62 |
“Thus I passed three
weeks at Nether-Stowey and in the neighbourhood, generally devoting the afternoons to a
delightful chat in an arbour made of bark by the poet’s friend Tom Poole, sitting under two fine elm trees, and listening
to the bees humming round us, while we quaffed our flip. It was
agreed, among other things, that we should make a jaunt down the Bristol Channel, as far as
Linton. We set off together on foot, Coleridge,
John Chester, and I. This
Chester was a native of Nether-Stowey, one of those who were
attracted to Coleridge’s discourse as flies are to honey, or
bees in swarming-time to the sound of a brass pan. He ‘followed in the chace, like
a dog who hunts, not like one that made up the cry.’ He had on a brown cloth
coat, boots, and corduroy breeches, was low in stature, bow-legged, had a drag in his walk
like a drover, which he assisted by a hazel switch, and kept on a sort of trot by the side
of Coleridge, like a running footman by a state coach, that he might
not lose a syllable or sound that fell from Coleridge’s lips. He
TRIP TO LINTON. | 63 |
“We passed Dunster on our right, a small town between the brow of
a hill and the sea. I remember eyeing it wistfully as it lay below us: contrasted with
the woody scene around, it looked as clear, as pure, as embrowned and ideal, as any
landscape I have seen since of Gaspar
Poussin’s or Domenichino’s. We had a long day’s march—(our feet kept
time to the echoes of Coleridge’s
tongue)—through Minehead and by the Blue Anchor, and on to Linton, which we did not
reach till near midnight, and where we had some difficulty in making a lodgment. We
however knocked the people of the house up at last, and we were repaid for our
apprehensions and fatigue by some excellent rashers of fried bacon and eggs. The view
in coming along had been splendid. We walked for miles and miles on dark-brown heaths
overlooking the Channel, with the Welsh hills beyond, and at times descended into
little sheltered valleys close by the seaside, with a smuggler’s face scowling by
us; and then had to ascend conical hills with a path winding up through a coppice to a
barren top, like a monk’s shaven crown, from one of
64 | PEDESTRIAN TOUR. |
“In the morning of the second day we breakfasted luxuriously in
an old-fashioned parlour, on tea, toast, eggs, and honey, in the very sight of the
beehives from which it had been taken and a garden full of thyme and wild flowers that
had produced it. On this occasion Coleridge
spoke of Virgil’s ‘Georgics,’ but not well. I do not think he had
much feeling for the classical or
WITH COLERIDGE. | 65 |
66 | TOUR WITH COLERIDGE. |
* He had no idea of pictures, of Claude or Raphael, and at, this time I had as little as he. He somewhere gives a striking account of the Cartoons at Pisa, by Buffamalco and others; of one in particular, where Death is seen in the air, brandishing his scythe, and the great and mighty of the earth shudder at his approach, while the beggars and the wretched kneel to him as their deliverer. He would of course understand so broad and fine a moral as this at any time. |
RETURN TO STOWEY. | 67 |
“In a day or two after we arrived at Stowey we set out, I on my return home, and he for Germany. It was a Sunday morning, and he was to preach that day for Dr. Toulmin of Taunton. I asked him if he had prepared anything for the occasion? He said he had not even thought of the text, but should, as soon as we parted. I did not go to hear him—this was a fault—but we met in the evening at Bridgewater. The next day we had a long day’s walk to Bristol, and sat down, I recollect, by a well-side on the road, to cool ourselves and satisfy our thirst, when Coleridge repeated to me some descriptive lines from his tragedy of ‘Remorse:’—
Oh memory! shield me from the world’s poor strife, And give those scenes thine everlasting life. |
“I saw no more of him for a year or two, during which period he had been wandering in the Hartz Forest in Germany; and his return was cometary, meteorous, unlike his setting out.”
Coleridge was my grandfather’s earliest
literary ac-
68 | STILL UPON COLERIDGE. |
My grandfather would have liked Lamb all the better, if he had been a man of stancher mind, a person who had set out with convictions from which there was to be no swerve. Lamb sinned in my grandfather’s eyes in having too much good-fellowship, in shaking everybody round by the hand with a sincerity which a careful study of his correspondence, in its entire and undiluted state, leaves painfully questionable.
Yet my grandfather was fond of reverting to these
STILL UPON COLERIDGE. | 69 |
I find these observations of his upon Coleridge elsewhere:—
“I remember once saying to Mr. ———, a great while ago, that I did not seem to have altered any of my ideas since I was sixteen years old. ‘Why then,’ said he, ‘you are no wiser now than you were then!
“I might make the same confession, and the same retort would apply still.
“Coleridge used to tell me that this pertinacity was owing to a want of sympathy with others. What he calls sympathising with others is their admiring him; and it must be admitted that he varies his battery pretty often, in order to accommodate himself to this sort of mutual understanding.
“But I do not agree in what he says of me. On the other hand, I think that it is my sympathising beforehand with the different views and feelings that may be entertained on a subject, that prevents me retracting my judgment, and flinging myself into the contrary extreme afterwards. . . I cannot say that, from my own experience, I have found that the persons most remarkable for sudden and violent changes of principle have been cast in the softest and most susceptible mould. . . .
“I can hardly consider Mr. Coleridge a deserter from the cause
he first espoused, unless one could tell what
70 | COLERIDGE’S CHARACTER. |
“I have been delighted to hear him expatiate with the most natural and affecting simplicity on a favourite passage or picture, and all the while afraid of agreeing with him, lest he should instantly turn round and unsay all that he had said, for fear of my going away with too good an opinion of my own taste, a too great an admiration of my idol—and his own.
“I dare not ask his opinion twice, if I have got a favourable sentence once, lest he should belie his own sentiments to stagger mine. I have heard him talk divinely (like one inspired) of Boccaccio, and the story of the ‘Pot of Basil,’ describing ‘how it grew, and it grew, and it grew,’ till you saw it spread its tender leaves in the light of his eye, and wave in the tremulous sound of his voice; and yet, if you asked him about it another time, he would, perhaps, affect to think little of it. or to have forgotten the circumstance.
“When I cease[d] to hear him quite, other tongues, tuned to what accents they may [be] of praise or blame, would sound dull, ungrateful, out of tune, and harsh, in the comparison.”
Coleridge it was who “encouraged him to
write a book, which he did, according to the original bent of his mind (these are my
grandfather’s own words),” and the result, after eight years’
labour, was the ‘Essay on the
Principles of Human Actions,’ which few have read, and fewer have
appreciated. The intellectual profit
RECOLLECTIONS OF 1798. | 71 |
Of Mr. Hazlitt’s tour in Wales in 1798, between the time that Coleridge visited his father at Wem and his own journey to Somersetshire in the same Spring, to see Coleridge, he has spoken slightly in the account of his first acquaintance with the poet and philosopher. But what follows will help to cast a little further light on this tour in the Principality, as well as on that into the west.
“I have certainly spent some enviable hours at inns—sometimes
when I have been left entirely to myself, and have tried to solve some metaphysical
problem; as once at Witham Common, where I found out the proof that likeness is not a
case of the association of ideas—at other times, when there have been pictures in the
room, as at St. Neots (I think it was), where I first met with Gribelin’s engravings of the Cartoons, into
which I entered at once; and at a little inn on the borders of Wales, where there
happened to be hanging some of Westall’s
drawings, which I compared triumphantly (for a theory that I had, not for the admired
artist) with the figure of a girl who had ferried me over the Severn, standing up in
the boat between me and the twilight—at other times I might mention luxuriating in
books, with a peculiar interest in this way, as I remember sitting up half the night to
read ‘Paul and Virginia,’
which I picked up at an inn at Bridgewater, after being drenched in the rain all day;
and at the same place I got through two volumes of Madame
D’Arblay’s ‘Camilla.’
72 | RECOLLECTIONS OF 1798. |
“The best part of our lives we pass in counting on what is to
come, or in fancying what may have happened, in real or fictitious story, to others. I
have had more pleasure in reading the adventures of a novel (and perhaps changing
situations with the hero) than I ever had in my own. I do not think any one can feel
much happier—a greater degree of heart’s ease—than I used to feel in reading
‘Tristram Shandy,’
and ‘Peregrine
Pickle,’ and ‘Tom
Jones,’ and the ‘Tatler,’ and
RECOLLECTIONS OF 1798. | 73 |
Dallied with the innocence of love, Like the old time. |
74 | THE NEW HELOISE. |
“The last time I tasted the luxury of an inn in its full perfection was one day after a sultry day’s walk in summer between Farnham and Alton. I was fairly tired out; I walked into an inn-yard (I think at the latter place); I was shown by the waiter to what looked at first like common outhouses at the other end of it, but they turned out to be a suite of rooms, probably a hundred years old. The one I entered opened into an old-fashioned garden, embellished with beds of larkspur and a leaden Mercury; it was wainscoted, and there was a grave-looking, dark-coloured portrait of Charles II. hanging up on the tiled chimney-piece. I had ‘Love for Love’ in my pocket, and began to read. Coffee was brought in in a silver coffee-pot; the cream, the bread and butter, everything was excellent, and the flavour of Congreve’s style prevailed over all.
“I prolonged the entertainment till a late hour, and relished
this divine comedy better even than when I used to see it played by Miss Mellon as Miss Prue; Bob
THE REV. JOSEPH FAWCETT. | 75 |
But my grandfather was not long before he found another congenial and improving mind. During a visit to Hertfordshire, under I know not what circumstances, he made the acquaintance of a gentleman, on whose friendship he looked back through life with pleasure and pride. I shall leave him, as usual, to speak for himself:—
“The person of the most refined and least contracted taste I ever knew was the late Joseph Fawcett, the friend of my youth. He was almost the first literary acquaintance I ever made, and I think the most candid and unsophisticated. He had a masterly perception of all styles and of every kind and degree of excellence, sublime or beautiful, from Milton’s ‘Paradise Lost” to Shenstone’s ‘Pastoral Ballad;’ from Butler’s ‘Analogy’ down to ‘Humphrey Clinker.’ If you had a favourite author, he had read him too, and knew all the best morsels, the subtle traits, the capital touches. ‘Do you like Sterne?’—‘Yes, to be sure,’ he would say, ‘I should deserve to be hanged if I didn’t.’ His repeating some parts of ‘Comus,’ with his fine, deep, mellow-toned voice, particularly the lines,
I have heard my mother Circe with the
Sirens three, &c., |
76 | THE REV. JOSEPH FAWCETT. |
“Most men’s minds are to me like musical instruments out of tune. Touch a particular key, and it jars and makes harsh discord with your own. They like ‘Gil Blas,’ but can see nothing to laugh at in ‘Don Quixote;’ they adore Richardson, but are disgusted with Fielding.
“Fawcett had a taste accommodated to all these. He was not exceptions. He gave a cordial welcome to all sorts, provided they were the best in their kind. He was not fond of counterfeits or duplicates. His own style was laboured and artificial to a fault, while his character was frank and ingenuous in the extreme. He was not the only individual whom I have known to counteract their natural disposition in coming before the public; and in avoiding what they perhaps thought an inherent infirmity, debar themselves of their real strength and advantages.
THE REV. JOSEPH FAWCETT. | 77 |
“A heartier friend or honester critic I never coped withal. He has made me feel (by contrast) the want of genuine sincerity and generous sentiment in some that I have listened to since. . . . I would rather be a man of disinterested taste and liberal feeling, to see and acknowledge truth and beauty wherever I found it, than a man of greater and more original genius, to hate, envy, and deny all excellence but my own—but that poor scanty pittance of it (compared with the whole) which I had myself produced.
“It was he who delivered the Sunday evening lectures at the Old Jewry, which were so popular about twenty years ago. He afterwards retired to Hedgegrove, in Hertfordshire.
“It was here that I first became acquainted with him, and passed some of the pleasantest days of my life. He was the first person of literary eminence whom I had then known; and the conversations I had with him on subjects of taste and philosophy (for his taste was as refined as his powers of reasoning were profound and subtle) gave me a delight such as I can never feel again.
“The writings of Sterne, Fielding, Cervantes, Richardson, Rousseau, Godwin, Goethe, &c., were the usual subjects of our discourse, and the pleasure I had had in reading these authors seemed more than doubled.
“Of all the persons I have ever known, he was the most perfectly
free from every taint of jealousy or narrowness. Never did a mean or sinister motive
come near his heart. He was one of the most enthusiastic admirers of the French
Revolution; and I believe that
78 | THE REV. JOSEPH FAWCETT. |
“Fawcett used to say that if Sir Isaac Newton himself had lisped, he could not have thought anything of him. Coleridge, I recollect, once asked me whether I thought that the different members of a family really liked one another so well, or had so much attachment as was generally supposed; and I said that I conceived the regard they had towards each other was expressed by the word interest, rather than by any other; which he said was the true answer.”
Mr. Fawcett was a friend of Godwin’s. My grandfather says:—“Mr. Fawcett (an old friend and fellow-student of our author, and who always spoke of his writings with admiration tinctured with wonder) used to mention a circumstance with respect to his ‘Life of Chatham,’ which may throw some light on the history and progress of Mr. Godwin’s mind.
“He was anxious to make his biographical account as complete as
he could, and applied for this purpose to many of his acquaintance to furnish him with
anecdotes or to suggest criticisms. Amongst others, Mr.
Fawcett repeated to him what he thought a striking passage on general
warrants, delivered by Lord Chatham, at which he
(Mr. Fawcett) had been present. ‘Every man’s
house’ (said this emphatic thinker and speaker) ‘has been called
his castle. And why is it called his castle? Is it because it is defended by a
wall, because it is sur-
MR. HAZLITT’S EARLY READING. | 79 |
I have thus gathered into one point of view the notices of Mr. Fawcett scattered through his friend’s works, from a desire that the public should know a little more than they do of a man who stood so high in Mr. Hazlitt’s opinion, and who seems to have fully deserved the place which he held there. There was a report current after Mr. Fawcett’s death that Mr. Hazlitt intended to draw up his life; but whether true or no, the design was never carried out.
Among the books which I trace to him in early days were ‘The New Héloise’ in the English translation, 4 vols, duodecimo, ‘The Sentimental Journey,’ St. John’s Letters (‘The American Farmer’), ‘The Tatler,’ ‘Gil Blas,’ ‘Corinne,’ Mrs. Inchbald and Mrs. Barbauld,* Rich-
* The two Bald women, as Lamb called them. |
80 | EARLY READING. |
He was a spare reader, and the narrowness of his attainments in this branch of study told against him beyond question. But he had no inclination for the general run of authors, ancient or modern, and he wanted no better or stronger reason for steering clear of them. A little later on he made the acquaintance of the ‘Seasons’ and the ‘Castle of Indolence,’ and still later, of the ‘Waverley Novels.’ He once paid five shillings at a library for the loan of ‘Woodstock.’
“I knew Tom Jones by heart, and was deep in Peregrine Pickle. I was intimately acquainted with all the heroes and heroines of Richardson’s romances, and could turn from one to the other as I pleased. I could con over that single passage in ‘Pamela’ about her ‘lumpish heart,’ and never have done admiring the skill of the author and the truth of nature.
“For my part I have doubts of his (Tom Jones) being so very handsome, from the author’s always talking about his beauty; and I suspect that he was a clown, from being constantly assured that he was so very genteel.
“I am no friend to repeating-watches. The only pleasant
association I have with them is the account given by Rousseau of one French lady, who sat up reading the ‘New Héloise,’ when it first came
out—and ordering her maid to sound the repeater, found it was too late to go to bed,
and continued reading on till morning. . . . . . In general, I have heard repeating
EARLY READING. | 81 |
“I remember, as long ago as the year 1798, going to a neighbouring town (Shrewsbury, where Farquhar has laid the plot of his ‘Recruiting Officer’), and bringing home with me, ‘at one proud swoop,’ a copy of Milton’s ‘Paradise Lost,’ and another of Burke’s ‘Reflections on the French Revolution.’”
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