poet or painter could use a certain scene.
Coleridge returned from his Mediterranean sojourn in August 1806. His old friend Humphry Davy was giving a series of lectures at the Royal Institution on Albemarle Street (not to be confused with the Royal Society; the Royal Institution was founded in 1799, the Royal Society in 1660). Davy’s lectures and chemical demonstrations were so popular that there were traffic jams on Albemarle Street, so it became the first one-way street in London (Davy’s assistant, Michael Faraday, later gave popular lectures/demonstrations at the Royal Institution).
Davy admired Coleridge as a poet and thinker, so he urged Coleridge to give a course of lectures at the Royal Institution. Coleridge was short of money, as usual, so he agreed. Coleridge began by reading a script, and reading long quotations, but after three or four lectures, he realized that he was more effective when he talked extempore, using only an outline; he was more effective when his words came “warm from the heart.” One person who heard Coleridge remembered years later that Coleridge arrived “unprepared,” as if he had left his lecture at home:
| A conscious importance gleamed in his eloquent eyes.... Every whisper (and there were some hundreds of ladies present) was hushed, and the poet began. I remember there was a stateliness in his language, and... I began to think, as Coleridge went on, that the lecture had been left at home on purpose; he was so eloquent — there was such a combination of wit and poetry in his similes.30 |
Shortly after Coleridge began lecturing, Wordsworth visited London. Wordsworth wanted to discuss his latest poetry with a publisher, and also with Coleridge. Wordsworth attended the third and fourth of Coleridge’s lectures (in early 1808); he said that the lectures gave “great satisfaction” to the audience. Wordsworth had the pleasure of hearing Coleridge quote his own lines about Daffodils.
After the fourth lecture, Wordsworth went to Coleridge’s apartment, and they spent the entire night discussing poetry and the imagination. Early the next morning, Wordsworth left London. In a letter, Wordsworth said that, after he left Coleridge’s apartment, he
| walked towards the City in a very thoughtful and melancholy state of mind; I had passed through Temple Bar and by St Dunstans, noticing nothing, and entirely occupied by my own thoughts, when looking up, I saw before me the avenue of Fleet Street, silent, empty, and pure white with a sprinkling of new fallen snow, not a cart or carriage to obstruct the view... and beyond and towering above it was the huge and majestic form of St Paul’s, solemnized by a thin veil of falling snow. I cannot say how much I was affected at this un-thought of sight, in such a place and what a blessing I felt there is in habits of exalted Imagination.31 |
Notice how Wordsworth uses the term “imagination” to mean “appreciation of scenery,” appreciation of the aesthetic qualities of a scene. I understand how important such an experience is for an artist — for all people. I’ve often written about such moments, and photographed such moments. What I don’t understand is why Coleridge and Wordsworth would use the term “imagination” for such experiences. In my view, these experiences are real, not imaginary.
When I read some of Coleridge’s literary criticism, his concept of imagination became clearer. Perhaps we should think of Coleridge’s imagination as “imaginative power,” or as “creativity.” At any rate, he says there are different kinds of imagination. One kind is, “The power by which one image or feeling is made to modify many others, and by a sort of fusion to force many into one.” As an example, Coleridge cites King Lear, “where the deep anguish of a father spreads the feeling of ingratitude and cruelty over the very elements of heaven.”
This kind of imagination, this “fusion imagination,” “tends to produce that ultimate end of all human thought and human feeling, unity.” A Shakespeare play has various digressions and asides, but everything is fused into one theme. Coleridge says that nature is “the greatest of poets,” and when we “open our eyes upon an extended prospect,” we see “a one-ness.” This “one-ness” is what Wordsworth saw on Fleet Street — not countless particular things, not a distracting diversity of impressions, but one scene.
Another kind of imagination is “impressing the stamp of humanity, and of human feelings, on inanimate or mere natural objects.” Coleridge quotes an example from Venus and Adonis:
Even as the sun, with purple-colored face,
Had ta’en his last leave of the weeping morn
A third kind of imagination, according to Coleridge, is carrying the eye of the reader beyond words, so he suddenly sees a scene. Coleridge praises Wordsworth for using the term “flash,” i.e., flash a scene before the reader’s eye.32 Nature flashed a vision of daffodils before Wordsworth, then Wordsworth recalled the scene with his “inward eye,” then he described it for the reader — flashed it before the reader’s inward eye. When Wordsworth was walking through London, nature flashed a vision of St Paul’s veiled by snow. When he described that vision in prose, he flashed it before the reader.
An example of “flashing imagination” can be found in Hemingway’s “Snows of Kilimanjaro.” The protagonist is in a tiny plane, piloted by “Old Compton”: “Compie turned his head and grinned and pointed and there, ahead, all he could see, as wide as all the world, great, high, and unbelievably white in the sun, was the square top of Kilimanjaro.”
The historian Goitein gives us another example of flashing imagination: “[When] Yehuda Halevi describes how, while rising from his sleep at midnight, he was overcome by the majestic beauty of the starlit sky, we believe with all our hearts that he has actually had that experience.” Likewise, we believe that Hemingway saw Kilimanjaro, and Wordsworth saw the daffodils, and saw St Paul’s.33
So Coleridge describes three kinds of imagination: fusion imagination, humanizing imagination, and flashing imagination. These three kinds of imagination overlap, so perhaps it makes sense to use the term “imagination” for all of them. Perhaps the study of literature and painting helps us to appreciate nature’s art, appreciate the scenes that nature flashes before us. Perhaps Wordsworth could appreciate St Paul’s more than the average Englishman, since Wordsworth had cultivated “habits of exalted Imagination.”
Imagination creates unity, creates one-ness; Germans speak of Einbildungskraft or Ineinsbildung.34 Coleridge coined the term esemplastic, “from the Greek eis en plattein, ‘to shape into one.’”35 St Paul’s fills Wordsworth’s mind with one image, Kilimanjaro fills Hemingway’s mind with one image, the starry sky fills Yehuda’s mind with one image.
Coleridge argues that organic life is also about unifying, making one. Life makes many into one — makes all your cells and organs into one life. The human body is like an orchestra with thousands of instruments, all following one conductor. So the faculty of imagination is much the same as the power of life, they both unify, they both bring many into one.
The world is also unified by occult connections, by telepathy, which we can trace among particles, people, etc. And finally, the world is unified by synchronicity, by the tendency of events to group themselves into clusters — the death of an emperor clustering with an earthquake, the crowning of a king clustering with the flight of an eagle, etc. So Coleridge was right to emphasize the importance of unifying, of making one, and he was right to think that, if the imagination unifies, then it’s akin to the most important forces in the universe. The universe created the human mind, so perhaps it’s not surprising that the forces of the mind, such as imagination, are closely related to the forces of the universe.
It’s possible that the meaning of the word “imagination” has evolved over time. We think of imaginary things as not real, but perhaps, in Coleridge’s time, it was common to think of imagination as a creative power that operated on real things. George Eliot said, “Here undoubtedly lies the chief poetic energy: in the force of imagination that pierces or exalts the solid fact, instead of floating among cloud-pictures.” Barfield uses this quote as an epigraph for What Coleridge Thought, showing how important imagination is in Coleridge’s thought. For Wordsworth, as for Hemingway and Yehuda, imagination ‘exalted the solid fact,’ and led to ecstasy, led to the ecstatic appreciation of beauty.
Coleridge’s fourth lecture, and his all-night talk with Wordsworth, was in early April, 1808. By July, his relationship with Wordsworth had taken a turn for the worse. Though his lectures were well-received, and had made him something of a celebrity, Coleridge felt lonely in his city apartment, his health was poor, and he brooded.
He was obsessed with Wordsworth’s sister-in-law, Sara Hutchinson, whom he often called “Asra,” perhaps to distinguish her from his wife, Sara Fricker Coleridge. Coleridge’s obsession with “Asra” lasted for years. In a letter written around June 1808, Coleridge accused Wordsworth of interfering with his relationship with Asra. Wordsworth was hurt and angry, destroyed Coleridge’s letter, then wrote an angry response, but didn’t mail it; perhaps his sister (Dorothy) prevailed on him not to mail it. At any rate, the friendship between Coleridge and Wordsworth was injured but not dead.
The episode shows that Coleridge wasn’t an easy person to deal with; he seemed unable to be happy by himself, and unable to be happy with his wife, so he was dependent on various friends, male and female. One might say that, at this time of his life, Coleridge had failed to achieve maturity and detachment, failed to achieve the “diamond body.”36
In the summer of 1808, Coleridge traveled north and re-joined his family at Greta Hall. He enjoyed his children — Hartley, Derwent, and Sara — and they enjoyed him. His relations with his wife were somewhat more amicable than they were before. Nonetheless, he preferred to live apart from his wife, so he moved into the Wordsworths’ large house, Allan Bank.
In September 1808, Coleridge took a walking tour with Wordsworth and Asra along the River Duddon (in the Lake District). Coleridge worried that, when Asra looked at Wordsworth, she seemed happier, and when she was alone with him (Coleridge), she was restless, impatient to leave. Coleridge worried that, if Asra loved him at all, she did so out of pity, pity for his mental and physical travails.
Perhaps Asra inspired Coleridge’s remark on love:
| Love [is] always the abrupt creation of a moment, though years of Dawning may have preceded.... Between the brightest Hues of the Dawn and the first Rim of the Sun itself there is a chasm — all before were Differences of Degrees, passing & dissolving into each other, but this is a difference of Kind — a chasm of Kind in a continuity of Time. And as no man who has never watched for the rise of the Sun, could understand what I mean, so can no man who has not been in Love, understand what Love is.37 |
Always ready with a metaphor from science, Coleridge “insisted that love was a primary element, in the chemical sense, and not a compound of other emotions like friendship or sexual attraction.”
Coleridge’s 1808 lectures were generally well-received, and enhanced his reputation. To capitalize on this reputation, he decided to write his own periodical, to be called The Friend. The first issue was printed in May 1809.
The Friend was a major undertaking, and not just because he had to write it. He had so much trouble finding a printer that he thought about starting his own printing operation. Even obtaining paper was a challenge; the government required periodicals to be printed on special stamped paper.
Coleridge managed to attract about 500 subscribers, including 28 members of Parliament, and eminent writers like Walter Scott and Walter Savage Landor. But even with 500 subscribers, The Friend wasn’t profitable; Holmes speaks of, “a grave financial loss.” Friends like Wordsworth thought Coleridge was incapable of carrying out such a project.
But somehow Coleridge rose to the occasion, and “astonished [his] severest critics.” He managed to produce 28 issues, or 140,000 words, over a period of 10 months. Dorothy Wordsworth was astonished at how fast Coleridge could write, when he put his mind to it:
| There have been weeks and weeks when he has not composed a line. The fact is that he either does a great deal or nothing at all; and that he composes with a rapidity truly astonishing... He has written a whole Friend more than once in two days. They are never re-transcribed, and he generally has dictated to Miss Hutchinson [i.e., Sara Hutchinson, “Asra”], who takes the words down from his mouth.38 |
When The Friend was over, Coleridge could revise it, and print it in book form. It became one of his major works — he sometimes called it his chief work — and its influence was felt even by American writers like Poe and Emerson. All things considered, The Friend was a successful project, and proved his doubters wrong.
The Friend forced Coleridge to produce, and made him aware of what he had within him; as Southey put it, “there is so much got out of him which would never otherwise have come out.” Southey appreciated the depth and range of Coleridge’s knowledge; he said that Coleridge was producing “an accumulation of knowledge equal to that of any man living and a body of sound philosophy superior to what any man either of this or any former age has possessed — all of which will perish with him.” Southey would be surprised to know that it didn’t perish with him, that every poem, every letter, every notebook-entry that Coleridge wrote has been pored over by generations of critics.
Just as The Friend was ending after ten months, Asra left. She moved out of Allan Bank (the Wordsworth home), and went to live with her brother in Wales. Coleridge was devastated. And when she didn’t write to him, he was doubly devastated. He wrote in his notebook,
I have experienced
The worst, the World can wreak on me; the worst
That can make Life indifferent...
I have beheld the whole of all, wherein
My Heart had any interest in this Life,
To be disrent and torn from off my Hopes,
That nothing now is left. Why then live on?39
He didn’t feel comfortable at Allan Bank, so he moved to Greta Hall, where his wife and children were. Southey also lived at Greta Hall, with his wife and children; Southey’s wife and Coleridge’s wife were sisters.
Coleridge spent five months at Greta Hall, then in October 1810, he was invited to London by a wealthy lawyer, Basil Montagu. Coleridge may have felt that he could resume his journalism in London. So he traveled to London with Montagu and his wife, riding in Montagu’s fancy carriage, but the carriage didn’t go to Montagu’s upscale address. It stopped in an ordinary neighborhood, where Montagu was intending to deposit Coleridge.
Why did Montagu decide not to have Coleridge in his own house? As Montagu was passing through the Lake District, Wordsworth had warned him that Coleridge was an unbearable guest, chiefly because of his drugs and alcohol. Montagu told Coleridge what he had heard from Wordsworth. Coleridge was devastated at what seemed like a betrayal by his close friend. This affair was the origin of the estrangement between Coleridge and Wordsworth. Instead of living in Montagu’s elegant home, Coleridge found himself in a humble hotel, abandoned by Asra, betrayed by Wordsworth, his whole life apparently in tatters.
But he still had his notebook, so he took stock of his situation. He began by expressing his love for Asra — expressing it with “religious intensity.” Then he declared his Christian faith, using the doctrine of Original Sin to explain his vices. “I am a fallen creature... capable of moral evil, but not of myself capable of moral good.”40
Then he turned to his “emotional predicament.” He wrote,
| One human Being, entirely loving me (this, of course must have been a Woman) [would have satisfied] all my Hopes. The events of last year, and emphatically of the last month, have now forced me to perceive — No one on earth has ever LOVED me. |
Holmes says, “the very fact that he could examine and describe his feelings and his beliefs held out some possibility of a future.” His notebook was a valuable outlet. As Coleridge put it, “Dear Book! now my only Confidant, my only faithful Friend.”
Then he was rescued by John Morgan, a wealthy friend — an older friend, and a closer friend, than Basil Montagu. Morgan brought Coleridge to his house on the outskirts of London, where Coleridge remained for eighteen months, looked after by Morgan, his wife, and his wife’s sister.
While staying with the Morgans, he re-connected with his old London friends, like the writer Charles Lamb. Lamb noted that Coleridge was drinking as much as ever:
| He is going to turn sober, but his Clock has not struck yet, meantime he pours down goblet after goblet, the 2d to see where the 1st is gone, the 3d to see no harm happens to the second, a fourth to say there’s another coming, and a 5th to say he’s not sure he’s the last. |
A new acquaintance, Henry Crabb Robinson, kept a diary in which he wrote about the leading literary people of the time. After meeting Coleridge, Robinson wrote, “He kept me on the stretch of attention and admiration from half-past three till twelve o’clock. On politics, metaphysics and poetry... Kant and Shakespeare, he was astonishingly eloquent.” Holmes writes, “Robinson was struck by Coleridge’s fantastic range of intellectual reference.... He was also surprised by the originality of his views.”
Robinson described a conversation with Lamb: “We spoke of Wordsworth and Coleridge. Lamb, to my surprise, asserted Coleridge to be the greater man. He preferred [Coleridge’s “Ancient Mariner”] to anything Wordsworth had written. Wordsworth, he thought, is narrow and confined in his views compared with him.”41
Since Coleridge had a gift for talking, and enjoyed talking, city life seemed to suit him better than country life. In the country, there were fewer people to talk to; in the country, his audience had already heard his theories and his stories, and didn’t want to hear them again. Doubtless Coleridge could feel the admiration of people like Robinson, Lamb, and Godwin. His self-esteem rose. Holmes says he was “unbending in the unaccustomed light and warmth.” In his notebook, Coleridge wrote,
| Man of genius places things in a new light... adds something, namely, Lights & Relations. Who has not seen a Rose, or a sprig of Jasmine, of Myrtle? But behold these same flowers in a posy or flowerpot, painted by a man of genius, or assorted by the hand of a woman of fine Taste & instinctive sense of Beauty.42 |
But not everyone was in Coleridge’s Fan Club. Some radical editors, like Leigh Hunt, were annoyed with Coleridge for supporting the conservative government. Holmes writes,
| [Coleridge] was now stepping back onto the public stage as a figure of controversy. Over the next two years he was to become a recognized “lion” of Regency London, an object of unceasing curiosity, his doings and sayings widely recorded in diaries, memoirs, letters and newspaper articles. Adrift in his private life, he proved surprisingly resilient and stubborn in this public role, facing down criticism and personal hostility that would have destroyed many men. At some level controversy sustained him.43 |
In early 1811, Coleridge dove back into journalism. “Over the next five months,” Holmes writes, “Coleridge produced ninety-one articles.” British politics were polarized: conservative Tories were in power, reform-minded radicals out of power. Meanwhile, the long war against France was still in progress.
Coleridge took a moderate, centrist position (as he had during his prior stint as a journalist, about ten years ago, and as he had in the political essays that he wrote for The Friend). Coleridge “questioned the popular cry of universal government corruption.” Coleridge conceded that progress and reform were important, but he argued that The Left should compare the current situation of the country, not to some ideal, but to “that of former times at home, and of other countries at the present day.” Coleridge scolded The Left for “pandering to the ‘mob.’” Finally, he struck a patriotic note, suitable for wartime.
Holmes says that Coleridge’s journalism damaged his reputation. Dorothy Wordsworth lamented the “waste and prostitution of his fine genius.” William Hazlitt thought that Coleridge had betrayed the radical cause, which he had once espoused. Holmes says that Coleridge needed to be busy, needed “to tie himself to deadlines, to commute to an office.”
In November 1811, Coleridge began a series of lectures on Shakespeare, Milton, and poetry in general. He lectured twice-weekly until January 1812. The lectures were well-attended and well-received. “The gathering impact of the lectures was formidable,” Holmes writes, “and news of the series began to spread in various influential quarters.” Byron heard the buzz about the lectures, and came to a couple. Coleridge had a superb command of English, whether speaking from notes or extemporaneously; he was a natural lecturer.
Coleridge said that “The mature poet remained in some sense ‘unsubdued, unshackled by custom.’ He combined ‘the wonder of a child’ with the ‘inquisitive powers of his manhood.’” Poetry comes from excitement, “passion united with order.”44
One of the highlights of Coleridge’s lectures was the discussion of Hamlet. Coleridge said that the protagonist suffered from “paralysis of the will” and “aversion to action,” not because he was cowardly or sluggish, but rather because he was introverted, he was one of those who have “a world within themselves.” Was Coleridge thinking of himself as well as Hamlet? “To the end of his life,” Holmes writes, “Coleridge would mildly claim, ‘I have a smack of Hamlet myself, if I may say so.’”
Coleridge was rather critical of Hamlet:
| Hamlet has a natural inclination to devious behavior.... His far-fetched scruples are often mere pretexts to cover his want of resolution.... He has no compassion for others. He takes malicious joy in his schemes. |
In earlier issues, we found similar criticisms of Hamlet in D. H. Lawrence and G. Wilson Knight.
Coleridge compared Milton’s remarks on the creation of the universe with those of Erasmus Darwin. Darwin anticipated the Big Bang Theory, he
| imagined the creation of the universe to have taken place in a moment, by the explosion of a mass of matter in the womb or center of space. In one and the same instant of time, suns and planets shot into Systems in every direction. |
Coleridge couldn’t accept this theory, he couldn’t connect “all the beauty and harmony of nature to something like the bursting of a barrel of gunpowder.”
Coleridge borrowed from the German critic Schlegel, without acknowledging Schlegel by name (Schlegel’s Lectures on Shakespeare had just appeared). Holmes says that plagiarism was “the specter that would haunt the rest of his career.”
The lecture series “ended with ˇclat,” wrote Henry Crabb Robinson. “The room was crowded; and the lecture had several passages more than brilliant; they were luminous. And the light gave conscious pleasure to every person who knew that he could... see the glory.”45
In Paradise Lost, Milton tried to set forth the structure of the universe — the physical structure, the moral structure, the religious structure. Wordsworth didn’t seem to have these cosmic ambitions. Wordsworth attempted a big epic, The Prelude, but his epic doesn’t try to capture the universe, it focuses on his own mind, his own experiences. Wordsworth finds in nature
A never-failing principle of joy,
And purest passion
Wordsworth focuses on his own positive thoughts and high goals. He writes thus of human destiny:
With hope it is, hope that can never die,
Effort, and expectation, and desire,
And something evermore about to be.
The mind beneath such banners militant
Thinks not of spoils or trophies, nor of aught
That may attest its prowess, blest in thoughts
That are their own perfection and reward
When Wordsworth and Coleridge became estranged in 1810, Henry Crabb Robinson tried to make peace between them, tried to draft a “peace treaty.” Robinson was a lawyer, and a friend of Coleridge. Robinson didn’t know Wordsworth, but regarded him as “the greatest man now living in this Country.”
Robinson had a long conversation with Wordsworth, and later described the conversation as “highly interesting and exhibited Wordsworth in a most honorable light. His integrity, his purity, his delicacy are alike eminent. How preferable is the coolness of such a man to the heat of Coleridge.”
Both Wordsworth and Coleridge agreed to the “peace treaty,” but the old warmth between them was gone. Wordsworth had moved on, he didn’t want to get involved in Coleridge’s passionate love, passionate penitence, hopeless addiction, etc. Been there, done that.
But Wordsworth did attend a new series of lectures by Coleridge, a series that took place in May and June of 1812. Wordsworth’s attendance at these lectures was a public expression of loyalty to his old friend.
Wordsworth’s visit to London in 1812 may have been the high point of his public life. He attended “a number of smart literary salons.... For the first time in his life he was lionized, and felt clearly the position he had established.” Robinson said, “Everybody was anxious to get near him.”
But Wordsworth had no regular income, and he could barely support his large family. His poetry didn’t sell briskly, as the poetry of Walter Scott and Lord Byron did. So he sought, and eventually obtained, a place in the bureaucracy, a place as stamp distributor. (Southey was also on the government payroll. Southey, Wordsworth, and Coleridge were all criticized by The Left as sell-outs.)
While Wordsworth was in London, he missed his wife, Mary Hutchinson Wordsworth, and wrote her a series of love letters. Meanwhile, Coleridge was still in love with Mary’s sister, Sara or “Asra,” but he could feel that his love was slowly cooling. Asra lived with the Wordsworth family, and sided with Wordsworth in his quarrel with Coleridge; there was little or no contact between Coleridge and Asra.
The high point of Wordsworth’s public life coincided with the most painful chapter of his private life: two of his children died in 1812. “He grew thin,” Holmes writes, “and Dorothy thought he looked ten years older. He could not bear the thought of remaining at the Grasmere Parsonage, so near the graveyard with its little tombs. He busied himself with finding a new house, two miles away at Rydal Mount, where they moved in May 1813.”
Meanwhile, Coleridge seemed to be flourishing. His play Osorio (also known as Remorse) was staged at a DruryLane theater, and became a hit. Coleridge’s profits were substantial. The play blended poetry, song, and music. One person who witnessed a performance said, “A thrilling sensation appeared to pervade the great mass of congregated humanity... and at the conclusion the applause was loud and protracted.” Holmes writes, “Here was an attempt to embody the ‘witchery’ of Coleridge’s poetry in a form of ritualized, orchestrated psycho-drama intended to hold a mass audience spellbound.”46 Even Coleridge’s old foe Leigh Hunt was impressed; Hunt called Osorio “the only tragedy touched with real poetry for the last fifty years.” Holmes says that Osorio breathed new life into the London theater world.
Meanwhile, the British economy was stumbling, weighed down by the long war with Napoleon, and by taxes designed to finance the war. The Wedgwood family suffered losses, and reduced Coleridge’s annuity by 50% (they had been giving Coleridge £150/year for the last fifteen years). The Morgan family, with whom Coleridge was living, suffered losses, too, and John Morgan fled to Ireland to escape creditors.
Coleridge decided to help the Morgans in their hour of need. He visited John Morgan’s Unitarian friends in Bristol, and solicited funds for the Morgans. He also lectured in Bristol, to raise money for the Morgans. He began with lectures on Hamlet and Macbeth; by this time, he had done so much lecturing that he could speak without notes. The Bristol audience was captivated, and the lectures drew large crowds. Coleridge’s audiences preferred to hear him speak from his own mind, rather than read from a text. Coleridge’s fund-raising efforts were successful, John Morgan’s creditors were satisfied, and John came back from Ireland.
Before John returned, however, Coleridge rented humble lodgings for the Morgan women (John’s wife and her sister), and lived with them. The arrangement ended quickly, perhaps due to some sort of quarrel, or some sort of misbehavior on Coleridge’s part. Now Coleridge was alone, in deep despond, thinking of suicide. Holmes writes,
| Lying on his sweat-soaked bed in the Grey Hound Inn, Bath, as homeless now as he had ever been in his life, a man with a bag of old clothes and some borrowed books, addicted to opium, incapable of work, clutching a tortoiseshell snuffbox as the only proof that he had ever achieved anything, Coleridge looked into his own dark night of the soul.47 |
And to think that, just a few months ago, he had been the toast of London — a famous dramatist, poet, philosopher, and lecturer! Now he doubted the universe. Life seemed meaningless, man a mere accident, all our restless activity signified nothing. Now he wrote what Holmes calls “perhaps the darkest of all Coleridge’s poems,” a poem called “Human Life: On the Denial of Immortality.”
O Man! Thou vessel purposeless, unmeant,
Yet drone-hive strange of phantom purposes!
It was December 1813. Coleridge was 41.
Then another wealthy friend, Josiah Wade of Bristol, gave Coleridge a room in his house. Coleridge spent nine months with Wade. Coleridge wrote numerous confessions to his friends (confessions of addiction, etc.), and these confessions may have been an important step in his resurrection.
Holmes says that these confessions have a strong “religious dimension,” and emphasize “the corrupted human will... which is so prominent in all his later writing.” Coleridge had a “renewed belief in the Trinity and the healing powers of Christ.” He said that the “Christian doctrine of the resurrection [was] an exhilarating belief.”
Coleridge was under the care of a doctor, who tried to regulate and reduce his intake of opium. His mental and physical condition slowly improved. He told Charles Lamb that he was “crucified, dead, and buried, descended into Hell, and am now, I humbly trust, rising again, though slowly and gradually.”
In 1814, Napoleon was exiled to Elba, and Bristol celebrated with bonfires and window-decorations. Coleridge made a decoration that showed Napoleon chained to a rock. “The rhyming motto he attached,” Holmes writes, “was curiously prophetic of Napoleon’s escape from Elba, and the Hundred Days leading to Waterloo the following June. ‘Britons, rejoice! and yet be wary too! The Chain may break, the Clipt Wing sprout anew.’”
Below is a painting of Coleridge made at this time by his old friend Washington Allston.
Allston said of the painting,
| It is not Coleridge in his highest mood, the poetic state, when the divine afflatus of the poet possessed him. When in that state, no face that I ever saw was like his; it seemed almost spirit made visible without the shadow of the physical upon it. Could I then have fixed it upon canvas! but it was beyond the reach of my art. |
After nine months in Wade’s house, Coleridge re-joined the Morgans, who were living in a small house in the country, near Bath. Perhaps Coleridge wanted female company, perhaps he wanted rural surroundings. He wrote,
| I am now joint-tenant with Mr Morgan of a sweet little cottage.... I breakfast every morning before nine, work till one, and walk or read till 3, thence till Tea time, chat or read some lounge-book, or correct what I have written, from 6 to 8, work again, from 8 to Bed time play whist, or the little mock-billiard, called Bagatelle, and then sup and go to bed. |
He was catching-up on current affairs by reading periodicals, and he was hoping to write for a newspaper to earn money. But he also had higher goals:
| His Notebooks and letters suggest a return to intense philosophical reading — Spinoza, Fichte, Schelling — and the problem of reconciling his renewed Christian faith with German idealism. This was his “most important Work,” for which he kept his morning hours “sacred.”48 |
He was planning a great philosophical work, Opus Maximum, “a philosophical argument advancing from the secular to the sacred.” He sometimes titled the work “Christianity the one true Philosophy.” Opus Maximum was never completed (though it does form one volume in Coleridge’s Collected Works).
He began writing a prefatory essay for Opus Maximum. This essay was a history of his intellectual life; it was eventually published, and became one of his chief works, Biographia Literaria. So the great work was never completed, but the preface became an important work, just as Wordsworth’s epic The Recluse was never completed, but the preface or Prelude was completed, and became Wordsworth’s chief work. I think Coleridge and Wordsworth deserve credit for attempting ambitious works, though their goals may have been unattainable. They strove to capture The Whole in their writings, they didn’t aim to entertain readers and sell books.
In 1816, Coleridge began living with the Gillmans at Highgate. He stayed busy with literary projects, and he began attracting disciples. If Dr. Gillman thought he needed a break, they would go to the coast for a month or two, and enjoy long walks on the beach. In 1818, Coleridge published a revised edition of The Friend (his one-man periodical), in three volumes, dedicated to the Gillmans.
During these years, Coleridge was still close to John Morgan, and sometimes dictated to Morgan. (Sometimes Morgan mis-heard Coleridge. For example, when Coleridge said “officious for equivalents,” Morgan wrote “fishing for elephants.”) Coleridge also became close to J. H. Green, a doctor and a friend of Gillman. John Sterling (destined to die young, and be the subject of a biography by Carlyle) visited Coleridge with a young John Stuart Mill. Ruskin was impressed with The Friend — even more so than with Coleridge’s poetry. Coleridge was becoming a well-known sage, a legendary figure, visited even by foreigners like Emerson.
In the third volume of The Friend, Coleridge inserted a 200-page “Essay on the Principles of Method.” It might seem like a dry subject, but Holmes insists it’s an interesting work; “[Coleridge] came to consider this, rightly, as one of his outstanding pieces of later prose.”49 In this essay, Coleridge says that the man of “superior mind” isn’t simply a man with lots of knowledge. Rather, he’s a man who connects facts, who seeks “underlying principles and laws.” As Plato would say, he looks for the One in the Many. Coleridge aims to organize knowledge, not simply accumulate knowledge. His essay on method was originally an introduction to an encyclopedia.
Coleridge writes, “Method, therefore, becomes natural to the mind which has been accustomed to contemplate not things only, or for their sake alone, but likewise and chiefly the relations of things.” Holmes compares this to Coleridge’s view that an organism links all its cells and organs, binds together all its cells and organs, and pursues one goal, one will; an organism makes One out of Many. Likewise, the imagination makes One of Many (as we saw above), as in a Shakespeare play, where one theme knits together numerous incidents. So Coleridge saw many examples of “making One,” of uniting; he spoke of, “that ultimate end of all human thought and human feeling, unity.”
In late 1818, Coleridge gave another series of lectures in London, half on Shakespeare, half on the history of philosophy. One of his disciples, John Hookham Frere, hired a stenographer to record the philosophy lectures. The theme of the philosophy lectures, according to Holmes, was the polarity between Plato and Aristotle; Plato emphasized the idea and the invisible, while Aristotle emphasized sensation, experience, and the visible. The difference between these two approaches was, according to Coleridge, fundamental and innate; “Every man is born an Aristotelian or a Platonist.” (I myself seemed to have an innate tendency toward Plato’s approach; even as a teenager, I was drawn toward theory/idea.)
In his essay on method, Coleridge argued that knowledge has a “moral origin and tendency.” In other words, learning aims at the good life. “This was in direct opposition,” Holmes writes, “to the Benthamite or utilitarian concept of knowledge as an empirical gathering of value-free data.”50 I’m not surprised that Coleridge would make this argument, many leading philosophers make this argument. Montaigne, for example, said he only pursued knowledge insofar as it improved his life. And Nietzsche said that the study of history is only valuable insofar as it gives us models for living. Ruskin said economics should promote the good life; “there is no wealth but life.”
In the spring of 1819, Coleridge was walking near Highgate with J. H. Green, and encountered John Keats. Keats was a medical student, and Green had been his teacher, so Green recognized him and introduced him to Coleridge. Keats struck Coleridge as “loose, slack, not well-dressed.” This seems appropriate for a poet like Keats, appropriate for an artist/intellectual with a weak ego and weak finances.
Keats had heard of Coleridge, and he’d probably read some of Coleridge’s writings. Keats walked with Green and Coleridge for a couple miles, Coleridge talking all the while. Later Keats described Coleridge’s loquacity in a letter to his brother:
| He broached a thousand things. Let me see if I can give you a list: Nightingales, Poetry, on Poetical sensation, Metaphysics, Different genera and species of Dreams.... I heard his voice as he came towards me, I heard it as he moved away, I heard it all the interval. |
After they parted, Keats came back and said, “Let me carry away the memory, Coleridge, of having pressed your hand!” So the two poets shook hands, and then went their separate ways. Coleridge claims that he could feel Keats was dying; he claims that he said to Green, “There is death in that hand.” Was this a physical feeling, or a telepathic communication? Holmes writes, “What [Coleridge] felt was not necessarily the physical consumption, the disease itself, but a psychic impression of Keats’ anxiety about himself and his threatened future.”51
Holmes says that meeting Coleridge “galvanized [Keats] into life,” and started a productive period in Keats’ life. Keats read Sibylline Leaves (a volume of Coleridge’s poetry) and was influenced by it.
Keats died at age 25, two years after meeting Coleridge. Holmes writes,
| [Coleridge] thought increasingly of Keats in his final years, and one of the many young men who visited him from Cambridge remembered him reading aloud, “with keen delight,” the whole of [Keats’] “St Agnes Eve” one winter evening at Highgate. The listener was Tennyson’s friend, Arthur Hallam. |
In 1822, Coleridge was concerned about his two sons, Hartley and Derwent. Hartley, the elder and the first-born child, was odd in appearance and behavior, and complained that women rejected him. He was intelligent, had some academic success, and graduated from Oxford; he could express himself with a certain originality, and a certain poetic flair.
After graduating from Oxford, Hartley obtained a fellowship, but lost it as a result of drinking, carousing, and eccentricity. Coleridge was devastated by this loss, and did all he could to have Hartley reinstated in his fellowship — to no avail. Hartley tried his hand at journalism and teaching, but wasn’t a success at either. Thomas McFarland says that Hartley was an “abject failure.” In my essay on genius, I argued that the children of geniuses are often “abject failures.”52
Hartley had a lively and likable personality, and publishers sometimes engaged him to write some local history, or to compile an edition of an obscure dramatist.
Meanwhile, Derwent was more stable and less eccentric. He had a solid career, a solid marriage, and lived a long life.
In 1822, Derwent came down with typhus, and his life hung in the balance. Coleridge nursed him at Highgate. Hartley, who had always been close to Derwent, came to Highgate, and helped care for Derwent. One day,
| Coleridge and Hartley hurried into London on some errands together.... Hartley suddenly said he had a debt to pay, borrowed some money from his father, and arranged to meet him again at six o’clock.... Coleridge called after him... “Hartley! Six!” Hartley turned back for a moment, and Coleridge had a terrible premonition, “And though he was not three yards from me, I only saw the color of his face through my Tears!” Then Hartley’s small figure disappeared into the busy crowd. Hartley had run away forever. Coleridge and his son never met face to face again.53 |
This was one of the great sorrows of Coleridge’s life. For a time, Hartley caroused with London pals. But soon he returned to the Lake District, where he had spent his early years. Coleridge vented his grief over Hartley’s disappearance in a poem called “The Pang More Sharp Than All”:
...like some Elfin Knight in kingly court,
Who having won all guerdons in his sport,
Glides out of view, and whither none can find!
...Ah! he is gone, and yet will not depart!
Is with me still, yet I from him exiled!
For still there lives within my secret heart
The magic image of the Magic Child,
Which there he made up-grow by his strong art.
Coleridge said he had four great sorrows:
- the breakdown of his marriage
- the collapse of his friendship with Wordsworth
- his unrequited love for Asra
- his loss of Hartley
Hartley lived out his life in the Lake District, dying at 52, probably from alcoholism. After he died, Derwent published his poems and essays, with a memoir about him.
In 1823, Coleridge attended a dinner with Wordsworth and other poets. Charles Lamb described the evening thus:
| I dined in Parnassus... half the poetry of England constellated and clustered in Gloucester Place! It was a delightful evening. Coleridge was in his finest vein of talk, had all the talk... I am sure not one there but was content to be nothing but a listener. The Muses were dumb, while Apollo lectured on his and their fine Art.55 |
In 1825, Coleridge published Aids To Reflection, which began as a collection of quotations from Archbishop Leighton, and gradually grew, Coleridge adding more and more of his own commentary. Holmes calls it, “A highly original book... whose open speculative manner — the sage at his most genial and relaxed — would have great and unexpected appeal.”
Leighton had said that we shouldn’t be afraid of science, though it may seem to raise doubts about religion. Coleridge agreed, Coleridge felt that science could buttress religion. Pursue truth, Coleridge argued, and eventually you’ll see that it agrees with religion. Coleridge wrote, “He who begins by loving Christianity better than the Truth, will proceed by loving his own Sect or Church better than Christianity, and end in loving himself better than all.”
Coleridge felt that contemporary science was breaking free from materialism, and depicting a universe of energies and fields, a spiritual universe. Holmes writes,
| The old language of eighteenth-century materialism was restricted to the human senses, what was fixed and solid to perception. But the new language of “dynamic science” had returned to the notion of energy, force fields, invisible powers and constant transformation.... The new science had shown that the human body itself was no more fixed or permanent, from moment to moment, than the sound of a voice.... The new science in effect demanded a return to spiritual perceptions.... Without this realization of the validity of the religious vision, renewed by science, the spiritual world would dwindle to “mere Metaphors, Figures of Speech, Oriental Hyperboles!”56 |
So science and religion were partners, they both opposed the Newtonian universe of matter and mechanism, they both depicted a universe based on spirit, will, energy. Coleridge’s fondness for contemporary science reminds me of my own fondness for quantum physics.
Coleridge was equally interested in biology and chemistry. Sometimes he approaches the idea of evolution, as when he writes, “All things strive to ascend, and ascend in their striving.”
In 1828, Coleridge and Wordsworth took a 6-week tour of Germany, thirty years after their previous trip to Germany; they were accompanied by Wordsworth’s daughter Dora. Holmes writes,
| Each complained vigorously of the other’s habits. Wordsworth was parsimonious and taciturn and got up too early in the mornings; Coleridge was garrulous and disorganized and constantly criticized the bad German wine and appalling medieval plumbing.57 |
At one party, an observer noted that
| Coleridge shuffled round distractedly in “well-worn slippers, much trodden down at heel,” clutching a ponderous tome to his side, “musing and muttering to himself.” Wordsworth paced imperiously across the room, holding an alpenstock in one hand, and “a sprig of apple-blossom overgrown with lichen” in the other. |
After this trip, Coleridge was often confined to his bedroom due to heart weakness. But the old fire still smoldered within. His friend J. H. Green wrote,
| How often during the last years of his life have I found him languid, listless, with “drooping gait” and heavy eye... till some question arose that roused his dormant intellectual powers, his bodily ails were then forgotten, his infirmities thrown off, the mind lived for itself, and... the fascinated auditor could not choose but hear!58 |
Coleridge’s daughter, Sara, married her cousin, Henry Nelson Coleridge. They lived near Coleridge, and they brought Coleridge’s wife into their house. Mrs. Coleridge took a certain pride in her husband’s matchless loquacity, noting that, at his grandchild’s christening, Coleridge “talked incessantly for full five hours.”59 After Coleridge died, both Henry and Sara edited his works.
A. The Holdovers (2023) is a popular and pleasant film about boarding-school students who are “holdovers,” i.e., they stay at school during the Christmas holiday, for various reasons. The director of Holdovers, Alexander Payne, was inspired by Marcel Pagnol’s 1935 film Merlusse, which deals with “Christmas holdovers” at a French boarding school.
The Holdovers has a large dose of political correctness: the white teacher is nerdy and sadistic, the black cook is wise and good. Boarding schools are one of Hollywood’s favorite targets; they represent the upper class, the aristocracy, and Hollywood rarely misses an opportunity to ridicule the aristocracy.
The Holdovers has some wit and intelligence. My favorite quotes from the film:
- Picasso: Every child is an artist. The problem is how to remain an artist once we grow up.
- The Greeks said that the steps we take to avoid our fate actually lead us to it. [This is the idea behind “Appointment in Samarra”]
B. Hope and Glory (1987) is about an English family during World War II. Though it was popular with both critics and the public, I found it dull and tasteless. It was written and directed by John Boorman, whom Roger Ebert criticized for “sensationalism.”60
C. In Football We Trust (2015) is about Polynesian football players (players from Samoa, Tonga, etc.), who play at Utah high schools, and sometimes reach the NFL. According to Smithsonian Magazine, “Samoans constitute the most disproportionately overrepresented ethnic group in the NFL.” Many Utah Polynesians, however, join gangs, and end up in prison. In Football We Trust deals with the highs and lows of the players’ lives.
© L. James Hammond 2024
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| Footnotes | |
| 1. | See Richard Holmes, Coleridge: Early Visions: 1772-1804, Ch. 1, #3 and Henri Troyat, Tolstoy, Ch. 1 or Ch. 2 back |
| 2. | Coleridge: Early Visions, Ch. 1, #6 back |
| 3. | Coleridge: Early Visions, Ch. 1, #5. Elsewhere Holmes tells us that, shortly before writing “Ancient Mariner,” Coleridge worked on “The Wanderings of Cain,” which also dealt with murder, guilt, and exile.(Coleridge: Early Visions, Ch. 8, #1) back |
| 4. | Holmes writes, “he was not allowed back to Ottery, during the brief Christmas and summer vacations, more than three or possibly four times over the next nine years.”(Coleridge: Early Visions, Ch. 2, #2) back |
| 5. | Holmes writes, “the sense of bereavement was very strong, and henceforth he would often refer to himself as an ‘orphan.’”(Coleridge: Early Visions, Ch. 2, #1) back |
| 6. | Coleridge’s Variety, edited by John Beer, Ch. 6, “Coleridge’s Anxiety,” by Thomas McFarland, p. 150, footnote back |
| 7. | Coleridge: Early Visions, Ch. 2, #3 back |
| 8. | Coleridge: Early Visions, Ch. 3, #4 back |
| 9. | This is a quote from Holmes, not Coleridge. See Holmes, Coleridge: Early Visions, Ch. 4, #3 back |
| 10. | Coleridge: Early Visions, Ch. 6, #2 back |
| 11. | Coleridge: Early Visions, Ch. 7, #5 back |
| 12. | This quote and the next are from Statesman’s Manual, Appendix B, Complete Works of Coleridge edited by Shedd, 1884, Vol. I, p. 457 (in most editions of Statesman’s Manual, this is called “Appendix C”) back |
| 13. | Coleridge: Early Visions, Ch. 9, #8 back |
| 14. | Coleridge: Darker Reflections, Ch. 11, #5 back |
| 15. | Coleridge: Early Visions, Ch. 10, #6 back |
| 16. | Coleridge: Early Visions, Ch. 11, #4. For more on this period of Coleridge’s life, see Holmes’ map of the Lake District, and Holmes’ bibliography. Holmes recommends the following three books about this period:
|
| 17. | The source of this quote and the next quote is an essay by Thomas McFarland called “The Symbiosis of Coleridge and Wordsworth,” Studies in Romanticism, Fall, 1972, Vol. 11, No. 4, pp. 263-303, jstor.org/stable/25599859 back |
| 18. | Coleridge: Early Visions, Ch. 11, #5 back |
| 19. | Coleridge: Early Visions, Ch. 11, #5, Footnote What exactly were the defects of “Ancient Mariner,” in Wordsworth’s view? “The principal person has no distinct character... He does not act, but is continually acted upon.” Are these really defects? Perhaps real people are “continually acted upon.” Perhaps a clearly-defined character is unrealistic, a literary invention. Is it possible that Wordsworth is praising while he means to criticize? When Tolstoy criticized Shakespeare, Wilson Knight responded, These criticisms are actually compliments. Tolstoy criticized Hamlet on the same grounds that Wordsworth criticized “Ancient Mariner,” namely, that the protagonist has “no distinct character.” As I wrote in an earlier issue, Tolstoy excoriates Hamlet for having “no character at all.” Knight says that Tolstoy is right.... But Knight says that it’s precisely Hamlet’s lack of character that makes Hamlet Shakespeare’s greatest creation, Shakespeare’s most life-like creation. Hamlet, says Knight, “expresses many impulses, good and evil, and thus is one of Shakespeare’s most universal single creations. As men are not different in the instincts and desires they possess, but only in those they express, the deeper we go in human understanding, the less ultimate meaning we must attribute to differences of character between man and man.” Hamlet is “like a real person with a real person’s potentiality for all things.... Hamlet is universal. In him we recognize ourselves, not our acquaintances. Possessing all characters, he possesses none.” Is it possible that Wordsworth’s criticisms of “Ancient Mariner” were, unbeknownst to Wordsworth, compliments? When people are put in extreme situations, such as living on a life-raft, perhaps their individual differences melt away, perhaps they drop their persona. Does this justify the Mariner’s lack of character? Charles Lamb thought it did. Responding to Wordsworth’s criticisms, Lamb wrote, “The Ancient Mariner undergoes such Trials, as overwhelm and bury all individuality or memory of what he was, like the state of a man in a Bad dream.”(Lamb is quoted in McFarland’s “Symbiosis”) back |
| 20. | Quoted in McFarland, “The Symbiosis of Coleridge and Wordsworth,” p. 271 back |
| 21. | Quoted in Holmes, Coleridge: Early Visions, Ch. 11, #7 back |
| 22. | Thomas McFarland, “Symbiosis...” p. 297, jstor.org/stable/25599859
Did Coleridge and Wordsworth both need the stimulus of their relationship, their conversations, their poems? After they became estranged, neither one produced any important poetry; both of them were only creative until about age 35. I’m reminded of E. M. Forster, who began writing novels in his early 20s, but stopped around age 35. back |
| 23. | Coleridge: Early Visions, Ch. 13, #4 back |
| 24. | Holmes, Coleridge: Early Visions, Ch. 13, #6. The tendency to plagiarize went together with a tendency to fabricate. After the sudden death of Wordsworth’s brother, Coleridge exaggerated and dramatized his reaction to the tragic news. Holmes writes, “John Wordsworth’s ship... had been wrecked in a storm off Weymouth, with the loss of all cargo, three hundred men and the captain himself.” When Coleridge was informed, his friend saw him “go pale,” and he “staggered from the room. He walked back to his garret, supported by the Sergeant-at-Arms and pursued by [his friend]. As he got to his door, he collapsed.” But Coleridge later said that he “‘fell down on the ground in a convulsive fit’ in front of fifty people in the ‘great Saloon of the Palace’ itself.”(Holmes, Coleridge: Darker Reflections, Ch. 1, #13) back |
| 25. | Coleridge: Early Visions, Ch. 13, #3 back |
| 26. | Coleridge’s Variety, edited by John Beer, Ch. 6, “Coleridge’s Anxiety,” by Thomas McFarland, p. 141, footnote. This is a top-notch essay, Holmes deserves credit for recommending it in his Bibliography. Holmes has put together an excellent Bibliography. back |
| 27. | Coleridge: Darker Reflections, Ch. 1, #9. Holmes speaks of “Indian hemp.” Hemp was often grown in India. There was an industrial variety of hemp — used to make rope, paper, clothing, etc. — and another variety with mind-altering properties. back |
| 28. | Coleridge’s Variety, edited by John Beer, Ch. 6, “Coleridge’s Anxiety,” by Thomas McFarland, p. 137 back |
| 29. | Coleridge: Darker Reflections, Ch. 1, #15 back |
| 30. | Coleridge: Darker Reflections, Ch. 3, #6 back |
| 31. | Coleridge: Darker Reflections, Ch. 3, #5 back |
| 32. | Wordsworth had written,
I wandered lonely as a cloud
For oft, when on my couch I lie
Coleridge discusses Wordsworth’s use of the term “flash” in an essay called “Shakespeare, a Poet generally.” See Coleridge’s Complete Works, edited by Shedd, Vol. 4, p. 49 back |
| 33. | Coleridge said that poetry can move the reader by depicting the “truth of nature,” or by modifying nature in a new and unexpected way. Nature itself is a poet, and nature can charm the viewer by truth and novelty at the same time. This is what Wordsworth experienced — his view of St Paul’s was both true and novel (novel because of the snow). Hemingway’s view of Kilimanjaro was also true and novel (novel because he was seeing it from a plane). And Yehuda’s nocturnal view is also true and novel (novel because he usually sees the world in the daytime). Here’s how Coleridge describes truth and novelty, and the poetry of nature:
“During the first year that Mr. Wordsworth and I were neighbors, our conversations turned frequently on the two cardinal points of poetry, the power of exciting the sympathy of the reader by a faithful adherence to the truth of nature, and the power of giving the interest of novelty by the modifying colors of imagination. The sudden charm, which accidents of light and shade, which moon-light or sunset diffused over a known and familiar landscape, appeared to represent the practicability of combining both. These are the poetry of nature.”(Biographia Literaria, Ch. XIV, opening sentences) This is what happened to Wordsworth and Yehuda: a “familiar landscape” was modified — by snowfall (in Wordsworth’s case) and star-light (in Yehuda’s case). back |
| 34. | See the Norton Critical Edition of Coleridge’s writings, Coleridge’s Poetry and Prose, p. 417, footnote 6
As the artist uses a fusing or unifying imagination, so the art critic discovers a one-ness in works that seem multifarious. Holmes tells how Coleridge wrote essays about the paintings of his friend Washington Allston, essays that were collected under the title “On the Principles of Genial Criticism.” Coleridge looked for the underlying form/shape that was “‘concealed by the action and passion’ of the human participants.... Coleridge summed up his whole position in a formula that he was to use frequently in his later criticism: Beauty was the intuition of the one in the many.”(Coleridge: Darker Reflections, Ch. 8, #3) Does this definition of beauty seem chilly, static, formal? It should be remembered that Coleridge also defined beauty as “Passion united with order.... an explosion of energy perfectly contained.... He linked this dynamic aesthetic with the moral nature of mankind: happiness required that we had the individual sense of ‘free will’ and ‘spontaneous action’, balanced and reconciled with ‘regular forms’ of duty and obligation.”(Coleridge: Darker Reflections, Ch. 8, #3) Like the art critic, the philosopher and the scientist look for the one in the many. Man’s tendency to theorize is a tendency to seek the one in the many. Coleridge spoke of, “that ultimate end of all human thought and human feeling, unity.” back |
| 35. | Coleridge: Darker Reflections, Ch. 8, #17 back |
| 36. | For more on detachment, see ljhammond.com/phlit/2006-10.htm#3 back |
| 37. | Coleridge: Darker Reflections, Ch. 6, #3 back |
| 38. | Quoted in Coleridge: Darker Reflections, Ch. 4, #18 back |
| 39. | Coleridge: Darker Reflections, Ch. 5, #2 back |
| 40. | Coleridge: Darker Reflections, Ch. 5, #7. In the Lovejoy section, I discuss how the doctrine of Original Sin helped Coleridge to accept himself. back |
| 41. | Coleridge: Darker Reflections, Ch. 6, #2. See the Emerson section for another comment on Wordsworth’s narrowness. back |
| 42. | Coleridge: Darker Reflections, Ch. 6, #2 back |
| 43. | Coleridge: Darker Reflections, Ch. 6, #3. When we say that the older Coleridge was a conservative, we should qualify that. In an essay written in 1817,
“Coleridge offered little comfort to the Tory establishment. He bitterly attacked the economic selfishness and laissez-faire attitudes that were tearing Britain apart. The rich landlords and manufacturers were coming to regard society simply as a wealth-creating machine: they were ‘Christian Mammonists’ hardened by ‘the Spirit of Trade.’”(Coleridge: Darker Reflections, Ch. 9, #11) Perhaps we should call Coleridge a centrist rather than a conservative, perhaps we should compare his political views to Ruskin’s. back |
| 44. | Coleridge: Darker Reflections, Ch. 6, #12. I’m quoting Holmes, who’s quoting Coleridge. back |
| 45. | Coleridge: Darker Reflections, Ch. 6, #15 back |
| 46. | Coleridge: Darker Reflections, Ch. 7, #13 back |
| 47. | Coleridge: Darker Reflections, Ch. 7, #18 back |
| 48. | Coleridge: Darker Reflections, Ch. 8, #6 back |
| 49. | Richard Holmes, Coleridge: Darker Reflections, Ch. 9, #25 back |
| 50. | Coleridge: Darker Reflections, Ch. 9, #17. Here is a fuller version of Holmes’ quotation from Coleridge: “The first pre-conception, or master-thought, on which our plan rests, is the moral origin and tendency of all true science; in other words, our great objects are to exhibit the Arts and Sciences in their philosophical harmony; to teach Philosophy in union with Morals; and to sustain Morality by Revealed Religion.”
In Shedd’s edition of The Friend, the essay on method is “Second Section, Essay IV through Essay XI,” pp. 408-472. It doesn’t contain the above quotation, so there are probably different versions of the essay on method. In the big Princeton edition of Coleridge’s Complete Works, the above quotation is in Shorter Works, 1818, “Treatise on Method,” p. 674 back |
| 51. | Coleridge: Darker Reflections, Ch. 10, #7 back |
| 52. | See ljhammond.com/cwgt/05.htm#15
The McFarland quote is from his essay “Coleridge’s Anxiety.” back |
| 53. | Coleridge: Darker Reflections, Ch. 10, #21 back |
| 54. | Coleridge: Darker Reflections, Ch. 11, #28 back |
| 55. | Coleridge: Darker Reflections, Ch. 11, #5 back |
| 56. | Coleridge: Darker Reflections, Ch. 11, #16 back |
| 57. | Coleridge: Darker Reflections, Ch. 11, #21 back |
| 58. | Coleridge: Darker Reflections, Ch. 11, #23, footnote, quoting Green’s “Introduction to the Philosophical Remains of S. T. Coleridge,” which can be found in the big Princeton edition of Coleridge’s works ==> Shorter Works, II, p. 1526 back |
| 59. | Coleridge: Darker Reflections, Ch. 11, #27 back |
| 60. | Ebert wrote that Boorman’s film Deliverance “totally fails [in] its attempt to make some kind of significant statement about its action.... It’s possible to consider civilized men in a confrontation with the wilderness without throwing in rapes, cowboy-and-Indian stunts and pure exploitative sensationalism.” This is similar to how I felt about Hope and Glory; it lacks taste and intelligence, it has too much action and sensationalism. back |