The Complete Works of Samuel Taylor Coleridge: Poems, Plays, Essays, Lectures, Autobiography & Personal Letters (Illustrated). Samuel Taylor Coleridge
left school with great anticipation of success from all who knew him, for his character for scholarship, and extraordinary accounts of his genius had preceded him. He carried with him too the same childlike simplicity which he had from a boy, and which he retained even to his latest hours. His first step was to involve himself in much misery, and which followed him in after life, as the sequel will evidence. On his arrival at College he was accosted by a polite upholsterer, requesting to be permitted to furnish his rooms. The next question was, “How would you like to have them furnished?” The answer was prompt and innocent enough, “Just as you please, Sir!” — thinking the individual employed by the College. The rooms were therefore furnished according to the taste of the artizan, and the bill presented to the astonished Coleridge. Debt was to him at all times a thing he most dreaded, and he never had the courage to face it. I once, and once only, witnessed a painful scene of this kind, which occurred from mistaking a letter on ordinary business for an application for money. Thirty years afterwards, I heard that these College debts were about one hundred pounds! Under one hundred pounds I believe to have been the amount of his sinnings; but report exceeded this to something which might have taxed his character beyond imprudence, or mere want of thought. Had he, in addition to his father’s simplicity, possessed the worldly circumspection of his mother, he might have avoided these and many other vexations; but he went to the University wholly unprepared for a College life, having hitherto chiefly existed in his own ‘inward’ being, and in his poetical imagination, on which he had fed.
But to proceed. Coleridge’s own account is, that while Middleton, afterwards Bishop of Calcutta, remained at Pembroke, he “worked with him and was industrious, read hard, and obtained the prize for the Greek Ode,” &c. It has been stated, that he was locked up in his room to write this Ode; but this is not the fact. Many stories were afloat, and many exaggerations were circulated and believed, of his great want of attention to College discipline, and of perseverance in his studies, and every failure, or apparent failure, was attributed to these causes. Often has he repeated the following story of Middleton, and perhaps this story gave birth to the report.
They had agreed to read together in the evening, and were not to hold any conversation. Coleridge went to Pembroke and found Middleton intent on his book, having on a long pair of boots reaching to the knees, and beside him, on a chair, next to the one he was sitting on, a pistol. Coleridge had scarcely sat down before he was startled by the report of the pistol. “Did you see that?” said Middleton. “See what?” said Coleridge. “That rat I just sent into its hole again — did you feel the shot? It was to defend my legs,” continued Middleton, “I put on these boots. I am fighting with these rats for my books, which, without some prevention, I shall have devoured.”
There is an anecdote related of Coleridge while at College, and which I have heard him frequently repeat, when called upon to vouch for its truth. His fellow students had amused themselves, when he was in attendance at Lecture, by stealing a portion of the tail of his gown, and which they had repeated so frequently, as to shorten it to the length of a spencer. Crossing the quadrangle one day with these remains at his back, and his appearance not being in collegiate trim, the Master of Jesus’ College, who was ever kind to him, and overlooked all little inattentions to appearances, accosted him smartly on this occasion—”Mr. Coleridge! Mr. Coleridge! when will you get rid of that shameful gown?” Coleridge, turning his head, and casting his eyes over his shoulders, as if observing its length, or rather want of length, replied in as courteous a manner as words of such a character would permit, “Why, Sir, I think I’ve got rid of the greatest part of it already!”
Such were Coleridge’s peculiarities, which were sometimes construed into irregularities; but through his whole life, attracting notice by his splendid genius, he fell too often under the observation of men who busied themselves in magnifying small things, and minifying large ones. About this period, that Volcano, in which all the worst passions of men were collected, and which had been for some time emitting its black smoke, at length exploded and rent society asunder. The shock was felt throughout Europe; each party was over-excited, and their minds enthralled by a new slavery — the one shouting out the blessings of liberty and equality — the other execrating them, and prophesying the consequences that were to follow: —
”There’s no philosopher but sees
That rage and fear are one disease;
Tho’ that may burn, and this may freeze,
They’re both alike tho ague.”
‘Mad Ox’.
Combustibles composed of such ardent and evil spirits soon blaze out; yet the evil does not stop when the blaze has ceased; it leaves an excitement which is constantly disclosing itself in a restless morbid vanity, a craving for distinction, and a love of applause, in its way as dangerous as the thirst of gain, and the worship of the mammon of unrighteousness.
Alas! the circulation of such anecdotes as have been here related of Coleridge when at College, and his inattention to some of the minor forms of discipline, were sufficient for illnatured persons to transform into serious offences, particularly when coupled with the disappointed hopes of zealous friends. At this period, in which all men who were not senseless, or so indifferent as nearly to be senseless, particularly the young men of our Universities, all embraced a party, and arranged themselves under their different banners. When I now look around me, and see men who have risen to the highest offices of the different professions, in the church, the law, or in physic, formerly only known by the name of Citizen John, &c. &c., now my Lord so and so, or your Grace the —— , it seems like a dream, or at least a world of fleeting shadows. Sir James Mackintosh, in a letter to Mr. Sharp, states what he conceived to be the errors of both parties, so far as they arose from errors of judgment:
“The opposition mistook the moral character of the revolution; the ministers mistook its force: and both parties, from pique, resentment, pride, habit, and obstinacy, persisted in acting on these mistakes after they were disabused by experience. Mr. Burke alone avoided both these fatal mistakes. He saw both the malignity and the strength of the revolution. But where there was wisdom to discover the truth, there was not power, and perhaps there was not practical skill, to make that wisdom available for the salvation of Europe.—’Diis aliter visum!’ My fortune has been in some respects very singular. I have lately read the lives and private correspondence of some of the most memorable men in different countries of Europe, who are lately dead. Klopstock, Kant, Lavater, Alfieri, they were all filled with joy and hope by the French revolution — they clung to it for a longer or a shorter time — they were compelled to relinquish their illusions. The disappointment of all was bitter, but it showed itself in various modes, according to the variety of their characters. The series of passions growing out of that disappointment, was the not very remote cause of the death of Lavater. In the midst of society, Alfieri buried himself in misanthropic solitude; and the shock, which awakened him from the dreams of enthusiasm, darkened and shortened his days. In the mean time the multitude, comprehending not only those who have neither ardour of sensibility, nor compass of understanding to give weight to their suffrage, but those also whom accident had not brought into close and perpetual contact with the events, were insensibly detached from the revolution; and, before they were well aware that they had quitted their old ‘position’, they found themselves at the antipodes.”
The excitement which this state of things produced might have been highly advantageous to some, and even quickened their intellectual powers, particularly those destined either for the bar or the senate, but certainly not those intended for the church.
The revolution and its consequences engrossed the thoughts of all men too much for the calmer pursuits of life; and the minds of the young especially were so absorbed by passing temporal events, as to leave but little time for the contemplation of the deeper and more serious affairs of futurity. However, Coleridge appears in his political opinions to have leaned too much to the side of democracy; but this was so prevalent and so much a fashion, particularly in those filled with enthusiasm, that it seemed a natural consequence in any young man possessing even ordinary intellect. Middleton, his friend, passed on without attaching himself to either party. His manners (as I have before noticed) were austere and sedate. He steadily persevered, without deviation, in his studies, though