1 |
It seems well to give Godwin’s correspondence with Coleridge during 1800 without break. The play therein mentioned was “Antonio,” represented at Drury Lane, and damned, of which more will be said hereafter.
“My dear Sir,—To-morrow and Friday business rises almost above smothering point with me, over chin and mouth! but on Saturday evening I shall be perfectly at leisure, and shall calendar an evening apart with you on so interesting a subject among my ‘Noctes Atticæ.’ If this do not suit your engagements, mention any other day, and I will make it suit mine.—Yours with esteem,
“P.S.—How many thousand
letter-writers will in the first fortnight of this month write a 7 first,
and then transmogrify it into an 8, in the dates of their letters! I like
to catch myself doing that which involves any identity of the human race.
Hence I like to talk of the weather, and in the fall never omit observing,
2 | WILLIAM GODWIN |
“Dear Godwin,—The punch, after the wine, made me tipsy last night. This I mention, not that my head aches, or that I felt, after I quitted you, any unpleasantness or titubancy; but because tipsiness has, and has always, one unpleasant effect—that of making me talk very extravagantly; and as, when sober, I talk extravagantly enough for any common tipsiness, it becomes a matter of nicety in discrimination to know when I am or am not affected. An idea starts up in my head,—away I follow through thick and thin, wood and marsh, brake and briar, with all the apparent interest of a man who was defending one of his old and long-established principles. Exactly of this kind was the conversation with which I quitted you. I do not believe it possible for a human being to have a greater horror of the feelings that usually accompany such principles as I then supposed, or a deeper conviction of their irrationality, than myself; but the whole thinking of my life will not bear me up against the accidental crowd and press of my mind, when it is elevated beyond its natural pitch. We shall talk wiselier with the ladies on Tuesday. God bless you, and give your dear little ones a kiss a-piece from me.—Yours with affectionate esteem,
“Dear Godwin,—I received
your letter this morning, and had I not, still I am almost confident that I
should have written to you before the end of the week. Hitherto the translation
of the Wallenstein has
prevented me; not that it so engrossed my time, but that it wasted and
depressed my spirits, and left a sense of
CORRESPONDENCE WITH COLERIDGE. | 3 |
4 | WILLIAM GODWIN |
“I received yesterday a letter from Southey. He arrived at Lisbon, after a prosperous voyage, on the last day of April. His letter to me is dated May-Day. He girds up his loins for a great history of Portugal, which will be translated into the Portuguese in the first year of the Lusitanian Republic.
“Have you seen Mrs Robinson lately? How is she? Remember me in the kindest and most respectful phrases to her. I wish I knew the particulars of her complaint. For Davy has discovered a perfectly new acid, by which he has restored the use of limbs to persons who had lost them for years (one woman 9 years) in cases of supposed rheumatism. At all events, Davy says it can do no harm in Mrs Robinson’s case, and if she will try it, he will make up a little parcel, and write her a letter of instructions, &c. . . .
“God bless you.—Yours sincerely affectionate,
“Sara desires to be kindly remembered to you, and sends a kiss to Fanny and ‘dear meek little Mary.’”
“Dear Coleridge,—You
scarcely expected a letter from me of the above date. But I received last
September an invitation from John Philpot
Curran, the Irish barrister, probably the first advocate in
Europe, then in London, to spend a few weeks with him in Ireland this summer,
which I did not feel in myself philosophy enough to resist. Nor do I repent my
compliance. The advantages one derives from placing the sole of one’s
foot on a foreign soil are extremely great. Few men, on such an occasion, think
it worth their while to put on armour for your encounter. I know Fox and Sheridan, but can scarce consider them as my acquaintance. Your
next door neighbour, before he admits you to his familiarity, considers how far
he should like to have you for his familiar for the next seven years. But
familiarity with a foreign
CHARACTER OF CURRAN. | 5 |
“Curran I admire extremely. There is scarcely the man on earth with whom I ever felt myself so entirely at my ease, or so little driven back, from time to time, to consider of my own miserable individual. He is perpetually a staff and a cordial, without ever affecting to be either. The being never lived who was more perfectly free from every species of concealment. With great genius, at least a rich and inexhaustible imagination, he never makes me stand in awe of him, and bow as to my acknowledged superior, a thing by-the-by which, de temps à d’autre, you compel me to do. He amuses me always, astonishes me often, yet naturally and irresistibly inspires me with confidence. I am apt, particularly when away from home, to feel forlorn and dispirited. The two last days I spent from him, and though they were employed most enviably in tête à tête with Grattan, I began to feel dejected and home-sick. But Curran has joined me to-day, and poured into my bosom a full portion of his irresistible kindness and gaiety.
“You will acknowledge these are extraordinary traits.
Yet Curran is far from a faultless and
perfect character. Immersed for many years in a perpetual whirl of business, he
has no profoundness or philosophy. He has a great share of the Irish
character—dashing, étourdi, coarse,
vulgar, impatient, fierce, kittenish. He has no characteristic delicacy, no
intuitive and instant commerce with the sublime features of nature. Ardent in a
memorable degree, and a patriot from the most generous impulse, he has none of
that political chemistry which Burke so
admirably describes (I forget his words), that resolves and combines, and
embraces distant nations and future ages. He is inconsistent in the most
whimsical degree. I remember, in an amicable debate with Sheridan, in which
Sheridan far outwent him in refinement, penetration,
and taste, he three times surrendered his arms, acknowledged
6 | WILLIAM GODWIN |
“Dear Godwin,—There are
vessels every week from Dublin to Workington, which place is 16 miles from my
house, through a divine country, but these are idle regrets. I know not the
nature of your present pursuits, whether or no they are such as to require the
vicinity of large and curious libraries. If you were engaged in any work of
imagination or reasoning, not biographical, not historical, I should repeat and
urge my invitation, after my wife’s confinement. Our house is situated on
a rising ground, not two furlongs from Keswick, about as much from the Lake
Derwentwater, and about two miles from the Lake Bassenthwaite—both lakes and
mountains we command. The river Greta runs behind our house, and before it too,
and Skiddaw is behind us—not half a mile distant, indeed just distant enough to
enable us to view it as a Whole. The garden, orchards, fields, and immediate
country all delightful. I have, or have the use of, no inconsiderable
collection of books. In my library you will find all the
Poets and
COLERIDGE AT KESWICK. | 7 |
8 | WILLIAM GODWIN |
“Hartley is well, and all life and action.—Yours, with unfeigned esteem,
“Kisses for Mary and Fanny. God
love them! I wish you would come and look out for a house for yourself
here. You
ON BAPTISM. | 9 |
“Dear Godwin,—I received your letter, and with it the enclosed note, which shall be punctually re-delivered to you on the 1st October.
“Your tragedy to be exhibited at Christmas! I have indeed merely read your letter, so it is not strange that my heart still continues beating out of time. Indeed, indeed, Godwin, such a stream of hope and fear rushed in on me, when I read the sentence, as you would not permit yourself to feel. If there be anything yet undreamed of in our philosophy; if it be, or if it be possible, that thought can impel thought out of the visual limit of a man’s own skull and heart; if the clusters of ideas, which constitute our identity, do ever connect and unite with a greater whole; if feelings could ever propagate themselves without the servile ministrations of undulating air or reflected light—I seem to feel within myself a strength and a power of desire that might dart a modifying, commanding impulse on a whole theatre. What does all this mean? Alas! that sober sense should know no other to construe all this, except by the tame phrase, I wish you success. . . .”
[In a previous letter not here given he had begged Godwin to stand godfather to his child. The compliment was of course declined.]
“Your feelings respecting Baptism are, I suppose, much
like mine! At times I dwell on Man with such reverence, resolve all his follies
and superstitions into such grand primary laws of intellect, and in such wise
so contemplate them as ever-varying incarnations of the Eternal Life—that the
Llama’s dung-pellet, or the cow-tail which the dying Brahmin clutches
convulsively, become sanctified and sublime by the feelings which cluster round
them. In that mood I exclaim, my boys shall be christened! But then another fit
of moody philosophy attacks me. I look at my doted-on Hartley—he moves, he lives, he finds impulses
from within
10 | WILLIAM GODWIN |
“My wife is now quite comfortable. Surely you might
come and spend the very next four weeks, not without advantage to both of us.
The very glory of the place is coming on. The local Genius is just arranging
himself in his highest attributes. But above all, I press it, because my mind
has been busied with speculations that are closely connected with those
pursuits which have hitherto constituted your utility and importance; and
ardently as I wish you success on the stage, I yet cannot frame myself to the
thought that you should cease to appear as a bold moral
thinker. I wish you to write a book on the power of the words, and the
processes by which the human feelings form affinities with them. In short, I
wish you to philosophize Horne
Tooke’s system, and to solve the great questions, whether
there be reason to hold that an action bearing all the semblance of
pre-designing consciousness may yet be simply organic, and whether a series of
such actions are possible? And close on the heels of this question would
follow, Is Logic the Essence of Thinking? In other
words, Is Thinking impossible without arbitrary signs?
And how far is the word ‘arbitrary’ a misnomer? Are not words,
&c., parts and germinations of the plant? And what is the law of their
growth? In something of this sort I would endeavour to destroy the old
antithesis of Words and Things; elevating, as it were, Words into
LYRICAL BALLADS. | 11 |
“I was in the country when Wallenstein was published. Longman sent me down half-a-dozen. The carriage back, the book was not worth.”
“Dear Godwin,—I have been myself too frequently a grievous delinquent in the article of letter-writing to feel any inclination to reproach my friends when peradventure they have been long silent. But, this is out of the question. I did not expect a speedier answer, for I had anticipated the circumstances which you assign as the causes of your delay.
“An attempt to finish a poem of mine for insertion in
the second volume of the ‘Lyrical Ballads’ has thrown me so fearfully back in my
bread-and-beef occupations, that I shall scarcely be able to justify myself in
putting you to the expense of the few lines which I may be able to scrawl on
the present paper; but some parts in your letter interested me deeply, and I
wished to tell you so. First, then, you know Kemble, and I do not. But my conjectural judgments concerning
his character lead me to persuade an absolute, passive obedience to his
opinions; and this, too, because I would leave to every man his own trade. Your
trade has been in the present instance, 1st, To furnish a wise pleasure to your
fellow-beings in general; and 2dly, to give to Mr Kemble
and his associates the means of themselves delighting that part of your
fellow-beings assembled in a theatre. As to what relates to the first point, I
should be sorry indeed if greater men than Mr Kemble could
induce you to alter a ‘but’ to a ‘yet,’ contrary to
your own convictions. Above all things, an author ought to be sincere to the
public; and when William Godwin stands
in the
12 | WILLIAM GODWIN |
“If it be possible, come therefore, and let us discuss every page and every line. The time depends of course on the day fixed for the representation of the piece.
“Now for something which I would fain believe is still
more important, namely the property of your philosophical speculations. Your
second objection, derived from the present ebb of opinion, will be best
answered by the fact that Mackintosh and
his followers have the flow. This is greatly in your
favour, for mankind are at present gross reasoners. They reason in a perpetual
antithesis; Mackintosh is an oracle, and Godwin therefore a fool. Now it is morally
impossible that Mackintosh and the sophists of his school
can retain this opinion. You may well exclaim with Job, ‘O that my
adversary would write a book!’ When he publishes, it will be all
over with him, and then the minds of men will incline strongly to those who
would point out in intellectual perceptions a source of moral progressiveness.
Every man in his heart is in favour of your general principles. A party of
dough-baked democrats of fortune were weary of being dissevered from their
fellow rich men. They want to say something in defence of turning round.
Mackintosh puts that something into their mouths, and
for awhile they will admire and be-praise him. In a little while these men will
have fallen back into the ranks from which they had stepped out, and life is
too
SYSTEM OF GEOGRAPHY. | 13 |
“I would gladly write any verses, but to a prologue or epilogue I am utterly incompetent. . . . .”
“Dear Godwin.—The cause
of my not giving you that immediate explanation which you requested, was merely
your own intimation that you could attend to nothing until the fate of your
‘Melpomene,’ was decided. The plan was this: a system of
Geography, taught by a re-writing of the most celebrated Travels into the
different climates of the world, choosing for each climate one Traveller, but
interspersing among his adventures all that was interesting in incident or
observation from all former or after travellers or voyagers: annexing to each
travel a short essay, pointing out what facts in it illustrate what laws of
mind, &c. If a bookseller of spirit would undertake this work, I have no
doubt of its being a standard school-book. It should be as large
14 | WILLIAM GODWIN |
“One phrase in your letter distressed me. You say that much of your tranquillity depends on the coming hour. I hope that this does not allude to any immediate embarrassment. If not, I should cry out against you loudly. The motto which I prefixed to my tragedy when I sent it to the manager, I felt, and I continue to feel.
“‘Valeat res scenica, si me
‘Palma negata mærum, donata reducit
opimum.’ |
“The success of a tragedy in the present size of the
theatres (‘Pizarro’ is a pantomime) is in my humble opinion rather
improbable than probable. What tragedy has succeeded for the last 15 years? You
will probably answer the question by
COLERIDGE’S ILL-HEALTH. | 15 |
“My darling Hartley has been ill, but is now better. My youngest is a fat little creature, not unlike your Mary. God love you and
“P.S.—Do you continue to see dear Charles Lamb often? Talking of tragedies, at every perusal my love and admiration of his play rises a peg. C. Lloyd is settled at Ambleside, but I have not seen him. I have no wish to see him, and likewise no wish not to see him.”
“Dear Godwin.—I received
the newspaper with a beating heart, and laid it down with a heavy one. But
cheerily, friend! it is worth something to have learnt what will not please.
16 | WILLIAM GODWIN |
“If your interest in the theatre is not ruined by the fate of this, your first piece, take heart, set instantly about a new one, and if you want a glowing subject, take the death of Myrza as related in the Holstein Ambassador’s Travels into Persia, in p. 93, vol ii. of ‘Harris’s Collections.’ There is crowd, character, passion, incident and pageantry in it; and the history is so little known that you may take what liberties you like without danger.
“It is my present purpose to spend the two or three weeks after the Christmas holidays in London. Then we can discuss all and everything. Your last play wanted one thing which I believe is almost indispensable in a play—a proper rogue, in the cutting of whose throat the audience may take an unmingled interest.
“We are all tolerably well. God love you, and
“P.S.—There is a paint, the first coating of which, put on paper, becomes a dingy black, but the second time to a bright gold colour. So I say—Put on a second coating, friend!”
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