can 10 much.'-Still nothing amiss. Selleridge 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 5 for the what d'ye call it- the selleranxieties. 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 to 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 in- 15 convenience, 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, 20 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 con- 25 clusion 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 30 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 hos- 35 tility became the good old man's favorite 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 40 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 45 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 50 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! 55 moderate enough! Stitching, covers, advertisements, carriage, and so forth, so idge?' '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 traveler) you have mistaken the word. There have been none of them sold; they have been sent back from London long ago; and this £3. 35. 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 humor and still greater good nature. Jesus 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 honored 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 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 a 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 was 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 5 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! Sweet echoes of unearthly melodies, And they, that from the crystal river of 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,'-(Ŏ! 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 Sab 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 20 so predominant over breadth, that he might almost have been borrowed for a foundry poker. O that face! a face κατ ̓ ἔμφασιν! I have it before me at this moment. The lank, black, twine-like 25 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 per- 30 fect unison, both of color and luster, 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 35 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 used grid-40 iron, 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 45 bath, that's more than I ever reads, Sir! 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 ha's aban- 55 doned the cause of his client; and I commenced an harangue of half an hour to 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 offense, I hope, 50 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 over-run with these articles!' and so without another syllable retired into his counting-house. And, I can truly say, to my unspeakable amusement. 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 in5 vited 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, 15 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 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 20 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 25 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, 30 however, that the tobacco was equally mild, and seeing too that it was of a yellow color; - not forgetting the lamentable difficulty, I have always experienced, in saying, 'No,' and in abstaining 35 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 engage- 45 ment; 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 packet of letters, which he had received from 50 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. 55 For here and thus I lay, my face like a wall that is white-washing, deathly pale 40 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. 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 5 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. 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. 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 10 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 15 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 20 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 25 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 30 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 40 Anti-Ministerialist, but after the invaof me, I leveled 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 45 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, 50 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 55 a concurring spread of the Gospel were the indispensable condition of any true 35 Conscientiously an opponent of the first revolutionary war, yet with my eyes thoroughly opened to the true character and impotence of the favorers 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 sion 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 unsal able 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.' His 25 suspected; how indeed could such a suspicion enter our fancies?— he not only rejected Sir Dogberry's request that he would try yet a little longer, but declared to him his belief, that both my friend and myself were as good subjects, for aught he could discover to the contrary, as any in His Majesty's dominions. He had repeatedly hid himself, he said, for hours together behind a bank at the sea-side, (our favorite seat,) and overheard our conversation. At first he fancied, that we were aware of our danger; for he often heard me talk of one Spy Nosy, which he was inclined to interpret of himself, and of a remarkable feature belonging to him; but he was speedily convinced that it was the name of a man who had made a book and lived long ago. Our talk ran most upon books, and we were perpetually desiring each other to look at this, and to listen to that; but he could not catch a word about politics. Once he had joined me on the I now devoted myself to poetry and to hearing, and all the while utterly unto the study of ethics and psychology; and so profound was my admiration at this time of Hartley's Essay on Man, that I gave his name to my first-born. In addition to the gentleman, my neigh- 15 bor, whose garden joined on to my little orchard, and the cultivation of whose friendship had been my sole motive. in choosing Stowey for my residence, I was so fortunate as to acquire, shortly 20 after my settlement there, an invaluable blessing in the society and neighborhood of one, to whom I could look up with equal reverence, whether I regarded him as a poet, a philosopher, or a man. conversation extended to almost all subjects, except physics and politics; with the latter he never troubled himself. Yet neither my retirement nor my utter abstraction from all the disputes of the day could secure me in those jealous times from suspicion and obloquy, which did not stop at me, but extended to my excellent friend, whose perfect innocence was even adduced as a proof of his guilt. One of 35 road; (this occurred, as I was returning the many busy sycophants of that day, (I here use the word sycophant in its original sense, as a wretch who flatters the prevailing party by informing against his neighbors, under pretence that they 40 are exporters of prohibited figs or fancies, 30 for the moral application of the term it matters not which)-one of these sycophantic law-mongrels, discoursing on the politics of the neighborhood, uttered 45 the following deep remark: 'As to Coleridge, there is not so much harm in him, for he is a whirl-brain that talks whatever come uppermost; but that - -! he is the dark traitor. You never hear 50 HIм say a syllable on the subject.' * * The dark guesses of some zealous Quidnunc met with so congenial a soil in the grave alarm of a titled Dogberry of our 55 neighborhood, that a spy was actually sent down from the government pour home alone from my friend's house, which was about three miles from my own cottage,) and, passing himself off as a traveler, he had entered into conversation with me, and talked of purpose in a democrat way in order to draw me out. The result, it appears, not only convinced him that I was no friend of Jacobinism; but, he added,) I had plainly made it out to be such a silly as well as wicked thing, that he felt ashamed though he had only put it on. I distinctly remembered the occurrence. and had mentioned it immediately on my return, repeating what the traveler with his Bardolph nose had said, with my own answer; and so little did I suspect the true object of my tempter ere accuser,' that I expressed with no small pleasure my hope and belief that the conversation had been of some service to the poor misled malcontent. This incident |