The Life of Samuel Taylor Coleridge: 1838Gillman, James
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The Life of Samuel Taylor Coleridge: 1838
Gillman, James
Coleridge, Samuel Taylor, 1772-1834; Critics -- Great Britain -- Biography; Poets, English -- 19th century -- Biography
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, and French philosophy, 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 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 amelioration. 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 dropped the work." He never recovered the
money of his London publisher, and but little from his subscribers,
and as he goes on to say:--"Must have been thrown into jail by my
printer, 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 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 gentle and affectionate." (p. 177.)
Coleridge's reputation from boyhood quietly increased, not through the
favor, but the censure of reviewers. It was this which, contrary to
their wishes, diffused his name as poet and philosopher. So long as
there are readers to be gratified by calumny, there will always be found
writers eager to furnish a supply; and he had other enemies,
unacquainted with the critical profession, yet morbidly vain, and
because disappointed in their literary hopes, no less malignant.
Alas! how painful it is to witness at times the operation of some of the
human passions.--Should envy take the lead, her twin sisters, hatred and
malice, follow as auxiliaries in her train,--and, in the struggles for
ascendancy and extension of her power, she subverts those principles
which might impede her path, and then speedily effects the destruction
of all the kindly feelings most honourable to man.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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