Reminiscences of Samuel Taylor Coleridge and Robert SoutheyCottle, Joseph
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Reminiscences of Samuel Taylor Coleridge and Robert Southey
Cottle, Joseph
Authors, English -- 19th century -- Biography; Coleridge, Samuel Taylor, 1772-1834; Southey, Robert, 1774-1843
Alas, repose was not made for man, nor man for repose! Mr. Coleridge at
this time little thought of the joys and sorrows, the vicissitudes of
life, and revolutions of feeling, with which he was ordained ere long to
contend! Inconveniences connected with his residence at Clevedon, not at
first taken into the calculation, now gradually unfolded themselves. The
place was too far from Bristol. It was difficult of access to friends;
and the neighbours were a little too tattling and inquisitive. And then
again, Mr. Coleridge could not well dispense with his literary
associates, and particularly with his access to that fine institution,
the Bristol City Library; and, in addition, as he was necessitated to
submit to frugal restraints, a walk to Bristol was rather a serious
undertaking; and a return the same day hardly to be accomplished, in the
failure of which, his "Sara," was lonely and uneasy; so that his friends
urged him to return once more to the place he had left; which he did,
forsaking, with reluctance, his rose-bound cottage, and taking up his
abode on Redcliff-hill. There was now some prospect that the printer's
types would be again set in motion, although it was quite proper that
they should remain in abeyance while so many grand events were
transpiring in the region of the domestic hearth. This was late in the
year 1795.
After Mr. Coleridge had been some little time settled in Bristol, he
experienced another removal. To exchange the country, and all the
beauties of nature, for pent-up rooms on Redcliff-hill, demanded from a
poet, sacrifices for which a few advantages would but ill compensate. In
this uneasy state of mind, Mr. C. received an invitation from his friend,
Mr. T. Poole, of Stowey, Somersetshire, to come and visit him in that
retired town, and to which place Mr. and Mrs. Coleridge repaired.
The volume of poems, that, in the presence of so many more important
affairs, had retired into shade, was now about to reappear, as will be
found by the following letter.
"Stowey,
My dear Cottle,
I feel it much, and very uncomfortable, that, loving you as a brother,
and feeling pleasure in pouring out my heart to you, I should so seldom
be able to write a letter to you, unconnected with business, and
uncontaminated with excuses and apologies. I give every moment I can
spare from my garden and the Reviews (i. e.) from my potatoes and meat to
the poem, (Religious Musings) but I go on slowly, for I torture the poem
and myself with corrections; and what I write in an hour, I sometimes
take two or three days in correcting. You may depend on it, the poem and
prefaces will take up exactly the number of pages I mentioned, and I am
extremely anxious to have the work as perfect as possible, and which I
cannot do, if it be finished immediately. The "Religious Musings" I have
altered monstrously, since I read them to you and received your
criticisms. I shall send them to you in my next. The Sonnets I will send
you with the Musings. God love you!
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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