Anima Poetae.
by Samuel Taylor Coleridge.
PREFACE
_Specimens of the Table Talk of Samuel Taylor Coleridge_, which the poet"s nephew and son-in-law, Henry Nelson Coleridge, published in 1835, was a popular book from the first, and has won the approval of two generations of readers. Unlike the _Biographia Literaria_, or the original and revised versions of _The Friend_, which never had their day at all, or the _Aids to Reflection_, which pa.s.sed through many editions, but now seems to have delivered its message, the _Table Talk_ is still well known and widely read, and that not only by students of literature.
The task which the editor set himself was a difficult one, but it lay within the powers of an attentive listener, possessed of a good memory and those rarer gifts of a refined and scholarly taste, a sound and luminous common sense. He does not attempt to reproduce Coleridge"s conversation or monologue or impa.s.sioned harangue, but he preserves and notes down the detached fragments of knowledge and wisdom which fell from time to time from the master"s lips. Here are "the balmy sunny islets of the blest and the intelligible," an unvexed and _harbourous_ archipelago. Very sparingly, if at all, have those pithy "sentences" and weighty paragraphs been trimmed or pruned by the pious solicitude of the memorialist, but it must be borne in mind that the unities are more or less consciously observed, alike in the matter of the discourse and the artistic presentation to the reader. There is, in short, not merely a "mechanic" but an "organic regularity" in the composition of the work as a whole. A "myriad-minded" sage, who has seen men and cities, who has read widely and shaped his thoughts in a peculiar mould, is pouring out his stores of knowledge, the garnered fruit of a life of study and meditation, for the benefit of an apt learner, a discreet and appreciative disciple. A day comes when the marvellous lips are constrained to an endless silence, and it becomes the duty and privilege of the beloved and honoured pupil to "s.n.a.t.c.h from forgetfulness" and to hand down to posterity the great tradition of his master"s eloquence. A labour of love so useful and so fascinating was accomplished by the gifted editor of the _Table Talk_, and it was accomplished once for all.
The compilation of a new _Table Talk_, if it were possible, would be a mistake and an impertinence.
The present collection of hitherto unpublished aphorisms, reflections, confessions and soliloquies, which for want of a better name I have ent.i.tled _Anima Poetae_, does not in any way challenge comparison with the _Table Talk_. It is, indeed, essentially different, not only in the sources from which it has been compiled but in const.i.tution and in aim.
"Since I left you," writes Coleridge in a letter to Wordsworth of May 12, 1812, "my pocket-books have been my sole confidants." Doubtless, in earlier and happier days, he had been eager not merely to record but to communicate to the few who would listen or might understand the ceaseless and curious workings of his ever-shaping imagination, but from youth to age note-books and pocket-books were his silent confidants, his "never-failing friends" by night and day.
More than fifty of these remarkable doc.u.ments are extant. The earliest of the series, which dates from 1795 and which is known as the "Gutch Memorandum Book," was purchased in 1868 by the trustees of the British Museum, and is now exhibited in the King"s Library. It consists, for the most part, of fragments of prose and verse thrown off at the moment, and stored up for future use in poem or lecture or sermon. A few of these fragments were printed in the _Literary Remains_ (4 vols.
1836-39), and others are to be found (pp. 103, 5, 6, 9 _et pa.s.sim_) in Herr Brandl"s _Samuel Taylor Coleridge and the English Romantic School_.
The poetical fragments are printed _in extenso_ in Coleridge"s _Poetical Works_ (Macmillan, 1893), pp. 453-58. A few specimens of the prose fragments have been included in the first chapter of this work. One of the latest note-books, an unfinished folio, contains the Autobiographic Note of 1832, portions of which were printed in Gillman"s _Life of Coleridge_, pp. 9-33, and a ma.s.s of unpublished matter, consisting mainly of religious exercises and biblical criticism.
Of the intervening collection of pocket-books, note-books, copy-books, of all shapes, sizes and bindings, a detailed description would be tedious and out of place. Their contents may be roughly divided into diaries of tours in Germany, the Lake District, Scotland, Sicily and Italy; notes for projected and accomplished works, rough drafts of poems, schemes of metre and metrical experiments; notes for lectures on Shakspere and other dramatists; quotations from books of travel, from Greek, Latin, German and Italian cla.s.sics, with and without critical comments; innumerable fragments of metaphysical and theological speculation; and commingled with this una.s.sorted medley of facts and thoughts and fancies, an occasional and intermitted record of personal feeling, of love and friendship, of disappointment and regret, of penitence and resolve, of faith and hope in the Unseen.
Hitherto, but little use has been made of this life-long acc.u.mulation of literary material. A few specimens, "Curiosities of Literature" they might have been called, were contributed by Coleridge himself to Southey"s _Omniana_ of 1812, and a further selection of some fifty fragments, gleaned from note-books 21-1/2 and 22, and from a third unnumbered MS. book now in my possession, were printed by H. N.
Coleridge in the first volume of the _Literary Remains_ under the heading _Omniana 1809-1816_. The _Omniana_ of 1812 were, in many instances, re-written by Coleridge before they were included in Southey"s volumes, and in the later issue, here and there, the editor has given shape and articulation to an unfinished or half-formed sentence. The earlier and later _Omniana_, together with the fragments which were published by Allsop in his _Letters, Conversations and Recollections of S. T. Coleridge_, in 1836, were included by the late Thomas Ashe in his reprint of the _Table Talk_, Bell & Co., 1884.
Some fourteen or fifteen notes of singular interest and beauty, which belong to the years 1804, 1812, 1826, 1829, etc., were printed by James Gillman in his unfinished "Life of Coleridge," and it is evident that he contemplated a more extended use of the note-books in the construction of his second volume, or, possibly, the publication of a supplementary volume of notes or _Omniana_. Transcripts which were made for this purpose are extant, and have been placed at my disposal by the kindness of Mrs. Henry Watson, who inherited them from her grandmother, Mrs.
Gillman.
I may add that a few quotations from diaries of tours in the Lake Country and on the Continent are to be found in the foot-notes appended to the two volumes of _Letters of Samuel Taylor Coleridge_ which were issued in the spring of the present year.
To publish the note-books _in extenso_ would be impracticable, if even after the lapse of sixty years since the death of the writer it were permissible. They are private memoranda-books, and rightly and properly have been regarded as a sacred trust by their several custodians. But it is none the less certain that in disburthening himself of the ideas and imaginations which pressed upon his consciousness, in committing them to writing and carefully preserving them through all his wanderings, Coleridge had no mind that they should perish utterly. The invisible pageantry of thought and pa.s.sion which for ever floated into his spiritual ken, the perpetual hope, the half-belief that the veil of the senses would be rent in twain, and that he and not another would be the first to lay bare the mysteries of being, and to solve the problem of the ages--of these was the breath of his soul. It was his fate to wrestle from night to morn with the Angel of the Vision, and of that unequal combat he has left, by way of warning or encouragement, a broken but an inspired and inspiring record. "Hints and first thoughts" he bade us regard the contents of his memorandum-books--"_cogitabilia_ rather than _cogitata_ a me, not fixed opinions," and yet acts of obedience to the apostolic command of "Try all things: hold fast that which is good"--say, rather, acts of obedience to the compulsion of his own genius to "take a pen and write in a book all the words of the vision."
The aim of the present work, however imperfectly accomplished, has been to present in a compendious shape a collection of unpublished aphorisms and sentences, and at the same time to enable the reader to form some estimate of those strange self-communings to which Coleridge devoted so much of his intellectual energies, and by means of which he hoped to pa.s.s through the mists and shadows of words and thoughts to a steadier contemplation, to the apprehension if not the comprehension of the mysteries of Truth and Being.
The various excerpts which I have selected for publication are arranged, as far as possible, in chronological order. They begin with the beginning of Coleridge"s literary career, and are carried down to the summer of 1828, when he accompanied Wordsworth and his daughter Dora on a six months" tour on the Continent. The series of note-books which belong to the remaining years of his life (1828-1834) were devoted for the most part to a commentary on the Old and New Testament, to theological controversy, and to metaphysical disquisition. Whatever interest they may have possessed, or still possess, appeals to the student, not to the general reader. With his inveterate love of humorous or facetious t.i.tles, Coleridge was pleased to designate these serious and abstruse dissertations as "The Flycatchers."
My especial thanks are due to Amy, Lady Coleridge, who, in accordance with the known wishes of the late Lord Coleridge, has afforded me every facility for collating my own transcripts of the note-books, and those which were made by my father and other members of my family, with the original MSS. now in her possession.
I have to also thank Miss Edith Coleridge for valuable a.s.sistance in the preparation of the present work for the press.
The death of my friend, Mr. James d.y.k.es Campbell, has deprived me of aid which he alone could give.
It was due to his suggestion and encouragement that I began to compile these pages, and only a few days before his death he promised me (it was all he could undertake) to "run through the proofs with my pencil in my hand." He has pa.s.sed away _multis flebilis_, but he lived to accomplish his own work both as critic and biographer, and to leave to all who follow in his footsteps a type and example of honest workmanship and of literary excellence.
ERNEST HARTLEY COLERIDGE.
ANIMA POETAE
CHAPTER I
_1797-1801_
"O Youth! for years so many and sweet, "Tis known, that Thou and I were one."
S. T. C.
[Sidenote: PAST AND PRESENT]
"We should judge of absent things by the absent. Objects which are present are apt to produce perceptions too strong to be impartially compared with those recalled only by the memory." SIR J. STEWART.
True! and O how often the very opposite is true likewise, namely, that the objects of memory are, often, so dear and vivid, that present things are injured by being compared with them, vivid from dearness!
[Sidenote: LOVE]
Love, a myrtle wand, is transformed by the Aaron touch of jealousy into a serpent so vast as to swallow up every other stinging woe, and makes us mourn the exchange.
Love that soothes misfortune and buoys up to virtue--the pillow of sorrows, the wings of virtue.
Disappointed love not uncommonly causes misogyny, even as extreme thirst is supposed to be the cause of hydrophobia.
Love transforms the soul into a conformity with the object loved.
[Sidenote: DUTY AND EXPERIENCE]
From the narrow path of virtue Pleasure leads us to more flowery fields, and there Pain meets and chides our wandering. Of how many pleasures, of what lasting happiness, is Pain the parent and Woe the womb!
Real pain can alone cure us of imaginary ills. We feel a thousand miseries till we are lucky enough to feel misery.
Misfortunes prepare the heart for the enjoyment of happiness in a better state. The life of a religious benevolent man is an April day. His pains and sorrows [what are they but] the fertilising rain? The sunshine blends with every shower, and look! how full and lovely it lies on yonder hill!
Our quaint metaphysical opinions, in an hour of anguish, are like playthings by the bedside of a child deadly sick.
Human happiness, like the aloe, is a flower of slow growth.