Memoirs of William Hazlitt
Ch. III 1795-98
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CHAPTER III.
1795-1798.
His first acquaintance with poets (January, 1798)—Samuel Taylor
Coleridge at Wem—William Hazlitt’s visit to
Coleridge and Wordsworth—Chiefly
autobiographical.
But my grandfather’s mind was to receive, a few years
later, an extraordinary stimulus from a quarter where he could as little as possible have
been expecting it. When he was in his twentieth year, and still at Wem under the paternal
eye, there came hither somebody of more mark and likelihood, to pay his respects to the
Rev. W. Hazlitt, than the young thinker had ever
chanced to come across in all his rambles. In 1798, and in the month of January, Samuel Taylor Coleridge came to visit my great-grandfather
over from Shrewsbury, where he was officiating for Mr.
Rowe, the Unitarian minister there.
Of his first introduction to Coleridge, in January, 1798, he has left the following account:—*
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* Published originally in the Examiner newspaper for January 12, 1817; in the same
shape it was included among the Political Essays, 1819. It was afterwards amplified,
and printed in the first volume of the Liberal (1823). It has been published two or three
times since, and here it is again.
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“In the year 1798 Mr.
Coleridge came to Shrewsbury to succeed Mr.
Rowe in the spiritual charge of a Unitarian congregation there. He did
not come till late on the Saturday afternoon before he was to preach; and Mr.
Rowe, who himself went down to the coach in a state of anxiety and
expectation to look for the arrival of his successor, could find no one at all
answering the description but a round-faced man, in a short black coat (like a
shooting-jacket) which hardly seemed to have been made for him, but who seemed to be
talking at a great rate to his fellow-passengers. Mr. Rowe had
scarce returned to give an account of his disappointment when the round-faced man in
black entered, and dissipated all doubts on the subject by beginning to talk. He did
not cease while he stayed; nor has he since, that I know of. He held the good town of
Shrewsbury in delightful suspense for three weeks that he remained there,
‘fluttering the proud Salopians like an eagle in a
dove-cote;’ and the Welsh mountains, that skirt the horizon with their
tempestuous confusion, agree to have heard no such mystic sounds since the days of
High-born Hoel’s harp or soft
Llewelyn’s lay! |
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As we passed along between Wem and Shrewsbury, and I eyed their blue tops seen
through the wintry branches, or the red rustling leaves of the sturdy oak trees by the
roadside, a sound was in my ears as of a Siren’s song; I was stunned, startled
with it, as from deep sleep; but ![]()
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I had no
notion then that I should ever be able to express my admiration to others in motley
imagery or quaint allusion, till the light of his genius shone into my soul, like the
sun’s rays glittering in the puddles of the road. I was at that time dumb,
inarticulate, helpless, like a worm by the wayside, crushed, bleeding, lifeless; but
now, bursting from the deadly bands that bound them, With Styx nine times round them, |
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my ideas float on winged words, and as they expand their plumes, catch the golden
light of other years. . . .
“My father lived [at Wem] ten miles from Shrewsbury, and was in
the habit of exchanging visits with Mr. Rowe, and
with Mr. Jenkins of Whitchurch (nine miles
farther on), according to the custom of dissenting ministers in each other’s
neighbourhood. A line of communication is thus established, by which the flame of civil
and religious liberty is kept alive, and nourishes its smouldering fire unquenchable,
like the fires in the Agamemnon of Æschylus, placed
at different stations, that waited for ten long years to announce with their blazing
pyramids the destruction of Troy. Coleridge had
agreed to come over and see my father, according
to the courtesy of the country, as Mr. Rowe’s probable
successor; but, in the mean time, I had gone to hear him preach the Sunday after his
arrival. A poet and a philosopher getting up into a Unitarian pulpit to preach the
gospel, was a romance in these degenerate ![]()
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days, a sort of revival of the primitive spirit of Christianity, which was not to be
resisted.
“It was in January, 1798, that I rose one morning before
daylight, to walk ten miles in the mud, to hear this celebrated person preach. Never,
the longest day I have to live, shall I have such another walk as this cold, raw,
comfortless one, in the winter of the year 1798.—Il y a des
impressions que ni le tems ni les circonstances peuvent effacer. Dusse-je vivre
des siècles entiers, le doux tems de ma jeunesse ne pent renaitre pour moi, ni
s’effacer jamais dans ma mémoire. When I got there the
organ was playing the 100th Psalm, and when it was done Mr.
Coleridge rose and gave out his text, ‘And he went up into the
mountain to pray, Himself, Alone.’ As he gave out this text, his voice
‘rose like a steam of rich distilled perfumes,’ and when he came
to the two last words, which he pronounced loud, deep, and distinct, it seemed to me,
who was then young, as if the sounds had echoed from the bottom of the human heart, and
as if that prayer might have floated in solemn silence through the universe. The idea
of St. John came into my mind, ‘of one crying in the
wilderness, who had his loins girt about, and whose food was locusts and wild
honey.’ The preacher then launched into his subject, like an eagle
dallying with the wind. The sermon was upon peace and war; upon church and state—not
their alliance, but their separation—on the spirit of the world and the spirit of
Christianity, not as the same, but as opposed to one another. He talked ![]()
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of those who had ‘inscribed the
cross of Christ on banners dripping with human gore.’ He made a poetical
and pastoral excursion,—and to show the fatal effects of war, drew a striking contrast
between the simple shepherd boy, driving his team afield, or sitting under the
hawthorn, piping to his flock, ‘as though he should never be old,’
and the same poor country lad, crimped, kidnapped, brought into town, made drunk at an
alehouse, turned into a wretched drummer-boy, with his hair sticking on end with powder
and pomatum, a long cue at his back, and tricked out in the loathsome finery of the
profession of blood. Such were the notes our once-loved poet sung. |
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And for myself I could not have been more delighted if I had heard the music of
the spheres. Poetry and Philosophy had met together, Truth and Genius had embraced,
under the eye and with the sanction of Religion. This was even beyond my hopes. I
returned home well satisfied. The sun that was still labouring pale and wan through the
sky, obscured by thick mists, seemed an emblem of the good cause; and the cold dank
drops of dew, that hung half melted on the beard of the thistle, had something genial
and refreshing in them; for there was a spirit of hope and youth in all nature, that
turned everything into good. The face of nature had not then the brand of Jus Divinum on it:
Like to that sanguine flower inscrib’d with woe. |
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“On the Tuesday following the half-inspired speaker came. I was
called down into the room where he was, and went half hoping, half afraid. He received
me very graciously, and I listened for a long time without uttering a word. I did not
suffer in his opinion by my silence. ‘For those two hours,’ he
afterwards was pleased to say, ‘he was conversing with William Hazlitt’s forehead!’ His
appearance was different from what I had anticipated from seeing him before. At a
distance, and in the dim light of the chapel, there was to me a strange wildness in his
aspect, a dusky obscurity, and I thought him pitted with the small-pox. His complexion
was at that time clear, and even bright—
As are the children of yon azure sheen. |
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His forehead was broad and high, light as if built of ivory, with large projecting
eyebrows, and his eyes rolling beneath them, like a sea with darkened lustre.
‘A certain tender bloom his face o’erspread,’ a purple
tinge as we see it in the pale thoughtful complexions of the Spanish portrait-painters,
Murillo and Velasquez. His mouth was gross, voluptuous, open, eloquent; his chin
good-humoured and round; but his nose, the rudder of the face, the index of the will,
was small, feeble, nothing—like what he has done. It might seem that the genius of his
face as from a height surveyed and projected him (with sufficient capacity and huge
aspiration) into the world unknown of thought and imagination, with nothing to support
or guide his ![]()
| 44 | THE HOST AND HIS VISITOR CONTRASTED. | |
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veering
purpose—as if Columbus had launched his
adventurous course for the New World in a scallop, without oars or compass. So at least
I comment on it after the event. Coleridge, in his person, was
rather above the common size, inclining to the corpulent, or like Lord Hamlet, ‘somewhat fat and pursy.’
His hair (now, alas! grey) was then black and glossy as the raven’s, and fell in
smooth masses over his forehead. This long pendulous hair is peculiar to enthusiasts,
to those whose minds tend heavenward; and is traditionally inseparable (though of a
different colour) from the pictures of Christ. It ought to belong, as a character, to
all who preach Christ crucified, and
Coleridge was at that time one of those!
“It was curious to observe the contrast between him and my
father, who was a veteran in the cause, and
then declining into the vale of years. He had been a poor Irish lad, carefully brought
up by his parents, and sent to the University of Glasgow (where he studied under
Adam Smith) to prepare him for his future
destination.* It was his mother’s proudest wish to see her son a dissenting
minister. So, if we look back to past generations (as far as eye can reach), we see the
same hopes, fears, wishes, followed by the same disappointments, throbbing in the human
heart; and so we may see them (if we look forward) rising up for ever, and
disappearing, like vapourish bubbles, in the human breast! After being tossed about
from congregation to
* See more of this suprâ.—Ed. |
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| | THE HOST AND HIS VISITOR CONTRASTED. | 45 |
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congregation in the heats
of the Unitarian controversy, and squabbles about the American war, he had been
relegated to an obscure village, where he was to spend the last thirty years of his
life, far from the only converse that he loved, the talk about disputed texts of
Scripture, and the cause of civil and religious liberty. Here he passed his days,
repining, but resigned, in the study of the Bible, and the perusal of the
commentators,—huge folios, not easily got through, one of which would outlast a winter!
Why did he pore on these from morn to night (with the exception of a walk in the fields
or a turn in the garden to gather broccoli-plants or kidney-beans of his own rearing,
with no small degree of pride and pleasure)?—Here were ‘no figures nor no
fantasies,’—neither poetry nor philosophy—nothing to dazzle, nothing to
excite modern curiosity; but to his lack-lustre eyes there appeared, within the pages
of the ponderous, unwieldy, neglected tomes, the sacred name of
JEHOVAH in Hebrew capitals. Pressed down by the weight of the
style, worn to the last fading thinness of the understanding, there were glimpses,
glimmering notions of the patriarchal wanderings, with palm trees hovering in the
horizon, and processions of camels at the distance of three thousand years; there was
Moses with the Burning Bush, the number of the Twelve Tribes,
types, shadows, glosses on the law and the prophets; there were discussions (dull
enough) on the age of Methuselah, a mighty speculation! there were outlines, rude
guesses at the shape of Noah’s Ark ![]()
| 46 | THE HOST AND HIS VISITOR CONTRASTED. | |
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and of the riches of
Solomon’s Temple; questions as to the date of the
creation, predictions of the end of all things; the great lapses of time, the strange
mutations of the globe were unfolded with the voluminous leaf, as it turned over; and
though the soul might slumber with an hieroglyphic veil of inscrutable mysteries drawn
over it, yet it was in a slumber ill-exchanged for all the sharpened realities of
sense, wit, fancy, or reason. My father’s life was comparatively a dream; but it
was a dream of infinity and eternity, of death, the resurrection, and a judgment to
come!
“No two individuals were ever more unlike than were the host and
his guest. A poet was to my father a sort of nondescript; yet whatever added grace to
the Unitarian cause was to him welcome. He could hardly have been more surprised or
pleased if our visitor had worn wings. Indeed, his thoughts had wings; and as the
silken sounds rustled round our little wainscoted parlour, my father threw back his
spectacles over his forehead, his white hairs mixing with its sanguine hue, and a smile
of delight beamed across his rugged cordial face, to think that Truth had found a new
ally in Fancy!* Besides, Coleridge seemed to
take considerable notice of me, and that of itself was enough. He
* My father was one of
those who mistook his talent after all. He used to be very much dissatisfied
that I preferred his Letters to his Sermons. The last were forced and dry; the
first came naturally from him. For ease, half-plays on words, and a supine,
monkish, indolent pleasantry, I have never seen them equalled. |
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| | THE HOST AND HIS VISITOR CONTRASTED. | 47 |
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talked very familiarly,
but agreeably, and glanced over a variety of subjects. At dinner-time he grew more
animated, and dilated in a very edifying manner on Mary
Wolstonecraft and Mackintosh. The
last, he said, he considered (on my father’s speaking of his ‘Vindiciæ Gallicæ’ as a
capital performance) as a clever scholastic man—a master of the topics,—or as the ready
warehouseman of letters, who knew exactly where to lay his hand on what he wanted,
though the goods were not his own. He thought him no match for Burke, either in style or matter.
Burke was a metaphysician, Mackintosh a
mere logician! Burke was an orator (almost a poet) who reasoned in
figures, because he had an eye for nature: Mackintosh, on the
other hand, was a rhetorician, who had only an eye to common-places. On this I ventured
to say that I had always entertained a great opinion of Burke, and
that (as far as I could find) the speaking of him, with contempt might be made the test
of a vulgar democratical mind. This was the first observation I ever made to
Coleridge, and he said it was a very just and striking one. I
remember the leg of Welsh mutton and the turnips on the table that day had the finest
flavour imaginable. Coleridge added that
Mackintosh and Tom
Wedgwood (of whom, however, he spoke highly) had expressed a very
indifferent opinion of his friend Mr.
Wordsworth, on which he remarked to them—‘He strides on so far
before you, that he dwindles in the distance!’ Godwin had once boasted to him of having carried on an
argu-![]()
| 48 | CONVERSATIONS WITH COLERIDGE. | |
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ment with
Mackintosh for three hours with dubious success.
Coleridge told him—‘If there had been a man of genius
in the room, he would have settled the question in five minutes.’ He
asked me if I had ever seen Mary Wolstonecraft, and I said I had
once for a few moments, and that she seemed to me to turn off
Godwin’s objections to something she advanced with quite
a playful, easy air. He replied, that ‘this was only one instance of the
ascendancy which people of imagination exercised over those of mere
intellect.’ He did not rate Godwin very high* (this was
caprice or prejudice, real or affected), but he had a great idea of Mrs.
Wolstonecraft’s powers of conversation; none at all of her talent
for book-making. We talked a little about Holcroft. He had been asked if he was not much struck with him; and he said, he thought himself in more danger of being struck by him. I complained that he would not let me get on at all, for
he required a definition of even the commonest word, exclaiming, ‘What do you
mean by a sensation, sir? What do you mean by an idea?” This, Coleridge said,
was barricading the road to truth—it was setting up a turnpike-gate at every step we
took. I forget a great number of things, many more than I remember; but the day passed
off pleasantly, and the next morning
* He complained in particular of the presumption of his
attempting to establish the future immortality of man,
“without” (as he said) “knowing what Death was or
what Life was”—and the tone in which he pronounced these two
words seemed to convey a complete image of both. |
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Mr. Coleridge was to return to Shrewsbury. When I came down to
breakfast, I found that he had just received a letter from his friend T.
Wedgwood,* making him an offer of 150l. a-year if
he chose to waive his present pursuit, and devote himself entirely to the study of
poetry and philosophy. Coleridge seemed to make up his mind to
close with this proposal in the act of tying on one of his shoes. It threw an
additional damp on his departure. It took the wayward enthusiast quite from us to cast
him into Deva’s winding vales, or by the shores of old romance. Instead of living
at ten miles’ distance, of being the pastor of a dissenting congregation at
Shrewsbury, he was henceforth to inhabit the Hill of Parnassus, to be a Shepherd on the
Delectable Mountains. Alas! I knew not the way thither, and felt very little gratitude
for Mr. Wedgwood’s bounty. I was presently relieved from
this dilemma; for Mr. Coleridge, asking for a pen and ink, and
going to a table to write something on a bit of card, advanced towards me with
undulating step, and giving me the precious document, said that that was his address,
Mr. Coleridge, Nether-Stowey,
Somersetshire; and that he should be glad to see me there in a few
weeks’ time, and, if I chose, would come half-way to meet me. I was not less
surprised than the shepherd-boy (this simile is to be found in Cassandra) when he sees a thunder-bolt fall
close at his feet. I stammered out my acknowledgments and acceptance of this offer I
thought Mr. Wedgwood’s annuity a trifle to it) as ![]()
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well as I could; and this mighty
business being settled, the poet-preacher took leave, and I accompanied him six miles
on the road. It was a fine morning in the middle of winter, and he talked the whole
way. The scholar in Chaucer is described as
going ![]()
So Coleridge went on his.”
Aeschylus (525 BC c.-456 BC c.)
Greek tragic poet, author of
Oresteia and
Prometheus Bound.
Edmund Burke (1729-1797)
Irish politician and opposition leader in Parliament, author of
On the
Sublime and Beautiful (1757) and
Reflections on the Revolution
in France (1790).
Geoffrey Chaucer (1340 c.-1400)
English Poet, the author of
The Canterbury Tales (1390 c.).
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.
Mary Godwin [née Wollstonecraft] (1759-1797)
English feminist, author of
Vindication of the Rights of Woman
(1792); she married William Godwin in 1797 and died giving birth to their daughter
Mary.
William Godwin (1756-1836)
English novelist and political philosopher; author of
An Inquiry
concerning the Principles of Political Justice (1793) and
Caleb
Williams (1794); in 1797 he married Mary Wollstonecraft.
William Hazlitt (1737-1820)
Born in Ireland and educated at University of Glasgow, he was a Unitarian minister and
father of the essayist.
William Hazlitt (1778-1830)
English essayist and literary critic; author of
Characters of
Shakespeare's Plays (1817),
Lectures on the English Poets
(1818), and
The Spirit of the Age (1825).
Thomas Holcroft (1745-1809)
English playwright and novelist; a friend of William Godwin indicted for treason in 1794;
author of
The Road to Ruin (1792). His
Memoirs (1816) were completed by William Hazlitt.
Thomas Jenkins (1745 c.-1815)
He was a schoolmaster in Bristol and for 33 years the Unitarian minister of Whitchurch in
Shropshire.
Sir James Mackintosh (1765-1832)
Scottish philosopher and man of letters who defended the French Revolution in
Vindiciae Gallicae (1791); he was Recorder of Bombay (1803-1812) and
MP for Knaresborough (1819-32).
Bartolomé Estéban Murillo (1617-1682)
Spanish painter admired for the naturalism displayed in his portraits of street
urchins.
John Rowe (1764-1832)
Unitarian minister educated at Hoxton Academy and at Hackney; he was pastor at Shrewsbury
from 1787, where he knew Coleridge, and at Lewin's Mead Chapel, Bristol from 1798.
Adam Smith (1723-1790)
Friend of David Hume and professor of logic at Glasgow University (1751); he wrote
Theory of the Moral Sentiments (1759) and
The
Wealth of Nations (1776).
Josiah Wedgwood the younger (1769-1843)
Of Maer Hall in Staffordshire, the son and successor of the famous potter; he was the
patron of Coleridge and a founding member of the King of Clubs.
Thomas Wedgwood (1771-1805)
Chemist and third son of Josiah Wedgewood; he was the patron of Godwin and Coleridge and
of his former tutor, Sir John Leslie.
William Wordsworth (1770-1850)
With Coleridge, author of
Lyrical Ballads (1798), Wordsworth
survived his early unpopularity to succeed Robert Southey as poet laureate in 1843.
The Examiner. (1808-1881). Founded by John and Leigh Hunt, this weekly paper divided its attention between literary
matters and radical politics; William Hazlitt was among its regular contributors.
