Reminiscences of Samuel Taylor Coleridge and Robert Southey | Page 3

friendship which you showed me when I stood most in need of them? Your house was my house when I had no other. The very money with which I bought my wedding ring, and paid my marriage fees, was supplied by you. It was with your sisters that I left my Edith, during my six months' absence; and for the six months after my return, it was from you that I received, week by week, the little on which we lived, till I was enabled to live by other means. It is not the settling of our cash account that can cancel obligations like these. You are in the habit of preserving your letters, and if you were not, _I would entreat you to preserve this, that it might be seen hereafter_. Sure I am, that there never was a more generous, nor a kinder heart than yours, and you will believe me when I add, that there does not live that man upon earth, whom I remember with more gratitude, and more affection. My heart throbs, and my eyes burn with these recollections. Good night my dear old friend and benefactor.
Robert Southey."
Gratitude is a plant indigenous to Heaven. Specimens are rarely found on Earth. This is one.
Mr. Southey, on previous occasions had advised me to write my "Recollections of Persons and Things," and it having been understood that I was about to prepare a memoir of Mr. Coleridge, (1836) Mr. S. renewed his solicitation, as will appear by the following extracts.
"Keswick, April 14, 1836.
My dear Cottle,
There is I hope, time enough for you to make a very interesting book of your own 'Recollections,' a book which will be of no little value to the history of our native city, and the literature of our times. Your prose has a natural ease which no study could acquire. I am very confident you could make as delightful a book on this subject as Isaac Walton has in his way. If you are drawing up your 'Recollections of Coleridge,' you are most welcome to insert anything of mine which you may think proper. To be employed in such a work, with the principles and frame of mind wherewith you would engage in it, is to be instructing and admonishing your fellow-creatures; it is employing your talents, and keeping up that habitual preparation for the enduring inheritance in which the greater part of your life has been spent. Men like us, who write in sincerity, and with the desire of teaching others so to think, and to feel, as may be best for themselves and the community, are labouring as much in their vocation as if they were composing sermons, or delivering them from the pulpit....
God bless you, my dear old friend. Always yours most affectionately,
Robert Southey."
On another occasion Mr. S. thus wrote.
"My dear Cottle,
I both wish and advise you to draw up your '_Reminiscences_', I advise you for your own sake, as a valuable memorial, and wish it for my own, that that part of my life might be faithfully reported by the person who knows it best...." "You have enough to tell which is harmless, as well as interesting, and not harmless only, but instructive, and that ought to be told, _and which only you can tell._"
It may be proper to notice that the title here adopted, of "REMINISCENCES" is to be understood as a general, rather than as a strictly applicable phrase, since the present miscellaneous work is founded on letters, and various memoranda, that for the most part, have lain in a dormant state for many years, and which were preserved as mementos of past scenes, personally interesting, but without, in the first instance, the least reference to ultimate publication.
I cannot withhold a final remark, with which my own mind is greatly affected; from revolving on a most unexpected, as it is a singular fact,--that these brief memorials of Mr. Coleridge, and Mr. Southey, should be written by the same individual who, more than half a century before, contributed his humble efforts to assist, and encourage them, in their first entrance on a literary life. The whole of the events thus recorded, appear through the dim vista of memory, already with the scenes before the flood! while all the busy, the aspiring, and the intellectual spirits here noticed, and once so well known, have been hurried off our mortal stage!--Robert Lovell!--George Burnet!--Charles Lloyd!--George Catcott!--Dr. Beddoes!--Charles Danvers!--Amos Cottle!--William Gilbert!--John Morgan!--Ann Yearsley!--Sir H. Davy!--Hannah More!--Robert Hall!--Samuel Taylor Coleridge!--Charles Lamb!--Thomas Poole!--Josiah Wade!--Robert Southey!--and John Foster!--confirming, with fresh emphasis,
"What shadows we are, and what shadows we pursue!"
Bristol, April 20, 1847.
J. C.
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CONTENTS.
Pantisocracy and Robert Lovell
Mr. Southey and Mr. Burnet arrive in Bristol
Mr. Coleridge arrives in Bristol
Fears for the Pantisocritans dissipated
A London bookseller offers Mr. Coleridge six guineas for the copyright