Reminiscences of Samuel Taylor Coleridge and Robert Southey | Page 3

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 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