264 1808. Foreign Editor of the Times. CHAP. XII. February I inserted a letter with my initials, which was, I believe, of real use to the Government. It is to be found in the paper printed on Feb. 13th. It is a justification of the English Government for the seizure of the Danish ships. The Ministry defended themselves very ill in the House of Commons. In my letter, I stated the fact that the Holstein post office refused to take in my letters to England, and alleged as a reason that Buonaparte had obliged the Government to stop the communication with England. The same evening, in the House of Lords, this fact was relied upon by the Marquis of Wellesley as conclusive. Indeed, it was more to the purpose than any fact alleged by the Government speakers. Dinner at Dr. Aikin's. In the month of March I was invited to dine with Southey at Dr. Aikin's. I was charmed with his person and manners, and heartily concurred with him in his opinions on the war. I copy from a letter to my Southey. brother-"Southey said that he and Coleridge were directly opposed in politics. He himself thought the last administration (Whig) so impotent that he could conceive of none worse except the present; while Coleridge maintained the present ministry to be so corrupt that he thought it impossible there could be a worse except the late." On poetry we talked likewise I bolted my critical philosophy, and was defended by Southey throughout. I praised Wordsworth's "Sonnets" and preface. In this, too, Southey joined; he said that the sonnets contain the profoundest political wisdom, and the preface he declared to be "the quintessence of the philosophy of poetry.” 1808. Wordsworth. A few days after this (viz. on March 15th) I was CHAP. XII. introduced to Wordsworth. I breakfasted with him at Lamb's and accompanied him to Mr. Hardcastle's, at Haleham, Deptford, with whom Mrs. Clarkson was on a visit. Wordsworth received me very cordially, owing, I have no doubt, to a favourable introduction by Mrs. Clarkson, aided, of course, by my perfect agreement with him in politics; and my enthusiastic and unconcealed admiration of his poetry gave me speedy admission to his confidence. At this first meeting he criticised unfavourably Mrs. Barbauld's poetry, which I am the less unwilling to mention as I have already recorded a later estimate of a different kind. He remarked that there is no genuine feeling in the line,— In what brown hamlet dost thou joy?* He said, "Why brown?" Barbauld's line, He also objected to Mrs. Mrs. Bar "The lowliest children of the ground, moss-rose and violet," &c. "Now," said he, moss-rose is a shrub." The last remark is just, but I dissent from the first; for evening harmonizes with content, and the brown hamlet is the evening hamlet. Collins has with exquisite beauty described the coming on of evening,— "And hamlets brown, and dim discover'd spires." Wordsworth, in my first tête-à-tête with him, spoke freely and praisingly of his own poems, which I never felt to be unbecoming, but the contrary. He said he thought of writing an essay on "Why bad poetry pleases." He never wrote it a loss to our literature. * Ode to Content. bauld's poetry. CHAP. XII. He spoke at length on the connection of poetry with 1808. Coleridge's moral principles as well as with a knowledge of the principles of human nature. He said he could not respect the mother who could read without emotion his poem "Once in a lonely hamlet I sojourn'd." He said he wrote his "Beggars" to exhibit the power of physical beauty and health and vigour in childhood, even in a state of moral depravity. He desired popularity for his "Two voices are there, one is of the sea," as a test of elevation and moral purity. I have a distinct recollection of reading in the Monthly Review a notice of the first volume of Coleridge's poems before I went abroad in 1800, and of the delight the extracts gave me; and my friend Mrs. Clarkson having become intimate with him, he was an object of interest with me on my return from Germany in 1805. And when he delivered lectures in the year 1808, she wished me to interest myself in them. I needed, however, no persuasion. It was out of my power to be a regular attendant, but I wrote to her two letters, which have been printed, for want of fuller materials, in the "Notes and Lectures on Shakespeare," edited by Mrs. Henry Coleridge.* At the time of my attending these lectures I had no personal acquaintance with Coleridge. I have a letter from him, written in May, 1808, sending me an order for admission. He says, "Nothing but endless interruptions, and the necessity of dining out far oftener * Pickering, 1849. 1808. Lectures. than is either good for me, or pleasant to me, joined CHAP. XII. with reluctance to move (partly from exhaustion by company I cannot keep out, for one cannot, dare not always Coleridge's be 'not at home,' or 'very particularly engaged,'—and the last very often will not serve my turn) these, added to my bread and cheese employments,+my lectures, which are-bread and cheese, i.e. a very losing bargain in a pecuniary view, have prevented me day after day from returning your kind call. I will as soon as I can. In the meantime I have left your name with the old woman and the attendants in the office, as one to whom I am always at home' when I am at home. For Wordsworth has taught me to desire your acquaintance, and to esteem you; and need I add that any one so much regarded by my friend Mrs. Clarkson can never be indifferent, &c. &c., to S. T. Coleridge." * I find among my papers two pages of notes of Coleridge's lecture, Feb. 5th., 1808 : Feb. 5th, 1808. Lecture 2nd on Poetry (Shakespeare), &c. The Grecian Mythology exhibits the symbols of the powers of nature and Hero-worship blended together. Jupiter both a King of Crete and the personified Sky. Bacchus expressed the organic energies of the Universe which work by passion-a joy without consciousness; while Minerva, &c., imported the preordaining intellect. Bacchus expressed the physical origin of heroic character, a felicity beyond prudence. In the devotional hymns to Bacchus the germ of the first Tragedy. Men like to imagine themselves to be the characters they treat of-hence dramatic representations. The exhibition of action separated from the devotional feeling. The Dialogue became distinct from the Chorus. The Greek tragedies were the Biblical instruction for the people. Comedy arose from the natural sense of ridicule which expresses itself naturally in mimickry. Mr. Coleridge, in Italy, heard a quack in the street, who was accosted by his servant-boy smartly; a dialogue ensued which pleased the mob; the next day 268 CHAP. XII. 1808. Sir C. Bunbury. In a visit to Bury, my friend Hare Naylor being a guest at the house of Sir Charles Bunbury, my brother Sir Charles and I were invited to dinner by this beau-ideal of an Bunbury. English sportsman, who was also well known as a Whig politician and a man of honour. A few months afterwards I met him in London, when I was walking with Lamb. Sir Charles shook hands with me, and asked where my regiment was. I evaded the question. Lamb the quack, having perceived the good effect of an adjunct, hired a boy to talk with him. In this way a play might have originated. The modern Drama, like the ancient, originated in religion. The priests exhibited the miracles and splendid scenes of religion. Tragi-Comedy arose from the necessity of amusing and instructing at the same time. The entire ignorance of the ancient Drama occasioned the reproduction of it on the restoration of literature. Harlequin and the Clown are the legitimate descendants from the Vice and Devil of the ancient Comedy. In the early ages, very ludicrous images were mixed with the most serious ideas, not without a separate attention being paid to the solemn truths; the people had no sense of impiety; they enjoyed the comic scenes, and were yet edified by the instruction of the serious parts. Mr. Coleridge met with an ancient MS. at Helmstädt, in which God was repre|sented visiting Noah's family. The descendants of Cain did not pull off their hats to the great visitor, and received boxes of the ear for their rudeness; while the progeny of Abel answered their catechism well. The Devil prompted the bad children to repeat the Lord's Prayer backwards. The Christian polytheism withdrew the mind from attending to the whisperings of conscience; yet Christianity in its worst state was not separated from humanity (except where zeal for Dogmata interfered). Mahometanism is an anomalous corruption of Christianity. In the production of the English Drama, the popular and the learned writers by their opposite tendencies contributed to rectify each other. The learned would have reduced Tragedy to oratorical declamation, while the vulgar wanted a direct appeal to their feelings. The many feel what is beautiful, but they also deem a great deal to be beautiful which is not in fact so: they cannot distinguish the counterfeit from the genuine. The vulgar love the Bible and also Hervey's "Meditations." The essence of poetry universality. The character of Hamlet, &c., affects all men; addresses to personal feeling; the sympathy arising from a reference to individual sensibility spurious. [N.B. This applies to Kotzebue.] |