William Godwin: his Friends and Contemporaries
Ch. IV. 1801-1803
Samuel Taylor Coleridge to William Godwin, 22 September 1801
“Greta Hall, Keswick, Sep. 22, 1801.
“My dear Godwin,—When once a correspondence
has intermitted, from whatever cause, it scarcely ever recommences without some
impulse ab extra. After my last
letter, I went rambling after health, or at least, alleviation of sickness. My
Azores scheme I was obliged to give up, as well, I am afraid, as that of going
abroad at all, from want of money. Latterly I have had additional source of
disquietude—so that altogether I have, I confess, felt little inclination to
write to you, who have not known me long enough, nor associated enough of that
esteem which you entertain for the qualities you attribute to me, with me
myself me, to be much interested about the carcase Coleridge. So, of Carcase Coleridge no
more.
“At Middleham, near Durham, I accidentally met your
pamphlet and read it—and
only by accident was prevented from immediately writing to you. For I read it
with unmingled delight and admiration, with the exception of that one hateful
paragraph, for the insertion of which I can account only on a superstitious
hypothesis, that, when all the gods and goddesses gave you each a good gift,
Nemesis counterbalanced them all with the destiny, that, in whatever you
published, there should be some one outrageously imprudent suicidal passage. But you have had enough ![]()
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of this. With the exception of this passage, I never
remember to have read a pamphlet with warmer feelings of sympathy and respect.
Had I read it en masse when I wrote
to you, I should certes have made none of the remarks I once made in the first
letter on the subject, but as certainly should have done so in my second. On
the most deliberate reflection, I do think the introduction clumsily worded,
and (what is of more importance) I do think your retractations always
imprudent, and not always just. But it is painful to me to say this to you. I
know not what effect it may have on your mind, for I have found that I cannot
judge of other men by myself. I am myself dead indifferent as to censures of any kind. Praise even from fools has
sometimes given me a momentary pleasure, and what I could not but despise as
opinion, I have taken up with some satisfaction as sympathy. But the censure or
dislike of my dearest Friend, even of him whom I think the wisest man I know,
does not give me the slightest pain. It is ten to one but I agree with him, and
if I do, then I am glad. If I differ from him, the pleasure which I feel in
developing the sources of our disagreement entirely swallows up all
consideration of the disagreement itself. But then I confess that I have
written nothing that I value myself at all, and that
constitutes a prodigious difference between us—and still more than this, that
no man’s opinion, merely as opinion, operates in any other way than to
make me review my own side of the question. All this looks very much like
self-panegyric. I cannot help it. It is the truth, and I find it to hold good
of no other person; i.e. to the extent of the
indifference which I feel. And therefore I am without any criterion, by which I
can determine what I can say, and how much without wounding or irritating. I
will never therefore willingly criticise any manuscript composition, unless the
author and I are together, for then I know that, say what I will, he cannot be
wounded, because my voice, my looks, my whole manners must convince any good
man that all I said was accompanied with sincere good-will and genuine
kindness. Besides, I seldom fear to say anything when I can develope my
reasons, but this is seldom possible in a letter. It is not improbable, that
is, not very im-![]()
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probable that, if I am absolutely unable to go
abroad (and I am now making a last effort by an application to Mr John King respecting his house at S. Lewis,
and the means of living there), I may perhaps come up to London and maintain
myself as before by writing for the Morning Post. Here it will be imprudent for
me to stay, from the wet and the cold. My darling Hartley has this evening had an attack of fever, but my medical
man thinks it will pass off. I think of your children not unfrequently. God
love them. He has been on the Scotch hills with Montagu and his new father, William Lush,—Yours,
Hartley Coleridge [Old Bachelor] (1796-1849)
The eldest son of the poet; he was educated at Merton College, Oxford, contributed essays
in the
London Magazine and
Blackwood's, and
published
Lives of Distinguished Northerns (1832).
Samuel Taylor Coleridge (1772-1834)
English poet and philosopher who projected
Lyrical Ballads (1798)
with William Wordsworth; author of
Biographia Literaria (1817),
On the Constitution of the Church and State (1829) and other
works.
John King (1753 c.-1824)
Jewish money-lender and political radical; he was a friend of William Godwin and the
father of the writer Charlotte [Byrne] Dacre.
Basil Montagu (1770-1851)
An illegitimate son of the fourth earl of Sandwich, he was educated at Charterhouse and
Christ's College, Cambridge, and afterwards was a lawyer, editor, and friend of Samuel
Romilly, William Godwin, and William Wordsworth.
Morning Post. (1772-1937). A large-circulation London daily that published verse by many of the prominent poets of
the romantic era. John Taylor (1750–1826), Daniel Stuart (1766-1846), and Nicholas Byrne
(d. 1833) were among its editors.
