Coleridge in
His Letters
BY E. M. FORSTER. GOOSE, darling, genius, practical man! When shall we see Coleridge plainer ? Our earlier view was simple ; here was a poet who took drugs, and adorned literature and the copy books at the same time. What does genius avail if it cannot resist temptation ? How unlike Lord Tennyson ! Trouble began when it was realized that Coleridge was drugging himself heavily before he wrote any good poems, and that the poems themselves arise out of abnormal states. And there was further trouble when the period of his critical activity had tohe considered ; he ought, by rights, to have become a nervous wreck, yet he lectured and wrote energetically. It became obvious that there were two peaks in his achievement, the creative, in 1796-97, and the critical, some twenty years later. But even this was too simple : the critical period is an extended range of mountains rather than a peak, and the gulf between it and the crea- tive is not an unrelieved abysm of despair.
He himself gave us all the help he could. He is one of the most explanatory of writers. But he is also one of the least revealing. The more he describes his health, his finances, his mental states, and his personal relation- ships, the more muddled do we become. It is only when he fastens on an outside theme, such as Shakespeare or a voyage to the antarctic, that he remains lucid. And all these fresh letters of his that have lately been pub- lished—they only heighten the contradictory lights, * Unpublished Lettere of S.T.Colersdge. Edited by E. L. Griggs. 2 vols. Constable. 378. 6d. they do not round him off or allow us to say "So that was Coleridge ! " He will defeat the schoolmaster in us for ever. And if we have entered into his exalted view of human nature and the universe, there is something satisfactory in this. He has assailed our finite intellig- ences and suggested that the letter weight and the tape-measure are not the only measures conceivable, or even attainable.
However, let us leave all that for a moment and bring out -our letter weight, and place some of these letters on it. What a thrilling collection ! How well they have been edited by Professor Griggs, of Michigan University ! How greatly the student of Coleridge is indebted to him, to Professor Lowes, and to American scholarship in general ! There are four hundred letters, and they are either unknown, or have hitherto been published in mutilated forms.
They illustrate every aspect of Coleridge's long life, and we can argue that he comes out the better or the worse, as we please. Take, as an example, his relations with his wife. From this additional correspondence it seems clearer than it used to be both that she hooked him, and that he proved a troublesome fish. The origins of the union are well known. He and Southey had, in their undergraduate days, a scheme for emigrating and setting up an ideal community—the sort of scheme which fascinated D. H. Lawrence over a hundred years later. Wives were necessary, and several Miss Frickers were available. Southey picked a good one, Coleridge was less fortunate, and by the time the scheme was given up -he would like to have disentangled himself from the lady too. But she pointed out that she had missed two matrimonial chances on his account, and annoyed her uncle, and she would be compelled to marry a man whom she disliked if he abandoned her. So, although he never felt anything for her beyond pity, and was in love with someone else, he married her, and made her unhappy. He now comes out as a typical male. His gallantry and sentimental idealism give place to an unseasonable display of reason, and the letters he *rites eight years after their marriage must have been quite maddening. They are, at the same time, extraordinarily wise and extraordinarily silly letters. Only a masculine intelligence could have produced them :
"My dear Love, let me in the spirit of Love say two things. (1) / owe duties, and solemn ones, to you as my wife, but some equally solemn ones to Myself, to my children, to my friends and to society. . . . When duties are at variance, dreadful as the case may be, there must be a choice. . . (2) Permit me, my dear Sara, without offence to you, as, Heaven knows, it is without any pride in myself, to say that, in six acquirements, and in the quantity and quality of natural endowments, whether of feeling or of intellect, you are the inferior. Therefore it would be preposterous to expect that 1 should see with your eyes and dismiss my friends from my heart. ; . . If you read this letter with half the tenderness with which it is written, it will do you and both of us good."
Here is the familiar situation of the big sweet-natured man tied to the small jealous wife, and every word that Coleridge says Is true. But what a fool to say it ! What insensitiveness ! What a refinement of cruelty he achieves by the (1) and (2), and by the gentle tone ! And if these did not drive the poor woman frantic, imagine her reaction to the final paragraph, which is : "Write immediately, my dear Love, and direct to me—where ? That's the puzzle—to be left at the Post Office, Carmar- then." Yes ! She is to write at once, although both the children have the worms, and he—he will possibly pick up. her letter some time or other at Carnnuthen, and probably never read it.
The relation of Coleridge to his wife occupies only a small part of the letters collected by Professor Griggs. They illustrate every period and topic, and constantly give us new lights. The quarrel with Words. worth, for instance, is more violent than one had realized : "even to have any thought of Wordsworth, while writing these lines, has, I feel, fluttered and disordered my whole Inside." And the hallucinations are more terrible : "Night is my Hell, Sleep my tormenting Angel. Three nights out of four I fall asleep, struggling to lie awake —and my frequent Night-screams have almost made me a nuisance in my own House. Dreams with me are no Shadows but the very substances and foot-thiek Calamities of my Life." Wherever we turn we get the sense of greater intensity and complexity, we are surer than before that Coleridge is one of the most important and interesting people who have ever lived in England. And we manage to see him, at moments, outside space and time, and thus catch sight of the new country to which he beckoned us, that country whose only proper language is poetry, yet it also speaks through the mouths of philosophers and the actions of ordinary men.
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