The Palgrave Literary Dictionary of

Samuel Taylor Coleridge Martin Garrett

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PALGRAVE LITERARY DICTIONARIES

The Palgrave Literary

Dictionary of
Samuel Taylor Coleridge
Martin Garrett
Palgrave Literary Dictionaries

Series Editors
Brian G. Caraher
School of English
Queen’s University Belfast
Belfast, UK

Elizabeth K. Switaj
Liberal Arts
College of the Marshall Islands
Majuro, Marshall Islands
Palgrave Literary Dictionaries are concise reference guides containing vital
information for the study and appreciation of major writers and literary groups.
Alphabetical entries provide accessible and informative summaries focusing on
the historical and political contexts, key themes, locations and texts, as well as
the critical reception of writers including Chaucer, Spenser and Milton. Each
volume contains a chronology and a selective guide to further reading.
 Martin Garrett

The Palgrave Literary

Dictionary of Samuel
Taylor Coleridge
Martin Garrett
Independent Scholar
Cambridge, UK

Palgrave Literary Dictionaries

ISBN 978-3-031-15571-0    ISBN 978-3-031-15572-7 (eBook)
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To Helen
 Series Editors’ Foreword

The purpose of the Palgrave Literary Dictionaries is to provide the reader with
immediate access to reliable information on some of the major authors of lit-
erature written in the English language. These books are intended for a reader-
ship including students, graduate students, teachers, scholars and advanced
general readers. Each volume will be dedicated either to an individual author
or to a group of authors. It will offer a concise reference guide, consisting
mainly of entries presented under headwords arranged in alphabetical order.
These entries will vary in length from about 10 to about 3000 words, depend-
ing on the significance of the particular topic. The topics will include the liter-
ary works, individuals, genres, traditions, events, places, institutions, editors
and scholars most relevant to a full and sophisticated understanding and appre-
ciation of the author (or authors) in question. The more substantial entries will
include suggestions for further reading, full particulars of which will be sup-
plied in a selective bibliography. Access to information will be facilitated by
extensive cross-referencing.
We trust the volumes in this series will be judged by their effectiveness in
providing quick, clear and convenient access to reliable and scholarly
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Belfast, Northern Ireland Brian G. Caraher

Majuro, Republic of the Marshall Islands Elizabeth K. Switaj

vii
List of Other Published Titles by the Author

‘A diamond, though set in horn’: Philip Massinger’s Attitude to Spectacle

Massinger: the Critical Heritage (editor)
Sidney: the Critical Heritage (editor)
George Gordon, Lord Byron
A Browning Chronology: Elizabeth Barrett and Robert Browning
Elizabeth Barrett Browning and Robert Browning: Interviews and
Recollections (editor)
Elizabeth Barrett Browning and Robert Browning
Mary Shelley: a Chronology
Mary Shelley
The Palgrave Literary Dictionary of Byron
The Palgrave Literary Dictionary of [P.B.] Shelley
The Palgrave Literary Dictionary of Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley
A Romantics Chronology, 1780-1832
Greece: a Literary Companion
Traveller’s Literary Companion: Italy
Venice: a Cultural and Literary Companion
Cambridge: a Cultural and Literary History
Provence: a Cultural History
The Loire: a Cultural History
Oxford (Innercities Cultural Guides)

ix
 Preface and Acknowledgements

Virginia Woolf, in ‘The Man at the Gate’ (1940), refers to ‘the labyrinth of
what we call Coleridge’, whose ‘written words fill hundreds of pages and over-
flow innumerable margins; whose spoken words still reverberate’. J.C.C. Mays
says of his poems and plays—and the same is true of his work more broadly—
that ‘He wrote to denounce, celebrate, explore, earn money, move, test tech-
nicalities, entertain, discover’ (CW 16.1.cxx). This Dictionary attempts to
provide a guide to at least some of Coleridge’s diverse achievements and activi-
ties: publication details, sources, contexts, interpretations, reception history,
suggestions for further reading.
Anyone working on Coleridge is immensely indebted to the Bollingen edi-
tion, to the Notebooks as edited by Kathleen Coburn and others, to Earl Leslie
Griggs’s edition of the Letters, and to the biographies by Richard Holmes and
Rosemary Ashton. Among the other scholars whose work I have found most
consistently useful are Tim Fulford, Peter J. Kitson, Lucy Newlyn and
Seamus Perry.

xi
 Coleridge Chronology

1772 Birth of Samuel Taylor Coleridge (21 October).

1781 Death of his father.
1782–90 Christ’s Hospital, London. Charles Lamb is his younger
schoolfellow.
1791–4 Jesus College, Cambridge.
1791 STC’s first reference to use of opium.
1794 Meets Robert Southey; ‘Pantisocracy’ scheme. Meets
Thomas Poole.
1795 Lectures in Bristol. Marries Sara Fricker (4 October).
1796 Poems on Various Subjects, including Religious Musings. The
Watchman.
1797 Writes Osorio (later revised as Remorse). Close friendship with
William and Dorothy Wordsworth begins. Revised Poems.
1797–8 Writes Conversation Poems, The Rime of the Ancient Mariner,
‘Kubla Khan’, Christabel Part One.
1797–8, 1799–1803 Journalism for the Morning Post.
1798 Lyrical Ballads.
1798–9 STC visits Germany. During his absence his infant son,
Berkeley Coleridge, dies (1799).
1799 Friendships with William Godwin and Humphry Davy
develop. Meets Sara Hutchinson. Original version of ‘Love’.
1800 Wallenstein. Essay on William Pitt in the Morning Post.
c. 1800 Effects of opium addiction worsen.
1800–1 Writes Christabel Part Two.
1802 ‘Dejection. An Ode’. ‘Once a Jacobin Always a Jacobin’.
1803 Walking tour of Scotland.
1804 Begins writing for the Courier. (Continues off and on
until 1818.)
1804–6 In Malta and Italy.
1806 STC and SFC separate.
1807 ‘To William Wordsworth’.
1808 First series of lectures on literature.
1809–10 The Friend (revised 1812, 1818).

xiii
xiv COLERIDGE CHRONOLOGY

1810 Estranged from WW. (Partially reconciled 1812.)

1811–12 Lectures on Shakespeare and Milton.
1813 Performances of Remorse at Drury Lane.
1813–14 STC close to physical and mental collapse.
1816 Meets George Gordon, Lord Byron. Moves to Highgate to
live with the Gillmans. Christabel and ‘Kubla Khan’ published.
1816–17 Lay Sermons.
1817 Biographia Literaria; Sibylline Leaves. Meets Joseph
Henry Green.
1818 Zapolya performed at the Surrey Theatre (published
version 1817).
1818–19 Lectures on Shakespeare.
1819 Final lectures on literature and on the history of philosophy.
1819–23? STC dictates Opus Maximum material to Green.
1822 Sees son, Hartley Coleridge, for the last time.
1823 First meeting with daughter, Sara Coleridge, as an adult.
1825 Drafts ‘Work Without Hope’ (revised 1827). Aids to
Reflection.
1828–9 Writes ‘The Garden of Boccaccio’ and ‘Alice du Clós’.
1828, 1829, 1834 Poetical Works.
1829 On the Constitution of the Church and State.
1834 Death of STC (25 July).
1835 Table Talk, edited by Henry Nelson Coleridge.
1840 Confessions of an Inquiring Spirit.
 Contents


The Palgrave Literary Dictionary of Samuel Taylor Coleridge  1
A   1
B  14
C  30
D  57
E  65
F  70
G  83
H  88
I  95
J  97
K  99
L 108
M 125
N 131
O 135
P 141
R 149
S 159
T 172
U 180
V 181
W 181
Y 190
Z 191

References195

xv
 Abbreviations

CL Charles Lamb
DW Dorothy Wordsworth
RS Robert Southey
SFC Sara (Fricker) Coleridge
SH Sara Hutchinson
STC Samuel Taylor Coleridge
WW William Wordsworth

Works by Coleridge1

CL Collected Letters of Samuel Taylor Coleridge, ed. Earl

Leslie Griggs, 6 vols (Oxford: Clarendon Press,
1956-71).
CN The Notebooks of Samuel Taylor Coleridge, ed.
Kathleen Coburn, Merton Christensen and Anthony
John Harding, 5 vols (Princeton: Princeton
University Press; London: Routledge, 1957-2002).
CW The Collected Works of Samuel Taylor Coleridge
(Bollingen edition), 16 vols, multiple editors
(Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1969-2002).
Aids Aids to Reflection in the Formation of a Manly
Character on the Several Grounds of Prudence,
Morality, and Religion.
AM The Rime of the Ancient Mariner.
BL Biographia Literaria or Biographical Sketches of My
Literary Life and Opinions.

1
References to STC’s work are, unless stated otherwise, to CW.

xvii
xviii COLERIDGE CHRONOLOGY

Church and State On the Constitution of the Church and State.

Friend The Friend.
FS Fears in Solitude … to which are added, France, an
Ode; and Frost at Midnight [1798].
LB Lyrical Ballads (with William Wordsworth), 1st edi-
tion (1798).
LB2 Lyrical Ballads (with William Wordsworth), 2nd edi-
tion (1800).
Watchman The Watchman.
1796, 1797, 1803, 1812 Poems.
1816 Christabel; Kubla Khan, a Vision; The Pains of Sleep.
1817 Sibylline Leaves: a Collection of Poems.
1828, 1829, 1834 Poetical Works.
1852 The Poems of Samuel Taylor Coleridge, ed. Derwent
and Sara Coleridge (London: Moxon).
1870 The Poems of Samuel Taylor Coleridge, ed. Derwent
and Sara Coleridge, ‘new and enlarged edition’
(London: Moxon).

Other

Ashton Rosemary Ashton, The Life of Samuel Taylor Coleridge:

a Critical Biography (Oxford: Blackwell, 1996).
CH Coleridge: the Critical Heritage [volume one] ed.
J.R. de J. Jackson (London: Routledge & Kegan
Paul, 1970).
Holmes 1 Richard Holmes, Coleridge: Early Visions (London:
Hodder and Stoughton, 1989).
Holmes 2 Richard Holmes, Coleridge: Darker Reflections
(London: HarperCollins, 1998).
Lowes John Livingston Lowes, The Road to Xanadu: a Study
in the Ways of the Imagination (London: Constable,
1927).
MP The Morning Post.
Norton Coleridge’s Poetry and Prose: Authoritative Texts,
Criticism, ed. Nicholas Halmi, Paul Magnuson and
Raimonda Modiano (London and New York:
W.W. Norton, 2004).
Roberts Adam Roberts, Samuel Taylor Bloggeridge, samueltay-
lorbloggeridge.blogspot.com
SWH Selected Works of William Hazlitt, ed. Duncan Wu, 9
vols (London: Pickering and Chatto, 1998).
WL The Letters of William and Dorothy Wordsworth, ed.
Ernest de Selincourt, 2nd edition, 8 vols (Oxford:
Clarendon Press, 1967-93).
 The Palgrave Literary Dictionary of Samuel
Taylor Coleridge

A
Aids to Reflection in the Formation of a Manly Character on the Several Grounds
of Prudence, Morality, and Religion
Prose work in STC’s ‘late style of benign sermonizing’ (Holmes 2.540). It was
proposed to *Murray, in 1822, as a life and anthology of the work of Archbishop
Robert Leighton (1611–84), which STC first encountered in 1814. In 1823
Murray decided not to proceed (CL 5.282) and in late May 1825 it was pub-
lished by Taylor and Hessey; the work now contained, as CL hoped it would,
‘more of Bishop Coleridge than Leighton’ (Lamb [1935], 2.416)—‘an origi-
nal work almost’ (CL 5.336). Sources for the completed Aids include the work
not only of Leighton but of Richard Baxter (1615–91), Jeremy Taylor
(1613–67), and William Law (1686–1771). A second edition, revised partly by
STC and partly by Henry Nelson *Coleridge, was published by Hurst, Chance
in 1831. The first American edition, edited with a ‘Preliminary Essay’ by James
Marsh, appeared in 1829 and was ‘the decisive event in establishing [American]
respect for him as a thinker’ (CW 9.cxvii).
Aids is addressed, according to the Preface, to ‘the studious Young at the
close of their education’ and particularly to ‘Students intended for the Ministry’,
whether in the established church or ‘all alike … who have dedicated their lives
to the future of their Race, as Pastors, Preachers, Missionaries, or Instructors of
Youth’ (CW 9.6). It will ‘direct the Reader’s attention to the value of the
Science of Words, their use and abuse’ (CW 9.6–7)—‘to expose a sophism’ is
most often the same as ‘to detect the equivocal or double meaning of a word’
(CW 9.7); it will ‘establish the distinct characters of Prudence, Morality, and
Religion’; and it will ‘substantiate … the momentous distinction between
REASON and Understanding’ (CW 9.8), a subject already considered in
Friend. A principal focus is ‘the operation of the Idea in History’ (Edwards

© The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature 1

Switzerland AG 2022
M. Garrett, The Palgrave Literary Dictionary of Samuel Taylor Coleridge,
Palgrave Literary Dictionaries,
https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-15572-7_1
2 M. GARRETT

[2009], p. 243). The argument implicit in the aphorisms is that ‘The idea of
reason is both speculative and practical. The will is an expression of practical
reason, although its constitution is an extension of the principles of speculative
reason, or pure reason, as *Kant would have it. … It is the expression of spirit
in action and therefore the primary driver in history’ (Edwards [2009], p. 247).
Aphorism XXV—‘He, who begins by loving Christianity better than Truth,
will proceed by loving his own Sect or Church better than Christianity, and end
in loving himself better than all’ (CW 9.107)—gained currency especially fol-
lowing its approving quotation by *Mill in the Westminster Review in 1840
(Mill [1963–91], 10.128). Aids more generally, as an argument against mate-
rialism, had an influence on a younger generation of Broad Church clergy,
notably *Sterling and *Maurice. The work was little reviewed at the time of
publication. The British Critic in October 1826 disliked ‘the mystical notions
of the critical philosophy’ (p. 240). Not until J.A. Heraud’s response to the
second edition in Fraser’s Magazine for June 1832 did a detailed and more
favourable assessment appear, emphasising, however, that no-one can hope to
‘master the subject of the work at once’; to understand many things here the
reader ‘must discipline his mind to a submissive ductility, and wait for their
gradual development in his own consciousness, being and conduct’ (p. 597).
Further reading: Hipolito (2004).

‘Alice du Clós Or, the Forked Tongue. A Ballad’

Poem combining, for Holmes in Coleridge (1996), ‘the formal intricacy of a
medieval tapestry, with the lethal rapidity of a modern film sequence’ (p. 314).
It was written in its present form in 1828–9, incorporating some earlier lines
(see CW 16.1.1098, 2.1311), and published in 1834. Alice is reading Ovid’s
Metamorphoses at dawn. Sir Hugh, vassal of her intended husband Lord Julian,
says (in ‘taunting vein’ and gazing wantonly at her) that she should join Julian
at once in his hunting since he is ‘a hasty Man,/Long waiting brook’d he
never’ (39, 45, 7–8). She refuses; Hugh should tell his lord that ‘slow is sure’
and ‘I follow here a stronger Lure,/And chace a gentler prey’ (50–1)—mean-
ing her reading. She then changes her mind and sets off to join Julian with her
young squire, Florian, but Hugh gets there first, insinuates that she has been
unfaithful to him with Florian, and thus deceives him into jealous misunder-
standing of her message about the ‘stronger Lure’. (Hugh puns also on ‘Page’
meaning Florian rather than the book she gazed at [169].) When she reaches
the glade, full of ‘Hope and Joy’, her ‘Cheeks aglow’ (182–3), with Florian
laughing, Julian at once strikes her dead.
STC said that he could not complete the poem because of a disagreement
with Frederic Reynolds, editor of The Keepsake, for which it was originally
intended (see CL 6.800 and CW 16.1.1099). He had, he said, planned to fin-
ish ‘in the legendary, supernatural, imaginative style of popular superstition’
(CL 6.800), with ‘what struck me as a highly lyrical & impressive
 THE PALGRAVE LITERARY DICTIONARY OF SAMUEL TAYLOR COLERIDGE 3

conclusion—intimating the fate and punishment of Julian & the Traitor—and

tho’ every thought & image is present to my mind’ he cannot bring ‘them
forth in the requisite force & fire of diction & metre’ (CL 6.808). As it is, the
stark ending serves to emphasise the horror of Alice’s death. There is no super-
natural punishment for the perpetrator, no Ovidian transformation for
the victim.
A clos is an enclosed garden; the garden here is ‘an ambiguous symbol: like
the lime-tree bower, or … the pleasure dome … it is an enclosure that may
threaten or promote personal safety’ (Barbarese [1997], p. 688). Murder of an
innocent, pure bride, or intended bride, by a powerful man deceived by his
malicious aide, recalls Othello. Sir Hugh uses Iago’s technique of disclosing
enough alleged information to force Lord Julian to ask for more, while stating
enough doubt to make him sound honourable—‘if I saw aright’ (165—com-
pare, for example, Othello 3.3.35–41). Mays (2015) points out, however, that
Hugh’s ‘malignity is not, like Iago’s, motiveless. Alice … is the target of Hugh’s
malign intentions; not the vehicle’; in his sudden jealousy Julian seems more
like Leontes in The Winter’s Tale than Othello (pp. 5, 6). Holmes finds the
‘heraldic settings, the stylized violence, and the worldly mixture of chivalry and
jealousy’ reminiscent of *Spenser (Coleridge [1996], p. 314). ‘Dan Ovid’
(37), hunting, the vassal, and the young romantic squire (even younger and
even more naïve than Aurelius in Chaucer’s The Franklin’s Tale) suggest a
medieval setting, which recalls Christabel. (Christabel herself is, for Mays
[2015], p. 11, ‘directly recalled by the innocent but ambivalently culpable
Alice’.) ‘A Snow-drop in a tuft of Snow!’ (24) is a variation on the last line of
STC’s ‘The Apotheosis; or, The Snow-drop’, which responds to Mary
*Robinson, and thereby links Alice to ‘a figure with whom Coleridge strongly
identified as an abandoned victim of cruel love affairs’ (Mays [2015], p. 10).
The ballad has a striking clarity of action and image. As Mays (2015) says,
‘we are plunged into a situation that develops in real time with little oppor-
tunity to think outside it. The action advances through the uncertain period
while dawn turns into day, as if within the mesmerised time we take to read’
(p. 3). Alice is clearly associated with light: the ‘moon-shiny Doe’ (18),
‘wrapt in Maiden White,/ … A Snow-drop’ (22–4); on the way to Julian she
stopped for a moment to see ‘The whole great Globe of Light/Give the last
parting kiss-like Touch/To the Eastern Ridge’ (93–5). About to kill her,
Julian is ‘Dark as a dream’ (187). It is an ironically ‘green and lightsome
Glade’ (120). Alice with her buskins, bow and quiver is repeatedly associated
with Diana—explicitly at 185, when Julian has been persuaded of her unchas-
tity. But for all the apparent simplicity of the narrative, Mays (2015) registers
the ‘impression that the vulnerable Alice is …, in some way, responsible for
the situation she finds herself in; that her fear and Julian’s rage are somehow
interrelated’ (pp. 10–11).
Further reading: Crawford (1996).
4 M. GARRETT

‘Allegoric Vision’ see ‘Lectures on Revealed Religion, its Corruptions, and

its Political Views’.

Allston, Washington
(1779–1843)
American painter. STC came to know him well in Rome in 1806 and during
his time in Britain between 1811 and 1818. In 1806 he took enthusiastic and
very detailed notes on his Diana and her Nymphs in the Chase (CN 2.2831).
Later he did much to promote Allston’s work; see Essays on the Principles of
Genial Criticism. He ‘engaged himself so closely’ with Allston’s The Dead
Man Restored to Life (1811–14) ‘that he seemed to regard it as almost a col-
laborative work’ (Paley [2008], p. 99).
Allston worked on an unfinished portrait of STC in 1806, showing him
‘relaxed and meditative’, ‘His face … puffy and pale, yet handsome and almost
raffish’ feels Holmes 2.55. His second portrait, of an august, thoughtful STC
(1814) was especially esteemed by Sara *Coleridge, Henry Nelson *Coleridge,
WW and *Green (see Paley [1999b], p. 55). The artist notes, however, that ‘it
is Coleridge in repose’, not ‘in his highest mood, the poetic state’ in which his
face ‘seemed almost spirit made visible’ (quoted in Paley [1999b], p. 55).

The Ancient Mariner

STC’s best known and most discussed, illustrated and performed poem, writ-
ten mainly between November 1797 and late March 1798 and first published
in LB. (See below, Revisions, for later texts.) STC takes ‘the popular narrative
of exploration’ and makes it ‘an articulation of mental as well as physical voyag-
ing’ (Fulford [2002b], p. 49).
An ancient mariner stops a wedding-guest, fixes him with his ‘glittering eye’
(3), and tells him the tale of his voyage. The ship reaches the equator and then
is driven by a storm into the icy southern ocean. The sailors feed an albatross,
the ice splits and a strong south wind springs up. The bird follows until the
Mariner shoots it with his cross-bow. The crew first blame him for killing the
bird that brought the wind and then, when the fog and mist clear, say he did
right. (According to the marginal gloss first added in 1817 this makes them
‘accomplices in the crime’ [CW 16.1.381].) The ship enters the Pacific and is
becalmed. There is no water to drink and slimy things crawl on the slimy sea.
The Mariner has the albatross hung round his neck ‘Instead of the Cross’
(141). A ghostly ship arrives, carrying a woman and a skeletal figure who are
named, in 1817, as Life-in-Death and Death. They dice and the woman says
that she has won (won the Mariner, explains the gloss [CW 16.1.387]). The
200 crewmen curse the Mariner with their eyes before, one by one, silently
dropping dead. Left alone, he cannot pray and is tormented by the sight of the
bodies, still looking their curse. After seven days and nights he watches water-­
snakes moving happy and beautiful in the moonlight; ‘A spring of love gusht
 THE PALGRAVE LITERARY DICTIONARY OF SAMUEL TAYLOR COLERIDGE 5

from my heart,/And I bless’d them unaware’ (284–5). At once he can pray and
the albatross falls from his neck and sinks into the sea. The dead men rise and
man the ship. (In lines first added in LB2 the Mariner tells the guest that it is
not their souls but ‘a troop of Spirits blest’ that have come to them [CW
16.2.523, 16.1.397].) The spirit from the south propels the ship back as far as
the equator. The Mariner hears a voice saying that the spirit ‘lov’d the bird that
lov’d the man/Who shot him with his bow’ and a softer voice replying that
‘the man hath penance done,/And penance more will do’ (404–9). They come
within sight of his native land. The corpses lie flat with a shining seraph above
each. A boat approaches with pilot, pilot’s boy and the hermit who will ‘shrieve
my soul’ and ‘wash away/The Albatross’s blood’ (512–13). The ship suddenly
sinks; the Mariner finds himself in the pilot’s boat. On land his frame is
‘wrench’d/With a woeful agony’ (578–9) until he has told his tale. Periodically
he is forced to repeat it. He tells the Wedding Guest that ‘He prayeth best who
loveth best,/All things both great and small’ (614–15). The guest turns away
from the wedding. He will rise ‘A sadder and a wiser man’ (622–5).
Origins
AM was first conceived as a collaboration with WW, who later remembered
suggesting that ‘some crime’ should bring ‘the spectral persecution’ on the
Mariner (Wordsworth [1993], p. 2). He had just read George Shelvocke’s
Voyage Round the World by the Way of the Great South Sea (1726), which reports
a melancholy officer’s shooting of a black albatross, imagining that it ‘might be
some ill omen’, perhaps responsible for a ‘continued series of contrary tempes-
tuous winds’ (p. 73). WW proposed to STC that the Mariner should kill the
bird ‘on entering the South Sea, and that the tutelary spirits of these regions
take upon them to avenge the crime’. He also ‘suggested the navigation of the
ship by the dead men’ (Wordsworth [1993], p. 2) and contributed lines 15–16
and 226–7. STC made rapid initial progress (CL 1.357); WW did not, and
withdrew from the project since ‘I soon found that the style of Coleridge and
myself would not assimilate’ (1852, pp. 323–4). They decided, according to
BL, that STC’s poems for LB would focus on supernatural ‘incidents and
agents’, aiming at ‘the interesting of the affections by the dramatic truth of
such emotions, as would naturally accompany such situations, supposing them
real’ (CW 7.2.6).
Another early influence, also noted by WW, was the dream of John
Cruikshank, a friend of STC, of ‘a skeleton ship with figures in it’ (Dyce [1972],
p. 185; see CW 16.1.366). It is probably also significant that, as Hill (1983)
points out, earlier work by both poets is much concerned with guilt: WW’s
‘Adventures on Salisbury Plain’ (where a sailor wanders after a killing) and The
Borderers, STC’s Osorio and the jointly written ‘The Three Graves’ and ‘The
Wanderings of Cain’ (p. 125).
Revision
WW told *Cottle on 24 June 1799 that ‘the old words and the strangeness
of [AM] have deterred readers from going on’ (WL 1.1.264). Francis
Wrangham in the British Critic (October 1799) felt that the ‘antiquated
6 M. GARRETT

words … might with advantage be entirely removed’ (p. 365) and in LB2 much
of the archaism does go—‘Eftsoones’ (500) becomes ‘But soon’, ‘yeven’
‘given’, the ‘Marinere’ usually the ‘Mariner’, ‘Lavrock’ (359) ‘sky-lark’. The
title changes from The Rime of the Ancyent Marinere, in Seven Parts, to The
Ancient Mariner, A Poet’s Reverie. The sub-title survives in the half-title before
the poem in the 1802 and 1805 editions of LB but is removed in the heading,
which becomes simply The Ancient Mariner, probably in response to CL’s
complaint that ‘A Reverie’ ‘is as bad as Bottom the Weaver’s declaration that he
is not a Lion but only the scenical representation of a Lion’ (Lamb
[1975–8], 1.266).
The prose ‘Argument’ of 1798, which notes the course of the voyage and
mentions ‘the strange things that befell’, is altered in LB2 to include a less mor-
ally neutral summary of how the Mariner ‘cruelly, and in contempt of the laws
of hospitality, killed a Sea-bird; and how he was followed by many and strange
Judgements’ (CW 16.1.370, 16.2.509). (The Argument is dropped in later
editions of LB.) Other substantial changes included the omission of five stanzas
mainly concerned with the torch-like burning of the corpses’ right arms (see
CW 16.1.408)—perhaps considered by STC in revision ‘unnecessarily maca-
bre, excessive, and out of date’ (Mays [2016], pp. 122–3).
In the anonymous LB there is no suggestion that two poets are represented.
LB2, however, appears under WW’s name, with a statement in the preface that
‘a Friend’ has contributed AM and several other poems ‘for the sake of variety’.
Repositioned from the opening of LB to become the penultimate piece in the
first volume of LB2, it is accompanied by WW’s note (omitted in later editions)
claiming that the author had wanted it suppressed because ‘many persons had
been much displeased with it’. Its ‘great defects’ are ‘that the principal person
has no distinct character’, ‘he does not act, but is continually acted upon’, ‘the
events [have] no necessary connection … and … the imagery is somewhat too
laboriously accumulated’. It does contain ‘many delicate touches of passion’,
‘beautiful images’ and harmonious versification (Wordsworth and Coleridge
[2013], p. 346). Clearly STC’s poem is being judged by a Wordsworthian
agenda; STC allows his poem to be moved from its prominent position, and
denigrated, as part of his campaign to promote WW’s poems and his status as
the most notable and philosophical of modern poets.
The next significant revision of AM is for 1817, where it appears for the first
time under STC’s name and as The Rime of the Ancient Mariner. In Seven
Parts. Alterations here work further to tone down *Gothic elements, for
instance by removing the description of the death-figure’s bones, black or
patched with purple and green ‘rust/Of mouldy damps and charnel crust’
(189). The new text opens with a Latin epigraph from Thomas Burnet’s
Archaeologiae Philosophicae (1692) on the mysterious ‘invisible Natures’ of the
universe; omitting a passage which discourages speculation (see Norton 59
n.1), the epigraph ‘stresses, like the poem itself, the vital interaction between
the realms of the natural and the supernatural’ (Hill [1983], p. 120). 1817 also
gives the marginal gloss—solemn, eloquent and archaic—which adds one more
 THE PALGRAVE LITERARY DICTIONARY OF SAMUEL TAYLOR COLERIDGE 7

layer of interpretation: the voice of a perhaps seventeenth-century antiquarian

responds to, or edits, that of a perhaps early sixteenth-century poet (see Brown
[1945]). Often the gloss is seen as parodying the too-easy answers expected by
some readers and reviewers, perhaps including WW (see Stillinger [1994],
pp. 72–3). It ‘familiarizes every supernatural event … Again and again it inter-
prets the narrative … as a parable’ (Lipking [1977], p. 615).
Changes after 1817 are minor. Mays (2016) highlights the difficulty of
choosing which version of AM to read and of how, with the gloss in place, to
‘“read” the later [usually 1817 or 1834] version at all’ (p. 130). Some editions
have printed the later text with the gloss, some without, some the 1798 text
with the gloss. Omitting it, as Mays (2016), p. 133, notes, means losing the
celebrated sentence beginning ‘In his loneliness and fixedness, he yearneth
towards the journeying Moon, and the stars that still sojourn, yet still move
onward …’ (CW 16.2.520, 16.1.393).
Sources
No source for AM has been accepted as overridingly significant. The sense
that the tale is archetypal—that the Mariner must tell it again and again—is
increased by the use of ‘Mariner’, ‘wedding-guest’, ‘pilot’ rather than personal
names, and the traditional ballad-form popularised by collections like Percy’s
Reliques (1765). The ballads there, with *Chaucer and *Spenser, supply most
of the archaic vocabulary in LB (see Lowes 303–10). But, as Fulford (2002b)
points out, ‘old-fashioned diction is blended with common speech’, reinforc-
ing the poem’s ‘combination of strangeness and familiarity’ (p. 53). Some of
the supernatural elements owe more to such recent ballads as Gottfried August
Bürger’s ‘Lenore’ (several English versions were published in 1796) and
*Lewis’s Alonzo the Brave and Fair Imogine (1796)—the Gothic horror of the
leprous-white woman and her black-boned, ‘fleshless’ companion (189–94),
the Wedding Guest’s fear that he is talking to a ghost (223–31). Mays (2016)
believes that AM began partly ‘as a send-up of the current revival’ of ‘early bal-
ladry’ (p. 79). It developed into a work whose genre is difficult to pin down: as
well as ballad, there are elements of lyric and epic (see O’Neill [2009],
pp. 383–4).
Homer’s Odyssey sets a precedent for a voyage full of storms and supernatu-
ral intervention. Lowes established the importance of STC’s reading in such
later voyage literature as Samuel Purchas’ Purchas his Pilgrimage (1613),
Leemius’ De Lapponibus Finnarchiae (1767), William Bartram’s Travels
Through North and South Carolina (1791), and the narratives of the expedi-
tions of James Cook. (Smith [1956] suggests the influence of William Wales
[1734–98], astronomer on Cook’s second voyage in 1772–5 who subsequently
taught mathematics at *Christ’s Hospital.) There are possible sources or ana-
logues in these works for details like the shiny water-snakes, the ‘slimy things’
(238), the cracking of the ice to release the ship, and the ‘river steep and wide’
(326) of lightning (Lowes 35–55, 81–2, 135, 171–2). Ower (2001) suggests
David Crantz’s The History of Greenland (1767) as the likely main source of the
‘slimy things’. Piper (1987) sees them in the context of the rotting ocean of the
8 M. GARRETT

end of days in Burnet’s The Sacred Theory of the Earth (1681–9) and the larger
‘pattern of the apocalypse story’ in the poem (pp. 50–52).
The Mariner, compelled to repeat his tale, is in the tradition of ‘the everlast-
ing Wandering Jew’ (CW 14.1.273–4). STC draws probably on Lewis’s The
Monk, the ballad ‘The Wandering Jew’ in Percy’s Reliques, and the Sicilian’s
story in *Schiller’s Der Geisterseher (Lowes 229–30). ‘Instead of the cross, the
Albatross/About my neck was hung’ is often linked to the burning cross on
the Jew’s brow in The Monk (chapter 4); Lowes 236 connects the lines also to
the mark borne by Cain which is, according to some sources, a cross. There
may also be a link with the Dutch legend of Falkenberg, who is condemned to
wander the seas with a black spectral form and a white (compare Death and
Life-in-Death) who dice for his soul (Lowes 253–4).
Brown (1998) looks at the influence of *Dante’s Inferno as translated by
Henry Boyd (1785), which STC borrowed from *Bristol Library in summer
1796. Like Ulysses—an ‘ancient mariner’—and others in Dante, the Mariner is
‘compelled by those he meets to tell his story and show by example the nature
of his crime’; the souls are, like him, both prisoners and guides (pp. 651, 652).
Beer (1959) discusses Neoplatonist influences and notes other possible sources
in *Berkeley (pp. 142–5) and *Böhme, finding a ‘Close link between [his]
angels and Coleridge’s seraph-men’ (pp. 150–1, 142–5, 164).
Interpretations
The themes of AM include ‘the evil of isolation and the restorative goodness
of communion’ (Stillinger [1994], p. 68); the operation of guilt; the mystery
(or the theology) of sin and suffering; the relationship between humans and
the natural world; ‘the supernatural dimension of what [STC] came to call
Imagination’ (Mays [2016], p. 132); ‘states of madness, dream and hallucina-
tion which encroach upon the normal, waking world’ (Holmes 1.173). O’Neill
(2009) suggests that the poem ‘tells Coleridge’s contemporaries that there are
more things in heaven and earth than are dreamt of in their philosophy’
(p. 384).
Mid-twentieth century discussion often revolved around moral meaning, or
its absence, in AM: the poem as ‘a spiritual allegory depicting human life as a
sort of Pilgrim’s Progress on the sea’ (Hill [1983], p. 155). For Abrams (1971),
for example, the Mariner’s spiritual journey ‘is an instance of the Christian plot
of moral error, the discipline of suffering, and a consequent change of heart’
(p. 272). In such readings there is a clear progression from sin, in the killing of
the albatross, through retribution and suffering to redemption in the blessing
of the water-snakes and the telling of the warning tale to others. The blessing
of the snakes ‘unaware’ (285) indicates an instinctive response to the One Life,
the operation of Divine Grace, or the redeeming power of the imagination.
According to Table Talk, however, STC said that AM ‘had too much moral,
and that too openly intruded on the reader’, that it was a fault to bring in ‘the
moral sentiment … too much as a principle or cause in a work of such pure
Imagination’ (CW 14.1.272–3, 149). For many readers the suffering of
Mariner and crew seems out of proportion to his crime, and his parting words
 THE PALGRAVE LITERARY DICTIONARY OF SAMUEL TAYLOR COLERIDGE 9

to the Wedding Guest seem trite and inadequate. For Bostetter (1962) the
world of the poem is one whose inhabitants are ‘at the mercy of arbitrary and
unpredictable forces’ (p. 251), as suggested by the game of dice. For many
others ‘He prayeth best …’ is untrue to the sense of mystery in, for example,
the spectre-ship or the albatross-loving ‘spirit who ‘bideth by himself/In the
land of mist and snow’ (402–3). The discrepancy may reflect the Mariner’s
own limited comprehension of his experience. His story makes his listener sad-
der and wiser but not necessarily because what he has heard can be fully
summed up by the Mariner. The tale leaves the Wedding Guest initially as if
‘stunn’d’ (622), senseless.
STC’s *Unitarianism in 1797–8 has often been taken to rule out an ortho-
dox Christian exegesis of the poem, but Raiger (2006) argues that this ignores
the shifting nature of STC’s beliefs at the time. Raiger’s STC embraces the
Augustinian understanding of original sin as a mystery, unintelligible (pp. 73,
75), although it issues from the will and humans must take responsibility for it.
Hence the lack of motive for the Mariner’s deed and the apparent dispropor-
tion of what follows. Evil remains a mystery in the poem because STC has ‘just
moved from a deterministic philosophy of Necessity which grounded his
Unitarian theology’ to an incipiently more orthodox ‘sense of the individual’s
responsibility for sinful actions’ (p. 82).
A wide range of studies seeks to place the poem in its historical, ecological,
psychological and other contexts. Kitson (1996) examines how the break-­
down of ‘the normal ties of human communication’ in AM ‘could be seen as a
symbolic representation of the state of Britain … under the repressive policies
of *Pitt’s government’ (p. 42) and the rotting ocean as a metaphor for its cor-
ruption (p. 47). Many readers have found implicit allusions to the slave-trade
and colonialism: see for example Keane (1994). Fulford (2002b) looks at inner
and outer enslavement: like the British and French ‘slavish band’ of ‘France: an
Ode’ 27, the Mariner ‘is controlled by forces he cannot understand or resist’
and so desires to believe in their ‘supernatural power’ (p. 49). Fulford, with
Bewell (1999), stresses the ill consequences of the slave-trade for the slavers—
an argument used by *Clarkson in his abolitionist works and by STC in ‘Lecture
on the Slave Trade’; Bewell’s Mariner is traumatised by colonial suffering and
guilt and the poem interrogates, through his re-telling, ‘not a colonized
“other” but the “otherness” that colonialism produced within Britain itself’
(p. 108). The voyage goes to tropical seas and the crew die after suffering such
symptom as tongues ‘wither’d at the root’ (135–6) and ‘black lips bak’d’ (157),
perhaps reminding contemporary readers of the disease, mainly yellow fever,
which killed not only slaves but a high percentage of sailors on slave-ships (Lee
[1998], pp. 685–6).
Ecological perspectives are now common in response to a poem where
human intervention in the natural world—shooting the albatross—has dire
consequences, oily water burns (129–30) and water-snakes are blessed. Mason
(2016) argues that Christianity and ecology are compatible, imagining together
‘a way of thinking that readily comprises “All things both great and small”’
10 M. GARRETT

(p. 75). She reads ‘The very deeps did rot …’ (123) in terms of environmental
catastrophe (p. 83) and notes that ‘The sailors are able to see the connection
between the albatross and the climate—the bird is blamed for making the
breeze blow, and bringing fog and mist—but they are unable to understand
their own relation to the bird and environment’ (p. 84).
Psychological approaches concentrate often on the traumatic nature of the
Mariner’s experience. For Hill (1983) ‘The spectral figures are organic and func-
tional … and not merely shocking or decoratively macabre; they are the leering
and accusing incarnations of [the Mariner’s] own guilt and remorse’ (p. 142).
CL, answering WW’s charge that the Mariner lacks distinct character or profes-
sion, argues that he needs none because he ‘undergoes such Trials, as overwhelm
and bury all individuality or memory of what he was’ (Lamb [1975–8], 1.266).
And Davies (2016) diagnoses post-traumatic stress disorder in ‘a Mariner who
has experienced … the extreme horrors of shipwreck in uncharted waters, and
who believes his own navigational error to be the cause of that wreck’, and who
pathologically repeats his story (pp. 525, 526). Others attempt explanations
based on their understanding of STC’s own psychology. The death of the alba-
tross provides a focus for his pervasive sense of guilt, the female Life-in-Death
reflects the coldness of his mother. Williams’ (1993) psychoanalytical account
traces ‘the means by which meaning is constructed out of separation, need, fear,
guilt, and a need to repair the primal break’ (p. 1124). For Williams an important
aspect of the Mariner is that he is linked ‘with the conventionally female in
Western culture: the sea, irrationality, motherhood, and nature—“spontaneous”
energies that challenge and disrupt symbolic order’ (p. 1112).
Texture
AM includes many inventive departures from the tradition of ballad, with
frequent internal rhyme in the first and third lines (see Ashton 127) and varia-
tion in stanza-length. Fiona Stafford looks at the effect of such variation: ‘as
the breeze drops, for example, so does the jaunty third-line rhyme: “And we
did speak only to break/The silence of the Sea” (109–10). The visual resem-
blance of “speak” and “break” recalls the full rhymes of the previous stanza’
but in the next stanzas the third lines lose their ‘internal chime’ and finally in
the repeated ‘Water, water every where’ of 119 ‘the third line not only lacks a
rhyme, but seems so drained of energy that it fails even to muster new words’
(Wordsworth and Coleridge [2013], p. xvi). Another distinctive feature, dis-
cussed by Ashton 127–9, is the use of similes which compare the unfamiliar
with the ‘even less familiar’: the sun rising ‘Ne dim ne red, like God’s own
head’ (97), or the coloured, burning water ‘like a witch’s oils’ (129–30). Since
similes usually compare the less with the more known, the reader is given the
illusion of familiarity with the experience of the Mariner (Ashton 128).
The reader of AM is plunged ‘into a pellucid, hallucinatory world of the imag-
ination’ (O’Neill [2009], p. 382). The effects are made the more nightmarish by
the powerful contrast between the elemental world, the extreme conditions, of
the voyage, and on land the more conventional wedding with its music, rose-red
bride who paces into the Hall (33–4) and open ‘Bridegroom’s doors’ (5). Here
 THE PALGRAVE LITERARY DICTIONARY OF SAMUEL TAYLOR COLERIDGE 11

‘There was a Ship’ (8, 10) might begin a suitably ‘laughsome’ (8), light-hearted
and very un-AM-like tale. The bride, associated with life, the rose and ‘merry
Minstralsy’ (36) counterpoints, with the bridesmaids (594) and ‘Maidens gay’
(609), the only other definitely female figure in the poem, the cold-dealing Life-
in-Death, whose red lips, free looks, golden hair and diseased white skin suggest
another, more destructive aspect of relations between the sexes: a parodic bride,
perhaps. Time at the wedding moves in predictable measure and the hermit
kneels regularly ‘at morn and noon and eve’ (519), whereas in the Mariner’s
account time slows for the becalmed ship and speeds for the approach of the
spectre-ship and the frighteningly swift return home. The hermit’s main field of
reference is the land. In spite of his experience talking to mariners from afar
(517–18), he cannot imagine the horrors on the sea this Mariner has experi-
enced. His wood ‘Slopes down to the Sea’ (515) and his remit does not, it may
be implied, reach further. Similarly the whirlpool caused by the sinking ship is an
intrusion of extreme sea events into the pilot’s familiar ‘harbour-bay’ (472): it
sends him into a faint and his boy ‘crazy’ (565). Between the first appearance of
the harbour, kirk, hill and lighthouse and their reappearance in exactly reversed
order (465–8) extraordinary events have occurred in a world completely differ-
ent from the land and beyond the comprehension of those who have remained
there, except perhaps the stunned but wiser Wedding-Guest.
Most of the poem is spoken by the Mariner, and much of the time he describes
his own and the crew’s silent suffering. The ‘Two voices in the air’ (397) pro-
vide a brief but striking shift in tone, sounding more like figures in a seven-
teenth-century masque than a ballad. They speak to each other (or sing?) in
tones both courtly and engaged—‘But tell me, tell me! Speak again,/Thy soft
response renewing …’ (410–11)—unlike the haunted, more isolated Mariner,
the cruder Life-in-Death, or the Wedding Guest who stutters his fear that the
Mariner is a spirit. The voices usher in a new phase of ‘penance more’ (409).
The two voices are disembodied, exceptionally in this highly visual poem.
Owens (2018) considers its stage potential as ‘a series of “set pieces”’, of ‘visu-
ally arresting descriptions reminiscent of’ contemporary theatrical backdrops—
most obvious in the description of the becalmed vessel ‘As idle as a painted
Ship/Upon a painted Ocean’ (117–18). The spectre-ship would emerge ‘glid-
ing on grooves past the doomed Mariner and his crew’ and ‘coloured silks or
transparencies … lit from behind’ would produce such effects as the ‘dismal
sheen’ of the ‘snowy clifts’ (55–6), the moonshine glimmering through ‘fog-­
smoke white’ (77) or the ice ‘As green as Emeraud’ (54).
Reviews
Charles Burney, in the Monthly Review (June 1799) concedes that this appar-
ent ‘rhapsody of unintelligible wildness and incoherence’ contains exquisite
‘poetical touches’ (p. 204). Francis Wrangham in the British Critic (October
1799) finds ‘confusion of images’ but an arresting opening and conclusion—
particularly good is the idea of the ‘periodical fits of agony, which oblige [the
Mariner] to relate his marvellous adventure’ (pp. 365–6). Other reviewers of LB
focus on the relation to traditional ballad or contemporary Gothic, signalled by
12 M. GARRETT

the word ‘German’. According to the Analytical Review (December 1798) AM

‘has more of the extravagance of a mad german [sic] poet, than of the simplicity
of our ancient ballad writers’ (p. 583). For RS in the Critical Review (October
1798) the story ‘is a Dutch attempt at German sublimity’ (p. 201), prompting
CL’s protest that it is less ‘A Dutch Attempt’ than ‘a right English attempt, and
a successful one, to dethrone German sublimity’ (Lamb [1975–8], 1.142).
*Jeffrey similarly finds ‘more true poetical horror and more new images than in
all the German ballads and tragedies, that have been holding our hair on end for
these last three years’ (letter of March 1799, CH 60).
CL’s letter to RS goes on to say that there are ‘fifty passages as miraculous
as the miracles they celebrate. I never felt so deeply the pathetic as in that
part, “A spring of love gush’d from my heart,/And I bless’d them unaware
-” It stung me into high pleasure through sufferings’ (Lamb [1975–8],
1.142). Similarly favourable responses did not appear in print until reviews of
1817. If the Monthly Review for January 1819 judged the horrors of AM
outdated and the poem full of repetition and absurd, inappropriate images
(pp. 28, 35), *Lockhart in Blackwood’s Edinburgh Magazine for October
1819 provides the first detailed, positive assessment. Those who have ‘refused
to see any meaning or purpose’ in the poem are blind (p. 5). Lockhart traces
a progression from ‘violation of the charities of sentiment’ to ‘heart-felt sac-
rifice to the … spirit of universal love’ (p. 6). Those who cavilled at superflu-
ous imagery and confused narrative ‘did not consider into whose mouth the
poet has put this ghastly story’ (p. 5). The poem will be appreciated by any-
one who submits to its magic, ‘the melody of the charmed words, and the
splendour of the unnatural apparitions’ (p. 6). For the Monthly Magazine
(December 1818) it is STC’s only work of genius and ‘the finest superstitious
ballad in literature’ (p. 408). Responses in the 1820s and 1830s tend to
accept that AM is a distinctly memorable work. John Bowring, reviewing
1828 in the Westminster Review (January 1830) likes the ‘graphic power’ of
description and ‘the truth of the emotions’ ascribed to the Mariner, preserv-
ing ‘what is natural amid the supernatural’ (pp. 27, 29).
Legacy
Lines and references from AM have become widely known, whether or not
their origin is realised: ‘A sadder and a wiser man’ (624), the proverbial alba-
tross round the neck, the intercepted Wedding Guest, various versions of
‘Water, water every where,/Ne any drop to drink’ (121–2). Mays (2016) fol-
lows the growth in the popularity of the poem through cheap STC selections
from the 1830s onward (p. 142) and as an educational text, ‘an adventure
story that told a moral lesson’, mainly from the 1860s (pp. 145,147). Its fame
spread above all through illustrated editions, particularly Gustave Doré’s, first
published in 1876. David Scott’s linear etchings had appeared in 1837; STC
himself had seen them and felt, according to Henry Nelson *Coleridge, that
Scott was wrong to make ‘the ancient mariner an old decrepit man …; no! he
 THE PALGRAVE LITERARY DICTIONARY OF SAMUEL TAYLOR COLERIDGE 13

should have been a growthless, decayless being … The curse of the dead men’s
eyes should not have passed away’ (Coleridge [1834], p. 29). Joseph Noel
Paton’s Pre-Raphaelite-style illustrations were published in 1863. The poem is
read variously by later artists: as ‘richly sumptuous Art Nouveau by Willy
Pogány (1910) …; as a subtle blend of Celtic mythology and Roman
Catholicism by David Jones (1929); as full of pain and anguish by Mervyn
Peake (1943) and full of light and colour by Duncan Grant (1945)’ (Mays
[2013], p. 114). Vladimir Vimr provides near-abstract illustrations for the
Czech translation of 1984, using elements of ‘the albatross’s wing, waves,
feathers, the sun, rigging and simplified boat shapes’ (Beare and Kooistra
[2002], p. 77). Beare and Kooistra (2002) list ninety-three illustrated editions
up to 2001 (pp. 87–98). See also Hebron et al. (2006).
A now lost silent film was made in 1925; its poster declares ‘For Human
Kindness, Tolerance and Happiness!’. A 1975 film directed by Raúl da Silva,
consisting of a reading by Sir Michael Redgrave and others and photo-­
animations, was avowedly educational in intention as was the BBC2 version
of 1994 directed by Juliet May and with Paul McGann as the Mariner. Orson
Welles gave a resonant, dramatic reading to accompany film of Doré’s illus-
trations in 1977. There is also a tradition of theatrical adaptation, including
the version for children by Michael Bogdanov, first performed at the Young
Vic in London in 1979 and then at the National Theatre, with Michael
Bryant as the Mariner, in 1984. A more experimental performance was by
Fiona Shaw (Epidaurus 2012, Old Vic Tunnels, London 2013, directed by
Phyllida Lloyd)—Shaw spoke and often enacted the words, interacting with
the dancer Daniel Hay-Gordon who became the albatross, the dead men,
the Wedding Guest and sometimes the Mariner. The theatrical possibilities
of the poem were further suggested by the Word for Word Performing Arts
Company production (Z Space, San Francisco, 2019, directed by Delia
MacDougall and Jim Cave), which doubled the Wedding Guest and the
young Mariner, the moon and Life-in-Death, the sun and the hermit, the
polar spirit and Death. It used ‘the slanted floor of a moving ship whose
ribbed edges rise like the remains of the skeletons that will soon reside there’
and projections of water, ‘rainbow-­colored and slimy creatures of the sea’
and starry skies (Reynolds [2019]).
Musical responses range from John Francis Barnett’s cantata (1867) to the
version by Iron Maiden (1984). Luca Francesconi’s opera Ballata, with libretto
from AM by Umberto Fiori, was first performed at La Monnaie, Brussels, in
2002. The Albatross, directed by Sinéad O’Neill with music by Kim Ashton,
presented as a work-in-progress at RADA Studios Theatre, London (2017),
emphasised the free movement of the bird and the conservation issues sug-
gested by its death.
14 M. GARRETT

‘The Apotheosis; or, The Snow Drop’ see Robinson, Mary.

Aristotle see Plato.

Asra see Hutchinson, Sara.

B
Ball, Sir Alexander
(1756–1809)
Naval officer and colonial administrator, Civil Commissioner (governor) of
*Malta 1803–9. As acting Public Secretary in 1805 STC was responsible for
issuing proclamations on Ball’s behalf, promoting his policies and maintaining
a favourable impression of him among the people of Malta. (See Hough and
Davis [2010].) STC enjoyed his ‘friendship and confidence’; ‘daily and familiar
intercourse with him’ made 1804–5 ‘in many respects, the most memorable
and instructive period of my life’ (CW 4.2.253; for further evidence of Ball’s
approval of ‘my friend Coleridge’ see CL 2.1157 n.1, 1171). Following his
death STC wrote about his integrity, wisdom and perseverance in the 1809–10
Friend numbers 19, 21, 22, 26 and 27. Already in July 1805 he is ‘really the
abstract Idea of a wise & good Governor’ (CL 2.1141). In Friend STC’s aim
is, amidst public controversy on Ball’s record as governor, both ‘to vindicate
his friend’ and to prove prudence compatible with principle (Kooy [2012],
p. 75). In CN 2.2438 in 1805 he had called him ‘the Σοφοσωφρων’
(Sophosophron), ‘the binding Link’ between Prudence and Wisdom, Wisdom-­
and-­Prudence’. Ball in Friend is ‘no doubt too good to be true’, but fulfils
STC’s promise (CW 4.2.200) ‘“to pourtray the ideal of a Moral Being” while
at the same time offering not a system but a case, “something from which my
Readers individually may draw a practical advantage”’ (Kooy [2012], p. 75).

‘The Ballad of the Dark Ladiè: a Fragment’

Unfinished poem, worked on c. 1798–1802 (see CW 16.2.684–5) and pub-
lished in 1834. The anguished Dark Lady sends her page to search for her
‘betrothed Knight’ (19), Lord Falkland. Towards evening he eventually comes
to her and she seeks his protection; she has given him her heart, her peace, ‘”I
gave thee all”’ (32). He says that he will give her the fairest of his father’s nine
castles if she will only wait until dark. But she is horrified by his mention of
darkness; it is ‘in the eye of noon’ that ‘He pledged his sacred Vow!’ and that
he must lead her to their wedding (47–60).
CW 16.1.523n. points out that ‘Falkland’ probably alludes to the character
in *Godwin’s Caleb Williams; in a manuscript note STC describes his own
Falkland as ‘a solemn Scoundrel’ (CW 16.1.524n.) and it seems very likely that
he will abandon, fail or betray the lady. No doubt he will prove as unreliable as
 THE PALGRAVE LITERARY DICTIONARY OF SAMUEL TAYLOR COLERIDGE 15

the ‘Friends’ who rudely ‘scoff and bid me fly to thee’ (26). His response is
wooden: we hear of her kisses and tears rather than his; he talks more about
castles than love and says less than her. Her insistence on the wedding indicates
her worry that it will not happen; the poem ends before it can.
See also: ‘Love’.

Barbauld, Anna Letitia

(1743–1825)
Poet, essayist and teacher. STC met her in July 1797. In 1800 he admires
her ‘wonderful Propriety of Mind’, her acuteness kept ‘within the bounds of
practical Reason’, contrasting with the way his own ‘Subtleties’ can lead him
into ‘Out-of-the-waynesses’ (CL 1.578). Her ‘To Mr. S. T. Coleridge’, written
in 1797 and published in 1799, counsels him against involvement in ‘the maze
of metaphysic lore’ (line 34); the poem ‘replays his “Eolian Harp,” taking both
sides’ (McCarthy [2008], p. 402).
But STC’s attitude to Barbauld changed rapidly. While his allegiances
shifted, she remained politically radical and continued to move in Unitarian
circles. A more immediate reason or excuse for the change was the negative
review, in 1803, of CL’s John Woodvil which STC and CL mistakenly believed,
for a time, to have been written by Barbauld. Psychological factors have also
been adduced for his turn against his former ‘mother-mentor’ (McCarthy
[2008], p. 402); ‘Having built her up as a benign fairy godmother, Coleridge
begins to refer to her as a cold step-mother’ (Stabler [1998], p. 1). In 1808
lectures he attacked her style of moralising children’s books and alleged view
that Samuel Richardson was as good a writer as *Shakespeare (CW 5.1.118,
220), and in his lecture on *Milton on 27 January 1812 he ‘ridiculed some
expressions in’ her ‘Hymn to Content’ (Robinson [1938], 1.62). And Table
Talk for 31 March 1832 records the much-quoted conversation in which
Barbauld supposedly told him that the ‘only faults’ of AM ‘were – that it was
improbable, and had no moral’ and he replied that it had ‘too much moral’
(CW 14.1.272–3). Seamus Perry, cited by Stabler (1998), thinks that STC may
have ‘invented this anecdote in the interests of elevating his own reputation’
(p. 26 n. 5). Certainly it helped to depress Barbauld’s. She was cast unfairly, in
much twentieth-century commentary on STC and Romanticism, as a staidly
moralising and unimaginative writer from an earlier age.
See Raiger (2019) for the influence on ‘Dejection’ of Barbauld’s ‘A Summer
Evening’s Meditation’ (1773), including its ‘poetic expression of Christian
patience and sublime suffering, whereby loss can willingly be borne, allowing
for the discovery of greater gain’ (p. 29). Stabler (1998) finds connections
between the ‘Meditation’ and ‘The Eolian Harp’ (pp. 13–16) and argues for
the two authors’ closeness of ‘poetic temperament’ (p. 25).
16 M. GARRETT

Beaumont, Sir George

(1753–1827)
Patron, painter and art collector. He formed an unfavourable impression of
STC when they met in *London in 1803 – he was suspicious of his politics –
but in *Keswick that summer he and his wife, Margaret, Lady Beaumont
(1756–1829) became his good friends. (They were closer to WW, however.)
STC found Sir George, in 1804, ‘remarkably sensible’, ‘a Painter of Genius …
& an exceedingly amusing Companion’ (CL 2.1102–3). He planned a volume
of poems responding to or ‘translating’ his drawings: see CL 2.1004, 1055 and
CN 2.1899 and notes.
Beaumont left money to SFC, WW and RS; STC took his omission from the
will as ‘an implicit but trumpet-tongued Brand on my Honor & character’
which must have been influenced by calumny (CL 6.680 and n.1). Lady
Beaumont left him £50, which he passed on to SFC (CL 6.814–15).

Beddoes, Thomas
(1760–1808)
Physician and medical theorist. He worked in *Bristol from 1793, where
STC had met him by November 1795. Both were prominent in such radical
causes as opposition to the two ‘gagging acts’ (see The Plot Discovered). STC
had access to Beddoes’ large library of political, philosophical and theological
works. Beddoes, through his translations and reviews of German authors
including *Kant, was ‘a crucial link to Germany in the years before [STC]
knew the language’ (Kooy [2002], p. 29). His influence on STC’s thinking
about medicine is explored in Vickers (2004); his ‘intellectual legacy … initi-
ated Coleridge’s lasting interest in the negative effects of the association of
ideas and in the primary importance of feeling states in underpinning mental
coherence’ (p. 158).

Berkeley, George
(1685–1753)
Philosopher, Bishop of Cloyne. In his system matter does not exist: rather,
to be is to be perceived. Perception is in the mind of God or spirits – including
humans. Nature is the ‘visual language’ of God. STC was enthusiastic about
Berkeley mainly in the mid to late 1790s: see Religious Musings and ‘This
Lime-Tree Bower My Prison’. Later he interpreted ‘The Eolian Harp’ 44–8
as an example of Berkeleian immaterialism (CW 5.2.557).
Townsend (2019) argues that although STC ‘turned away from Berkeley’s
idealism in his philosophical writings [see for example CW 12.4.447–8],
the image of nature as a “literal” language informs much of his poetry
across his life, and it leads directly into his symbological understanding of
the universe’.
 THE PALGRAVE LITERARY DICTIONARY OF SAMUEL TAYLOR COLERIDGE 17

Bertram see Maturin, Charles Robert.

Bible
STC read, studied and discussed the Bible throughout his life. His response
was often literary as well as religious: the Hebrew poets ‘beyond all others’ pos-
sess ‘Imagination, or the modifying, and co-adunating Faculty’ (CL 2.866);
‘What can Greece or Rome present, worthy to be compared with the 50th
Psalm, either in sublimity of the Imagery or in moral elevation?’ (CW 12.1.430).
In the 1790s, in works including Lectures on Revealed Religion, he worked
‘to defend the credibility of the Bible against the deists and rationalists … while
also … communicating a politically radical version of the Gospel message’
(Anthony Harding in Coleridge [2007–8], 2.18). Apocalyptic elements in
such poems as Religious Musings, AM and ‘Kubla Khan’ derive partly from the
Book of Revelation. Between 1802 and 1817 he was occupied chiefly with
‘finding a credible foundation in Scripture for … Trinitarian theology’ (2.20).
Biblical study in later years was central to published works including Aids and
Church and State but some of STC’s most searching analyses come in the com-
mentaries in notebooks and marginalia from the late 1820s onwards. Here he
works through the whole book, recording – often more freely than in print -
his interpretative and historical questions and theories and his suggested emen-
dations to the translations from Greek and Hebrew. He considers, for example,
the ‘many and … Important Problems’ raised by Genesis 1–11, from the nature
of the creation to matters of textual authority (CW 12.1.417 and n.). At the
other end of the Bible, in part following *Luther, he expresses doubts about
the authority of the Book of Revelation (CN 4.5069).
STC engaged seriously with the German ‘Higher Criticism’ of scholars
including *Eichhorn and Friedrich Schleiermacher (see also Lessing, Gotthold
Ephraim), agreeing that the biblical text, variously redacted and transmitted,
must be read in its historical context. But he remained ‘a man of strong reli-
gious convictions, who’ looked ‘to the Bible … to provide him with a viable
form and expression of personal belief’ (Coleridge [2007–8], 2.xiii). If the
form of the first two Gospels is ‘the Historian’s work as an Artist’, ‘The
Substance is fact’ (CW 12.1.448). (He was angered by Schleiermacher’s claim
that Gospel writers knowingly incorporated some fictitious material [CW
12.4.479–80].) He maintains that the God seen in Exodus 24.10–11 ‘was the
son of God, and that [in] Christ, the Word and Jehova the same Person is
expressed’ (CW 12.1.420). And ‘The very difficulties of [Luke’s] narrative’ of
events from Resurrection to Ascension convince him of its truthfulness: ‘Here
is no attempt to make one incident fit on to the other - this certainty as to the
fact in the minds of the Witnesses superseded & prevented the desire of explain-
ing and accounting for the particulars – ex. gr. the rolling away of the Stone’
(CW 12.1.456).
See also: Confessions of an Inquiring Spirit; Lay Sermons.
Further reading: Bornstein (2020).
18 M. GARRETT

Biographia Literaria; or Biographical Sketches of My Literary Life and Opinions

STC’s best known prose work, combining or interweaving intellectual and
some personal autobiography, philosophy and theology, and literary criticism
and theory. As early as autumn 1803 he noted ‘Seem to have made up my mind
to write my metaphysical works, as my Life, & in my Life – intermixed with all
the other events/ or history of the mind and fortunes of S.T. Coleridge’ (CN
1.1515). The work was originally intended as a briefer preface to the volume of
poems which became 1817 (CL 3.324 and 4.561). Expansion was impelled by
the appearance in April 1815 of WW’s Poems and its ‘Essay, Supplementary to
the Preface’. STC was provoked above all, as Modiano (2009) says, by WW’s
self-presentation there as ‘an able philosopher, engaging fundamental concepts
from Coleridge’s own arsenal, such as the prized distinction between fancy and
imagination’ (p. 212). He set out to answer both the ‘Essay’ and the views on
the language of poetry expressed in the preface to LB2, which was reprinted as
an appendix to Poems. He wanted to show the inadequacy of WW’s theories,
both in themselves and as applicable to WW’s own poetry, and to offer his own
analysis of the poems and the principles behind them. Among other motiva-
tions for BL are self-justification - separating his own career and agenda from
WW’s - and the desire to introduce German thought to British readers. The
work can also be seen as a political intervention in a post-war context in which
the ruling classes feel threatened from below: for Butler (1981) STC com-
mends German philosophy because it is ‘meaningful only to a small educated
élite’, while he criticises LB for ‘simplicity and universalism … associated with
the radical, levelling tendency of the pre-revolutionary Enlightenment’ (p. 63).
More generally, as CW 7.1.lxx-lxxi says, he is writing against an established,
‘quasi-mercantile, utilitarian’ British philosophy, ‘associationist in psychol-
ogy …; sceptical of the transcendental’, and likely to ‘end in atheism’.
The bulk of BL was dictated to John *Morgan between May and September
1815. (Oral delivery may have contributed to the uneven structure and often
digressive manner of the book; Holmes 2.378 suggests a Freudian ‘talking
cure’.) The traditional view is that the philosophical chapters (5–13) were
added in August to September 1815, with 12 and 13 being completed at great
speed between 16 and 19 September (see CW 7.1.lvii and Fogel [1977]).
Roberts in Coleridge (2014), however, argues that chapter 5 and parts of 6–13
may date, in their original form, from April to July 1815 (p. xxxiii–iv; for more
detail see pp. xix–xxxiii). Work was also extended and complicated when John
Gutch, who was supervising the printers in *Bristol, first mistakenly told STC,
in April 1816, that the material needed to be split into two volumes and then,
in July, discovered that the second volume was in fact too short by 150 pages.
Amid difficult negotiations with Gutch, STC transferred the printing to the
publishers Gale and Fenner in *London. The imbalance was addressed princi-
pally by enlarging chapter 22 and by including a lightly revised text of ‘Satyrane’s
Letters’ and a version of STC’s critique of *Maturin’s Bertram. In late 1816 or
early 1817 Chapter 24 was either added (Coleridge [2014], p. xxxiv) or revised
(CW 7.1.lxiv). BL was eventually published in July 1817 by Rest Fenner, now
 THE PALGRAVE LITERARY DICTIONARY OF SAMUEL TAYLOR COLERIDGE 19

the sole partner in what had been Gale and Fenner. Kirk and Mercein pub-
lished an edition in New York later in 1817.
Chapters 1–4 are concerned mainly with the nature of poetry, the poet and
the critics: the ‘school of *Pope’ and the more feeling and natural manner of
poets including *Bowles; the bias and ignorance of contemporary reviewers.
Hostile criticism of WW, which is unfair to the great majority of the poems, was
provoked by the theories set out in the Preface to LB2. Meditation on his
poems (whose qualities he will return to in chapters 14 and 17–22) led STC to
the conviction that ‘fancy and imagination were two distinct and widely differ-
ent faculties’ (CW 7.1.82). In order to explain his thinking he must set out its
metaphysical basis – whence chapters 5–9 and 12–13. Chapters 5–8 consider
the fallacies of associationism, especially *Hartley’s (which STC once found
highly persuasive), the related materialism of philosophers including Hobbes,
*Hume and Condillac, Descartes’ dualism of soul and body, and ‘(Berkeleyan)
subjective idealism’ (CW 7.1.140 n.1). Chapter 9 finds contrasting value in
Mystics including *Böhme and above all in the Transcendental philosophy of
*Kant and its development by *Schelling. The substantial Chapter 12 positions
‘religion and God as the high-water mark of the philosophical chapters’ (CW
7.1.lxxiii). Chapter 13 continues the argument ‘about the relationship of
(immortal, spiritual) subjectivity to (finite, material) objectivity’ (Coleridge
[2014], p. cv). But the chapter is soon interrupted by a letter, purportedly
from a friend of ‘practical judgement’, ‘taste and sensibility’ (CW 7.1.300) –
STC himself, as he admits in CL 4.728. (The practical consideration is the
length of the first volume and the need to end it on a suitably emphatic or
conclusive note.) The ‘friend’ lucidly makes the case that the present chapter
on Imagination will be too long, abstruse and difficult for readers to follow.
Therefore the author will state only ‘the main result of the Chapter’ – the defi-
nitions which the philosophical chapters were intended to lead up to. ‘The
primary IMAGINATION I hold to be the living Power and prime Agent of all
human Perception, and as a repetition in the finite mind of the eternal act of
creation in the infinite I AM’. The secondary differs from it ‘only in degree,
and in the mode of its operation. It dissolves, diffuses, dissipates, in order to
re-create’ or at least ‘struggles to idealize and to unify’. The lesser power of
Fancy ‘has no other counters to play with, but fixities and definites’ (CW
7.1.304–5).
In volume 2 the focus returns to poetry. The ideal poet ‘brings the whole
soul of man into activity, with the subordination of its faculties to each other,
according to their relative worth and dignity. He diffuses a tone, and spirit of
unity, that blends, and (as it were) fuses, each into each, by that synthetic and
magical power, to which we have exclusively appropriated the name of
Imagination. This power … reveals itself in the balance or reconciliation of
opposite or discordant qualities’ (CW 7.2.13–14). Consideration of the virtues
of earlier poets, including *Shakespeare, is followed by discussion of WW
(chapters 17–22). Contrary to his theory, ‘Rustic life … [is] especially unfavor-
able to the formation of a human diction’; ‘Poetry [is] essentially ideal and
20 M. GARRETT

generic’ (CW 7.2.40). Reacting against ‘the gaudy affectations’ of a fashionable

poetic style, WW expressed his preference for the humblest ‘language of nature,
and of good-sense’ in ‘terms at once too large and too exclusive’ (CW 7.2.90).
He meant, rather, to commend apt expression of thought together with apt
rhyme and metre. Literal adherence to his theory would exclude ‘two-thirds at
least of the marked beauties of his poetry’ (CW 7.2.106). Chapter 22 surveys
WW’s ‘characteristic defects’ and then his ‘(for the most part correspondent)
excellencies’ (CW 7.2.119, 142). The defects include ‘the INCONSTANCY of
the style’ (121), ’a matter-of-factness in certain poems’ (126) and ‘thoughts
and images too great for the subject’ (136): ‘sins of discontinuity that run
counter to an organic ideal of art’, notes Modiano (2009), p. 215. The beau-
ties include ‘an austere purity of language’ and sentiment (142–4); ‘the perfect
truth of nature in his images and descriptions as taken immediately from nature’
(148); ‘a meditative pathos’ (150); ‘the gift of IMAGINATION in the highest
and strictest sense of the word’ (151).
The concluding Chapter 24 protests about reviewers’ slating of Christabel
and misrepresentation of STC’s religious beliefs. His object has been to show
‘that the scheme of Christianity, as taught in the Liturgy and Homilies of our
Church, though not discoverable by human Reason, is yet in accordance with
it’ (CW 7.2.247).
Sources and Borrowings
The generic context of BL is in such literary lives as *Johnson’s Lives of the
Poets (1779–81) and several works with Biographia as part of the title; and rarer
autobiographical works like Rousseau’s Confessions (1782–9) and WW’s The
Prelude, which STC knew in manuscript (Coleridge [2014], pp. xv–xvi).
Jackson (1997) observes that the title excites associations of ‘the factual solid-
ity’ of the many eighteenth and nineteenth-century reference books with Latin
titles (p. 60); for Reiman (1986) the use of Latin aligns BL with other works
by STC ‘Addressed to the Learned and Reflecting … especially among the
Higher Class’ (p. 334; CL 4.695). The ‘Life and Opinions’ of the title, Reiman
(1986) points out, recalls *Sterne’s The Life and Opinions of Tristram Shandy
(1759–67). Reiman goes on to argue that STC at times makes use of a Shandean
persona in BL; and that ‘As Sterne created an anti-fiction to demonstrate how
an author would completely lose control of his narrative if he submitted himself
to the slavery of an associated necessity, Coleridge created an anti-philosophical
work that undermines all such theories of inevitability deriving from closed
systems of thought’ (p. 339). More simply, ‘Sketches’ in the title suggests ‘that
the author [like Sterne’s narrator] intends to veer off into digressions and
would fail to treat systematically the main events of his life’ (p. 335).
A substantial amount of material is copied or adapted from CN and other
work by STC. For example the analysis of Shakespeare poems in Chapter 15
draws extensively on CN 3.4115 (also used, CW 7.2.20 n. 1 points out, for
Lecture 4 of 1811, CW 5.1.239–59). And the last paragraph of BL uses a mar-
ginal note on Böhme’s Works (CW 12.1.576; CW 7.2.247 n.1). Greek,
German and British philosophical sources intertwine - overlapping ‘like bricks
 THE PALGRAVE LITERARY DICTIONARY OF SAMUEL TAYLOR COLERIDGE 21

in a wall’ (CW 7.1.lxxxviii). Kant and Schelling provide important discussions

of imagination but STC is also aware – as often are they – of Johann Nicolaus
Tetens, Alexander Gerard, *Locke, Bacon (CW 7.1.lxxxv–viii). On association-
ism a major source is Johann Gebhard Ehrenreich Maass’s Versuch über die
Einbildungskraft (1792, revised 1797) (CW 7.1.cxxiv). For the philosophic
imagination or intuitive reason STC consults the German transcendentalists
but also *Milton, Bacon, Plotinus (CW 7.1.xcv–vi). Some of the more impor-
tant of the many forerunners of STC’s distinction between imagination and
fancy occur in Maass’s Versuch, and in Kant, Tetens and Schelling (CW 7.1.c–
ciii). Friedrich Heinrich Jacobi’s Ueber die Lehre des Spinoza (1785) was a use-
ful quarry for quotations from Leibniz and Kant and appealed to STC for its
way, in a Christian context, of rescuing Spinozism ‘from the dangers of mate-
rialism and atheism’ (CW 7.1.cxxiv–v).
Controversy has attended STC’s often unacknowledged use of German
sources, above all Schelling and Maass, and mainly in the ‘philosophical chap-
ters’, since it began to be revealed by *De Quincey in 1834 and the more
hostile and exact James Ferrier in Blackwood’s Edinburgh Magazine for March
1840. There seems to be no one fully convincing explanation of his motives for
this plagiarism. Suggestions include exhaustion, laudanum-induced depres-
sion, confusion or forgetfulness, mistaking translated passages in his notebooks
‘for compositions of his own’ (Sara *Coleridge in Coleridge [1847] 1.viii),
simple arrogance or dishonesty, or the playing of some clever game with the
learned reader (compare Reiman [1986], pp. 347–9). He claims that in works
by Schelling ‘I first found a genial coincidence with much that I had toiled out
for myself’ and that, as with *Schlegel’s lectures on drama, ‘many of the most
striking resemblances, indeed all the main and fundamental ideas, were born
and matured in my mind before I had ever seen a single page of the German
Philosopher’ (CW 7.1.160–1; see STC’s note, 7.1.34). Worthen (2013) points
out that he ‘found it natural to identify himself with a writer with whom he
agreed, so that [CW 12.6.305] “his thoughts become my thoughts”’ (p. 109).
Sara Coleridge’s evidence-based addressing of the early allegations of plagia-
rism in the 1847 edition of BL successfully limited the damage to her father’s
reputation for over a century. While she will not countenance the idea of delib-
erate dishonesty, she admits her father’s ‘literary omissions and inaccuracies’
(Coleridge [1847], 1.xxxix); her notes supply the relevant passages from
German writers and ‘she translates … and gives the exact reference of each
source she identifies’ (Schofield [2018], p. 117). Her argument, having sifted
this evidence, is that STC engrafts ‘fresh matter’ onto a ‘nucleus’ of German
material (1.xi); Schofield (2018) observes that ‘she understands STC’s textual
dialogue with Schelling and Maass in terms of a shared philosophical quest’
(p. 122). Later some critics, notably Fruman (1971), took a much less tolerant
approach to the borrowing. But, as Schofield (2018), p. 120, shows, Sara
Coleridge’s approach continued to influence such positive ways of characteris-
ing STC’s borrowing as the ‘marginal exegesis’ – writing marginalia on other
texts - of Christensen (1981), p. 105, and the ‘mosaic’ of McFarland (1981),
22 M. GARRETT

p. 21. The notes by Engell and Bate in CW 7 maintained her usefully detailed
coverage of the sources. CW 7 estimates that ‘A maximum of a quarter’ of the
philosophical chapters, much of it in chapters 8 and 12, is taken without
acknowledgement – summarised, translated or paraphrased – from German
originals (CW 7.1.cxvii; see 7.1.cxix–xxv and the table at 7.2.254).
Structure
STC himself calls BL an ‘immethodical miscellany’ (CW 7.1.88) and Leslie
Stephen says it was ‘put together with a pitchfork’ (Hours in a Library [1892],
3.355); it features ‘baroque involutions’ (Holmes 2.378), it is a ‘collage’
(Burwick [2009b], p. vii), a ‘rubble-heap’ work where ‘a mosaic content of
borrowed passages from various sources is complemented by meandering inat-
tention to and indeed denial of conventional structure’ (McFarland [1981],
p. 21). Defenders of the unity of BL work to supply the sort of links which STC
has ‘been obliged to omit … from the necessity of compression’ (CW 7.1.302). CW
7.1.cxxxii–vi presents Chapters 1–13 as ‘an unbroken chain of development’,
with the philosophical chapters continuing STC’s intellectual autobiography.
The first volume ‘establishes philosophical principles’ and the second embodies
them. Unity is provided throughout by the debate with WW over fancy and
imagination and by the status of BL as ‘a religious testament’, linking STC’s
philosophy, his view of poetry, and his ‘religious biography’. As Roberts says,
he writes about himself not out of vaingloriouness but ‘to actualise his core
belief that Christian faith is lived, rather than rationalised … or studied’
(Coleridge [2014], p. xxxvii). Roberts sees a structure centred on chapters
5–13, which establish ‘the philosophical, and essentially divine, foundations of
imaginative excellence’, and chapters 14–22, which assess WW ‘in precisely
these terms, with his failings seen as fallings away from, and his beauties as most
perfectly embodying, the place where “poetry” and “philosophy” coincide’
(Coleridge [2014], pp. xxxv-vi). More local connections are also discernible:
for McGann (1989) ‘Coleridge’s argument that poetry is essentially ideal
relates directly to his account of Idealist philosophy’ (p. 237); Roberts in
Coleridge (2014) sees the letter from the ‘friend’ as ‘a playful embodiment of
one of the Biographia’s key themes: the capacity of subjectivity to objectivise
itself’ (p. cix).
Many nevertheless feel that consistent, logical structure is not characteristic
of BL. STC ‘inveighs against gossip, and then purveys it; fulminates against
plagiarism and then commits it; deplores self-indulgence and then commits it.
He advocates system and produces chaos’ (Jackson [1997], p. 58). (Jackson
goes on to suggest that ‘Self-contradiction’ is part of the ‘the dialectical pattern
of mental progress that shapes the whole work’ [pp. 65–6].) ‘200 pages of
prefatory matter’ introduce a ‘Disquisition on the Imagination’ which STC
then suppressed, says *Hazlitt in the Edinburgh Review for August 1817
(p. 514). Yet there are passages of great precision and lucidity, particularly in
the analyses of WW’s poems. There is an array of critical comments, aperçus
and comparisons on writers from *Chaucer to Milton, Samuel Daniel, Burns,
*Burke, Kant, *Fichte. Many formulations stand out, some pithy, some
 THE PALGRAVE LITERARY DICTIONARY OF SAMUEL TAYLOR COLERIDGE 23

probing elusive truths at necessarily greater length, and have gone on to have
a critical life of their own: the definitions of the imagination and fancy; ‘No
man was ever yet a great poet, without being at the same time a profound phi-
losopher’ (CW 7.2.25–6); ‘practical criticism’ (7.2.19); ‘that willing suspen-
sion of disbelief for the moment, which constitutes poetic faith’ (7.2.6).
Reviews
Only Hazlitt, in the Edinburgh Review for August 1817, engages in any
detail with the ideas and arguments of BL. For example he maintains, against
STC, that Hobbes anticipated ‘the system of Hartley’ (p. 496) and that Kant is
all assertion; ‘His whole theory is machinery and scaffolding’ (p. 497). A bril-
liantly witty section demonstrates the inadequacy of STC’s defence of RS
against criticism of his politics by asserting his moral and prudential virtues:
people ‘say, that he has changed his opinions: Mr Coleridge says, that he keeps
his appointments’ (p. 495). But there is some simpler hostility to, or frustration
at, the ‘long-winding metaphysical march’ which begins in chapter 4 (p. 495).
‘His metaphysics have been a dead weight on the wings of his imagination -
while his imagination has run away with his reason and common sense. He
might … have been a very considerable poet - instead of which he has chosen
to be a bad philosopher and a worse politician’ (p. 514). Metaphysics receive
short shrift in several other reviews: for the New Monthly Magazine (August
1817) anything of value is lost amid ‘a cloudiness of metaphysical jargon’
(p. 50) and if the reviewer in the British Critic (November 1817) had come
across the disquisitions of such ‘heteroclite’ philosophy in an anonymous pub-
lication he would have ‘laid them aside, as the production of a very ordinary
writer indeed, with respect to talents’ and perhaps suspected a degree of insan-
ity (p. 480). It is only ‘notwithstanding our author’s endless and bottomless
discussions upon metaphysical matters’ that the work is ‘certainly an able,
and … upon the whole, an entertaining performance’ (p. 463).
If the European Magazine and London Review for July 1819 concedes that
the book relates STC’s ‘opinions and his feelings with an ability almost suffi-
cient to atone for the egotism of many of the details’ (p. 5), others cannot
forgive the alleged egotism so easily. The particularly savage review in
Blackwood’s Edinburgh Magazine for October 1817 (probably by John
Wilson) – as much abuse, ridicule and moral censure of STC as a critique of
BL – describes the boundless egotism of an obscure figure who thinks himself
important, a self-publicist whose claim of ‘retirement … from the literary and
political world’ (CW 7.1.5) is absurd (pp. 8, 9). Blackwood’s, like most reviews,
has little time for STC’s criticism of reviewers: he is dishonoured by his attack
on *Jeffrey (p. 14). Unusually, however, the British Critic does set out and
consider in some detail his case against the reviewers (pp. 467–75).
Literary discussion in BL is regarded more favourably than philosophy. The
British Critic finds the analysis of WW’s and other poetry just and discriminat-
ing (pp. 478–80). Blackwood’s concedes that there are acute observations on
WW but STC ‘never knows when to have done, - explains what requires no
explanation, - often leaves untouched the very difficulty he starts’ (p. 16). The
24 M. GARRETT

Monthly Review for February 1819 takes strong exception to STC’s objections
to eighteenth-century poetry including Pope and *Gray (pp. 126–9), but ranks
him ‘among the unintentional defenders of good taste and good sense in
poetry’ since he writes so convincingly about WW’s defects (p. 132).
Legacy
STC’s view of BL continued to evolve. According to Table Talk he came to
feel that ‘all that metaphysical disquisition at the end of the first volume … is
unformed and immature; it contains the fragments of the truth, but it is not
full, nor thought out’ (CW 14.1.492). But the work as it stood became increas-
ingly influential on such younger contemporaries as P.B. *Shelley, *Keats and
Emerson (Engell [2002], pp. 67, 69–70). In the twentieth century the sections
on the imagination and on literature were an inspiration, almost a sacred book,
for ‘practical’ and New Critics. STC’s critical methods and theories inform a
series of widely read books of the 1920s and 1930s by I.A. Richards including
Practical Criticism (1929) and Coleridge on Imagination (1934). For many
commentators STC’s theory of the imagination had the status of an objective
truth – but one not too easily grasped, visionary as much as academic, one
which must be interpreted, written about. The poetically suggestive definitions
in chapter 13 could be treated like the dense, short poems New Criticism par-
ticularly esteemed. At the same time students were often encouraged to ignore
the philosophical chapters. Few teachers or students of literature had much
training in philosophy and the chapters remained subject to the charge of pla-
giarism at a time when originality was highly valued. The fully and authorita-
tively annotated CW 7, published in 1983, helped to redress the balance.

Blake, William
(1757–1827)
Poet and artist. STC met him in 1825 or early 1826, probably through his
friend Charles Augustus Tulk (1786–1849), or perhaps through STC’s friends
Charles and Elizabeth Aders (Bentley [2004], p. 438 n.; Paley [2008], p. 192).
In 1818 Tulk had lent STC Copy J of Songs of Innocence and of Experience. On
6 February 1818 STC describes ‘a strange publication – viz. Poems with very
wild and interesting pictures’ by Blake, ‘a man of Genius – and I apprehend, a
Swedenborgian – certainly, a mystic emphatically. You perhaps smile at my call-
ing another Poet, a Mystic; but verily I am in the very mire of common-place
common-sense compared with Mr Blake, apo- or rather ana-calyptic Poet, and
Painter!’ (CL 4.833–4). Probably on 12 February he sent a much more detailed
response to Tulk. He expresses some mixed feelings about the pictures (CL
4.836–8), which are subject to ‘despotism in symbols’ (CL 4.836). Poems giv-
ing him pleasure ‘in the highest degree’ are ‘The Divine Image’, ‘The Little
Black Boy’ and ‘Night’ (4.837). Those about which ‘I am perplexed and have
no opinion’ include ‘The Blossom’, ‘The Voice of the Ancient Bard’, ‘The
Nurse’s Song’ in Experience and ‘A Little Girl Lost’ (4.837). He is pleased by
‘The Little Vagabond’ - somewhat worried by its theological implications but
 THE PALGRAVE LITERARY DICTIONARY OF SAMUEL TAYLOR COLERIDGE 25

still disapproving of ‘the mood of mind in this wild poem so much less than I
do the servile … scurf-coat of FEAR of the modern Saints’ (4.837). In writing
to Tulk about these ‘poesies, metrical and graphic’ (4.836) STC anticipates the
modern ‘view that Blake’s illuminated books are a composite art in which
poetry and design interact in a complex way’, in line with his own ‘conviction
that all the arts emanate from the same source’ (Paley [2008], p. 188).
According to the London University Magazine for March 1830 ‘Blake and
Coleridge, when in company, seemed like congenial beings of another sphere,
breathing for a while on our earth; which may easily be perceived from the
similarity of thought pervading their works’ (Bentley [2004], p. 516). They
may have looked together at Blake’s lost painting The Last Judgement, with
STC pouring forth ‘concerning it a flood of eloquent commentary and enlarge-
ment’ (Bentley [2004], p. 438 n.). Paley (2008) notes that ‘It would … have
been entirely in character for Coleridge to give Blake a long lecture on Blake’s
own painting’ (p. 193).

‘The Blossoming of the Solitary Date Tree. A Lament’

Piece on the incompleteness of life without mutual love. CW 16.1.809 con-
cludes that the five-stanza manuscript of the poem may date from either
1802–4 or 1807–8. A version of stanzas 3–5, paraphrasing a medieval German
poem by Johans Hadloub (see CW 16.1.808–9), was first published in the New
Times for 31 January 1818 as ‘Imitations of one of the Minnesinger of the
Thirteenth Century’. In 1828 and later editions stanzas 1–2 are replaced by a
preface, two prose sections allegedly substituted for lines of verse which, ‘Kubla
Khan’-style, have gone missing and cannot be fully remembered (see CW
16.1.810), and a new stanza.
The preface tells the story of God’s rejection of the suggestion by the ser-
pent that the fallen Eve alone should ‘return at once to the dust, and let Adam
remain in this thy Paradise’ (CW 16.1.809–10). STC then explains that the
title comes from an account of how a date-tree long remained unfertilised until
another tree was brought to join it from many miles away. The first story comes
probably, CW 16.1.809 n.1 points out, from *Hurwitz’s Hebrew Tales (1826),
pp. 93–4. STC credits the date-tree story to Linnaeus but it derives ultimately
from an essay published by Johann Gottlieb Gleditsch in 1751. In its different
versions the poem explores ‘the ache of solitariness’ (CW 16.1.811) which
undermines all other causes and occasions of joy; ‘Why was I made for Love,
yet Love denied to Me!’ (35). On ‘the fluctuation between hope and despair;
the double vision of the present eye and dream of the past’ and other elements
common in STC’s later poems see Foakes (2002), p. 40. The personal context
depends on the date: if it is 1802–4 the ‘Sweet Friend’ (33) is probably SH, if
1807–8 probably Charlotte Brent (see Morgan family) (CW 16.1.809). Foakes
(2002) argues that STC’s ‘prose alternatives … for the introductory stanzas’ in
1828 ‘serve to generalize the argument and distract attention from his personal
investment in the poem’ (p. 37). For Fulford (1993) ‘The Blossoming’,
26 M. GARRETT

innovative in its disruptive fragmentariness, doubts ‘the possibility of a direct

representation of the original creator’s voice, whether that creator be God or
the author himself’ (p. 91).

Blumenbach, Johann Friedrich

(1752–1840)
Professor of medicine at Göttingen from 1776. In 1799 STC ‘regularly
attended [his] lectures on physiology in the morning, and on natural history in
the evening’ (CW 7.1.207). (In his opinion Blumenbach ‘was no very great
discoverer’ but ‘a man of enormous knowledge’ with ‘an arranging head’ [CL
1.590].) STC admired him because while ‘the identification of Man with the
Brute in kind was the fashion of Naturalists, [he] remained ardent and instant
in controverting the opinion, and exposing its fallacy and falsehood’ (STC’s
note in CW 4.1.154–5). In marginalia of 1828 or later, however, he expresses
some reservations about Blumenbach’s ‘Pentad of Races’ – a division of humans
into five groups (CW 12.1.539–41).

Böhme, Jakob
(1575–1624)
Mystic, known also as Jacob Behmen. STC had ‘conjured over’ his Aurora
(c. 1612) at *Christ’s Hospital (CL 4.751). His inserted note in The Works of
Jacob Behmen (1764–81) observes that ‘being a poor unlearned Man he con-
templated Truth and the Forms of Nature thro’ a luminous Mist, the vaporous
darkness rising from his Ignorance and accidental peculiarities of fancy and
sensation, but the Light streaming into it from his inmost Soul’ (CW 12.1.558).
According to BL the work of mystics, especially Bohme, ‘acted … to prevent
my mind from being imprisoned within the outline of any single dogmatic
system. They contributed to keep alive the heart in the head’; they led him
‘during my wanderings through the wilderness of doubt, and enabled me to
skirt, without crossing, the sandy deserts of utter unbelief’ (CW 7.1.152).

Bowles, Rev William Lisle

(1762–1850)
Poet, editor and clergyman. STC says that he read Sonnets, Written Chiefly
in Picturesque Spots, During a Tour (1789) when he was seventeen and at once
he ‘laboured to make proselytes’ (CW 7.1.15). His sonnet to Bowles in Sonnets
on Eminent Characters praises his ‘soft strains’ (1) and in BL he credits Bowles
with influencing him away from arid intellectualism ‘by the genial influence of
a style of poetry, so tender, and yet so manly, so natural and real, and yet so
dignified and harmonious’ (CW 7.1.17). Privately his enthusiasm for Bowles’s
 THE PALGRAVE LITERARY DICTIONARY OF SAMUEL TAYLOR COLERIDGE 27

work waned and in 1802 he told William Sotheby that it too often moralises
nature through simile whereas a true ‘Poet’s Heart & Intellect should be com-
bined, intimately combined & unified, with the great appearances in Nature’
(CL 2.864).
In 1815 STC visited Bowles (they had first met in 1797) and suggested revi-
sions for his poems; ‘he took the corrections and never forgave the Corrector’
(CL 4.694).

Bowyer (or Boyer), Rev James

(1736–1814)
Upper Grammar Master – head – of *Christ’s Hospital, 1776–99. In BL
STC calls him ‘a very sensible, though at the same time, a very severe master’
(CW 7.1.8). In studying both classical texts and *Shakespeare and *Milton, ‘I
learned from him, that Poetry … had a logic of its own, as severe as that of sci-
ence’ and ‘In our own English compositions … he showed no mercy’ to any-
thing ‘unsupported by a sound sense, or where the same sense might have been
conveyed with equal force and dignity in plainer words’ (CW 7.1.9–10).
Continuing nightmares about his ‘severities’ ‘neither lessen nor dim the
deep sense of my moral and intellectual obligations’ (CW 7.1.11). For Holmes
1.30 STC is engaged in a ‘genial retrospective attempt to pass off Bowyer’s
cruelties’; he seeks ‘to rewrite his personal history in a comic mode that
embraced the authorities he had once rebelled against’.

Brent, Charlotte see Morgan family.

Bristol
Port city whose population was about 69,000 in 1800; a centre both of the
slave-trade and of radicalism. Here STC visited RS in 1794, lived with him at
25 College Green in January-September 1795, and married SFC at St Mary
Redcliffe in October. Also in 1795 he delivered the lectures adapted as
Conciones ad Populum, Lectures on Revealed Religion, ‘Lecture on the Slave
Trade’ and ‘Lecture on the Two Bills’ (see The Plot Discovered). And he was
involved in public debate at the Guildhall and a petition against the govern-
ment’s ‘gagging acts’ (see CW 1.xlv–vi, 358–67). Among his early Bristol asso-
ciates were *Cottle, *Beddoes and *Davy. He made frequent use of the Bristol
Library Society, a circulating library from which he borrowed books of philoso-
phy, theology, poetry and history: see Whalley (1949).
He lived in the city again in autumn 1807, late 1813 and much of 1814.
Further reading: Kitson (2010).
28 M. GARRETT

Browne, Sir Thomas

(1605–82)
Writer ‘Rich in various knowledge; exuberant in conceptions and conceits’
(CL 2.1080), best known for Religio Medici (1643). STC was reading him by
1800 (CN 1.690). In 1804 he analysed Browne’s distinctiveness for SH (CW
12.1.762–5; CL 2.1080–3), recommending Hydriotaphia (1658) in particular.
He has ‘a feeling Heart conjoined with a mind of active curiosity’ (1081); he
never wanders from his subject, because ‘whatever happens to be his Subject,
he metamorphoses all nature into it’ (1081–2).

Burke, Edmund
(1729–97)
Politician and writer. Once a proponent of liberal causes, in the 1790s he
strongly opposed the *French Revolution, most famously in Reflections on the
Revolution in France (1790), and broke with *Fox and his supporters. STC’s
‘Sonnet: to Burke’ (1794) (Sonnets on Eminent Characters) laments this per-
ceived change from apostle of Freedom to one who ‘bad’st Oppression’s hire-
ling crew rejoice’ (7). In the sonnet Burke never drank ‘Corruption’s bowl’
(9), but STC later discovered that he had in fact accepted government pensions
when he ‘crossed … from the Opposition to the Ministry’ (CW 16.2.206; see
also CW 2.37–9). Fulford (2002b) sees Christabel as responding to Burke’s
belief, in Reflections, that ‘the age of chivalry is gone’: the poem is ‘a radical
critique of the chivalric code and the society Burke wanted to stay founded on
that code’ (p. 57).
As his own politics became more conservative, STC came to value Burke
more highly; his principled support of the American Revolution and opposi-
tion to the French were both based on ‘practical inferences’ which were ‘equally
legitimate and … equally confirmed by the results’ (7.1.191). ‘He was a scien-
tific statesman; and therefore a seer’ (CW 7.1.191).
Further reading: Fulford (1999b).

Byron, George Gordon, Lord

(1788–1824)
Poet. In English Bards and Scotch Reviewers (1809) he dismisses STC’s work
as turgid, tumid, and by turns innocent and obscure. But he attended two of
the lectures on *Shakespeare and *Milton (16 December 1811 and 20 January
1812). And in 1815 he apologised – as to a number of other targets of English
Bards – for his ‘pert, and petulant, and shallow’ attack (Byron [1973–94],
4.286), He praised Remorse, AM, ‘Love’ and particularly Christabel, which he
had heard *Scott recite in spring 1815: it is ‘the wildest & finest I ever heard
in that kind of composition ... the “toothless mastiff bitch” - & the “witch
 THE PALGRAVE LITERARY DICTIONARY OF SAMUEL TAYLOR COLERIDGE 29

Lady” - the descriptions of the hall ... & more particularly of the Girl herself as
she went forth in the evening - all took a hold on my imagination which I never
shall wish to shake off’ (Byron [1973–94], 4.318–19; and see his note to The
Siege of Corinth [1816], line 477). Byron also encouraged STC to write another
tragedy (see Zapolya: a Christmas Tale) – he was a member of the Drury Lane
management sub-committee in 1815–16 – and sent him a gift of £100 (see
Byron [1973–94], 4.286, 9.206–7; CL 4.622–3). Contact had begun when
STC wrote to him in March 1815 asking him to recommend his work to ‘some
respectable Publisher’ (CL 4.561).
In April 1816 STC sent Byron Zapolya and they met, possibly for the only
time. Afterwards STC enthused about his ‘beautiful … countenance ... his
teeth so many stationary smiles - his eyes the open portals of the sun’ (CL
4.641), an impression no doubt encouraged by Byron’s positive response to his
work: as well as agreeing to promote Zapolya, he prevailed on him to publish
Christabel and asked him to recite ‘Kubla Khan’. *Murray published 1816 in
May as a result of Byron’s pressure. From 1817, however, good relations
between the poets came to a rapid end. Byron disliked BL for its metaphysics
(‘I wish he would explain his explanation’ [dedication to Don Juan, not pub-
lished until 1833]; see also Medwin [1824], p. 215) and for its attack on
*Maturin’s ‘jacobinical’ Bertram. (But STC’s discussion of Don Juan in the
same chapter [CW 7.2.214–21] may have suggested him as a subject. See
McGann [1989], pp. 247–9.) Byron was further angered because he wrongly
believed that STC was responsible for spreading the rumour, started by RS,
that he and P.B. *Shelley were involved in a ‘league of Incest’ (CL 5.206–7n.1).
In Don Juan I.1634 (1819) ‘Thou shalt not set up Wordsworth, Coleridge,
Southey’ and in 3.837–40 (1821) STC and RS are political turncoats who have
married two alleged ‘milliners of Bath’. In The Blues (1823) STC is satirised as
the lecturer Scamp. Nevertheless, Byron continued to draw on STC’s poems
after 1817. AM influences the shipwreck scene in Don Juan Canto 2 (1819)
and, probably, the theme of death and rebirth in Mazeppa (1819); see Taylor
(2012), pp. 16–28, for the influence of ‘Ode on the Departing Year’ 48–53 on
Byron’s approach to Catherine of Russia and the siege of Ismail in Don Juan
Cantos 7–10.
For his part STC was wounded by the description of him as ‘drunk’ in Don
Juan I.1636 (CL 4.948) and in 1823 said that ‘There was a want of harmony
in Lord Byron. It was unnatural to connect very great intellectual powers with
utter depravity’ (CW 14.1.29; see also CW 12.4.76, 6.74). But, as CL 5.206–7
n.1 points out, STC’s response to Byron was much milder than RS’s ‘diatribes’.
When Byron’s funeral procession passed through *Highgate in July 1824,
STC paid sympathetic tribute to his ‘prodigious works & his numerous & great
public merits’ and predicted that his ‘literary merits would seem continually to
rise, while his personal errors … would be little noticed’ (CL 206–7 n.1).
Further reading: Garrett (2010).
30 M. GARRETT

C
Cambridge
STC started at Jesus College, Cambridge, in October 1791. At first he studied
hard. He won the Sir William Browne gold medal for Greek poetry with ‘Sors
misera servorum in insulis indiæ occidentalis’ in June 1792 and was a runner-
­up for the Craven Scholarship in January 1793. His manuscript Latin declama-
tion ‘That the Desire of Posthumous Fame is Unworthy a Wise Man’ survives
from early 1792 (CW 11.18–23). In his second year, however, he was much
involved in political and religious dispute—see Frend, Rev William—and ran
up considerable debts. At Cambridge he engaged in ‘Debauchery’ (CL 1.67);
he went to prostitutes, he later told *Davy (see CL 2.734). After his months in
the army (see Coleridge, Samuel Taylor), he returned to the university in
April 1794. He left without a degree in December. He came back to Cambridge
briefly in 1806 and in 1833, when he attended the annual meeting of the
British Association for the Advancement of Science. He visited the Fitzwilliam
Museum and ‘was more deeply impressed with the marvellous sublimity and
transcendent beauty of the King’s College Chapel than ever’ (CW 14.1.396).
From the 1820s, partly through the influence of Julius Hare, a fellow of
Trinity College, STC’s ideas—as found especially in his theological and philo-
sophical prose works—had a following in Cambridge among young men
including *Maurice, *Sterling and Arthur Hallam.

Carlyle, Thomas
(1795–1881)
Social critic and historian. Even before meeting STC, Carlyle expressed
doubts about him: in November 1823 he is ‘very great but rather mystical,
sometimes absurd’ (Carlyle [1970–], 2.468). They met in June 1824, when
Carlyle gave STC a copy of his translation of *Goethe’s Wilhelm Meister’s
Apprenticeship. In a letter written soon afterwards, while allowing STC to be ‘a
kind, good soul’, he finds him both physically and intellectually antipathetic: ‘a
fat flabby incurvated personage’ with ‘a snuffy nose, a pair of strange brown
timid yet earnest looking eyes’, weak-willed, his speech wandering ‘like a man
sailing among many currents, whithersoever his lazy mind directs him’, ‘a man
of great and useless genius’ (Carlyle [1970–], 3.90–1). He continued to feel
that STC failed to fulfil his potential. His most extended attack came in his Life
of Sterling (1851): his contribution to literature and enlightenment ‘had been
small and sadly intermittent; but he had, especially among young inquiring
men … a kind of prophetic or magician character’; ‘The practical intellects of
the world did not much heed him’ (Carlyle [1896–9], 11.53, 59). Carlyle’s
fundamental aim here was, as Brett (1997) puts it, ‘to demolish Coleridge, the
Coleridgeans such as Hare and *Maurice, and their defence of the Church of
England, and to present *Sterling as one who had emancipated himself from
this futile enterprise’ (p. 67).
 THE PALGRAVE LITERARY DICTIONARY OF SAMUEL TAYLOR COLERIDGE 31

Dalbrook in Carlyle’s Wotton Reinfred (1826), is a Coleridgean idealist who

pours forth ‘the richest, noblest speech, only that you can find no purpose,
tendency, or meaning in it!’ (Carlyle [1892], pp. 111–12). There are also ele-
ments of STC in the irresolute Teufelsdröckh of Sartor Resartus (1833–4).

Cervantes Saavedra, Miguel de

(1547–1616)
Author of Don Quixote, playwright, poet. Don Quixote personifies ‘the rea-
son and the moral sense, divested of the judgment and the understanding’
while Sancho Panza is ‘the common sense without reason or imagination’; put
together ‘they form a perfect intellect’ (CW 5.2.162). Cervantes’ characters
are, like *Shakespeare’s, ‘at once individual and general’ (5.2.165).
Further reading: Arronte (2018).

Chaucer, Geoffrey
(c.1343–1400)
Poet. In BL STC is pleased with his ‘chearfulness’ and ‘manly hilarity’, and
uses a passage from Troilus and Criseyde (5.603–37, 545–51) to demonstrate
‘natural’ and ‘seemingly unstudied’ language (CW 7.1.33, 7.2.92–3). He is
‘exquisitely tender’ yet free from melancholy and his sympathy ‘with the sub-
jects of his poetry’ is effected ‘without any effort, merely by the inborn kindly
joyousness of his nature. How well we seem to know Chaucer! How absolutely
nothing do we know of *Shakespeare!’ (CW 14.1.467).

‘Cholera Cured Beforehand’

Poem included, in different versions, in three letters of July-September 1832
(CL 6.916 and 923; CW 16.1.1129) and in 1834. In response to the major
cholera outbreak of 1831–2 a speaker delivers to the people ‘a transparently
ironic set of verses’ (Woodring [1961], p. 229) on the dire effects of the disease
and possible ways to avoid it, including quitting the banners of *Cobbett,
Daniel O’Connor (1775–1847), and Beelzebub. Bewell (1999) analyses how
STC ‘uses the cholera epidemic to highlight the failure of political authority
that has given rise to both cholera and Reform’ (p. 258).

Christabel
Unfinished poem where ‘events and characters are polysemous in the way we
usually expect myth to be polysemous’ (Harding [1985], p. 207). According
to Hartley *Coleridge it was STC’s ‘favourite child… in which he recognized
himself most and finest’ (Griggs [1931], p. 1252). Christabel is unusual in
STC’s work for its concentration on female protagonists: Taylor (2005) credits
him with trying ‘to enter the female world’ and ‘the depths of female
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minun saada tietää mikä alanne on. Oletteko näyttelijätär vai
tanssijatar, ooppera- vai operettilaulajatar?»

»Tähän saakka en ole ollut millään alalla erikoisesti, herra tohtori.

Mutta haluaisin ruveta näyttelijättäreksi.»

»Vai niin, ette siis ole vielä esiintynyt missään… Te haluatte ensi-
esiintymistä. Se onkin vaikeampaa. Missä olette opiskellut ja minkä
ohjelmiston olette valmistanut?»

»Minä… minä en ole ensinkään valmistautunut näyttämöä

varten… ja ohjelmisto tulee minun vasta hankkia.»

Asiamies pudisti hymyillen päätään. »Siis harrastelija vain?»

»Niin, minä olen usein esiintynyt seuraelämässä saavuttaen

suurta suosiota. Minulla on hyvä muisti ja rakastan taidetta.
Yksityisasiat — joita minun tuskin tarvinnee teille kertoa — ovat
pakottaneet minut luopumaan entisistä oloista… Se on syynä
päätökseeni antautua näyttämön palvelukseen, ja siksi käännyn
puoleenne paikantiedusteluillani… ensi aluksi jossain pienemmässä
teatterissa…»

»Mutta, neiti hyvä», keskeytti tohtori, »huomaan, ettei teillä ole

minkäänlaisia kokemuksia teatterialalla. Te antaudutte —
luonnollisista syistä — tällaiselle yksinkertaiselle alalle. Luuletteko
näyttämön olevan sellaisen paikan, jonka jokainen, joka jostain
syystä on alentunut yhteiskunnassa (olin ymmärtäväni teidät niin),
noin vain voi ottaa turvapaikakseen, uudeksi yhteiskunnalliseksi
asemakseen. Ettekö tiedä näyttelemisen olevan taidetta ja että tämä
taide edellyttää synnynnäisiä taipumuksia, pitkiä ja laajoja opintoja.»
 Hanna tunsi kiusallisen ymmällejoutumisen punan peittävän
poskiaan. »Luulin tosiaan… On totta, ettei minulla ole kokemuksia
tässä suhteessa… mutta minä en ollut ajatellut näyttelemistä
opittuna taiteena kuten laulua ja tanssia… kun kerran täydellisesti
osaa kielen, on esteettisesti sivistynyt, tuntee kirjallisuutta ja sen
lisäksi on yksityistilaisuuksissa osoittanut omaavansa taipumuksia,
niin arvelin… että…»

»Te olette kyllä jossain määrin oikeassa. Teknillinen puoli ei ole

näyttelemisessä yhtä tärkeä kuin muissa taiteissa, mutta silti
välttämätön. Jos tahdotte antautua näyttämö-alalle… te olette vielä
niin nuori… tulee teidän pyrkiä teatterikouluun. Jos te sitten
koenäytännöissä saavutatte menestystä, olette saanut tottumusta ja
jos teillä on tyydyttävä ohjelmisto, niin voitte kääntyä jonkun
teatteriasioimiston puoleen… sillä on silloin jokin tukikohta, mihin
vedota, esittäessään teitä johtajille. Mutta näin… taivaasta tipahtanut
nuori neiti, olkoon hän miten kaunis ja ihastuttava tahansa —
(kumarrus) — en mitenkään voi haittaamatta laitokseni arvoa (tohtori
Süssherz korosti mielilausettaan) ehdottaa teitä mihinkään
paikkaan.»

Hanna nousi. »Niin ollen pyydän anteeksi, että olen teitä

vaivannut… huomaan kokemattomuuteni…»

»Mutta istukaahan vielä, neitiseni — puhelkaamme hiukan — te

miellytätte minua; miksi ette huoli neuvostani ja pyri johonkin
teatterikouluun?»

»Minulla ei ole siihen aikaa.»

»Te tahdotte siis ensi-esiintymisenne aivan kohta?» hymyili

asiamies.
»Ehkä jo ylihuomenna?»

»Ei ylihuomenna, minun tulisi toki valmistaa osani. Mutta minulla

on hyvä muisti ja opin helposti.»

»Minkä alan olette sitten aikonut valita?» kysyi tohtori Süssherz

edelleen, sillä Hannan kokemattomuus huvitti häntä.

»Salonkinaisen…»

»Entä onko teillä siihen tarvittavat puvut?»

»Puvut? Eikö johtokunta anna niitä?»

»Ah, lapsi raukka, tämäpä vasta hullua. Muodinmukaiset pukunsa

täytyy näyttelijäin kustantaa itse.»

»Palkoillaan? Minä olen luullut vasta-alkajien palkkoja hyvin

pieniksi… ja kuitenkin? Niin, kuten huomaatte, olen tässäkin asiassa
hyvin kokematon.»

»Totta totisesti, niin olettekin. Vasta-alkajan palkka voi nousta noin

viiteenkymmeneen guldeniin kuukaudessa — ja tarvittaviin pukuihin
menee, jos on ymmärtäväinen ja käytännöllinen, noin neljä- tai
viisituhatta guldenia. Mutta, kuunnelkaahan minua, neiti, jos teistä on
niin mieluista ruveta taiteilijattareksi, niin on ehkä keino ja minä
voisin auttaa teitä.»

Hanna toivoi jälleen. »Miten — te tahtoisitte siis?»

»Sallikaa minun tehdä tunkeileva kysymys: Onko teillä ystävää?»

»Olen vallan yksin maailmassa. Miksi sitä kysytte?»

 »Koska jalomielinen ystävä voisi toteuttaa toiveenne… Tai ehkä
teillä itsellänne on tilaisuus? Jos sitoudutte olemaan vuoden
palkattomassa toimessa, jos te edelleen, ollakseni haittaamatta
laitostani lähettäessäni maailmaan taiteenharrastelijan, sopimusta
allekirjoitettaessa minulle suoritatte viisisataa guldenia; jos te
sitäpaitsi tuotte mukananne loistavan, runsaan puvuston ja jonkun
verran rahaa, niin lähetän teidät maaseututeatteriin, jonka johtaja
äskettäin kirjoitti minulle, — ja siellä voisitte koetella onneanne…
Voihan olla mahdollista, että teillä on taipumuksia, ja ellei ole, niin on
teillä kuitenkin pukuja, ja lopusta… niin, sanon sen mielistelemättä…
huolehtii kauneutenne. Loppujen lopuksi te saavutatte myrskyisää
suosiota… valloitatte ritarin… tai ainakin joitakuita tehtailijain poikia
ja kiitätte onnentähteänne, joka on johdattanut teidät asioimistooni.
No, miksi tuijotatte minuun niin, ihastuttava viattomuus?»

Hannan posket eivät enää olleet punaiset; hän oli kalmankalpea.

Tuntui kuin aikaisemmin polttanut kuolemankaipuu olisi taasen
herännyt.

Hän meni ovea kohden. »Vielä kerran, suokaa anteeksi, että olen
vaivannut… hyvästi!»

Tohtori Süssherz sulki häneltä tien.

»Sanokaa minulle kuitenkin nimenne ja osoitteenne, te ihanin…»

ja aikoi ottaa Hannaa leuasta.

Hanna avasi kiivaasti oven ja — tervehtimättä etuhuoneessa

olevia — pakeni nopeasti kauhuissaan jättäen »Taideasioimiston»
selkänsä taa.
XV.

Hanna ei poistunut moneen päivään huoneestaan. Hänen mielensä

oli mitä synkin. Pettyneet toiveet, teatteritoimistosta saamansa
surkeat havainnot herättivät jälleen eloon uinuvat omantunnontuskat.

Itsemurhanajatuksia ei hänellä enää ollut — ne hän oli ainiaaksi

voittanut — mutta hän luuli, tuntiessaan itsensä sairaaksi, kuoleman
vapaaehtoisesti lopettavan hänen tuskansa. Hänen ajatuksensa
keskittyivät jälleen vainajan ympärille, ja maatessaan siinä
puolihorroksissa, kuumehoureissa hän toisti lakkaamatta hiljaa:

»Odota, armahin, minä tulen!»

Mutta hänen ei sallittu kuolla. Hän tuli pian terveeksi. Ravintolan

palvelijatar oli hyväntahtoisesti hoitanut häntä, tuonut hänelle teetä ja
valvonut öitä hänen luonaan.

Hän sai uutta elämänrohkeutta ja halua taistella. Kahdeksan

päivää onnettoman käyntinsä jälkeen tohtori Süssherzin luona hän
lähti uudelle vaellusretkelle.

Häntä harmitti epäkäytännöllinen ja mieletön päähänpistonsa

antautua näyttelijättäreksi. Tuliko onnettoman naisen, joka
ainoastaan äärimmäisyyteen saakka siveellisen elämän kautta
saattoi omissa silmissään kohottaa kadottamansa arvon, heittäytyä
teatterielämän kirjavaan hyörinään, alkaa lahjojaan kehittämättä ja
varoja vailla kilpailla parempiosaisten näyttelijättärien kanssa
suosiosta? Entä mahdollisuus, että hänet tunnettaisiin… Mutta
kotiopettajattaren toimi, se olisi jotain toista. Siihenhän hänellä olisi
monta edellytystä. Hänen suuri kielitaitonsa ja musikaaliset
taipumuksensa olivat harvinaiset. Tällä alalla hän voisi helposti
saada paikan ja elää piiloutuneena hiljaiseen maalaiskotiin tai joutua
ulkomaille. Ei kukaan saattaisi tuntea häntä. Ehtymättömällä
ahkeruudella ja kovalla velvollisuuksiensa täyttämisellä hän saisi
osakseen kunnioitusta, hän voisi antaa arvoa itselleen, eikä enää
joutuisi sellaisten loukkausten alaiseksi kuin vihatun Süssherzin
luona käydessään.

Tällaiset ajatukset ja mietteet pyörivät Hannan mielessä hänen

kävellessään »kansainväliseen koulutoimistoon».

Pian hän saavuttikin matkan päämäärän. Kysymyksenalainen

toimisto oli kellarikerroksessa. Astuttiin sisään soittamatta; ovi, johon
oli kiinnitetty omistajattaren osoite, ei ollut suljettu.

Hanna avasi tämän oven ja tuli pieneen huoneistoon, jossa, vaikka

olikin päivällisen aika, paloi kaasuvalo. Huonekaluja oli
asiaankuuluva kirjoituspöytä, välttämätön piano sekä useita
pehmeitä tuoleja. Sisempään huoneeseen vievän oven edessä oli
verhot; lattiata peitti matto. Tuoleilla istui useita naisia, mutta
kirjoituspöydän ääressä oleva nojatuoli oli tyhjä.

»Saanko puhutella rouva Bergiä?» kysyi Hanna.

 »Olkaa hyvä ja odottakaa hetkinen; rouva Berg tulee kohta»,
vastasi eräs läsnäolevista.

Hanna istuutui erääseen nurkkaan odottamaan. Hänellä ei ollut

vielä kokemusta paikkaa hakevan tiellä olevista odotuksen tunneista.

Ovi avautui ja maalaisen näköinen, hatuton naishenkilö astui

sisään.
Hän katseli ympärilleen.

»Onko tämä paikanvälitystoimisto?» kysyi hän.

»On, mitä haluatte?»

»Haen paikkaa.»

»Minkälaista?»

»Keittäjän tai taloudenhoitajattaren…»

»Silloin olette erehtynyt», kuului pidätettyä vihaa ilmaiseva

vastaus.
»Täällä on paikkoja ainoastaan opettajattarille.»

»Luulin täällä olevan tarjolla paikkoja kaikenlaisille palvelijoille.

Hyvästi!»

Sen sanottuaan hän poistui.

Ovi avautui jälleen. Nuorehko, hyvinvoivan ja ystävällisen

näköinen rouva astui sisään. Hän oli rouva Berg.

»Suokaa anteeksi, arvoisat naiset! Oletteko kauan saaneet

odottaa?»
 Hänellä oli omituinen, hiukan käheä, mutta ei silti epämiellyttävä
ääni. Hattunsa hän ripusti naulakkoon, pani päivänvarjon nurkkaan
ja riisui hansikkaat. Sitten hän istuutui nojatuoliin. Hänen ystävällisiä
kasvojaan ympäröi vaalea tukka, jonka hän oli kiinnittänyt korkealla
kammalla niskaan paksuksi palmikkonutturaksi. Hauska
merinoleninki peitti hänen lihavahkoa vartaloaan. Hän oli todella
miellyttävän ja luotettavan näköinen henkilö.

Hanna piti hänestä paljon. Oikeastaan tuntee jo etukäteen

mieltymystä sellaisiin henkilöihin, joilta aikoo hakea apua.

»Nyt olen käytettävänänne, hyvät naiset.»

Hanna pysyi paikallaan. Hän tahtoi mieluummin ensin kuulla mitä

nuo toiset sanoisivat; se kiinnitti hänen mieltään.

Eräs pohjois-saksatar astui ensimäiseksi kirjoituspöydän luo.

»No, rouva Berg, joko olette saanut vastauksen maalta?»

»En, neiti Janke, en vielä. — Mutta te voisitte ilmoittautua siihen

perheeseen, jonka luota juuri tulen; esittämäni neiti ei sopinut, koska
hän oli liian nuori, he haluavat tasaantuneessa iässä olevan
opettajattaren. Tehän puhutte ranskaa, eikö totta? Se on
pääehtona.»

»Todellakin! Tietysti minä puhun ranskaa. Che sais barler la

langue française. Mutta jos tämä puoli opetuksesta on pääasia,
huomaan, ettei kasvatus tule olemaan minun mieleni mukainen.»

»Tahdotteko osoitteen, neiti Janke?» keskeytti rouva Berg häntä.

»Tehän voitte koettaa.»
 »No hyvä; antakaa se minulle!»

Rouva Berg otti paperilipun ja kirjoitti siihen »Stephanin-tori N:o

25, salaneuvos Belder. Te voitte heti mennä sinne, rouva on
kotona.»

»Mutta te ette ole vielä sanonut minulle ehtoja.»

»Ne ovat samat kuin vaatimuksenne: viisisataa guldenia ja

ainoastaan kaksi puolikasvuista tytärtä opetettavana.»

»Hyvä, minä koetan. Yksityisseikat saan kai kuulla siellä. Hyvästi,

rouva Berg!»

Kumartaen läsnäoleville hän poistui majesteetillisena.

»Entä te, neiti Durand?» kysyi rouva Berg kääntyen nuoren melko
kiemailevan näköisen neidin puoleen. »Miksi tulette tänne? Ettekö
kenties ole tyytyväinen paikkaanne?»

»Oh, mitenkä voisin olla tyytyväinen? Se on kamalaa… Antakaa

minulle pian toinen paikka. Ajatelkaa, että minun täytyy pestä ja
kammata lapset.»

»Oma syynne, neiti Durand. Sanoinhan teille heti heidän

tarvitsevan lapsenneitiä eikä opettajatarta, mutta te halusitte koettaa
kuitenkin. Nyt on esim. hyvä paikka teitä varten Serbiassa erään
leskimiehen luona, grand seigneur ainoan kaksitoistavuotiaan
tyttärensä kanssa. Palkka on runsas, ja loppujen lopuksi te naitte
lesken, mikä aina tapahtuu kundeilleni.»

»Hyvä», vastasi pieni ranskatar hymyillen.

 »Antakaa minulle siis valokuvanne, kirje sekä suosituksenne.
Lähetän ne huomenna Belgradiin. Noin kuuden päivän kuluttua
voitte tulla taas kuulemaan.»

»Miten hyvä te olette, rouva Berg! Minä tuon heti paperit. Hyvästi!»

»Mitä neiti haluaa?» kysyi rouva Berg nyt Hannalta.

»Minulla ei ole kiirettä, hyvä rouva. Ottakaa nämä naiset ensin…»

Kaikkea muuta kuin kaunis tyttö, jolla oli jokapäiväiset piirteet,

nousi ja meni kirjoituspöydän luo.

»Minäkin tahtoisin paikan.»

Rouva Berg tarkasti häntä kiireestä kantapäähän.

»Opettajattaren?»

»Niin, opettajattaren tai seuranaisen.»

»Te haluatte siis tulla kirjoitetuksi kirjoihini? Tässä on ohjelma

ehtoineen. Mutta ennenkuin kirjoitan nimenne, täytyy teidän sanoa,
mitä te osaatte. Puhutteko ranskaa?»

»En.»

»Tai jotain muuta vierasta kieltä?»

»Hiukan böhminkieltä.»

»Oletteko musikaalinen?»

»Kyllä, soitan pianoa.»

 »Se on hyvä. Oletteko tieteellisesti sivistynyt?»

»Sivistynyt? Totta kai. Minä luen selvästi ja hyvin ja kerran olen

runoillutkin.»

»Mutta, hyvä neiti, te puhutte murretta, eikä se sovi

opettajattarelle. Ehkä te sovitte seuranaiseksi, jos soitannolliset
taipumuksenne ovat suuret. Tahtoisitteko näyttää taitoanne.
Soittakaa vähän!»

»En osaa mitään ulkoa.»

»Pianolla on nuotteja.»

»En soita sellaista, jota en ole harjoittanut. Mutta ehkä löydän

jotain.»

Hän meni soittokoneen luo ja alkoi, soittamatta minkäänlaisia

alkusäveliä, kovalla ja lapsellisella kosketuksella soittaa kauheata
»Neidon rukous» nimistä alottelijakappaletta. Mutta jo parin tahdin
jälkeen hän sekaantui.

»Sen olen unohtanut», hän sanoi ja soitti nyt »Luostarin kellot»,

mutta löi väärän äänen toisensa jälkeen sekä painoi koko ajan
pedaalia.

»Kiitos! Riittää jo, neiti», keskeytti rouva Berg korviasärkevän

soiton. »Pianistina en voi teitä ainakaan suositella.»

»Olen nykyään hiukan harjaantumaton», vastasi soittaja nousten

pianon äärestä ja meni uudelleen kirjoituspöydän ääreen.
 »Niin, olkaa hyvä ja hankkikaa minulle hyvä paikka», sanoi hän.
»Kirjoittakaa minut kirjaanne; minä maksan mitä tarvitaan.»

»Valitan, mutta en voi ottaa teitä kirjoihin. En voi ottaa teiltä

maksua, koska en kuitenkaan voisi hankkia teille paikkaa.»

»Miks'ette?»

»Siksi ettette, kuten jo sanoin, puhu äidinkieltänne sujuvasti; siksi

ettette omaa sitä tietomäärää ja sellaisia taipumuksia mitä tarvitaan,
jotta voisin suositella teitä. En tahtoisi loukata teitä, hyvä neiti, mutta
minun täytyy huomauttaa teille, että opettajattarentoimeen vaaditaan
valmistavia opintoja, kehitettyjä taipumuksia y.m. Ne, jotka näitä
vailla antautuvat tälle alalle, ovat monelle nöyryytykselle alttiit eivätkä
suoraan sanoen voi niitä välttää. Seuratkaa neuvoani ja koettakaa
ansaita leipänne toisella tavalla. Ruvetkaa myyjättäreksi tai
ompelijattareksi…»

»Tai ehkä kamarineitsyeksi, minäkö, joka olen rikkaan liikemiehen

tytär ja jolla itsellä on ollut kamarineitsyitä!»

»Mutta jos te olette rikkaan miehen tytär, niin miksi te sitten…»

»Oi, isäni on ollut rikas, mutta hän meni ensin konkurssiin ja kuoli
sittemmin. Hän oli Alsergrundin rikkaimpia lihakauppiaita. Ja teistä
minun tulisi ruveta palvelijattareksi?»

»Niin, miksikäs ei? Siinäkin on edessä pulma, nimittäin omaatteko

sitä varten tarvittavat taidot… ommella vaatteita ja kammata.»

»Lopettakaa jo, sillä muuten kai sanotte, että sekin on liian hyvää
minulle. Kadun, että tulin ensinkään näin kurjaan toimistoon. Minun
olisi pitänyt suoraa päätä mennä rouva Reisnerin luo, jolla on hienoin
opettajatartoimisto Wienissä. Hyvästi!»

Ylpeä teurastajantytär meni vihastuneena ovesta ulos.

Rouva Berg katseli hymyillen hänen jälkeensä ja pudisti päätään.

Muutkin nauroivat.

»Te ette saata aavistaakaan, mitä kaikkea saan päivittäin kokea»,

hän sanoi.

»Siksi olenkin taasen tähystyspaikallani», sanoi Hannan

ensimäiseen kysymykseen vastannut neiti. »Usein ollessani
vapaana tulen tänne rouva Bergin luo, jota minun on kiittäminen
nykyisestä paikastani, istuudun aivan hiljaa nurkkaan ja teen
huomioitani. Minusta täällä on yhtä hauskaa kuin teatterissa. Minä
kadehdin rouva Bergiä hänen mielenkiintoisen elämänsä takia.»

»Todellako!» huudahti rouva Berg, »ja minusta on kohtaloni

kaikkea muuta kuin kadehdittava. En enää huomaa, mikä täällä on
hauskaa, ja minulla on niin paljon ikävyyksiä täällä. Moitteita ja
valituksia kuuluu milloin sieltä, milloin täältä; koko päivän oleskelen
tässä synkässä huoneistossa syventyneenä ikävään kirjevaihtoon.
On aikoja, jolloin liike kannattaa huonosti, ja silloin on minulla huolia
oman perheeni takia. Minun täytyy ansioillani elättää viittä pientä
lasta, sillä mieheni on, kuten tiedätte, pörssikeinottelujen takia ollut
pakotettu tekemään konkurssin. Silloin perustin tämän
välitystoimiston, joka ikävä kyllä ei vielä ole kyllin tunnettu. Minulla ei
ole aikaa olla kotona, ja lapsiani varten minulla on opettajatar, joka ei
kuitenkaan ole minun toimistoni kautta hankittu. Minun on niin
vaikeata ottaa ketään heistä, kun he voivat saada aikaan niin paljon
ikävyyksiä. Minulla on nykyään eräs englantilainen neiti, joka on
tekemäisillään minut hulluksi, ja minä olen suurella innolla koettanut
hankkia hänelle paikkaa eräässä venäläisessä perheessä…»

Tässä rouva Bergin avomieliset juttelut keskeytyivät.

Livreapukuinen palvelija avasi oven, ja silkkiin ja samettiin puettu
naishenkilö astui sisään. Hänen päänsä oli ylpeästi pystyssä, ja hän
silmäili ylenkatseellisesti ympärilleen.

»Onko tämä rouva Bergin paikanvälitystoimisto?» hän kysyi.

Rouva Berg nousi ja meni vierasta vastaan. Hän oli vainunnut

vieraassa paikantarjoojan, ja koska sellaiset henkilöt olivat
toimistossa harvinaisempia kuin paikanhakijat, joita ilmaantui
keskimäärin neljä kutakin paikkaa kohti, niin täytyi heitä kohdella
hienotunteisemmin.

»Miten voin olla avuksi?»

»Minä olen kreivitär Ramberg-Stauchwi ja haen opettajatarta.»

»Olkaa hyvä, istuutukaa, rouva kreivitär.»

Rouva Berg työnsi nojatuolinsa kreivittärelle ja nosti itselleen

toisen tuolin.

»Siis opettajattaren? Saanko tietää, mitä vaatimuksia rouva

kreivittärellä on hänen suhteensa? Minä voin suositella useita eteviä
opettajattaria.»

Kreivitär istuutui selkäkenoon sanoen:

»Tarvitsen täysin luotettavan henkilön, joka ei ole vallan nuori, joka

täydellisesti osaa ranskankieltä, on musikaalinen eikä ole liian
vaativainen ja ennen kaikkea: joka on hyvin uskonnollinen.»

Rouva Berg nyökäytti päätään tälle ominaisuusyhdistelmälle,

ikäänkuin hänellä olisi vaadittavia henkilöitä tukuittain, tai suuri
valikoima vanhemmanpuoleisia, musikaalisia, ranskankielentaitoisia,
vaatimattomia ja ennen kaikkea hyvin uskonnollisia opettajattaria.

»Mieluimmin tahtoisin sellaisen, joka jo on palvellut herrasväessä,

joten se olisi jonain takuuna, ja jos mahdollista, että hän olisi jo
loppuunsaattanut yhden nuoren tytön kasvatuksen. En pidä
vaihdoksista ja siksi tahtoisin henkilön» — sana »henkilö» tuntui
läsnäolevista joka kerran kuin puukonpisto — »joka voisi kasvattaa
tyttäreni, kunnes vien heidät seuraelämään.»

»Miten vanhoja neidit ovat?» kysyi rouva Berg.

»Kahden- ja kolmentoista. Minä valvon ja ohjaan itse opetusta;

opettajattaren tulee vain auttaa minua, s.o. hänen tulee opettaa
minun mieleni mukaan eikä omavaltaisesti. Pääasia on, että hän on
uskonnollinen, sillä tahdon kasvattaa tyttäreni vilpittömässä
jumalanpelvossa.»

»Minulla on sellainen, jota rouva kreivitär haluaa», vastasi rouva

Berg selaillessaan kirjaansa, »hyvin musikaalinen belgialainen,
kolmenkymmenenviiden vuotias. Hän on kasvattanut nuoren kreivitär
Prinzensteinin, joka nyt on kihloissa, ja mitä hänen
uskonnollisuuteensa tulee, on hän pikemmin nunna kuin opettajatar;
hän on saanut kasvatuksensa 'sacré coeur'in luostarissa.»

»Sepä hyvä. Lähettäkää hänet luokseni. Asun Munsch-hotellissa

ja viivyn kaupungissa vain niin kauan, että olen saanut sopivan
henkilön. Sitten palaan taas maalle.»
 »Miten suuren palkan rouva kreivitär antaa?»

»Kahdeksansataa guldenia. Mutta eräästä asiasta pyydän

huomauttaa, ja on parasta, että te ilmoitatte sen suositeltavallenne.
Talossani olevan opettajattaren tulee oleskella yksinomaan
oppilaittensa kanssa saamatta ottaa osaa seuraelämään; hän ei syö
pöydässämme, vaan lasten kanssa; hän ei saa tulla saliin iltaisin;
hän ei saa, kuten niin monet opettajattaret tekevät, luulla olevansa
perheen jäsen.»

»Ymmärrän.»

Kreivitär nousi.

»Siis huomenna kello yhden- ja kahdentoista välillä voitte lähettää

tuon henkilön luokseni. Hyvästi.»

Oven luona odottava palvelija avasi ja sulki oven, ja ylhäisön

nainen oli poissa. Jäljelle jääneet vetivät helpotuksen huokauksen.

»Minäpä en tahtoisi olla belgiatar-raukkanne sijassa», sanoi eräs

heistä.

»Makuasia, hyvät naiset», vastasi rouva Berg hymyillen.

»Belgialainen nunnani on kuin luotu sitä paikkaa varten. 'Pyydän,
rouva Berg, ainoastaan aateliseen, tosi katoliseen perheeseen!'
sanoi hän äskettäin. Minä nimittäin ehdotin hänelle erästä juutalaista
pankkiiriperhettä, mutta se sai hänet kalpenemaan. Minun täytyy heti
lähettää hänelle muutamia rivejä sekä uskonnollisen suosijamme
osoite. Hän tulee ihastumaan silmittömästi, ja toivon hänen
kreivitärtäkin miellyttävän; tämä sopii vallan erinomaisesti. No niin,
että te, neitiseni?» sanoi hän Hannalle. »Nyt on teidän vuoronne…
Haluatteko tekin paikan?»

Hanna nousi ja meni kirjoituspöydän luo.

»Sanon jo etukäteen, että on vaikeata hankkia teille paikkaa, kun

olette niin nuori ja kaunis. Siitä eivät rouvat tavallisesti pidä. Te
tahtoisitte varmaankin lasten opettajattareksi…?»

»Niin, haluaisin paikan hyvässä kodissa…»

Rouva Berg avasi kirjansa.

»Hyvä! Otan teidät kirjoihin. Tässä on ohjelma sääntöineen.» Hän

ojensi
Hannalle pöydällä olevan painetun kaavakkeen.

Hanna huomasi lukiessaan laitoksen kansainvälisestä liikenteestä,

pedagogisista ennätyksistä j.n.e., että ehtoina oli niin ja niin monen
prosentin maksu luvatusta palkasta ja että sisäänkirjoitusmaksu oli
kolme guldenia. Hanna otti esiin kukkaronsa.

»Saanko maksaa heti.»

Hän asetti rahat pöydälle.

»Siis nimenne, osoitteenne, tietonne, ehtonne?»

»Anna Meyer, 'Kultainen omena', Wieden.»

Rouva Berg katsahti ylös.

»Te asutte ravintolassa? Se ei käy; se ei herätä luottamusta;

teidän täytyy muuttaa. No edelleen! Tietonne!»
 »Pianonsoitto, ranskan- ja englanninkielet.»

»Suokaa anteeksi, neiti, mutta asiaan kuuluu, että soitatte jotain ja

sitten luette hiukan näistä ranskalaisista ja englantilaisista kirjoista.»

»Mielelläni», vastasi Hanna. Hän meni soittokoneen luo ja

muutamien tahtien jälkeen hän avasi ylimmän nuottivihon ja soitti
kappaleen — joku potpourri oopperasta — erinomaisesti suoraan
lehdestä.

»Erinomaista!» sanoi rouva Berg, ja muutkin ilmaisivat

ihastuksensa.

Sitten Hanna luki neuvotuista kirjoista virheettömällä ranskan- ja

englanninkielisellä ääntämisellään kaksi kohtaa. Eräs läsnäolevista,
joka ei vielä ollut puhunut mitään, huudahti:

»Oh…you are English?»

»No, I am not», vastasi Hanna, »but my mother was American.»

»Oh… I see.»

»Te olette loistavasti suorittanut kokeenne, hyvä neiti», sanoi

rouva
Berg. »Minä kirjoitan siis otsakkeen: 'Tiedot ja taidot kohdalle:
Erinomainen pianisti; osaa täydellisesti ranskan- ja englanninkieltä.
Onko teillä jo ollut joku paikka?»

»Ei, tämä on ensimäinen kokeeni.»

»Minä annan teille heti muutamia osoitteita, hyvä neiti. Jos te

soitatte näissä jotain, on teillä suurimmat mahdollisuudet tulla
otetuksi. Minä annan teille sellaisten perheiden osoitteita, jotka
panevat pääpainon musiikkiin.»

Rouva Berg kirjoitti kirjastaan monia osoitteita paperille, jonka hän

sitten ojensi Hannalle.

»Ottakaa tämä, hyvä neiti, ja tulkaa sitten kertomaan miten käy.»

Hanna otti paperin.

»Kiitän», sanoi hän. »Minä menen vielä tänään…»

»Kuten haluatte, tänään tai huomenna. Joka tapauksessa kai saan

sitten tietää. Jos näissä osoitteissa ei ole sopivia, niin annan uusia.»

Hanna kiitti, hyvästeli ja lähti toimistosta.

XVI.

Nuori rouva istuutui vaunuihin ja antoi kuskille ensimäisen

kirjoitetuista osoitteistaan: »Frans-Josef-ranta N:o 12.» Vaunut
pysähtyivät kauniin, uuden rakennuksen eteen. Hanna astui alas ja
meni portin kautta. Avattuaan oven, jossa seisoi: »Porttivahti», hän
kysyi, missä rouva Hirschfeld asui.

»Ensimäinen rappu, kolmas kerros, ovi oikealle», oli vastaus.

»Kiitän. Miten tämä rappusten nouseminen hengästyttää!…» Hän

soitti osoitetulle ovelle. Palvelustyttö avasi sen.

»Onko rouva Hirschfeld kotona?»

»Kyllä, olkaa hyvä, käykää sisälle.»

Hanna astui etuhuoneeseen. Kaksi pientä tyttöä juoksi juuri sen

läpi vieressä olevaan kyökkiin, josta avoinna olevan oven kautta
tunkeutui vastapoltetun kahvin tuoksu ja kuului huhmaren ääniä.
Toisesta huoneesta kuului pianonsoittoa. Heti Hannan jälkeen saapui
eräs kaupunginlähetti, joka jätti palvelustytölle paketin. Kodittomasta,
paikkaahakevasta olennosta tuntuu omituiselta joutua näkemään