The Complete Works of Samuel Taylor Coleridge (Illustrated Edition). Samuel Taylor Coleridge
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of my offences consisted in the folly of assuming the show of vices, from which I was all but free, and which in the comparatively few exceptions left loathing and self-disgust on my mind. Were I, indeed, to fix on that week of my existence, in which my moral being would have presented to a pitying guardian angel the most interesting spectacle, it would be that very week in London, in which I was believed by my family to have abandoned myself to debauchery of all kinds, and ‘thus’ to have involved myself in disreputable pecuniary embarrassments. God knows, so intense was my mental anguish, that during the whole time I was physically incapable even of a ‘desire’. My whole body seemed stunned and insensate, from excess of inward suffering — my debts were the ‘cause’, not the effect; but that I know there can be no substitute for a father, I should say, — surely, surely, the innocence of my whole ‘pre’ and ‘post’ academic life, my early distinction, and even the fact, that my Cambridge extravagations did not lose me, nor cool for me, the esteem and regard of a single fellow collegiate, might have obtained an amnesty from worse transgressions.”
Coleridge, who had desponded at the fate of Middleton, after the unsuccessful attempts he made to obtain a fellowship, lost all hope of procuring an income from the college, and as, through the instrumentality of Frend, with whom an intimacy had now taken place, he had been converted to what in these days is called Unitarianism, he was too conscientious to take orders and enter the Established Church. These circumstances opened to him new views, and effected a complete change in his course of life, and thus his former objects and plans were set aside. The friendship between Coleridge and Southey having greatly increased, and still continuing to increase, and Coleridge being easily led by the affection of those he loved, for which he had a constant yearning, determined to follow literature in future life as a profession, that appearing to him the only source of obtaining an honourable livelihood.
Here there was no “mad caprice,” but he calmly decided to leave Cambridge and join Southey in his plans for the future, and commence the profession on which they had mutually agreed. He went to Oxford to visit Mr. Southey, and thence to Wales, and thence to Bristol (Mr. Southey’s native place), at which city they conjointly commenced their career in authorship, and for the first few months shared the same room.
The times were still tumultuous; for although the great hurricane of the revolution ceased abroad, yet, like mighty waters that had been once agitated by a storm, tranquillity was not restored, nor was there any prospect of an immediate calm. The ‘Habeas Corpus’ act was at this time suspended, and the minister of that day, Mr. Pitt, had struck the panic of property among the wealthy and affluent. During the time of danger, when surrounded by government emissaries, these youthful poets gave lectures on politics, and that with impunity, to crowded audiences. Coleridge met with one interruption only, and that from a hired partizan who had assayed a disturbance at one of these lectures, in order to implicate him and his party, and by this means to effect, if possible, their incarceration. The gentleman who mentioned this in the presence of Coleridge (when with me at Highgate) said — He (Coleridge) had commenced his lecture when this intended disturber of the peace was heard uttering noisy words at the foot of the stairs, where the fee of admission into the room was to be paid. The receiver of the money on the alert ascended the stairs and informed Coleridge of the man’s insolence and his determination not to pay for his admission. In the midst of the lecture Coleridge stopped, and said loud enough to be heard by the individual, that before the intruder “kicked up a dust, he would surely down with the dust,” and desired the man to admit him. The individual had not long been in the room before he began hissing, this was succeeded by loud claps from Coleridge’s party, which continued for a few minutes, but at last they grew so warm that they began to vociferate, “Turn him out!”—”Turn him out!”—”Put him out of the window!” Fearing the consequences of this increasing clamour, the lecturer was compelled to request silence, and addressed them as follows: “Gentlemen, ours is the cause of liberty! that gentleman has as much right to hiss as you to clap, and you to clap as he to hiss; but what is to be expected, gentlemen, when the cool waters of reason come in contact with red hot aristocracy but a hiss?” When the loud laugh ended, silence ensued, and the rebuke was treasured and related.
The terms aristocrat, democrat, and jacobin, were the fashionable opprobrious epithets of the day; and well do I remember, the man who had earned by his politics the prefix of jacobin to his name, was completely shunned in society, whatever might be his moral character: but, as might be expected, this was merely ephemeral, when parties ran high, and were guided and governed more by impulses and passion than by principle.
”Truth I pursued, as Fancy sketch’d the way,
And wiser men than I went worse astray.”
Men of the greatest sense and judgment possessing good hearts are, on the review of the past, more disposed to think ‘well’ of the young men of that day, who, from not exercising their reason, were carried into the vortex of the revolution. Much has been written on the proposed scheme of settling in the wilds of America; — the spot chosen was Susquehannah, — this spot Coleridge has often said was selected, on account of the name being pretty and metrical, indeed he could never forbear a smile when relating the story. This daydream, as he termed it, (for such it really was) the detail of which as related by him always gave it rather a sportive than a serious character, was a subject on which it is doubtful whether he or Mr. Southey were really in earnest at the time it was planned. The dream was, as is stated in the “Friend,” that the little society to be formed was, in its second generation, to have combined the innocence of the patriarchal age with the knowledge and general refinements of European culture, and “I dreamt,” says he, “that in the sober evening of my life I should behold colonies of independence in the undivided dale of industry.” Strange fancies! ‘and as vain as strange’! This scheme, sportive, however, as it might be, had its admirers; and there are persons now to be found, who are desirous of realizing these visions, the past-time in thought and fancy of these young poets — then about 23 years of age. During this dream, and about this time, Southey and Coleridge married two sisters of the name of Fricker, and a third sister was married to an Utopian poet as he has been called, of the name of Lovel, whose poems were published with Mr. Southey’s. They were, however, too wise to leave Bristol for America, for the purpose of establishing a genuine system of property — a Pantisocracy, which was to be their form of government — and under which they were to realize all their new dreams of happiness. Marriage, at all events, seems to have sobered them down, and the vision vanished.
Chimerical as it appeared, the purveyors of amusement for the reading public were thus furnished with occupation, and some small pecuniary gain, while it exercised the wit of certain anti-Jacobin writers of the day, and raised them into notice. Canning had the faculty of satire to an extraordinary degree, and also that common sense tact, which made his services at times so very useful to his country; his powers seemed in their full meridian of splendour when an argument or new doctrine permitted him rapidly to run down into its consequence, and then brilliantly and wittily to skew its defects. In this he eminently excelled. The beauties of the anti-Jacobin are replete with his satire. He never attempted a display of depth, but his dry sarcasm left a sting which those he intended to wound carried off ‘in pain and mortfication’. This scheme of Pantisocracy excited a smile among the kindhearted and thinking part of mankind; but, among the vain and restless ignorant would-be-political economists, it met with more attention; and they, with their microscopic eyes, fancied they beheld in it what was not quite so visible to the common observer. Though the plan was soon abandoned, it was thought sufficient for the subject of a lecture, and afforded some mirth when the minds of the parties concerned in it arrived at manhood. Coleridge saw, soon after it was broached, that no scheme of colonizing that was not based on religion could be permanent. — Left to the disturbing forces of the human passions to which it would be exposed, it would soon perish; for all government to be permanent should be influenced by reason, and guided by religion.
In the year 1795 Coleridge, residing then at Clevedon, a short distance from Bristol, published his first prose work, with some additions by Mr. Southey, the “Conciones ad Populum.” In a short preface he observes,
“The two following addresses were delivered in the month of February, 1795, and were followed by six others in defence of natural and revealed religion. ‘There is a time