morbid and oppressive weight is gradually lifting up, and my will acquiring some degree of strength and power of reaction.
········
I have, however, received such manifest benefit from horse exercise, and gradual abandonment of fermented and total abstinence from spirituous liquors, and by being alone with Poole, and the renewal of old times, by wandering about among my dear old walks of Quantock and Alfoxden, that I have seriously set about composition, with a view to ascertain whether I can conscientiously undertake what I so very much wish, a series of Lectures at the Royal Institution. I trust I need not assure you how much I feel your kindness, and let me add, that I consider the application as an act of great and unmerited condescension on the part of the managers as may have consented to it. After having discussed the subject with Poole, he entirely agrees with me, that the former plan suggested by me is invidious in itself, unless I disguised my real opinions; as far as I should deliver my sentiments respecting the arts, [it] would require references and illustrations not suitable to a public lecture room; and, finally, that I ought not to reckon upon spirits enough to seek about for books of Italian prints, etc. And that, after all, the general and most philosophical principles, I might naturally introduce into lectures on a more confined plan—namely, the principles of poetry, conveyed and illustrated in a series of lectures. 1. On the genius and writings of Shakespeare, relatively to his predecessors and contemporaries, so as to determine not only his merits and defects, and the proportion that each must bear to the whole, but what of his merits and defects belong to his age, as being found in contemporaries of genius, and what belonged to himself. 2. On Spenser, including the metrical romances, and Chaucer, though the character of the latter as a manner-painter I shall have so far anticipated in distinguishing it from, and comparing it with, Shakespeare. 3. Milton. 4. Dryden and Pope, including the origin and after history of poetry of witty logic. 5. On Modern Poetry and its characteristics, with no introduction of any particular names. In the course of these I shall have said all I know, the whole result of many years’ continued reflection on the subjects of taste, imagination, fancy, passion, the source of our pleasures in the fine arts, in the antithetical balance-loving nature of man, and the connexion of such pleasures with moral excellence. The advantage of this plan to myself is, that I have all my materials ready, and can rapidly reduce them into form (for this is my solemn determination, not to give a single lecture till I have in fair writing at least one half of the whole course), for as to trusting anything to immediate effort, I shrink from it as from guilt, and guilt in me it would be. In short, I should have no objection at once to pledge myself to the immediate preparation of these lectures, but that I am so surrounded by embarrassments....
For God’s sake enter into my true motive for this wearing detail; it would torture me if it had any other effect than to impress on you my desire and hope to accord with your plan, and my incapability of making any final promise till the end of this month.
S. T. Coleridge.
CHAPTER IX. A PUBLIC LECTURER. 1807-1808
CLXV. TO THE MORGAN FAMILY.
Hatchett’s Hotel, Piccadilly, Monday evening,
[November 23, 1807.]
My dear Friends,—I arrived here in safety this morning between seven and eight, coach-stunned, and with a cold in my head; but I had dozed away the whole night with fewer disturbances than I had reason to expect, in that sort of whether-you-will-or-no slumber brought upon me by the movements of the vehicle, which I attribute to the easiness of the mail. About one o’clock I moaned and started, and then took a wing of the fowl and the rum, and it operated as a preventive for the after time. If very, very affectionate thoughts, wishes, recollections, anticipations, can score instead of grace before and after meat, mine was a very religious meal, for in this sense my inmost heart prayed before, after, and during. After breakfast, on attempting to clean and dress myself from crown to sole, I found myself quite unfit for anything, and my legs were painful, or rather my feet, and nothing but an horizontal position would remove the feeling. So I got into bed, and did not get up again till Mr. Stuart called at my chamber, past three. I have seen no one else, and therefore must defer all intelligence concerning my lectures, etc., to a second letter, which you will receive in a few days, God willing, with the D’Espriella, etc. When I was leaving you, one of the little alleviations which I looked forward to, was that I could write with less embarrassment than I could utter in your presence the many feelings of grateful affection and most affectionate esteem toward you, that pressed upon my heart almost, as at times it seemed, with a bodily weight. But I suppose it is yet too short a time since I left you—you are scarcely out of my eyes yet, dear Mrs. M. and Charlotte! To-morrow I shall go about the portraits. I have not looked at the profile since, nor shall I till it is framed. An absence of four or five days will be a better test how far it is a likeness. For a day or two, farewell, my dear friends! I bless you all three fervently, and shall, I trust, as long as I am
S. T. Coleridge.
I shall take up my lodgings at the “Courier” office, where there is a nice suite of rooms for me and a quiet bedroom without expense. My address therefore, “Squire Coleridge,” or “S. T. Coleridge, Esq: ‘Courier’ Office, Strand,”—unless you are in a sensible mood, and then you will write Mr. Coleridge, if it were only in compassion to that poor, unfortunate exile, from the covers of letters at least, despised MR.
Mr. Jno. Jas. Morgan,
St. James’s Square, Bristol.
CLXVI. TO ROBERT SOUTHEY.
[Postmark, December 14, 1807.]
My dear Southey,—I have been confined to my bedroom, and, with exceptions of a few hours each night, to my bed for near a week past—having once ventured out, and suffered in consequence. My complaint a low bilious fever. Whether contagion or sympathy, I know not, but I had it hanging about me from the time I was with Davy. It went off, however, by a journey which I took with Stuart, to Bristol, in a cold frosty air. Soon after my return Mr. Ridout informed me from Drs. Babbington and Bailly, that Davy was not only ill, but his life precarious, his recovery doubtful. And to this day no distinct symptom of safety has appeared, though to-day he is better. I cannot express what I have suffered. Good heaven! in the very springtide of his honour—his? his country’s! the world’s! after discoveries more intellectual, more ennobling, and impowering human nature than Newton’s! But he must not die! I am so much better that I shall go out to-morrow, if I awake no worse than I go to sleep. Be so good as to tell Mrs. Coleridge that I will write to her either Tuesday or Wednesday, and to Hartley and Derwent, with whose letters I was much both amused and affected. I was with Hartley and Mrs. Wilson and Mr. Jackson in spirit at their meeting. Howel’s bill I have paid, tell Mrs. C. (for this is what she will be most anxious about), and that I had no other debt at all weighing upon me, either prudentially or from sense of propriety or delicacy, till the one I shall mention, after better subjects, in the tail of this letter.
I very thoroughly admired your letter to W. Scott,[40] concerning the “Edinburgh Review.” The feeling and the resolve are what any one knowing you half as well as I must have anticipated, in any case where you had room for ten minutes thinking, and relatively to any person, with regard to whom old affection and belief of injury and unworthy conduct had made none of those mixtures, which people the brains of the best men—none but good men having the component drugs, or at least the drugs in that state of composition—but it is admirably expressed—if I had meant only wellexpressed, I should have said, “and it is well expressed,”—but, to my feeling, it is an unusual specimen of honourable feeling supporting itself by sound sense and conveyed with simplicity, dignity,
