continues he, “act the part of a coward if I disguised my conviction that the errors of the aristocratic party were as gross, and far less excusable than those of the Jacobin. Instead of contenting themselves with opposing the real blessing of English law to the ‘splendid promises of untried theory’, too large a part of those who called themselves ‘anti-Jacobins’, did all in their power to suspend those blessings; and they furnished ‘new arguments to the advocates of innovation’, when they should have been answering ‘the old ones!’”
But, whatever were his opinions, they were founded on ‘principle’, and with the exception of the two above alluded to, he ought never to be accused of changing. Some years since, the late Charles Matthews, the comedian, (or rather, as Coleridge used to observe, “the comic poet acting his own poems,”) showed me an autograph letter from Mr. Wordsworth to Matthews’ brother, (who was at that time educating for the bar) and with whom he corresponded. In this letter he made the following observation, “Tomorrow I am going to Bristol to see those two extraordinary young men, Southey and Coleridge,” Mr. Wordsworth then residing at Allfoxden. They soon afterwards formed an intimacy, which continued (though not without some little interruption) during his life, as his “Biographia Literaria” and his will attest.
Mr. Coleridge’s next work was the “Watchman” in numbers — a miscellany to be published every eighth day. The first number appeared on the 5th of February, 1796. This work was a report of the state of the political atmosphere, to be interspersed with sketches of character and verse. It reached the 10th number, and was then dropped; the editor taking leave of his readers in the following address:
“This is the last number of the Watchman. Henceforward I shall cease to cry the state of the political atmosphere. While I express my gratitude to those friends who exerted themselves so liberally in the establishment of this miscellany, I may reasonably be expected to assign some reason for relinquishing it thus abruptly. The reason is short and satisfactory. The work does not pay its expences. Part of my subscribers have relinquished it because it did not contain sufficient original composition, and a still larger because it contained too much. I have endeavoured to do well; and it must be attributed to defect of ability, not of inclination or effort, if the words of the prophet be altogether applicable to me, ‘O watchman! thou hast watched in vain!’”
Mr. Coleridge has given us in the “Biographia Literaria” a very lively account of his opinions, adventures, and state of feeling during this canvass in quest of subscribers.
“Towards the close of the first year, that inauspicious hour,” (it was, indeed, and for several reasons an “inauspicious hour” for him,) “when I left the friendly cloisters, and the happy grove of quiet, ever-honoured Jesus’ College, Cambridge, to set on foot a periodical, entitled the ‘Watchman,’ that (according to the motto of the work) ‘all might know the truth, and that truth might make us free!’
“With a flaming prospectus ‘Knowledge is power,’ &c. and to cry the state of the political atmosphere and so forth, I set off on a tour to the north, from Bristol to Sheffield, for the purpose of procuring customers, preaching by the way in most great towns, as a hireless volunteer, in a blue coat and white waistcoat, that not a rag of the woman of Babylon might be seen on me; for I was at that time, though a Trinitarian (i.e. ad normam Platonis) in philosophy, yet a zealous Unitarian in religion; more accurately, I was a psilanthropist, one of those who believe our Lord to have been the real son of Joseph, and who lay the main stress on the resurrection rather than on the crucifixion. Oh! never can I remember those days with either shame or regret, for I was most sincere! most disinterested! My opinions were, indeed, in many and most important points erroneous, but my heart was single! Wealth, rank, life itself then seemed cheap to me, compared with the interests of (what I believe to be) the truth and the will of my Maker. I cannot even accuse myself of having been actuated by vanity; for, in the expansion of my enthusiasm, I did not think of myself at all.
My campaign commenced at Birmingham, and my first attack was on a rigid Calvinist, a tallow-chandler by trade. He was a tall dingy man, in whom length was so predominant over breadth, that he might almost have been borrowed for a foundry poker. O that face! a face, [Greek: kat’ emphasin!] I have it before me at this moment. The lank, black twine-like hair, pingui-nitescent, cut in a straight line, along the black stubble of his thin gunpowder eyebrows, that looked like a scorched aftermath from a last week’s shaving. His coat collar behind in perfect unison, both of colour and lustre, with the coarse, yet glib cordage that I suppose he called his hair, and which with a ‘bend’ inward at the nape of the neck, (the only approach to flexure in his whole figure) slunk in behind his waistcoat; while the countenance lank, dark, very ‘hard’, and with strong perpendicular furrows, gave me a dim notion of some one looking at me through a ‘used’ gridiron, all soot, grease, and iron! A person to whom one of my letters of recommendation had been addressed, was my introducer.
It was a ‘new event’ in my life, my first ‘stroke’ in the new business I had undertaken of an author; yes, and of an author on his own account. I would address,” says Coleridge, “an affectionate exhortation to the youthful literati on my own experience. It will be but short; for the beginning, middle, and end converge to one charge. NEVER PURSUE LITERATURE AS A TRADE. My companion,” says he, “after some imperfect sentences, and a multitude of hums and hahs, abandoned the cause to his client; and I commenced an harangue of half an hour to Phileleutheros, the tallow-chandler, varying my notes through the whole gamut of eloquence, from the ratiocinative to the declamatory, and, in the latter, from the pathetic to the indignant. My taper man of lights listened with perseverant and praiseworthy patience, though (as I was afterwards told, in complaining of certain gales that were not altogether ambrosial,) it was a melting day with him. And what, sir! (he said, after a short pause,) might the cost be? only FOURPENCE, (O! how I felt the anticlimax, the abysmal bathos of that FOURPENCE!) ‘only fourpence, sir, each number, to be published on every eighth day’. That comes to a deal of money at the end of a year; and how much did you say there was to be for the money? Thirty-two pages, sir! large octavo, closely printed. Thirty and two pages? Bless me, why except what I does in a family way on the sabbath, that’s more than I ever reads, sir! all the year round. I am as great a one as any man in Brummagem, sir! for liberty and truth, and all them sort of things, but as to this, (no offence, I hope, sir!) I must beg to be excused. So ended my first canvass.”
Much the same indifference was shewn him at Manchester, &c., but he adds:—”From this rememberable tour, I returned 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 hagridden 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, and French philosophy, 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 they should contribute to deter men from openly declaiming on subjects, the ‘principles of which they had never bottomed’,
