CHAPTER XXX

THE RHINE TOUR, AND LAST COLLECTED EDITIONS OF THE POEMS

[Coleridge and Wordsworth, who, as we have seen, had had a serious estrangement in 1810, but gradually drew together again with the softening of the years, went on tour to the Rhine in 1828; and this was Coleridge's third time on the Continent. On their way they met Thomas Colley Grattan, novelist and miscellaneous writer. He gave in his _Beaten Paths_ some account of the two poets as they appeared at the time--partly reproduced in Knight's _Life of Wordsworth_. This passage is the best description of the two poets in their later period and the most reliable, along with Clement Carlyon's description of Coleridge in Germany. There is no attempt in Grattan to spin rhetoric out of Coleridge, such as we find in De Quincey, Hazlitt, and Carlyle. Another diarist gave a picture of the poets during the Rhine Tour, Julian Charles Young, who wrote the memoir of his brother, Charles Mayne Young, an actor of the time. This account is also partly reproduced in Knight's _Life of Wordsworth_. Grattan says: "He was about five feet five[143] inches in height, of a full and lazy appearance but not actually stout. He was dressed in black, and wore short breeches, buttoned and tied at the knees, and black silk stockings. And in his costume (the same that he describes to have been worn in his earliest voyages and travels in the year 1798), he worked along, in public coaches or barges, giving the idea of his original profession, an itinerant preacher. His face was extremely handsome, its expression placid and benevolent. His mouth was

## particularly pleasing, and his grey eyes, neither large nor prominent,

were full of intelligent softness. His hair, of which he had plenty, was entirely white. His forehead and cheeks were unfurrowed and the latter showed a healthy bloom" (_Beaten Paths_, ii, 108-109). On all topics touched by Coleridge he said something to be remembered. "In almost everything that fell from Coleridge there was a dash of deep philosophy--even in the outpourings of his egotism--touches not to be given without the whole of what they illustrated" (_Beaten Paths_, ii, 113). "Coleridge took evident delight in rural scenes. He was in ecstasies at a group of haymakers in a field we passed. He said the little girls, standing with their rakes, the handles resting on the ground, 'looked like little saints.' Half-a-dozen dust-covered children going by the roadside, with a garland of roses raised above their heads, threw him into raptures" (_Beaten Paths_, ii, 115).

Coleridge made a new collection of his Poems in 1828, which added to the Early Poems and _Sibylline Leaves_ seventeen new pieces. The collection was published in three volumes by Pickering, and included _Remorse_, _Zapolya_, and _Wallenstein_. Coleridge made many careful revisions; his corrections are a study in verse making. Another edition was issued in 1829; and here again Coleridge made alterations in twenty-one of the poems, the chief of which were in the _Monody on the Death of Chatterton_. The last edition of Coleridge's Poems prepared during his life was that of 1834, in three volumes, but though the first volume was out in May, the third volume was not issued from the press till after his demise on 25th July. The corrections extend to twenty-three poems. Some are merely restorations of former readings; but they constitute a real difference from the text of 1829, and must be accepted as belonging to the Textus Receptus. Henry Nelson Coleridge superintended the edition, but it is not likely, as Dykes Campbell supposed, that he made the alterations, for Coleridge was continually readjusting his texts.

The remainder of Coleridge's life from 1829 was taken up with visits from his old friends, in composing a Commentary on the New Testament, writing marginalia on the English Divines, and holding his Thursday at-homes. In 1830 he published his noble pamphlet _On the Constitution of Church and State_. Many new friends flocked round the ageing poet, to be introduced to whose acquaintance was one of the highest literary treats of London life. Friendship had been the balm of Coleridge's life; he had had his estrangements and misunderstandings. But he knew well that

Friendship is a Sheltering Tree,

the pathos of which line can be appreciated only when we recall to mind that its writer had been denied the full enjoyment of the deeper friendship called Love.

A good sized volume could be compiled of all the contemporary accounts of Coleridge. We have already had some of these. Another we must add by a young American. Coleridge was highly appreciated on the other side of the Atlantic; his monument in Westminster Abbey was the gift of an American; and the late Emperor of Brazil was an admirer and student of Coleridge. The following account is taken from _The Nation_, an American literary journal, of 14th July 1910:

"Henry Blake McLellan was born at Maidstone, Essex County, Vt., September 16, 1810. He was the son of Isaac and Eliza McLellan of Boston, and the grandson of Gen. William Hull of Newton, Mass. After a preparatory course at the Boston Latin School, McLellan entered Harvard University in 1825, and graduated in 1829. He studied for the ministry at Andover, 1829-31, and then went on a tour, which included Great Britain, France, Germany, Italy, and Switzerland. He left America September 16, 1831; started on his return April 18, 1833, and landed at Boston June 12. Then came the tragic ending to a bright young life. Eight weeks after his return he was stricken by typhus, and died four weeks later, in his twenty-third year.

"Such was the young and ardent spirit who went to see Coleridge in the filial spirit in which a disciple might have sat at the feet of an ancient philosopher. He writes this simple and affecting account of the interview:

"'Saturday, April 27th, 1832.

"'Walked to Highgate to call on Mr. Coleridge. I was ushered into the parlor while the girl carried up my letter to his room. She presently returned, and observed that her master was very poorly, but would be happy to see me, if I would walk up to his room, which I gladly did. He is short in stature, and appeared to be careless in his dress. I was impressed with the strength of his expression, his venerable locks of white, and his trembling frame. He remarked that he had for some time past suffered much bodily anguish. For many months (thirteen) seventeen hours each day had he walked up and down his chamber. I inquired whether his mental powers were affected by such intense suffering; "Not at all," said he. "My body and head appear to hold no connexion; the pain of my body, blessed be God, never reaches my mind." After some further conversation, and some inquiries respecting Dr. Chalmers, he remarked, "The Doctor must have suffered exceedingly at the strange conduct of our once dear brother laborer in Christ, Rev. Mr. Irving. Never can I describe how much it has wrung my bosom. I had watched with astonishment and admiration the wonderful and rapid development of his powers. Never was such unexampled advance in intellect as between his first and second volume of sermons, the first full of Gallicisms and Scottisms, and all other cisms, the second discovering all the elegance and power of the best writers of the Elizabethan age. And then so sudden a fall, when his mighty energies made him so terrible to sinners." Of the mind of the celebrated Puffendorf he said, "his mind is like some mighty volcano, red with flame, and dark with tossing clouds of smoke, through which the lightnings play and glare most awfully." Speaking of the state of the different classes of England, he remarked, "We are in a dreadful state. Care, like a foul hag, sits on us all; one class presses with iron foot upon the wounded heads beneath, and all struggle for a worthless supremacy, and all to rise to it move shackled by their expenses; happy, happy are you to hold your birthright in a country where things are different; you, at least at present, are in a transition state; God grant it may ever be so! Sir, things have come to a dreadful pass with us; we need most deeply a reform, but I fear not the horrid reform which we shall have. Things must alter; the upper classes of England have made the lower persons _things_; the people in breaking from this unnatural state will break from duties also."

"'He spoke of Mr. Allston with great affection and high encomium; he thought him in imagination and color almost unrivalled (pp. 230-232).'"[144]

* * * * *

The letters of Coleridge written during his last years breathe a pious and tender melancholy, but they are few, and what have been published are fragmentary. On 18th March 1833 he wrote to John Sterling, who, in spite of Carlyle's assertion to the contrary, remained a disciple to the end: "With grief I tell you I have been, and now am, worse, far worse than when you left me. God have mercy on me, and not withdraw the influence of His Spirit from me!" Recommending Mr. Gillman's son for the Living of Leiston he wrote:

"I have known the Revd James Gillman from his Childhood, as having been from that time to this a trusted Inmate of the Household of his dear and exemplary Parents. I have followed his progress at weekly Intervals from his entrance into the Merchants' Taylors' School, and traced his continued improvements under the excellent Mr. Bellamy to his Removal, as Head Scholar, to St. John's College; and during his academic Career his Vacations were in the main passed under my eye.

"I was myself educated for the Church at Christ's Hospital, and sent from that honoured and unique Institution to Jesus College, Cambridge, under the tutorage and discipline of the Revd James Bowyer who has left an honoured name in the Church for the zeal and ability with which he formed and trained his Orphan Pupils to the Sacred Ministry, as Scholars, as Readers, as Preachers, and as sound Interpreters of the Word. May I add that I was the Junior Schoolfellow in the next place, the Protegé, and the Friend of the late venerated D^r Middleton, the first Bishop of Calcutta. And assuredly whatever under such Training and such Influence I learnt, or thro' a long life mainly devoted to Scriptural, Theological and Ecclesiastical Studies, I have been permitted to attain, I have been anxious to communicate to the Son of my dearest Friends, with little less than paternal Solicitude. And at all events I dare attest, that the Revd James Gillman is pure and blameless in morals and unexceptionable in manners, equally impressed with the importance of the Pastoral Duties as of the Labours of the Desk and the Pulpit: and that his mind is made up to preach the _whole_ truth in Christ."[145]

Coleridge was always a lover of children. From his earliest years he was interested in the weak and small things of the earth, or as he expressed it at the conclusion of his immortal poem,

All things both great and small,

which embraced more than the babes; and there is an innate connection between his solicitude for children and that sentimental love of the "bird and beast" which characterized his poetical period (_Brandl_, p. 102). We have seen how he took notice of the young haymakers on the Rhine Tour, and how he loved to call the children of his friends by endearing pet names, Puckinella and the like. The last letter Coleridge wrote was to a child, not yet able to read, to whom he had stood godfather.

LETTER 219. TO ADAM STEINMETZ KENNARD

To Adam Steinmetz Kennard,

My dear godchild,--I offer up the same fervent prayer for you now, as I did kneeling before the altar, when you were baptized into Christ, and solemnly received as a living member of his spiritual body, the church. Years must pass before you will be able to read with an understanding heart what I now write. But I trust that the all-gracious God, the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, the Father of mercies, who, by his only-begotten Son, (all mercies in one sovereign mercy!) has redeemed you from evil ground, and willed you to be born out of darkness, but into light; out of death, but into life; out of sin, but into righteousness; even into "the Lord our righteousness;" I trust that he will graciously hear the prayers of your dear parents, and be with you as the spirit of health and growth, in body and in mind. My dear godchild, you received from Christ's minister, at the baptismal font, as your Christian name, the name of a most dear friend of your father's, and who was to me even as a son, the late Adam Steinmetz, whose fervent aspirations, and paramount aim, even from early youth, was to be a Christian in thought, word, and deed; in will, mind, and affections. I too, your godfather, have known what the enjoyment and advantages of this life are, and what the more refined pleasures which learning and intellectual power can give; I now, on the eve of my departure, declare to you, and earnestly pray that you may hereafter live and act on the conviction, that health is a great blessing; competence, obtained by honourable industry, a great blessing; and a great blessing it is, to have kind, faithful, and loving friends and relatives; but that the greatest of all blessings, as it is the most ennobling of all privileges, is to be indeed a Christian. But I have been likewise, through a large portion of my later life, a sufferer, sorely affected with bodily pains, languor, and manifold infirmities, and for the last three or four years have, with few and brief intervals, been confined to a sick room, and at this moment, in great weakness and heaviness, write from a sick bed, hopeless of recovery, yet without prospect of a speedy removal. And I thus, on the brink of the grave, solemnly bear witness to you, that the Almighty Redeemer, most gracious in his promises to them that truly seek him, is faithful to perform what he has promised; and has reserved, under all pains and infirmities, the peace that passeth all understanding, with the supporting assurance of a reconciled God, who will not withdraw his spirit from me in the conflict, and in his own time will deliver me from the evil one. O my dear godchild! eminently blessed are they who begin _early_ to seek, fear, and love, their God, trusting wholly in the righteousness and mediation of their Lord, Redeemer, Saviour, and everlasting High Priest, Jesus Christ. Oh, preserve this as a legacy and bequest from your unseen godfather and friend,

S. T. COLERIDGE.[146]

July 13th, 1834, Grove, Highgate.

FOOTNOTES:

[143] [Coleridge in his youth was about five feet ten inches in height.]

[144] _Journal of a Residence in Scotland and Tour through England, France, Germany, Switzerland, and Italy._ With a Memoir of the Author and Extracts from his Religious Papers. Compiled by Isaac McLellan, jr., Boston, 1834.

[145] [_The Gillmans of Highgate_, p. 28.]

[146] [Letter CCLX of E. H. Coleridge's _Letters_ of S. T. C. is our No. 219.]

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