Part 9

At another time he told them of the invasion of Xerxes, and his crossing the _wide_ Hellespont. "Ah!" said a young recruit, a native of an obscure village in Kent, who had acquired a decent smattering of geography, knowing well that the earth went round, was divided into land and water, and that there were more countries on the globe than England, and who now wished to show off a little before his comrades--"Silas, I know where that 'Hellspont' is. I think it must be the mouth of the Thames, for _'tis_ very wide."

Coleridge now told them of the heroes of Thermopylæ; when the geographer interrupted him by saying, "Silas, I know, too where that there Moppily is, it's somewhere up in the north." "You are quite right, Jack," said Coleridge, "it is to the north of the line." A conscious elevation marked his countenance; and he rose at once five degrees in the estimation of his friends.

But the days of Comberback were drawing to an end. An officer, supposed to be Captain Nathaniel Ogle, who sold out of that regiment toward the end of the same year that Coleridge left it, had, it is said, had his attention drawn toward this singular private, by finding the following sentence written on the walls of the stable where Comberback's horse equipage hung: "_Eheu! quam infortunii miserrimum est fuisse felicem!_" He showed him particular distinction. When Captain Ogle walked the streets, Coleridge walked behind him as his orderly; but when out of town, they walked abreast, to the great mystification of his comrades, who could not comprehend how a man out of the awkward squad could merit this honor. It was probably Ogle who wormed the secret out of Coleridge, and informed his friends where he was. It has, however, been said to have been through a young man, who had lately left Cambridge for the army, and, on his road through Reading to join his regiment, met Coleridge in the street, in his dragoon's dress, who was about to pass him; on which he said, "No, Coleridge, this will not do; we have been seeking you this six months. I must and will converse with you, and have no hesitation in declaring that I shall immediately inform your friends that I have found you."

Whether owing to one or both of these causes, but as Comberback was sitting as usual at the foot of a bed, in the hospital, in the midst of one of his talks, and surrounded by his usual gaping auditors, the door suddenly opened, and in came two or three gentlemen, his friends, looking in vain some time for their man, amid the uniform dresses. At length they pitched on their man, and taking him by the arm, led him in silence out of the room. As the supposed _deserter_ passed the door, one of the astonished auditors uttered, with a sigh--"Poor Silas! I wish they may let him off with a cool five hundred!"

Comberback was no more! but his memory was long and affectionately preserved among his hospital companions, one of whom he had volunteered to attend during a most malignant attack of small-pox, when all others deserted him, and had waited on him, and watched him for six weeks. To prevent contagion, the patient and his noble-hearted nurse, and eventual savior, were put into an out-house, where Coleridge continued all that time, night and day, administering medicine, guarding him from himself during violent delirium, and when again capable of listening, sitting by his bed, and reading to him. In the annals of humanity, that act must stand as one of the truest heroism.

Connected with this singular passage in Coleridge's life, an old friend of his told Cottle this anecdote. The inspecting officer of his regiment, on one occasion, was examining the guns of the men; and coming to one piece which was rusty, he called out in an authoritative tone, "Whose rusty gun is this?"--"Is it _very_ rusty, sir?" asked Coleridge. "Yes, Comberbatch, it is," said the officer, sternly. "Then, sir," replied Coleridge, "it must be mine!" The oddity of the reply disarmed the officer, and the "poor scholar" escaped without punishment.

There are various anecdotes abroad, at once illustrative of Coleridge's queer horsemanship and happy knack at repartee, of which a specimen or two may be given here, before we dismiss him as a trooper.

His awkwardness on horseback was so marked that it attracted general notice. Once riding along the turnpike-road in the county of Durham, a wag approaching him, noticed his peculiarity, and thought the rider a fine subject for a little fun. Drawing near, he thus accosted Coleridge, "I say, young man, did you meet a _tailor_ on the road?" "Yes," replied Coleridge, "I did, and he told me if I went a little farther I should meet a _goose_." The goose trotted on, quite satisfied with what he had got.

Coleridge is represented as being at this time on his way to a neighboring race-course. That a farmer at whose house he was staying, knowing his sorry horsemanship, had put him on the least and poorest animal he had, with old saddle and bridle and rusty stirrups. On this Rosinante, Coleridge went in a black dress coat, with black breeches, black silk stockings and shoes. Two other friends, as better horsemen, were intrusted with better steeds, and soon left him on the road. At length, reaching the race-ground, and thrusting his way through the crowd, he arrived at the spot of attraction to which all were hastening. Here he confronted a barouche and four, filled with smart ladies and attendant gentlemen. In it was also seated a baronet of sporting celebrity, steward of the course, and member of the House of Commons; well known as having been bought and sold in several parliaments. The baronet eyed the figure of Coleridge, as he slowly passed the door of the barouche, and thus accosted him: "A pretty piece of blood, sir, you have there."--"Yes!" answered Coleridge.--"Rare paces, I have no doubt, sir!"--"Yes," answered Coleridge, "he brought me here a matter of four miles an hour." He was at no loss to perceive the honorable baronet's drift, who wished to show off before the ladies: so he quietly waited the opportunity of a suitable reply. "What a free hand he has!" continued Nimrod; "how finely he carries his tail! Bridle and saddle well suited, and appropriately appointed!"--"Yes!" said Coleridge.--"Will you sell him?" asked the sporting baronet.--"Yes," was the answer, "if I can have my price."--"Name your price, then, putting the rider into the bargain!"--"My price," replied Coleridge, "for _the horse_, sir, if I sell him, is _one hundred_ guineas; as to the _rider_, never having been in parliament, and never intending to go, _his_ price is not yet fixed." The baronet sat down more suddenly than he had risen--the ladies began to titter--while Coleridge quietly now moved on.

Coleridge returned to Cambridge, but only for a very short time. The French Revolution, in its early promise, had raised the spirit of enthusiasm for liberty in the bosom of all generous-natured young men. This had brought together Coleridge, Southey, and others of the like temperament. Coleridge now went to visit Southey, at Oxford, where they hit upon the Pantisocracy scheme, an offshoot from the root of Rousseau's visions of primitive life. Coleridge is said first to have broached it, and that it was eagerly adopted by Southey, and a college friend of his, George Burnet. These young men, soon after, set off to Bristol, Southey's native place, where they were soon joined by Coleridge. Here Southey, Coleridge, and Burnet occupied the same lodging; Robert Lovell, a young Quaker, had adopted this scheme, and they all concluded to embark for America, where, on the banks of the Susquehannah, they were to found their colony of peace and perfection, to follow their own ploughs, harvest their own corn, and show forth to the world the union of a patriarchal life of labor, with the highest exercise of intellect and virtue. Luckily for them, the mainspring was wanting. Without the root of all evil, they could not rear this tree of all good fruits. They were obliged to borrow cash of Cottle even to pay for their lodgings; and the shrewd bookseller, while he listened to their animated descriptions of their future transatlantic Eden, chuckled to himself on the impossibility of their ever carrying it out. The dream gradually came to an end. Lovell died unexpectedly, being carried off by a fever, brought on through a cold, caught on a journey to Salisbury. Symptoms of jarring had shown themselves among the friends, which were rather ominous for the permanence of a pantisocracy. Coleridge had quarreled with Lovell before he died, because Lovell, who was married to a Miss Fricker, opposed Coleridge's marriage with her sister till he had better prospects. Coleridge and Southey quarreled about the pantisocracy afterward. The most important results to Southey and Coleridge of this pantisocratic coalition were, that they eventually married the two sisters of Lovell's wife. Both these young poets, with their minds now fermenting with new schemes of politics and doctrines of religion, commenced at Bristol as lecturers and authors. The profits of the lectures were to pay for the voyage to America; they did not even pay the rent. Coleridge lectured on the English Rebellion and Charles I., the French Revolution, and on Religion and Philosophy; Southey, on General History: both displaying their peculiar talents and characters--Coleridge all imagination, absence of mind, and impracticability; Southey, with less genius, but more order, prudence, and worldly tact. Both of those remarkable men began by proclaiming the most ultra-liberalism in politics and theology--both came gradually back to the opinions which early associations and education had riveted on them unknown to themselves, but with very different degrees of rapidity, and finally with a very different tone. Coleridge ran through infidelity, unitarianism, the philosophy of Berkeley, Spinoza, Hartley, and Kant; and came back finally to good old Church-of-Englandism, but full of love and tolerance. Southey, more prudent, and notoriously timid, was at once startled by the horrors of the French committed in the name of liberty; saw that the way of worldly prosperity was closed for life to him who was not orthodox, and became at once orthodox. But the consciousness of that sudden change hung forever upon him. He knew that reproach would always pursue the suspicious reconversion, and on that consciousness grew bitterness and intolerance. Coleridge, having wandered through all opinions himself, was afraid to condemn too harshly those who differed from him. He contented himself with loving God, and preaching the true principles of Christianity.

"He prayeth best who _loveth_ best Both man and beast, both great and small; For the great God who loveth us He made and loveth all."

Southey, on the contrary, stalked into the fearful regions of bigotry, assumed in imagination the throne and thunder-bolts of Deity, and

"Dealt damnation round the land On all he deemed his foes."

But this was the worst view of Southey's character. He had that lower class of virtues which Coleridge had not, and out of his prudence and timidity sprung that worldly substance which Coleridge was never likely to acquire, and by which he kindly made up for some of Coleridge's deficiencies. Coleridge could not provide properly for his family; Southey helped to provide for them, and invited Coleridge's wife and daughter to his house, where for many years they had a home. In all domestic relations, Southey was admirable; he failed only in those which would have given him a name, perhaps, little short of Milton for glorious patriotism, had he proceeded to the end as he began.

Of the literary life of Southey, Coleridge, and Wordsworth, who soon after joined them in the west, I have yet to speak. We must now follow Coleridge.

The circumstances which had brought Coleridge to Bristol, though they did not end in pantisocracy, ended in marriage, which for some years fixed him in that part of the country. Cottle, who, a poet of some merit himself, saw the great talent of these young men, offered Southey fifty guineas for his Joan of Arc, and became its publisher. He also offered Coleridge thirty guineas for a volume of poems, the cash to be advanced when he pleased from time to time. On this slender foundation, Coleridge began the world. He took a cottage at Clevedon, some miles from Bristol, and thither he took his bride. It appears truly to have been the poetic idea--love in a cottage, for there was love and little more. Cottle says it had walls, and doors, and windows, but as for furniture, only such as became a philosopher. This was not enough even for poetic lovers. Two days after the wedding, the poet wrote to Cottle to send him the following unpoetical, but very essential articles:--"A riddle-slice; a candle-box; two ventilators; two glasses for the wash-hand stand; one tin dust-pan; one small tin tea-kettle; one pair of candlesticks; one carpet brush; one flour-dredge; three tin extinguishers; two mats; a pair of slippers; a cheese-toaster, two large tin spoons; a Bible; a keg of porter; coffee, raisins, currants, catsup, nutmegs, allspice, rice, ginger, and mace."

So Coleridge began the world. Cottle, having sent these articles, hastened after them to congratulate the young couple. This is his account of their residence. "The situation of the cottage was peculiarly eligible. It was in the extremity, not in the center of the village. It had the benefit of being but one story high; and, as the rent was only five pounds per annum, and the taxes naught, Mr. Coleridge had the satisfaction of knowing that, by fairly mounting his Pegasus, he could make as many verses in a week as would pay his rent for a year. There was also a small garden, with several pretty flowers, and the 'tallest tree-rose' did not fail to be pointed out, which 'peeped at the chamber window,' and has been honored with some beautiful lines."

The cottage is there yet in its garden; but Coleridge did not long inhabit it. He soon found that even Clevedon was too far out of the world for books and intellect; and returning to Bristol, took lodgings on Redcliff-hill. From this abode he soon again departed, being invited by his friend, Mr. Thomas Poole, of Nether Stowey, to visit him there. During this visit, he wrote some of his first volume of poems, including the Religious Musings; he then returned to Bristol, and started the idea of his Watchman, and made that journey through the principal manufacturing towns, to obtain subscribers for it, which he so amusingly describes in his Biographia Literaria. This was a failure; but about this time, Charles Lloyd, the eldest son of Charles Lloyd, the banker, of Birmingham, whom Byron has commemorated in the alliterative line of

"-- -- -- --Lovell, Lamb, and Lloyd,"

was smitten with the admiration of Coleridge's genius, and offered to come and reside with him. He therefore took a larger house on Kingsdown, where Lloyd was his inmate. Mr. Poole, of Stowey, however, was not easy to be without the society of Coleridge; he sent him word that there was a nice cottage there at liberty, of only seven pounds per annum rent, and pressed him to come and fix there. Thither Coleridge went, Lloyd also agreeing to accompany them. Unfortunately, Lloyd had the germs of insanity, as well as poetry, in him. He was subject to fits, which agitated and alarmed Coleridge. They eventually disagreed, and Lloyd left, but was afterward reconciled, well perceiving that his morbid nervousness had had much to do with the difference.

This place became for two years Coleridge's home. Here he wrote some of his most beautiful poetry. "The manhood of Coleridge's true poetical life," has been observed by a cotemporary, "was in the year 1797." He was yet only twenty-five years of age; but his poetical faculty had now acquired a wide grasp and a deep power. Here he wrote his tragedy of Remorse, Christabelle, the Dark Ladie, the Ancient Mariner, which was published in the Lyrical Ballads jointly with Wordsworth's first poems, his ode on the Departing Year, and his Fears in Solitude. These works are at once imbued with the highest spirit of his poetry, and the noblest sentiments of humanity. Here he was visited by Charles Lamb, Charles Lloyd, Southey, Hazlitt, De Quincy, who had previously presented him generously with £300; the two great potters, the Wedgwoods, and other eminent men. Wordsworth lived near him at Allfoxden, and was in almost daily intercourse with him. The foot of Quantock was to Coleridge, says one of his biographers, a memorable spot. Here his studies were serious and deep. They were directed not only to poetry, but into the great bulk of theological philosophy. Here, with his friend, Thomas Poole, a man sympathizing in all his tastes, and with Wordsworth, he roamed over the Quantock hills, drinking in at every step new knowledge and impressions of nature. In his Biographia Literaria, he says, "My walks were almost daily on the top of Quantock, and among its sloping coombs." He had got an idea of writing a poem, called THE BROOK, tracing a stream which he had found, from its source, in the hills, among the yellow-red moss, and conical glass-shaped tufts of bent, to the first break, or fall, where its drops become audible, and it begins to form a channel; thence to the peat and turf barn, itself built of the same dark masses as it sheltered; to the sheepfold; to the first cultivated spot of ground; to the lonely cottage, and its bleak garden won from the heath; to the hamlets, the market-towns, the manufactories, and the sea-port. It will be seen, that this was not _quite_ on so fine a scale as Childe Harold, and that Wordsworth has carried out the idea, in the Sonnets on the river Duddon, not quite so amply as the original idea itself. He says, when strolling alone, he was always with book, paper, and pencil in hand, making studies from nature, whence his striking and accurate transcripts of such things. It will be noticed, in the article on Wordsworth, that these rambles, in the ignorant minds of the country people, converted him and Coleridge into suspicious characters. Coleridge was so open and simple, that they said, "As to Coleridge, he is a whirlbrain, that talks whatever comes uppermost; but that Wordsworth! he is a _dark_ traitor. You never hear _him_ say a syllable on the subject!"

Coleridge himself, in his Biographia Literaria, tells us, that a certain baronet, in the neighborhood, got government to send down a spy to watch them. That this spy was a very honest fellow, for a wonder. That he heard them, he said, at first, talking a deal of _Spy Nosey_ (Spinosa), and thought they were up to him, as his nose was none of the smallest; but he soon found that it was all about books. Coleridge also gives the amusing dialogue between the innkeeper and the baronet, the innkeeper having been ordered to entertain the spy, but, like the spy, soon found that the strange gentlemen were only _poets_, and going to put Quantock into verse.

Many are the testimonies of attachment to this neighborhood, and the wild Quantock hills, to be found in the poems of Coleridge; and in the third book of the Excursion, Wordsworth describes the Quantock, and their rambles, with all the gusto of a fond memory. First, we have a peep at his own abode. We are conveyed--

"To a low cottage in a sunny bay, Where the salt sea innocuously breaks, And the sea breeze as innocently breathes On Devon's leafy shores; a sheltered hold In a soft clime, encouraging the soil To a luxuriant bounty. As our steps Approach the embowered abode--our chosen seat See rooted in the earth, her kindly bed The unendangered myrtle, decked with flowers, Before the threshold stands to welcome us! While, in the flowering myrtle's neighborhood, Not overlooked, but courting no regard, Those native plants, the holly and the yew. Give modest intimation to the mind How willingly their aid they would unite With the green myrtle, to endear the hours Of winter, and protect that pleasant place."

This, though placed in Devon instead of Somerset, accurately describes Wordsworth's pleasant nook there; but the Quantock walks are more strikingly like.

"Wild were the walks upon those lonely downs, Track leading into track, how marked, how worn, Into light verdure, between fern and gorse. Winding away its never ending line On their smooth surface, evidence was none; But, there, lay open to our daily haunt, A range of unappropriated earth, Where youth's ambitious feet might move at large; Whence, unmolested wanderers, we beheld The shining giver of the day diffuse His brightness o'er a track of sea and land Gay as our spirits, free as our desires, As our enjoyments boundless. From those heights We dropped at pleasure into sylvan coombs, Where arbors of impenetrable shade, And mossy seats detained us side by side, With hearts at ease, and knowledge in our breasts That all the grove and all the day was ours."

In Coleridge's poem of Fears in Solitude, a noble-hearted poem, these hills, and one of these very dells, are described with equal graphic truth and affection.

"A green and silent spot amid the hills, A small and silent dell! O'er stiller place No singing skylark ever poised himself; The hills are heathy, save that swelling slope, Which hath a gay and gorgeous covering on, All golden with the never bloomless furz Which now blooms most profusely; but the dell Bathed by the mist is fresh and delicate As vernal cornfields, or the unripe flax, When through its half-transparent stalks at eve The level sunshine glimmers with green light. Oh! 'tis a quiet, spirit-healing nook! Which all, methinks, would love: but chiefly he, The humble man, who, in his youthful years, Knew just so much of folly as had made His early manhood more securely wise! Here might he lie on fern or withered heath, While from the singing lark, that sings unseen The minstrelsy that solitude loves best, And from the sun and from the breezy air, Sweet influences trembled o'er his frame; And he with many feelings, many thoughts, Made up a meditative joy, and found Religious musings in the forms of nature! And so his senses gradually wrapped In a half-sleep, he dreams of better worlds, And dreaming hears thee still, O singing lark, That singest like an angel in the clouds."

Here, buried in summer beauty from the world, in this green and delicious oratory, he lay and poured out those finely human thoughts on war and patriotism, which enrich this poem; which closes with a descriptive view of these hills, the wide prospects from them, and of little quiet Stowey lying at their feet.