The Complete Works of Samuel Taylor Coleridge: Poems, Plays, Essays, Lectures, Autobiography & Personal Letters (Illustrated). Samuel Taylor Coleridge
can arrive at, but which every human being ought to try to draw near unto. This is in the only wise, and verily, in a most sublime sense to see God face to face; which, alas! it seems too true, that no man can do and ‘live’, i.e. a ‘human’ life. It would become incompatible with his organization, or rather it would ‘transmute’ it, and the process of that transmutation to the senses of other men would be called ‘death’. — Even as to caterpillars; in all probability the caterpillar dies, and he either does not see, which is most probable, or at all events he does not see the connection between the caterpillar and the butterfly, the beautiful Psyche of the Greeks.
Those who in this life ‘love’ in perfection — if such there be — in proportion as their love has no struggles, see God darkly and through a veil: — for when duty and pleasure are absolutely coincident, the very nature of our organization necessitates that duty, will be contemplated as the symbol of pleasure, instead of pleasure being (as in a future life we have faith it will be) the symbol of duty. This then is the distinction between human and angelic ‘happiness’. Human happiness — humanly happy I call him, who in enjoyment finds his duty; angelically happy he, who seeks and finds his ‘duty’ in enjoyment. Happiness in general may be defined — not the aggregate of pleasurable sensations, for this is either a dangerous error and the creed of sensualists, or else a mere translation or wordy paraphrase — but the state of that person who, in order to enjoy his nature in its highest manifestations of conscious ‘feeling’, has no need of doing wrong, and who in order to do right is under no necessity of abstaining from enjoyment.”
On the arrival of the new secretary at Malta, Mr. Coleridge left it, September 27, 1805, and after a day’s voyage, arrived at Syracuse. He remained in Sicily a short time only, for he was eager to visit the “eternal city” (Rome,) in which he staid some months. The next date marking his progress, is the 15th December, 1806, Naples, — the usual place of the residence of travellers during summer. This gap in his minutes is partly filled up by his own verbal account, repeated at various times to the writer of this memoir. While in Rome, he was actively employed in visiting the great works of art, statues, pictures, buildings, palaces, &c. &c. observations on which he minuted down for publication. Here he became acquainted with the eminent literary men at that time collected there, and here he first saw the great American painter Alston, for whom he always cherished an unfeigned regard. The German poet Tieck, he then for the first time also saw, and many others of celebrity. To one of them he was mainly indebted for his safety, otherwise he might have terminated his career in the Temple at Paris: for to Buonaparte, through one of his industrious emissaries, Coleridge had become obnoxious, in consequence of an article written by him in the Morning Post. This salutary warning he obtained from the brother of the celebrated traveller, Humboldt, of whom he had enquired, whether he could pass through Switzerland and Germany, and return by that route to England. Humboldt then informed Coleridge, that having passed through Paris on his journey to Rome, he had learnt that he, Coleridge, was a marked man, and unsafe: when within the reach of Buonaparte he advised him to be more than usually circumspect, and do, all in his power to remain unknown. Rather unexpectedly, he had a visit early one morning from a noble Benedictine, with a passport signed by the Pope, in order to facilitate his departure. He left him a carriage, and an admonition for instant flight, which was promptly obeyed by Coleridge. Hastening to Leghorn, he discovered an American vessel ready to sail for England, on board of which he embarked. On the voyage she was chased by a French vessel, which so alarmed the American, that he compelled Coleridge to throw his papers overboard, and thus to his great regret, were lost the fruits of his literary labours in Rome.
In 1806 he returned to England, and took up his residence for a time at Keswick, but was more generally with his friend Wordsworth, then living at Grassmere.
At Grassmere he planned ‘The Friend’, for which Mr. Wordsworth wrote a few contributions; and receiving occasionally some little assistance from other writers, he was enabled to furnish the quantity of valuable matter which appeared in that publication. Some of his earnest admirers, and those too persons best acquainted with his works, are disposed to give this the preference.
His friend, Lamb, who is justly considered a man of exquisite taste, used to say, in his odd and familiar way, “Only now listen to his talk, it is as fine as an angel’s!” and then, by way of a superlative, would add, “but after all, his best talk is in ‘The Friend’.”
To the Lake Edition of this work, as it has been termed, is appended the following prospectus, addressed to a correspondent
“It is not unknown to you, that I have employed almost the whole of my life in acquiring, or endeavouring to acquire, useful knowledge by study, reflection, observation, and by cultivating the society of my superiors in intellect, both at home and in foreign countries. You know too, that at different periods of my life, I have not only planned, but collected the materials for many works on various and important subjects: so many indeed, that the number of my unrealized schemes, and the mass of my miscellaneous fragments, have often furnished my friends with a subject of raillery, and sometimes of regret and reproof. Waiving the mention of all private and accidental hinderances, I am inclined to believe, that this want of perseverance has been produced in the main by an over-activity of thought, modified by a constitutional indolence, which made it more pleasant to me to continue acquiring, than to reduce what I had acquired to a regular form. Add too, that almost daily throwing off my notices or reflections in desultory fragments, I was still tempted onward by an increasing sense of the imperfection of my knowledge, and by the conviction, that in order fully to comprehend and develope any one subject, it was necessary that I should make myself master of some other, which again as regularly involved a third, and so on, with an ever-widening horizon. Yet one habit, formed during long absences from those with whom I could converse with full sympathy, has been of advantage to me — that of daily noting down, in my memorandum or common place books, both incidents and observations, whatever had occurred to me from without, and all the flux and reflux of my mind within itself. The number of these notices and their tendency, miscellaneous as they were, to one common end (‘quid sumus et quid futuri gignimur,’ what we are and what we are born to become; and thus from the end of our being to deduce its proper objects), first encouraged me to undertake the weekly essay, of which you will consider this letter as the prospectus.
Not only did the plan seem to accord better than any other with the nature of my own mind, both in its strength and in its weakness; but conscious that, in upholding some principles both of taste and philosophy, adopted by the great men of Europe, from the middle of the fifteenth till toward the close of the seventeenth century. I must run counter to many prejudices of many of my readers (for old faith is often modern heresy). I perceived too in a periodical essay, the most likely means of winning instead of forcing my way. Supposing truth on my side, the shock of the first day might be so far lessened by reflections of the succeeding days, as to procure for my next week’s essay a less hostile reception, than it would have met with, had it been only the next chapter of a present volume. I hoped to disarm the mind of those feelings, which preclude conviction by contempt, and as it were, fling the door in the face of reasoning, by a ‘presumption’ of its absurdity. A motion too for honourable ambition was supplied by the fact, that every periodical paper of the kind now attempted, which had been conducted with zeal and ability, was not only well received at the time, but has become permanently, and in the best sense of the word, popular. By honourable ambition, I mean the strong desire to be useful, aided by the wish to be generally acknowledged to have been so. As I feel myself actuated in no ordinary degree by this desire, so the hope of realizing it appears less and less presumptuous to me, since I have received from men of highest rank and established character in the republic of letters, not only strong encouragements as to my own fitness for the undertaking, but likewise promises of support from their own stores.
The ‘object’ of ‘The Friend’ briefly and generally expressed is — to uphold those truths and those merits against the caprices of fashion, and such pleasures, as either depend on transitory and accidental causes, or are pursued from less worthy impulses. The chief ‘subjects’ of my own essays will be: —
The true and sole ground of morality, or virtue, as distinguished from
prudence.
The