Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine — Volume 57, No. 351, January 1845
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Considering the exquisite quality of some poems which Coleridge has composed, nobody can grieve (or has grieved) more than ourselves, at seeing so beautiful a fountain choked up with weeds. But had Coleridge been a happier man, it is our fixed belief that we should have had far less of his philosophy, and perhaps, but not certainly, might have had more of his general literature. In the estimate of the public, doubtless, that will seem a bad exchange. Every man to his taste. Meantime, what we wish to show is, that the loss was not absolute, but merely relative.
It is urged, however, that, even on his philosophic speculations, opium operated unfavourably in one respect, by often causing him to leave them unfinished. This is true. Whenever Coleridge (being highly charged, or saturated, with opium) had written with distempered vigour upon any question, there occurred soon after a recoil of intense disgust, not from his own paper only, but even from the subject. All opium-eaters are tainted with the infirmity of leaving works unfinished, and suffering reactions of disgust. But Coleridge taxed himself with that infirmity in verse before he could at all have commenced opium-eating. Besides, it is too much assumed by Coleridge and by his biographer, that to leave off opium was of course to regain juvenile health. But all opium-eaters make the mistake of supposing every pain or irritation which they suffer to be the product of opium. Whereas a wise man will say, suppose you do leave off opium, that will not deliver you from the load of years (say sixty-three) which you carry on your back. Charles Lamb, another man of true genius, and another head belonging to the Blackwood Gallery, made that mistake in his Confessions of a Drunkard. "I looked back," says he, "to the time when always, on waking in the morning, I had a song rising to my lips." At present, it seems, being a drunkard, he has no such song. Ay, dear Lamb, but note this, that the drunkard was fifty-six years old, the songster was twenty-three. Take twenty-three from fifty-six, and we have some reason to believe that thirty-three will remain; which period of thirty-three years is a pretty good reason for not singing in the morning, even if brandy has been out of the question.
It is singular, as respects Coleridge, that Mr Gillman never says one word upon the event of the great Highgate experiment for leaving off laudanum, though Coleridge came to Mr Gillman's for no other purpose; and in a week, this vast creation of new earth, sea, and all that in them is, was to have been accomplished. We rayther think, as Bayley junior observes, that the explosion must have hung fire. But that is a trifle. We have another pleasing hypothesis on the subject. Mr Wordsworth, in his exquisite lines written on a fly-leaf of his own Castle of Indolence, having described Coleridge as "a noticeable man with large grey eyes," goes on to say, "He" (viz. Coleridge) "did that other man entice" to view his imagery. Now we are sadly afraid that "the noticeable man with large grey eyes" did entice "that other man," viz. Gillman, to commence opium-eating. This is droll; and it makes us laugh horribly. Gillman should have reformed him; and lo! he corrupts Gillman. S. T. Coleridge visited Highgate by way of being converted from the heresy of opium; and the issue is — that, in two months' time, various grave men, amongst whom our friend Gillman marches first in great pomp, are found to have faces shining and glorious as that of Æsculapius; a fact of which we have already explained the secret meaning. And scandal says (but then what will not scandal say?) that a hogshead of opium goes up daily through Highgate tunnel. Surely one corroboration of our hypothesis may be found in the fact, that Vol. I. of Gillman's Coleridge is forever to stand unpropped by Vol. II. For we have already observed — that opium-eaters, though good fellows upon the whole, never finish any thing.
What then? A man has a right never to finish any thing. Certainly he has; and by Magna Charta. But he has no right, by Magna Charta or by Parva Charta, to slander decent men, like ourselves and our friend the author of the Opium Confessions. Here it is that our complaint arises against Mr Gillman. If he has taken to opium-eating, can we help that? If his face shines, must our faces be blackened? He has very improperly published some intemperate passages from Coleridge's letters, which ought to have been considered confidential, unless Coleridge had left them for publication, charging upon the author of the Opium Confessions a reckless disregard of the temptations which, in that work, he was scattering abroad amongst men. Now this author is connected with ourselves, and we cannot neglect his defence, unless in the case that he undertakes it himself.
We complain, also, that Coleridge raises (and is backed by Mr Gillman in raising) a distinction perfectly perplexing to us, between himself and the author of the Opium Confessions upon the question — Why they severally began the practice of opium-eating? In himself, it seems, this motive was to relieve pain, whereas the Confessor was surreptitiously seeking for pleasure. Ay, indeed — where did he learn that? We have no copy of the Confessions here, so we cannot quote chapter and verse; but we distinctly remember, that toothach is recorded in that book as the particular occasion which first introduced the author to the knowledge of opium. Whether afterwards, having been thus initiated by the demon of pain, the opium confessor did not apply powers thus discovered to purposes of mere pleasure, is a question for himself; and the same question applies with the same cogency to Coleridge. Coleridge began in rheumatic pains. What then? That is no proof that he did not end in voluptuousness. For our parts, we are slow to believe that ever any man did, or could, learn the somewhat awful truth, that in a certain ruby-coloured elixir, there lurked a divine power to chase away the genius of ennui, without subsequently abusing this power. To taste but once from the tree of knowledge, is fatal to the subsequent power of abstinence. True it is, that generations have used laudanum as an anodyne, (for instance, hospital patients,) who have not afterwards courted its powers as a voluptuous stimulant; but that, be sure, has arisen from no abstinence in them. There are, in fact, two classes of temperaments as to this terrific drug — those which are, and those which are not, preconformed to its power; those which genially expand to its temptations, and those which frostily exclude them. Not in the energies of the will, but in the qualities of the nervous organization, lies the dread arbitration of — Fall or stand: doomed thou art to yield; or, strengthened constitutionally, to resist. Most of those who have but a low sense of the spells lying couchant in opium, have practically none at all. For the initial fascination is for them effectually defeated by the sickness which nature has associated with the first stages of opium-eating. But to that other class, whose nervous sensibilities vibrate to their profoundest depths under the first touch of the angelic poison, even as a lover's ear thrills on hearing unexpectedly the voice of her whom he loves, opium is the Amreeta cup of beatitude. You know the Paradise Lost? and you remember, from the eleventh book, in its earlier part, that laudanum already existed in Eden — nay, that it was used medicinally by an archangel; for, after Michael had "purged with euphrasy and rue" the eyes of Adam, lest he should be unequal to the mere sight of the great visions about to unfold their draperies before him, next he fortifies his fleshly spirits against the affliction of these visions, of which visions the first was death. And how?
"He from the well of life three drops instill'd."
What was their operation?
"So deep the power of these ingredients pierced, Even to the inmost seat of mental sight, That Adam, now enforced to close his eyes Sank down, and all his spirits became entranced. But him the gentle angel by the hand Soon raised" —The second of these lines it is which betrays the presence of laudanum. It is in the faculty of mental vision, it is in the increased power of dealing with the shadowy and the dark, that the characteristic virtue of opium lies. Now, in the original higher sensibility is found some palliation for the practice of opium-eating; in the greater temptation is a greater excuse. And in this faculty of self-revelation is found some palliation for reporting the case to the world, which both Coleridge and his biographer have overlooked.
On all this, however, we need say no more; for we have just received a note from the writer of the Opium Confessions, more learned than ourselves in such mysteries, which promises us a sequel or finale to those Confessions. And this, which we have reason to think a record of profound experiences, we shall probably publish next month.
1
Reynolds' Discourses, No. 16, ad finem.
2
Macaulay.
3
The finest design ever conceived by Michael Angelo was a cartoon representing warriors bathing, and some buckling on their armour at the sound of the trumpet, which summoned them to their standards in the war between Pisa and Florence. It perished, however, in the troubles of the latter city, but an engraved copy remains of part, which justifies the eulogiums bestowed upon it.
4
The state of Missouri as almost entirely peopled by emigration from Kentucky.
5
The Mississippi water, although slimy, becomes clear after it has stood few hours, and is then excellent to drink.
6
An excellent map of Montenegro has been made by an Austrian officer of engineers, who resided there for the purpose — but I have not now the advantage of referring to it. This country is divided into twelve military departments; the natives reckon its extent about three days' journey in the longest, by two in the widest part. Those, of course, are foot or mule journeys.
7
It was this man's father who, shortly before our arrival, having been entrusted to receive from Lloyd's Company a packet containing a large sum of money, converted the contents into two cannon-balls, and forwarded them to the Vladika.
8
The late Vladika received the honours of sanctity after his death.
9
Meaning dressed in the European or Frank costume.
10
The Vladika bears the Russian eagle rising from a crown.
11
He passed but one night in Montenegro, at Cettigna, and returned the following day to Cattaro.
12
On the kalends of January the consuls-elect were formally installed; and on this occasion a procession was made to the Capitol, and sacrifice performed to Jupiter. The principal part of the procession, of course, was the consuls in their curule chair, preceded by the lictors bearing the fasces, or bundles of rods and axes.
13
From Janua, a gate.
14
The etymology of these old epithets, from pateo (to open) and claudo (to shut,) is obvious enough.
15
The lar familiaris, or domestic god of the family, who had an altar in the inner part of the Roman house.
16
The allusion here, and in the following lines, is to the different strenæ or New-Year's gifts, which used to be given by the Romans.
17
The old Roman as, with the double head on one side and a ship on the reverse, is well known among numismatists.
18
The Tuscan flood is a common appellation for the Tiber, as rising in Etruria, and forming the ancient boundary between that country and Latium, opposite Rome.
19
A silly etymology — from lateo, to lurk; mentioned also by Virgil. —Æn. viii. 323.
20
"The Romans gave the name of Jani to arches like that of Temple-Bar in London, under which people passed from one street into another. They were always double; people entering by one and going out by the other, every one keeping to the right. The temple or gateway mentioned in this place, adjacent to the ox and the fish markets, was built by Duilius." — Keightly.
21
Although the allusion refers, in the verses, to Delphi, it was, I think, at Dodona, in the earliest period of oracular influence, that this belief prevailed.
22
"And Mullah mine, whose waves whilome I taught to weep." — Spenser.
23
The Life of Samuel Taylor Coleridge. By James Gillman. Vol. I, London; 1838.
24
"Jacob Boehmen." We ourselves had the honour of presenting to Mr Coleridge Law's English version of Jacob — a set of huge quartos. Some months afterwards we saw this work lying open, and one volume at least overflowing, in parts, with the commentaries and the corollaries of Coleridge. Whither has this work, and so many others swathed about with Coleridge's MS. notes, vanished from the world?
25
Malthus would have rejoined by saying — that the flower-pot limitation was the actual limitation of nature in our present circumstances. In America it is otherwise, he would say; but England is the very flower-pot you suppose: she is a flower-pot which cannot be multiplied, and cannot even be enlarged. Very well; so be it: (Which we say in order to waive irrelevant disputes.) But then the true inference will be — not that vegetable increase proceeds under a different law from that which governs animal increase, but that, through an accident of position, the experiment cannot be tried in England. Surely the levers of Archimedes, with submission to Sir Edward B. Lytton, were not the less levers because he wanted the locum standi. It is proper, by the way, that we should inform the reader of this generation where to look for Coleridge's skirmishings with Malthus. They are to be found chiefly in the late Mr William Hazlitt's work on that subject: a work which Coleridge so far claimed as to assert that it had been substantially made up from his own conversation.
26
Vide, in particular, for the most exquisite specimen of pig-headedness that the world can furnish, his perverse evidence on the once famous case at the Warwick assizes, of Captain Donelan for poisoning his brother-in-law, Sir Theodosius Boughton.
27
It was printed at the end of Aristotle's Poetics, which Dr Cook edited.