from the happy groves of Jesus’ College to Bristol.” But it was so ordained! He sought literature as a trade, — and became an author:
“whatever,” he would say, “I write, that alone which contains the truth will live, for truth only is permanent. The rest will deservedly perish.”
He wrote to supply the fountain which was to feed the fertilizing rills, — to develope the truth was that at which he aimed, and in which he hoped to find his reward.
On the 16th of September, 1798, he sailed from Great Yarmouth to
Hamburg, in company with Mr. Wordsworth and his sister in his way to
Germany, and now for the first time beheld “his native land” retiring
from him.
In a series of letters, published first in the “Friend,” afterwards in his “Biographia Literaria,” is to be found a description of his passage to Germany, and short tour through that country. His fellow passengers as described by him were a motley group, suffering from the usual effects of a rolling sea. One of them, who had caught the customary antidote to sympathy for suffering, to witness which is usually painful, began his mirth by not inaptly observing,
“That Momus might have discovered an easier way to see a man’s inside than by placing a window in his breast. He needed only to have taken a saltwater trip in a pacquet-boat.”
Coleridge thinks that a
“pacquet is far superior to a stage-coach, as a means of making men open out to each other. In the latter the uniformity of posture disposes to dozing, and the definiteness of the period at which the company will separate, makes each individual think of those ‘to’ whom he is going, rather than of those ‘with’ whom he is going. But at sea more curiosity is excited, if only on this account, that the pleasant or unpleasant qualities of your companions are of greater importance to you, from the uncertainty how long you may be obliged to house with them.”
On board was a party of Danes, who, from his appearance in a suit of black, insisted he was a “Docteur Teology.” To relieve himself of any further questioning on this head, he bowed assent “rather than be nothing.”
“Certes,” he says, “We were not of the Stoic school; for we drank, and talked, and sung altogether; and then we rose and danced on the deck a set of dances, which, in one sense of the word at least, were very intelligibly and appropriately entitled reels. The passengers who lay in the cabin below in all the agonies of sea-sickness, must have found our bacchanalian merriment
a tune Harsh and of dissonant mood for their complaint.
I thought so at the time; and how closely the greater number of our virtues are connected with the fear of death, and how little sympathy we bestow on pain, when there is no danger.”
The Dane soon convinced him of the justice of an old remark, that many a faithful portrait in our novels and farces, has been rashly censured for an outrageous caricature, or perhaps nonentity.
“I had retired to my station in the boat when he came and seated himself by my side, and appeared not a little tipsy. He commenced the conversation in the most magnific style, and a sort of pioneering to his own vanity, he flattered me with such grossness! The parasites of the old comedy were modest in comparison.”
After a ludicrous conversation which took place, he passes on to the description of another passenger, an Englishman, who spoke German fluently and interpreted many of the jokes of a Prussian who formed one of the party.
“The Prussian was a travelling merchant, turned of threescore, a hale, tall, strong man, and full of stories, gesticulations, and buffoonery, with the soul as well as the look of a mountebank, who, while he is making you laugh, picks your pocket. Amid all his droll looks and droll gestures, there remained one look untouched by laughter; and that one look was the true face, the others were but its mask. The Hanoverian (another of the party) was a pale, bloated, young man, whose father had made a large fortune in London as an army contractor. He seemed to emulate the manners of young Englishmen of fortune. He was a good-natured fellow, not without information or literature, but a most egregious coxcomb. He had been in the habit of attending the House of Commons; and had once spoken, as he informed me, with great applause in a debating society. For this he appeared to have qualified himself with laudable industry; for he was perfect in Walker’s Pronouncing Dictionary, and with an accent that forcibly reminded me of the Scotchman in Roderick Random, who professed to teach the English pronunciation; he was constantly deferring to my superior judgment, whether or no I had pronounced this or that word with propriety or ‘the true delicacy.’ When he spoke, though it were only half a dozen sentences, he always rose; for which I could detect no other motive, than his partiality to that elegant phrase, so liberally introduced in the orations of our British legislators, ‘While I am on my legs.’”
Coleridge continues his description of the party, and relates a quarrel that ensued between a little German tailor and his wife, by which he was the gainer of a bed, it being too cold to continue much longer on deck:
“In the evening the sea rolling higher, the Dane became worse, and in consequence increased his remedy, viz. brandy, sugar, and nutmeg, in proportion to the room left in his stomach. The conversation or oration ‘rather than dialogue, became extravagant beyond all that I ever heard.’ After giving an account of his fortune acquired in the island of Santa Cruz, ‘he expatiated on the style in which he intended to live in Denmark, and the great undertakings he proposed to himself to commence, till the brandy aiding his vanity, and his vanity and garrulity aiding the brandy, he talked like a madman.
After this drunken apostrophe he changed the conversation, and commenced an harangue on religion, (mistaking Coleridge for “un Philosophe” in the continental sense of the word) he talked of the Deity in a declamatory style very much resembling the devotional rants of that rude blunderer Mr. Thomas Paine, in his ‘Age of Reason’. I dare aver, that few men have less reason to charge themselves with indulging in persiflage than myself; I should hate it, if it were only that it is a Frenchman’s vice, and feel a pride in avoiding it, because our own language is too honest to have a word to express it by.
At four o’clock I observed a wild duck swimming on the waves, a single solitary wild duck. It is not easy to conceive, how interesting a thing it looked in that round objectless desert of waters.”
The cry of ‘land’ was heard soon afterwards, and in a short time they dropped anchor at Cuxhaven, and proceeded from thence in a boat to Hamburg. After this he travelled on to Ratzeburg, and then took up his residence with a pastor for the purpose of acquiring the German language, but with what success will be presently shown. He soon after proceeded through Hanover to Göttingen. — Here he informs us he regularly
“attended lectures in the morning in physiology, in the evening an natural history under BLUMENBACH, a name as dear to every Englishman who has studied at the university, as it is venerable to men of science throughout Europe! Eichorn’s Lectures on the New Testament were repeated to me from notes by a student from Ratzeburg, a young man of sound learning and indefatigable industry, who is now I believe a professor of the oriental languages at Heidelberg.”
Few persons visit Gottingen without ascending the Brocken.
At the close of one of their academic studies, equivalent to, what in this country is called a term, it was agreed that the following party should visit the Hartz Mountains, &c. Namely, Coleridge, the two Parrys of Bath, Charles and Edward, sons of the celebrated physician of that name, the son also of Professor Blumenbach, Dr. Carlyon, Mr. Chester, and Mr. Greenough.
