The Life of Samuel Taylor Coleridge by James Gillman

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THE LIFE

OF

SAMUEL TAYLOR COLERIDGE

BY JAMES GILLMAN

1838

'... But some to higher hopes
Were destined; some within a finer mould
Were wrought, and temper'd with a purer flame:
To these the Sire Omnipotent unfolds
The world's harmonious volume, there to read
The transcript of himself ....'

TO JOSEPH HENRY GREEN, F.R.S.

PROFESSOR OF ANATOMY OF THE ROYAL ACADEMY, ETC. ETC.

THE HONOURED FAITHFUL AND BELOVED FRIEND OF

SAMUEL TAYLOR COLERIDGE,

THESE VOLUMES

ARE MOST RESPECTFULLY AND AFFECTIONATELY INSCRIBED.

PREFACE.

The more frequently we read and contemplate the lives of those eminent
men so beautifully traced by the amiable Izaak Walton, the more we are
impressed with the sweetness and simplicity of the work. Walton was a
man of genius--of simple calling and more simple habits, though best
known perhaps by his book on Angling; yet in the scarcely less
attractive pages of his biographies, like the flowing of the gentle
stream on which he sometimes cast his line, to practise "the all of
treachery he ever learnt," he leads the delighted reader imperceptibly
on, charmed with the natural beauty of his sentiments, and the
unaffected ease and simplicity of his style.

In his preface to the Sermons of (that pious poet and divine,) Dr.
Donne, so much may be found applicable to the great and good man whose
life the author is now writing, that he hopes to be pardoned for quoting
from one so much more able to delineate rare virtues and high
endowments: "And if he shall now be demanded, as once Pompey's poor
bondman was, who art thou that alone hast the honour to bury the body of
Pompey the great?" so who is he who would thus erect a funeral pile to
the memory of the honoured dead? ...

With the writer of this work, during the latter twenty years of his
life, Coleridge had been domesticated; and his intimate knowledge of
that illustrious character induces him to hope that his present
undertaking, "however imperfectly it may set forth the memory he fain
would honour," will yet not be considered presumptuous; inasmuch as he
has had an opportunity of bringing together facts and anecdotes, with
various memoranda never before published, some of which will be found to
have much of deep interest, of piety and of loveliness.

At the same time he has also been desirous of interweaving such
information as he has been enabled to collect from the early friends of
Coleridge, as well as from those of his after-life. Thus, he trusts, he
has had the means of giving, with truth and correctness, a faithful
portraiture of one whom he so dearly loved, so highly prized. Still he
feels that from various causes, he has laboured under many and great
difficulties.

First, he never contemplated writing this Memoir, nor would he have made
the attempt, had it not been urged on him as a duty by friends, whom
Coleridge himself most respected and honoured; they, "not doubting that
his intimate knowledge of the author, and dear love to his memory, might
make his diligence useful."

Secondly, the duties of a laborious profession, rendered still more
arduous by indifferent health--added to many sorrows, and leisure (if
such it might be called,) which permitted only occasional attention to
the subject--and was liable to frequent interruptions; will, he flatters
himself, give him a claim to the candour and kindness of his readers.
And if Coleridge's "glorious spirit, now in heaven, could look down upon
him, he would not disdain this well meant sacrifice to his memory--for
whilst his conversation made him, and many others happy below, his
humility and gentleness were also pre-eminent;--and divines have said,
those virtues that were but sparks upon earth, become great and glorious
flames in heaven."

LIFE OF COLERIDGE.

CHAPTER I.

BIRTH-PLACE OF COLERIDGE.--SLIGHT SKETCH OF HIS PARENTS.--WHIMSICAL
ANECDOTES HE USED TO RELATE OF HIS FATHER, &C.--AS A PASTOR, HOW MUCH
BELOVED.--HIS BROTHERS AND SISTERS ENUMERATED.--THE DEATH OF HIS
FATHER.--HIS ENTRANCE AT CHRIST'S HOSPITAL.--LAMB'S ACCOUNT OF HIM WHEN
AT SCHOOL.--WRITES THIS ACCOUNT UNDER THE NAME OF ELIA.--LAMB'S
ADMISSION THAT HE MEANT COLERIDGE FOR THE "FRIENDLESS BOY."--THE
DELICACY OF HIS STOMACH.--HIS FIRST ATTEMPT AT MAKING VERSE WHEN A
SCHOOL BOY.--AND CONTINUATION OF HIS SUFFERINGS WHEN AT SCHOOL.--HIS
WATER EXCURSIONS, THE ORIGIN OF MOST OF HIS SUBSEQUENT SUFFERING.

SAMUEL TAYLOR COLERIDGE, the subject of this memoir, was born at Ottery
St. Mary, Devonshire, the 21st October, 1772. His father, the Rev. John
Coleridge, was vicar of Ottery, and head master of Henry VIII Free
Grammar School, usually termed the King's School; a man of great
learning, and one of the persons who assisted Dr. Kennicott in his
Hebrew Bible. Before his appointment to the school at Ottery he had been
head master of the school at South Molton. Some dissertations on the
17th and 18th chapters of the Book of Judges, [1] and a Latin grammar
for the use of the school at Ottery were published by him. He was an
exceedingly studious man, pious, of primitive manners, and of the most
simple habits: passing events were little heeded by him, and therefore
he was usually characterized as the "absent man".

Many traditional stories concerning his father had been in circulation
for years before Coleridge came to Highgate. These were related with
mirth in the neighbourhood of Ottery, and varied according to the humour
of the narrator.

To beguile the winter's hour, which, however, was never dull in his
society, he would recall to memory the past anecdotes of his father, and
repeat them till the tears ran down his face, from the fond recollection
of his beloved parent. The relation of the story usually terminated with
an affectionate sigh, and the observation, "Yes, my friend, he was
indeed an Israelite without guile, and might be compared to Parson
Adams." The same appellation which Coleridge applied to his father will
also, with equal justice, be descriptive of himself. In many respects he
"differed in kind" from his brothers and the rest of his family, but his
resemblance to his father was so strong, that I shall continue this part
of the memoir with a sketch of the parent stock from which he sprung.

The Rev. John Coleridge had been twice married; his second wife, Anne
Bowdon, by whom he had a large family, was the mother of my friend, and
seems to have been peculiarly fitted for the wife of a clergyman who had
a large family and limited means. Her husband, not possessing that
knowledge usually termed worldly wisdom, she appeared to supply the
place of the friend, which such a man required in his wife. He was
better fitted for the apostolic age, so primitive was he in his manners
and uneducated in the fashions and changing customs surrounding him: his
companions were chiefly his books, and the few scholars he had to
educate. To all around him he was extremely kind and amiable, and
greatly beloved by the flock over whom he presided as pastor. For each
individual, whatever his rank, he had a kindly word of greeting, and in
sickness or distress he was an attentive friend. His richer and more
educated neighbours visited him, and shared the general pleasure and
amusement excited by his simple and peculiarly absent manners.

It is said of him, that on one occasion, having to breakfast with his
bishop, he went, as was the practice of that day, into a barber's shop
to have his head shaved, wigs being then in common use. Just as the
operation was completed, the clock struck nine, the hour at which the
bishop punctually breakfasted. Roused, as from a reverie, he instantly
left the barber's shop, and in his haste forgetting his wig, appeared at
the breakfast table, where the bishop and his party had assembled. The
bishop, well acquainted with his absent manners, courteously and
playfully requested him to walk into an adjoining room, and give his
opinion of a mirror which had arrived from London a few days previously,
and which disclosed to his astonished guest the consequences of his
haste and forgetfulness.

On another occasion he dined with the bishop, who had great pleasure and
delight in his society, when the following ludicrous scene took place.
The bishop had a maiden daughter, past the meridian of life, who was
always glad to see and converse with the "dear good old man" (his usual
appellation), and who was also kind enough to remind him of his little
'Forgets' in society, and rouse him from his absent moods. It not
being the fashion in his day for gentlemen to wear braces, his
small-clothes, receding from his waistcoat, left a space in his black
dress, through which often appeared a portion of his linen. On these
occasions, the good lady would draw his attention to this appearance, by
saying in an under tone, "A little to this side, Mr. Coleridge," or to
that, as the adjustment might require. This hint was as instantly
attended to as his embarrassed manner, produced by a sense of the
kindness, would permit. On the day above alluded to, his kind friend sat
next to him, dressed, as was then the fashion, in a smart party-going
muslin apron. Whilst in earnest conversation with his opposite
neighbour, on the side next the lady appeared the folds of his shirt,
through the hiatus before described, so conspicuously as instantly to
attract her notice. The hint was immediately given: "Mr. Coleridge, a
little on the side next me;"--and was as instantly acknowledged by the
usual reply, "Thank you, ma'am, thank you," and the hand set to work to
replace the shirt; but unfortunately, in his nervous eagerness, he
seized on the lady's apron, and appropriated the greater part of it. The
appeal of "Dear Mr. Coleridge, do stop!" only increased his
embarrassment, and also his exertions to dispose, as he thought, of his
shirt; till the lady, to put a stop to the titter of the visitors, and
relieve her own confusion, untied the strings, and thus disengaging
herself, left the room, and her friend in possession of her apron. [2]

Mrs. Coleridge, the mother of my friend, and of whom I have already
spoken, had naturally a strong mind. She was an uneducated woman,
industriously attentive to her household duties, and devoted to the care
of her husband and family. Possessing none, even of the most common
female accomplishments of her day, she had neither love nor sympathy for
the display of them in others. She disliked, as she would say, "your
harpsichord ladies," and strongly tried to impress on her sons their
little value, in their choice of wives. As a clergyman's wife her
conduct was exemplary; the father of my friend had a fortune in such a
woman, and she found in him, with all his peculiarities, a kind, sweet
tempered, engaging husband. She was, I should add, a very good woman,
though like Martha, over careful in many things, very ambitious for the
advancement of her sons in life, but wanting perhaps that flow of heart
which her husband possessed so largely. But "imperfection cleaves to
mortality." Such, as given in this brief sketch, were the parents of the
subject of this memoir. [3]

I have heard Coleridge relate the following anecdote of his father. The
old gentleman had to take a short journey on some professional business,
which would detain him from home for three or four days: his good wife,
in her care and watchfulness, had packed a few things in a small trunk,
and gave them in charge to her husband, with strong injunctions that he
was to put on a clean shirt every day. On his return home, his wife went
to search for his linen, when, to her dismay, it was not in the trunk. A
closer search, however, discovered that the vicar had strictly obeyed
her injunctions, and had put on daily a clean shirt, but had forgotten
to remove the one underneath. This might have been the pleasantest and
most portable mode of carrying half a dozen shirts in winter, but not so
in the dog-days.

As a preacher, he was peculiar: it is said, that the poor idolized, and
looked upon him with great reverence; and when death removed this
distinguished and eminent scholar from among them, his successor had
little chance of pleasing to the same extent. In their great admiration
of him, they would often say, "How fine he was in his discourse, for he
gave us the very words the spirit spoke in," viz. the Hebrew, with which
he frequently indulged them in his sermons, and which seems greatly to
have attracted the notice of the agricultural population, who flocked
from the neighbourhood, to the town in which he resided. Excited and
stimulated by curiosity, this class of persons might attend the church,
and in listening for the Hebrew they would perhaps be more attentive,
and carry away some useful portions of the English from this amiable and
accomplished pastor.

As a schoolmaster his singularities were of the same character,
manifesting the same simplicity and honesty of purpose. I have before
stated that he wrote a Latin Grammar for the use of his school, and
instead of the word ablative, in general use, he compounded three or
four Latin words [4] as explanatory of this case. Whether the mothers
were startled at the repetition of these words, and thought of the
hardships their sons would have to endure in the acquirement of this
grammar, I can only conjecture; but it seems he thought it his duty to
explain to the ladies, in justice to their feelings, his learned reasons
for the alteration he had made in the name of this case.

I had often pressed him to write some account of his early life, and of
the various circumstances connected with it. But the aversion he had to
read or write any thing about himself was so great, that I never
succeeded, except in obtaining a few notes, rather than a detailed
account. There would be little either useful or interesting in any
account of Coleridge's life, which a stranger to him could give;
therefore, from the best authorities with which I am acquainted, and
from an intimacy of nearly twenty years, is this memoir of my late
lamented friend compiled. He commences one of the notes above alluded
to, with his early childhood.

"I was," says he, "the last child, the youngest child of ten by the
same mother, that is to say, John, William (who died in infancy),
James, William, Edward, George, Luke, Ann, Francis, and myself, Samuel
Taylor Coleridge, beneficially abridged Esteese [Greek: estaesae],
i.e. S. T. C., and the thirteenth, taking in three sisters by my dear
father's first wife,--Mary, afterwards Mrs. Bradley,--Sarah, who
married a seaman and is lately dead, and Elizabeth, afterwards Mrs.
Phillips--who alone was bred up with us after my birth, and whom alone
of the three I was wont to think of as a sister, though not exactly,
yet I did not know why, the same sort of sister, as my sister Nancy.

Being the youngest child, I possibly inherited the weakly state of
health of my father, who died at the age of 62, before I had reached
my seventh year; and from certain jealousies of old Molly, my brother
Frank's dotingly fond nurse, (and if ever child by beauty and
loveliness deserved to be doted on, my brother Francis was that
child,) and by the infusions of her jealousy into my brother's mind, I
was in earliest childhood huffed away from the enjoyments of muscular
activity from play, to take refuge at my mother's side, on my little
stool, to read my little book, and to listen to the talk of my elders.
I was driven from life in motion, to life in thought and sensation. I
never played except by myself, and then only acting over what I had
been reading or fancying, or half one, half the other, with a stick
cutting down weeds and nettles, as one of the seven champions of
Christendom. [5] Alas! I had all the simplicity, all the docility of
the little child, but none of the child's habits. I never thought as a
child, never had the language of a child. I forget whether it was in
my fifth or sixth year, but I believe the latter, in consequence of
some quarrel between me and my brother, in the first week in October,
I ran away from fear of being whipped, and passed the whole night, a
night of rain and storm, on the bleak side of a hill on the Otter, and
was there found at daybreak, without the power of using my limbs,
about six yards from the naked bank of the river."

"In my seventh year, about the same time, if not the very same time,
i.e. Oct. 4th, my most dear, most revered father, died suddenly. O
that I might so pass away, if like him I were an Israelite without
guile. The image of my father, my revered, kind, learned,
simple-hearted father is a religion to me!"

Judge Buller who had been educated by his father, had always promised to
adopt the son, at least to educate him, foreseeing that Samuel, the
youngest, was likely to be left an orphan early in life. Soon after the
death of the Rev. John Coleridge, the Judge obtained from John Way,
Esq., one of the governors of Christ's Hospital, a presentation to that
school, and young Coleridge was sent by the Judge and placed there on
the 18th July, 1782. "O! what a change!" [6] he goes on in the note
above quoted.

"Depressed, moping, friendless, poor orphan, half starved; (at that
time the portion of food to the Bluecoats was cruelly insufficient for
those who had no friends to supply them)."

In the late Mr. Charles Lamb's "Works" published in 1818, there is an
account of the school, entitled "Recollections of Christ's Hospital." In
1823 there is a second essay on the same subject by Lamb, under the
assumed title of "Elia,"--Elia supposed to be intimate with Lamb and
Coleridge. This second account, entitled "Christ's Hospital
five-and-thirty years ago," gave umbrage to some of the "Blues," as they
termed themselves, as differing so much from the first in full praise of
this valuable foundation, and particularly as a school from which he had
benefited so much. In the preface to the second series, Elia says,

"What he (Elia) tells of himself is often true only (historically) of
another; when under the first person he shadows forth the forlorn
state of a country boy placed at a London school far from his friends
and connexions,"

which is in direct opposition to Lamb's own early history. The second
account, under the personification of Elia, is drawn from the painful
recollections and sufferings of Coleridge while at school, which I have
often heard him relate.

Lamb told Coleridge one day that the friendless school boy in his
"Elia," (soon after its publication) was intended for him, and taken
from his description of the Blue-coat school. After Coleridge's death,
Lamb related the same circumstance to me, that he had drawn the account
from Coleridge's feelings, sufferings, &c., Lamb having himself been an
indulged boy and peculiarly favoured through the instrumentality of a
friend:

"I remember," says Elia, "Lamb at school, and can well recollect that
he had some peculiar advantages, which I and others of his
schoolfellows had not. His friends lived in town and were at hand, and
he had the privilege of going to see them almost as often as he
wished, through some invidious distinction which was denied to us. The
present treasurer of the Inner Temple can explain how it happened. He
had his tea and hot rolls in the morning, while we were battening upon
our quarter of penny loaf--our 'crug' moistened with attenuated small
beer in wooden piggins, smacking of the pitched leathern jack it was
poured from. On Monday's milk porritch, blue and tasteless, and the
pease-soup of Saturday, coarse and choking, were enriched for him with
a slice of 'extraordinary bread and butter,' from the hot-loaf of the
Temple. The Wednesday's mess of millet, somewhat less repugnant--(we
had three banyan to four meat-days in the week)--was endeared to his
palate with a lump of double-refined, and a smack of ginger, (to make
it go down the more glibly) or the fragrant cinnamon. In lieu of our
'half-pickled' Sundays, or 'quite fresh' boiled beef on Thursdays,
(strong as caro equina), with detestable marigolds floating in the
pail to poison the broth--our scanty mutton crags on Fridays--and
rather more savoury, but grudging, portions of the same flesh,
rotten-roasted or rare, on the Tuesdays (the only dish which excited
our appetites, and disappointed our stomachs, in almost equal
proportion) he had his hot plate of roast veal, or the more tempting
griskin (exotics unknown to our palates), cooked in the paternal
kitchen.

"I (Coleridge) was a poor friendless boy, my parents, and those who
should have cared for me, were far away. Those few acquaintances of
their's, which they could reckon upon being kind to me in the great
city, after a little forced notice, which they had the grace to take
of me on my first arrival in town, soon grew tired of my holiday
visits. They seemed to them to recur too often, though I thought them
few enough; one after another, they all failed me, and I felt myself
alone among six hundred playmates--O the cruelty of separating a poor
lad from his early homestead! The yearnings which I used to have
towards it in those unfledged years! How in my dreams would my native
town come back (far in the west) with its churches and trees and
faces! To this late hour of my life, and even to the end of it did
Coleridge trace impressions left by the painful recollection of these
friendless holidays. The long warm days of summer never return but
they bring with them a gloom from the haunting memory of those 'whole
day's leave', when by some strange arrangement, we were turned out for
the live-long day, upon our own hands whether we had friends to go to
or none. I remember those bathing excursions to the New River, which
Lamb recalls with such relish, better, I think, than he can--for he
was a home-seeking lad, and did not care for such water-parties. How
we would sally forth into the fields; and strip under the first warmth
of the sun; and wanton like young dace in the streams; getting
appetites for the noon; which those of us that were penny less (our
scanty morning crust long since exhausted) had not the means of
allaying--while the cattle, and the birds, and the fishes were at feed
about us, and we had nothing to satisfy our cravings; the very beauty
of the day, and the exercise of the pastime, and the sense of liberty
setting a keener edge upon them! How faint and languid, finally, we
would return toward nightfall to our desired morsel, half-rejoicing,
half-reluctant, that the hours of uneasy liberty had expired.

"It was worse in the days of winter, to go prowling about the streets
objectless; shivering at cold windows of print-shops, to extract a
little amusement; or haply, as a last resort, in the hope of a little
novelty, to pay a fifty times repeated visit (where our individual
faces would be as well known to the warden as those of his own
charges) to the lions in the Tower, to whose levee, by courtesy
immemorial, we had a prescriptive right of admission."

In short, nearly the whole of this essay of Elia's is a transcript of
Coleridge's account of the school. 'Never was a friend or schoolfellow
more fondly attached to another than Lamb to Coleridge. The latter from
his own account, as well as from Lamb and others who knew him when at
school, must have been a delicate and suffering boy. His principal
ailments he owed much to the state of his stomach, which was at that
time so delicate, that when compelled to go to a large closet (shoe-bin,
its school name,) containing shoes, to pick out a pair easy to his feet,
which were always tender, and he required shoes so large that he could
walk in them, rather than with them, and the smell, from the number in
this place, used to make him so sick, that I have often seen him
shudder, even in late life, when he gave an account of it. In this note,
continuing an account of himself at school, he says,

"From eight to fourteen I was a playless day-dreamer, a 'helluo
librorum', my appetite for which was indulged by a singular incident:
a stranger, who was struck by my conversation, made me free of a
circulating library in King Street, Cheapside."

The incident, indeed, was singular: going down the Strand, in one of his
day-dreams, fancying himself swimming across the Hellespont, thrusting
his hands before him as in the act of swimming, his hand came in contact
with a gentleman's pocket; the gentleman seized his hand, turning round
and looking at him with some anger, "What! so young, and so wicked?" at
the same time accused him of an attempt to pick his pocket; the
frightened boy sobbed out his denial of the intention, and explained to
him how he thought himself Leander, swimming across the Hellespont. The
gentleman was so struck and delighted with the novelty of the thing, and
with the simplicity and intelligence of the boy, that he subscribed, as
before stated, to the library, in consequence of which Coleridge was
further enabled to indulge his love of reading.

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