Biographia Literaria

S >> Samuel Taylor Coleridge >> Biographia Literaria

Pages:
1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 | 6 | 7 | 8 | 9 | 10 | 11 | 12 | 13 | 14 | 15 | 16 | 17 | 18 | 19 | 20 | 21 | 22 | 23 | 24 | 25 | 26 | 27 | 28 | 29 | 30 | 31 | 32

The first lesson of philosophic discipline is to wean the student's
attention from the degrees of things, which alone form the vocabulary
of common life, and to direct it to the kind abstracted from degree.
Thus the chemical student is taught not to be startled at
disquisitions on the heat in ice, or on latent and fixible light. In
such discourse the instructor has no other alternative than either to
use old words with new meanings (the plan adopted by Darwin in his
Zoonomia;) or to introduce new terms, after the example of Linnaeus,
and the framers of the present chemical nomenclature. The latter mode
is evidently preferable, were it only that the former demands a
twofold exertion of thought in one and the same act. For the reader,
or hearer, is required not only to learn and bear in mind the new
definition; but to unlearn, and keep out of his view, the old and
habitual meaning; a far more difficult and perplexing task, and for
which the mere semblance of eschewing pedantry seems to me an
inadequate compensation. Where, indeed, it is in our power to recall
an unappropriate term that had without sufficient reason become
obsolete, it is doubtless a less evil to restore than to coin anew.
Thus to express in one word all that appertains to the perception,
considered as passive and merely recipient, I have adopted from our
elder classics the word sensuous; because sensual is not at present
used, except in a bad sense, or at least as a moral distinction; while
sensitive and sensible would each convey a different meaning. Thus too
have I followed Hooker, Sanderson, Milton and others, in designating
the immediateness of any act or object of knowledge by the word
intuition, used sometimes subjectively, sometimes objectively, even as
we use the word, thought; now as the thought, or act of thinking, and
now as a thought, or the object of our reflection; and we do this
without confusion or obscurity. The very words, objective and
subjective, of such constant recurrence in the schools of yore, I have
ventured to re-introduce, because I could not so briefly or
conveniently by any more familiar terms distinguish the percipere from
the percipi. Lastly, I have cautiously discriminated the terms, the
reason, and the understanding, encouraged and confirmed by the
authority of our genuine divines and philosophers, before the
Revolution.

------both life, and sense,
Fancy and understanding; whence the soul
Reason receives, and reason is her bring,
Discursive or intuitive: discourse [32]
Is oftest yours, the latter most is ours,
Differing but in degree, in kind the same.

I say, that I was confirmed by authority so venerable: for I had
previous and higher motives in my own conviction of the importance,
nay, of the necessity of the distinction, as both an indispensable
condition and a vital part of all sound speculation in metaphysics,
ethical or theological. To establish this distinction was one main
object of The Friend; if even in a biography of my own literary life I
can with propriety refer to a work, which was printed rather than
published, or so published that it had been well for the unfortunate
author, if it had remained in manuscript. I have even at this time
bitter cause for remembering that, which a number of my subscribers
have but a trifling motive for forgetting. This effusion might have
been spared; but I would fain flatter myself, that the reader will be
less austere than an oriental professor of the bastinado, who during
an attempt to extort per argumentum baculinum a full confession from a
culprit, interrupted his outcry of pain by reminding him, that it was
"a mere digression!" "All this noise, Sir! is nothing to the point,
and no sort of answer to my questions!" "Ah! but," (replied the
sufferer,) "it is the most pertinent reply in nature to your blows."

An imprudent man of common goodness of heart cannot but wish to turn
even his imprudences to the benefit of others, as far as this is
possible. If therefore any one of the readers of this semi-narrative
should be preparing or intending a periodical work, I warn him, in the
first place, against trusting in the number of names on his
subscription list. For he cannot be certain that the names were put
down by sufficient authority; or, should that be ascertained, it still
remains to be known, whether they were not extorted by some over
zealous friend's importunity; whether the subscriber had not yielded
his name, merely from want of courage to answer, no; and with the
intention of dropping the work as soon as possible. One gentleman
procured me nearly a hundred names for THE FRIEND, and not only took
frequent opportunity to remind me of his success in his canvass, but
laboured to impress my mind with the sense of the obligation, I was
under to the subscribers; for, (as he very pertinently admonished me,)
"fifty-two shillings a year was a large sum to be bestowed on one
individual, where there were so many objects of charity with strong
claims to the assistance of the benevolent." Of these hundred patrons
ninety threw up the publication before the fourth number, without any
notice; though it was well known to them, that in consequence of the
distance, and the slowness and irregularity of the conveyance, I was
compelled to lay in a stock of stamped paper for at least eight weeks
beforehand; each sheet of which stood me in five pence previously to
its arrival at my printer's; though the subscription money was not to
be received till the twenty-first week after the commencement of the
work; and lastly, though it was in nine cases out of ten impracticable
for me to receive the money for two or three numbers without paying an
equal sum for the postage.

In confirmation of my first caveat, I will select one fact among many.
On my list of subscribers, among a considerable number of names
equally flattering, was that of an Earl of Cork, with his address. He
might as well have been an Earl of Bottle, for aught I knew of him,
who had been content to reverence the peerage in abstracto, rather
than in concretis. Of course THE FRIEND was regularly sent as far, if
I remember right, as the eighteenth number; that is, till a fortnight
before the subscription was to be paid. And lo! just at this time I
received a letter from his Lordship, reproving me in language far more
lordly than courteous for my impudence in directing my pamphlets to
him, who knew nothing of me or my work! Seventeen or eighteen numbers
of which, however, his Lordship was pleased to retain, probably for
the culinary or post-culinary conveniences of his servants.

Secondly, I warn all others from the attempt to deviate from the
ordinary mode of publishing a work by the trade. I thought indeed,
that to the purchaser it was indifferent, whether thirty per cent of
the purchase-money went to the booksellers or to the government; and
that the convenience of receiving the work by the post at his own door
would give the preference to the latter. It is hard, I own, to have
been labouring for years, in collecting and arranging the materials;
to have spent every shilling that could be spared after the
necessaries of life had been furnished, in buying books, or in
journeys for the purpose of consulting them or of acquiring facts at
the fountain head; then to buy the paper, pay for the printing, and
the like, all at least fifteen per cent beyond what the trade would
have paid; and then after all to give thirty per cent not of the net
profits, but of the gross results of the sale, to a man who has merely
to give the books shelf or warehouse room, and permit his apprentice
to hand them over the counter to those who may ask for them; and this
too copy by copy, although, if the work be on any philosophical or
scientific subject, it may be years before the edition is sold off.
All this, I confess, must seem a hardship, and one, to which the
products of industry in no other mode of exertion are subject. Yet
even this is better, far better, than to attempt in any way to unite
the functions of author and publisher. But the most prudent mode is to
sell the copy-right, at least of one or more editions, for the most
that the trade will offer. By few only can a large remuneration be
expected; but fifty pounds and ease of mind are of more real advantage
to a literary man, than the chance of five hundred with the certainty
of insult and degrading anxieties. I shall have been grievously
misunderstood, if this statement should be interpreted as written with
the desire of detracting from the character of booksellers or
publishers. The individuals did not make the laws and customs of their
trade, but, as in every other trade, take them as they find them. Till
the evil can be proved to be removable, and without the substitution
of an equal or greater inconvenience, it were neither wise nor manly
even to complain of it. But to use it as a pretext for speaking, or
even for thinking, or feeling, unkindly or opprobriously of the
tradesmen, as individuals, would be something worse than unwise or
even than unmanly; it would be immoral and calumnious. My motives
point in a far different direction and to far other objects, as will
be seen in the conclusion of the chapter.

A learned and exemplary old clergyman, who many years ago went to his
reward followed by the regrets and blessings of his flock, published
at his own expense two volumes octavo, entitled, A NEW THEORY OF
REDEMPTION. The work was most severely handled in THE MONTHLY or
CRITICAL REVIEW, I forget which; and this unprovoked hostility became
the good old man's favourite topic of conversation among his friends.
"Well!" (he used to exclaim,) "in the second edition, I shall have an
opportunity of exposing both the ignorance and the malignity of the
anonymous critic." Two or three years however passed by without any
tidings from the bookseller, who had undertaken the printing and
publication of the work, and who was perfectly at his ease, as the
author was known to be a man of large property. At length the accounts
were written for; and in the course of a few weeks they were presented
by the rider for the house, in person. My old friend put on his
spectacles, and holding the scroll with no very firm hand, began--
"Paper, so much: O moderate enough--not at all beyond my expectation!
Printing, so much: well! moderate enough! Stitching, covers,
advertisements, carriage, and so forth, so much."--Still nothing
amiss. Selleridge (for orthography is no necessary part of a
bookseller's literary acquirements) L3. 3s. "Bless me! only three
guineas for the what d'ye call it--the selleridge?" "No more, Sir!"
replied the rider. "Nay, but that is too moderate!" rejoined my old
friend. "Only three guineas for selling a thousand copies of a work in
two volumes?" "O Sir!" (cries the young traveller) "you have mistaken
the word. There have been none of them sold; they have been sent back
from London long ago; and this L3. 3s. is for the cellaridge, or
warehouse-room in our book cellar." The work was in consequence
preferred from the ominous cellar of the publisher's to the author's
garret; and, on presenting a copy to an acquaintance, the old
gentleman used to tell the anecdote with great humour and still
greater good nature.

With equal lack of worldly knowledge, I was a far more than equal
sufferer for it, at the very outset of my authorship. Toward the close
of the first year from the time, that in an inauspicious hour I left
the friendly cloisters, and the happy grove of quiet, ever honoured
Jesus College, Cambridge, I was persuaded by sundry philanthropists
and Anti-polemists to set on foot a periodical work, entitled THE
WATCHMAN, that, according to the general motto of the work, all might
know the truth, and that the truth might make us free! In order to
exempt it from the stamp-tax, and likewise to contribute as little as
possible to the supposed guilt of a war against freedom, it was to be
published on every eighth day, thirty-two pages, large octavo, closely
printed, and price only four-pence. Accordingly with a flaming
prospectus,--"Knowledge is Power," "To cry the state of the political
atmosphere,"--and so forth, I set off on a tour to the North, from
Bristol to Sheffield, for the purpose of procuring customers,
preaching by the way in most of the great towns, as an hireless
volunteer, in a blue coat and white waistcoat, that not a rag of the
woman of Babylon might be seen on me. For I was at that time and long
after, though a Trinitarian (that is ad normam Platonis) in
philosophy, yet a zealous Unitarian in religion; more accurately, I
was a Psilanthropist, one of those who believe our Lord to have been
the real son of Joseph, and who lay the main stress on the
resurrection rather than on the crucifixion. O! never can I remember
those days with either shame or regret. For I was most sincere, most
disinterested. My opinions were indeed in many and most important
points erroneous; but my heart was single. Wealth, rank, life itself
then seemed cheap to me, compared with the interests of what I
believed to be the truth, and the will of my Maker. I cannot even
accuse myself of having been actuated by vanity; for in the expansion
of my enthusiasm I did not think of myself at all.

My campaign commenced at Birmingham; and my first attack was on a
rigid Calvinist, a tallow-chandler by trade. He was a tall dingy man,
in whom length was so predominant over breadth, that he might almost
have been borrowed for a foundery poker. O that face! a face kat'
emphasin! I have it before me at this moment. The lank, black, twine-
like hair, pingui-nitescent, cut in a straight line along the black
stubble of his thin gunpowder eye-brows, that looked like a scorched
after-math from a last week's shaving. His coat collar behind in
perfect unison, both of colour and lustre, with the coarse yet glib
cordage, which I suppose he called his hair, and which with a bend
inward at the nape of the neck,--the only approach to flexure in his
whole figure,--slunk in behind his waistcoat; while the countenance
lank, dark, very hard, and with strong perpendicular furrows, gave me
a dim notion of some one looking at me through a used gridiron, all
soot, grease, and iron! But he was one of the thorough-bred, a true
lover of liberty, and, as I was informed, had proved to the
satisfaction of many, that Mr. Pitt was one of the horns of the second
beast in THE REVELATIONS, that spake as a dragon. A person, to whom
one of my letters of recommendation had been addressed, was my
introducer. It was a new event in my life, my first stroke in the new
business I had undertaken of an author, yea, and of an author trading
on his own account. My companion after some imperfect sentences and a
multitude of hums and has abandoned the cause to his client; and I
commenced an harangue of half an hour to Phileleutheros, the tallow-
chandler, varying my notes, through the whole gamut of eloquence, from
the ratiocinative to the declamatory, and in the latter from the
pathetic to the indignant. I argued, I described, I promised, I
prophesied; and beginning with the captivity of nations I ended with
the near approach of the millennium, finishing the whole with some of
my own verses describing that glorious state out of the Religious
Musings:

------Such delights
As float to earth, permitted visitants!
When in some hour of solemn jubilee
The massive gates of Paradise are thrown
Wide open, and forth come in fragments wild
Sweet echoes of unearthly melodies,
And odours snatched from beds of amaranth,
And they, that from the crystal river of life
Spring up on freshened wing, ambrosial gales!

My taper man of lights listened with perseverant and praiseworthy
patience, though, as I was afterwards told, on complaining of certain
gales that were not altogether ambrosial, it was a melting day with
him. "And what, Sir," he said, after a short pause, "might the cost
be?" "Only four-pence,"--(O! how I felt the anti-climax, the abysmal
bathos of that four-pence!)--"only four-pence, Sir, each number, to be
published on every eighth day."--"That comes to a deal of money at the
end of a year. And how much, did you say, there was to be for the
money?"--"Thirty-two pages, Sir, large octavo, closely printed."--
"Thirty and two pages? Bless me! why except what I does in a family
way on the Sabbath, that's more than I ever reads, Sir! all the year
round. I am as great a one, as any man in Brummagem, Sir! for liberty
and truth and all them sort of things, but as to this,--no offence, I
hope, Sir,--I must beg to be excused."

So ended my first canvass: from causes that I shall presently mention,
I made but one other application in person. This took place at
Manchester to a stately and opulent wholesale dealer in cottons. He
took my letter of introduction, and, having perused it, measured me
from head to foot and again from foot to head, and then asked if I had
any bill or invoice of the thing. I presented my prospectus to him. He
rapidly skimmed and hummed over the first side, and still more rapidly
the second and concluding page; crushed it within his fingers and the
palm of his hand; then most deliberately and significantly rubbed and
smoothed one part against the other; and lastly putting it into his
pocket turned his back on me with an "over-run with these articles!"
and so without another syllable retired into his counting house. And,
I can truly say, to my unspeakable amusement.

This, I have said, was my second and last attempt. On returning
baffled from the first, in which I had vainly essayed to repeat the
miracle of Orpheus with the Brummagem patriot, I dined with the
tradesman who had introduced me to him. After dinner he importuned me
to smoke a pipe with him, and two or three other illuminati of the
same rank. I objected, both because I was engaged to spend the evening
with a minister and his friends, and because I had never smoked except
once or twice in my lifetime, and then it was herb tobacco mixed with
Oronooko. On the assurance, however, that the tobacco was equally
mild, and seeing too that it was of a yellow colour; not forgetting
the lamentable difficulty, I have always experienced, in saying, "No,"
and in abstaining from what the people about me were doing,--I took
half a pipe, filling the lower half of the bowl with salt. I was soon
however compelled to resign it, in consequence of a giddiness and
distressful feeling in my eyes, which, as I had drunk but a single
glass of ale, must, I knew, have been the effect of the tobacco. Soon
after, deeming myself recovered, I sallied forth to my engagement; but
the walk and the fresh air brought on all the symptoms again, and, I
had scarcely entered the minister's drawing-room, and opened a small
pacquet of letters, which he had received from Bristol for me; ere I
sank back on the sofa in a sort of swoon rather than sleep.
Fortunately I had found just time enough to inform him of the confused
state of my feelings, and of the occasion. For here and thus I lay, my
face like a wall that is white-washing, deathly pale and with the cold
drops of perspiration running down it from my forehead, while one
after another there dropped in the different gentlemen, who had been
invited to meet, and spend the evening with me, to the number of from
fifteen to twenty. As the poison of tobacco acts but for a short time,
I at length awoke from insensibility, and looked round on the party,
my eyes dazzled by the candles which had been lighted in the interim.
By way of relieving my embarrassment one of the gentlemen began the
conversation, with "Have you seen a paper to-day, Mr. Coleridge?"
"Sir!" I replied, rubbing my eyes, "I am far from convinced, that a
Christian is permitted to read either newspapers or any other works of
merely political and temporary interest." This remark, so ludicrously
inapposite to, or rather, incongruous with, the purpose, for which I
was known to have visited Birmingham, and to assist me in which they
were all then met, produced an involuntary and general burst of
laughter; and seldom indeed have I passed so many delightful hours, as
I enjoyed in that room from the moment of that laugh till an early
hour the next morning. Never, perhaps, in so mixed and numerous a
party have I since heard conversation, sustained with such animation,
enriched with such variety of information and enlivened with such a
flow of anecdote. Both then and afterwards they all joined in
dissuading me from proceeding with my scheme; assured me in the most
friendly and yet most flattering expressions, that neither was the
employment fit for me, nor I fit for the employment. Yet, if I
determined on persevering in it, they promised to exert themselves to
the utmost to procure subscribers, and insisted that I should make no
more applications in person, but carry on the canvass by proxy. The
same hospitable reception, the same dissuasion, and, that failing, the
same kind exertions in my behalf, I met with at Manchester, Derby,
Nottingham, Sheffield,--indeed, at every place in which I took up my
sojourn. I often recall with affectionate pleasure the many
respectable men who interested themselves for me, a perfect stranger
to them, not a few of whom I can still name among my friends. They
will bear witness for me how opposite even then my principles were to
those of Jacobinism or even of democracy, and can attest the strict
accuracy of the statement which I have left on record in the tenth and
eleventh numbers of THE FRIEND.

From this rememberable tour I returned with nearly a thousand names on
the subscription list of THE WATCHMAN; yet more than half convinced,
that prudence dictated the abandonment of the scheme. But for this
very reason I persevered in it; for I was at that period of my life so
completely hag-ridden by the fear of being influenced by selfish
motives, that to know a mode of conduct to be the dictate of prudence
was a sort of presumptive proof to my feelings, that the contrary was
the dictate of duty. Accordingly, I commenced the work, which was
announced in London by long bills in letters larger than had ever been
seen before, and which, I have been informed, for I did not see them
myself, eclipsed the glories even of the lottery puffs. But alas! the
publication of the very first number was delayed beyond the day
announced for its appearance. In the second number an essay against
fast days, with a most censurable application of a text from Isaiah
for its motto, lost me near five hundred of my subscribers at one
blow. In the two following numbers I made enemies of all my Jacobin
and democratic patrons; for, disgusted by their infidelity, and their
adoption of French morals with French psilosophy; and perhaps
thinking, that charity ought to begin nearest home; Instead of abusing
the government and the Aristocrats chiefly or entirely, as had been
expected of me, I levelled my attacks at "modern patriotism," and even
ventured to declare my belief, that whatever the motives of ministers
might have been for the sedition, or as it was then the fashion to
call them, the gagging bills, yet the bills themselves would produce
an effect to be desired by all the true friends of freedom, as far as
they should contribute to deter men from openly declaiming on
subjects, the principles of which they had never bottomed and from
"pleading to the poor and ignorant, instead of pleading for them." At
the same time I avowed my conviction, that national education and a
concurring spread of the Gospel were the indispensable condition of
any true political melioration. Thus by the time the seventh number
was published, I had the mortification--(but why should I say this,
when in truth I cared too little for any thing that concerned my
worldly interests to be at all mortified about it?)--of seeing the
preceding numbers exposed in sundry old iron shops for a penny a
piece. At the ninth number I dropt the work. But from the London
publisher I could not obtain a shilling; he was a ------ and set me at
defiance. From other places I procured but little, and after such
delays as rendered that little worth nothing; and I should have been
inevitably thrown into jail by my Bristol printer, who refused to wait
even for a month, for a sum between eighty and ninety pounds, if the
money had not been paid for me by a man by no means affluent, a dear
friend, who attached himself to me from my first arrival at Bristol,
who has continued my friend with a fidelity unconquered by time or
even by my own apparent neglect; a friend from whom I never received
an advice that was not wise, nor a remonstrance that was not gentle
and affectionate.

Conscientiously an opponent of the first revolutionary war, yet with
my eyes thoroughly opened to the true character and impotence of the
favourers of revolutionary principles in England, principles which I
held in abhorrence,--(for it was part of my political creed, that
whoever ceased to act as an individual by making himself a member of
any society not sanctioned by his Government, forfeited the rights of
a citizen)--a vehement Anti-Ministerialist, but after the invasion of
Switzerland, a more vehement Anti-Gallican, and still more intensely
an Anti-Jacobin, I retired to a cottage at Stowey, and provided for my
scanty maintenance by writing verses for a London Morning Paper. I saw
plainly, that literature was not a profession, by which I could expect
to live; for I could not disguise from myself, that, whatever my
talents might or might not be in other respects, yet they were not of
the sort that could enable me to become a popular writer; and that
whatever my opinions might be in themselves, they were almost equi-
distant from all the three prominent parties, the Pittites, the
Foxites, and the Democrats. Of the unsaleable nature of my writings I
had an amusing memento one morning from our own servant girl. For
happening to rise at an earlier hour than usual, I observed her
putting an extravagant quantity of paper into the grate in order to
light the fire, and mildly checked her for her wastefulness; "La,
Sir!" (replied poor Nanny) "why, it is only Watchmen."

Pages:
1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 | 6 | 7 | 8 | 9 | 10 | 11 | 12 | 13 | 14 | 15 | 16 | 17 | 18 | 19 | 20 | 21 | 22 | 23 | 24 | 25 | 26 | 27 | 28 | 29 | 30 | 31 | 32