Reminiscences of Samuel Taylor Coleridge and Robert Southey | Page 2

fidelity, when the portraiture of a man is to be presented, like Samuel Taylor Coleridge, in whom such diversified and contrary qualities alternately predominated! Yet all the advantages to be derived from him, and similar instructors of mankind, must result from a faithful exhibition of the broad features of their earthly conduct and character, so that they might stand out as landmarks, and pharos-towers, to guide, or warn, or encourage, all succeeding voyagers on the Ocean of Life.
In preparing the following work, I should gladly have withheld that one letter of Mr. Coleridge to Mr. Wade, had not the obligation to make it public been imperative. But concealment would have been injustice to the living, and treachery to the dead. This letter is the solemnizing voice of conscience. Can any reflecting mind, deliberately desire the suppression of this document, in which Mr. Coleridge, for the good of others, generously forgets its bearing on himself, and makes a full and voluntary confession of the sins he had committed against "himself, his friends, his children, and his God?" In the agony of remorse, at the retrospection, he thus required that this his confession should hereafter be given to the public. "AFTER MY DEATH, I EARNESTLY ENTREAT, THAT A FULL AND UNQUALIFIED NARRATIVE OF MY WRETCHEDNESS, AND ITS GUILTY CAUSE, MAY BE MADE PUBLIC, THAT AT LEAST SOME LITTLE GOOD MAY BE EFFECTED BY THE DIREFUL EXAMPLE." This is the most redeeming letter Samuel Taylor Coleridge ever penned. A callous heart could not have written it. A Christian, awaking from his temporary lethargy, might. While it powerfully propitiates the reader, it almost converts condemnation into compassion.
No considerate friend, it might be thought, would have desired the suppression of this letter, but rather its most extended circulation; and that, among other cogent reasons, from the immense moral lesson, enforced by it, in perpetuity, on all consumers of opium; in which they will behold, as well as in some of the other letters, the "tremendous consequences," (to use Mr. Coleridge's own expressions) of such practices, exemplified in his own person; and to which terrible effects, he himself so often, and so impressively refers. It was doubtless a deep conviction of the beneficial tendencies involved in the publication, that prompted Mr. C. to direct publicity to be given to this remarkable letter, after his decease.
The incidents connected with the lives of Mr. Coleridge and Mr. Southey, are so intimately blended, from relationship, association, and kindred pursuits, that the biography of one, to a considerable extent, involves that of the other. The following narrative, however, professes to be annals of, rather than a circumstantial account of these two remarkable men.
Some persons may be predisposed to misconstrue the motive for giving publicity to the following letter, but others, it is hoped, will admit that the sole object has been, not to draw the reader's attention to the writer, but to confer credit on Southey. Many are the individuals who would have assisted, to a greater extent than myself, two young men of decided genius, like Samuel Taylor Coleridge, and Robert Southey, who required, at the commencement of their literary career, encouragement, and a little assistance. Few however, would have exhibited the magnanimity which Southey displayed, in seasons of improved circumstances, by referring to slender acts of kindness, long past, and scarcely remembered but by himself. Few are the men, who, after having surmounted their difficulties by honourable exertion, would have referred to past seasons of perplexity, and have desired--that occurrences "might be seen hereafter," which little minds would sedulously have concealed, as discredit, rather than as conferring conspicuous honour.
Ten years after the incidents had occurred to which the following letter refers, in writing to Mr. Southey, among other subjects, I casually expressed a regret, that when I quitted the business of a bookseller, I had not returned him the copy-rights of his "Joan of Arc;" of his two volumes of Poems; and of his letters from Spain and Portugal. The following was his reply.
"Wednesday evening, Greta Hall, April 28, 1808.
My dear Cottle,
... What you say of my copy-rights affects me very much. Dear Cottle, set your heart at rest on that subject. It ought to be at rest. They were yours; fairly bought, and fairly sold. You bought them on the chance of their success, what no London bookseller would have done; and had they not been bought, they could not have been published at all. Nay, if you had not published 'Joan of Arc,' the poem never would have existed, nor should I, in all probability, ever have obtained that reputation which is the capital on which I subsist, nor that power which enables me to support it.
But this is not all. Do you suppose, Cottle, that I have forgotten those true and most essential acts of