Biographia Literaria
feeling in my eyes, which, as I had drunk but a single glass of ale,
must, I knew, have been the effect of the tobacco. Soon after, deeming
myself recovered, I sallied forth to my engagement; but the walk and the
fresh air brought on all the symptoms again, and, I had scarcely entered
the minister’s drawing-room, and opened a small pacquet of letters,
which he had received from Bristol for me; ere I sank back on the sofa
in a sort of swoon rather than sleep. Fortunately I had found just time
enough to inform him of the confused state of my feelings, and of
the occasion. For here and thus I lay, my face like a wall that is
white-washing, deathly pale and with the cold drops of perspiration
running down it from my forehead, while one after another there dropped
in the different gentlemen, who had been invited to meet, and spend the
evening with me, to the number of from fifteen to twenty. As the
poison of tobacco acts but for a short time, I at length awoke from
insensibility, and looked round on the party, my eyes dazzled by the
candles which had been lighted in the interim. By way of relieving my
embarrassment one of the gentlemen began the conversation, with “Have
you seen a paper to-day, Mr. Coleridge?” “Sir!” I replied, rubbing my
eyes, “I am far from convinced, that a Christian is permitted to read
either newspapers or any other works of merely political and temporary
interest.” This remark, so ludicrously inapposite to, or rather,
incongruous with, the purpose, for which I was known to have visited
Birmingham, and to assist me in which they were all then met, produced
an involuntary and general burst of laughter; and seldom indeed have
I passed so many delightful hours, as I enjoyed in that room from
the moment of that laugh till an early hour the next morning.
Never, perhaps, in so mixed and numerous a party have I since heard
conversation, sustained with such animation, enriched with such variety
of information and enlivened with such a flow of anecdote. Both then
and afterwards they all joined in dissuading me from proceeding with
my scheme; assured me in the most friendly and yet most flattering
expressions, that neither was the employment fit for me, nor I fit for
the employment. Yet, if I determined on persevering in it, they promised
to exert themselves to the utmost to procure subscribers, and insisted
that I should make no more applications in person, but carry on the
canvass by proxy. The same hospitable reception, the same dissuasion,
and, that failing, the same kind exertions in my behalf, I met with at
Manchester, Derby, Nottingham, Sheffield,--indeed, at every place in
which I took up my sojourn. I often recall with affectionate pleasure
the many respectable men who interested themselves for me, a perfect
stranger to them, not a few of whom I can still name among my friends.
They will bear witness for me how opposite even then my principles were
to those of Jacobinism or even of democracy, and can attest the strict
accuracy of the statement which I have left on record in the tenth and
eleventh numbers of THE FRIEND.
From this rememberable tour I returned with nearly a thousand names on
the subscription list of THE WATCHMAN; yet more than half convinced,
that prudence dictated the abandonment of the scheme. But for this
very reason I persevered in it; for I was at that period of my life
so completely hag-ridden by the fear of being influenced by selfish
motives, that to know a mode of conduct to be the dictate of prudence
was a sort of presumptive proof to my feelings, that the contrary
was the dictate of duty. Accordingly, I commenced the work, which was
announced in London by long bills in letters larger than had ever been
seen before, and which, I have been informed, for I did not see them
myself, eclipsed the glories even of the lottery puffs. But alas!
the publication of the very first number was delayed beyond the day
announced for its appearance. In the second number an essay against fast
days, with a most censurable application of a text from Isaiah for its
motto, lost me near five hundred of my subscribers at one blow. In the
two following numbers I made enemies of all my Jacobin and democratic
patrons; for, disgusted by their infidelity, and their adoption of
French morals with French psilosophy; and perhaps thinking, that charity
ought to begin nearest home; Instead of abusing the government and the
Aristocrats chiefly or entirely, as had been expected of me, I levelled
my attacks at “modern patriotism,” and even ventured to declare my
belief, that whatever the motives of ministers might have been for the
sedition, or as it was then the fashion to call them, the gagging bills,
yet the bills themselves would produce an effect to be desired by all
the true friends of freedom, as far as they should contribute to deter
men from openly declaiming on subjects, the principles of which they had
never bottomed and from “pleading to the poor and ignorant, instead
of pleading for them.” At the same time I avowed my conviction, that
national education and a concurring spread of the Gospel were the
indispensable condition of any true political melioration. Thus by the
time the seventh number was published, I had the mortification--(but why
should I say this, when in truth I cared too little for any thing that
concerned my worldly interests to be at all mortified about it?)--of
seeing the preceding numbers exposed in sundry old iron shops for a
penny a piece. At the ninth number I dropt the work. But from the London
publisher I could not obtain a shilling; he was a ------ and set me at
defiance. From other places I procured but little, and after such delays
as rendered that little worth nothing; and I should have been inevitably
thrown into jail by my Bristol printer, who refused to wait even for a
month, for a sum between eighty and ninety pounds, if the money had
not been paid for me by a man by no means affluent, a dear friend,
who attached himself to me from my first arrival at Bristol, who has
continued my friend with a fidelity unconquered by time or even by my
own apparent neglect; a friend from whom I never received an advice that
was not wise, nor a remonstrance that was not gentle and affectionate.
Conscientiously an opponent of the first revolutionary war, yet with
my eyes thoroughly opened to the true character and impotence of the
favourers of revolutionary principles in England, principles which
I held in abhorrence,--(for it was part of my political creed, that
whoever ceased to act as an individual by making himself a member of
any society not sanctioned by his Government, forfeited the rights of
a citizen)--a vehement Anti-Ministerialist, but after the invasion of
Switzerland, a more vehement Anti-Gallican, and still more intensely
an Anti-Jacobin, I retired to a cottage at Stowey, and provided for my
scanty maintenance by writing verses for a London Morning Paper. I saw
plainly, that literature was not a profession, by which I could expect
to live; for I could not disguise from myself, that, whatever my talents
might or might not be in other respects, yet they were not of the sort
that could enable me to become a popular writer; and that whatever my
opinions might be in themselves, they were almost equi-distant from
all the three prominent parties, the Pittites, the Foxites, and the
Democrats. Of the unsaleable nature of my writings I had an amusing
memento one morning from our own servant girl. For happening to rise
at an earlier hour than usual, I observed her putting an extravagant
quantity of paper into the grate in order to light the fire, and mildly
checked her for her wastefulness; “La, Sir!” (replied poor Nanny) “why,
it is only Watchmen.”
I now devoted myself to poetry and to the study of ethics and
psychology; and so profound was my admiration at this time of Hartley’s
ESSAY ON MAN, that I gave his name to my first-born. In addition to the
gentleman, my neighbour, whose garden joined on to my little orchard,
and the cultivation of whose friendship had been my sole motive in
choosing Stowey for my residence, I was so fortunate as to acquire,
shortly after my settlement there, an invaluable blessing in the society
and neighbourhood of one, to whom I could look up with equal reverence,
whether I regarded him as a poet, a philosopher, or a man. His
conversation extended to almost all subjects, except physics and
politics; with the latter he never troubled himself. Yet neither my
retirement nor my utter abstraction from all the disputes of the day
could secure me in those jealous times from suspicion and obloquy, which
did not stop at me, but extended to my excellent friend, whose perfect
innocence was even adduced as a proof of his guilt. One of the many busy
sycophants of that day,--(I here use the word sycophant in its original
sense, as a wretch who flatters the prevailing party by informing
against his neighbours, under pretence that they are exporters of
prohibited figs or fancies,--for the moral application of the term it
matters not which)--one of these sycophantic law-mongrels, discoursing
on the politics of the neighbourhood, uttered the following deep
remark: “As to Coleridge, there is not so much harm in him, for he is a
whirl-brain that talks whatever comes uppermost; but that ------! he is
the dark traitor. You never hear HIM say a syllable on the subject.”
Now that the hand of Providence has disciplined all Europe into
sobriety, as men tame wild elephants, by alternate blows and caresses;
now that Englishmen of all classes are restored to their old English
notions and feelings; it will with difficulty be credited, how great an
influence was at that time possessed and exerted by the spirit of secret
defamation,--(the too constant attendant on party-zeal)--during
the restless interim from 1793 to the commencement of the Addington
administration, or the year before the truce of Amiens. For by the
latter period the minds of the partizans, exhausted by excess of
stimulation and humbled by mutual disappointment, had become languid.
The same causes, that inclined the nation to peace, disposed the
individuals to reconciliation. Both parties had found themselves in
the wrong. The one had confessedly mistaken the moral character of
the revolution, and the other had miscalculated both its moral and
its physical resources. The experiment was made at the price of great,
almost, we may say, of humiliating sacrifices; and wise men foresaw that
it would fail, at least in its direct and ostensible object. Yet it
was purchased cheaply, and realized an object of equal value, and,
if possible, of still more vital importance. For it brought about
a national unanimity unexampled in our history since the reign of
Elizabeth; and Providence, never wanting to a good work when men have
done their parts, soon provided a common focus in the cause of Spain,
which made us all once more Englishmen by at once gratifying and
correcting the predilections of both parties. The sincere reverers of
the throne felt the cause of loyalty ennobled by its alliance with that
of freedom; while the honest zealots of the people could not but admit,
that freedom itself assumed a more winning form, humanized by loyalty
and consecrated by religious principle. The youthful enthusiasts who,
flattered by the morning rainbow of the French revolution, had made a
boast of expatriating their hopes and fears, now, disciplined by the
succeeding storms and sobered by increase of years, had been taught
to prize and honour the spirit of nationality as the best safeguard of
national independence, and this again as the absolute pre-requisite and
necessary basis of popular rights.
If in Spain too disappointment has nipped our too forward expectations,