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THE 
 
 THORNY PATH 
 
 OF 
 
 LITERATURE 
 
THE 
 
 THORNY PATH 
 
 OF 
 
 LITERATURE 
 
 BY 
 
 Samuel Taylor Coleridge 
 
 WITH AN INTRODUCTION BY 
 WILLIAM E. A. AXON 
 
INTRODUCTION 
 
 OLD and ofcscure periodicals are something of a Tom Tiddler's 
 ground where amidst rubbish heaps there are occasional pieces of 
 the gold and silver of literature to be picked up. The ** Sunbeam" is 
 an unknown weekly magazine. Its first number is dated for Saturday^ 
 February 3rd, J 838; its last issue was that for December 28th, 1839. 
 These too numbers make two volumes, and, with title pages and 
 indexes, were published ** complete in one volume, £1 8s. Devoted to 
 science, literature, and music," each number had an original piece of 
 music, some of them by well-known composers. In the last volume of 
 the ** Sunbeam " there is an announcement that it would be continued 
 in a new and improved series as the " Sylph," but whether this ever 
 came out I know not. Neither ** Sunbeam " nor " Sylph " is in the 
 British Museum catalogue of periodicals. 
 
 The unknown editor was a great admirer of Samuel Taylor Coleridge, 
 and this may have induced Mr. Thomas Curnick, of Bristol, to send 
 him in 1838 a letter he had received from the poet in 18)4. Mr. 
 Curnick was a worshipper, though not, it may be feared, a priest of the 
 Muses, and not satisfied with the opinions, or lack of opinions, of "his 
 Boeotian friends " about his verses he sent to S. T. G a copy of an 
 ''Ode on the Victories obtained by the Allied Armies under the 
 command of Lord "Wellington," and with it a letter in which " a 
 young and ardent mind naturally enough freely indulged its obser- 
 vations on the chilling and destructive apathy with which metrical 
 compositions were generally regarded. To understand the reply of 
 S. T. C it is necessary to quote some verse from this production: — 
 
 Then toae, sweet lyrel to 'Wellington thy string; 
 
 To ■Wellington thy warbling accents raise. 
 
 For say of whom more glorious canst thou sing. 
 
 What mightier hero praise, 
 
 Than he whose powerful hand 
 
 Supports the totfriog domes of freedom's state 
 
 Inwreathed with victory see him stand. 
 
 And hurl upon his foes inevitable fate I 
 
INTRODUCTION 
 
 On tlie auspicious hour that gave thee birth, 
 Britannic Mars I rejoicing nature smil'd; 
 Cherubic forms declar'd thy future worth. 
 And mark'd thee conq'ror in the dreadful field. 
 Bright honour wove a chaplet for thy brow; 
 Justice thy manly bosom sway'd; 
 While, like the moon, thy acts conspicuous grow, 
 Till to the full they rise in majesty array'd. 
 
 Hark I the brazen trumpet swells; 
 
 See vrhere the god in terror rolls his car; 
 
 Swift as a wintry flood its course impels. 
 
 The rattling wheels resound and thunder through the war. 
 
 Mark his helm and ponderous spear ; 
 
 Mark how his falchion fires the dusky air ; 
 
 His steeds with meteor names and eyes that wildly glare I 
 
 TTis past — the fiend of slaughter flics; 
 
 In murmurs low the clani'rous battle dies; 
 
 As distant billows from the shore recede ; 
 
 And hear what strains harmonious rise — 
 
 Strains which alone from seraph harps proceed^ 
 
 Expansive through the skies. 
 
 Peace, behold I on downy wings descending; 
 
 Unnumber'd joys her heavenly form attending; 
 
 Her accents every grief assuage. 
 
 And calm the dauntless warrior's rage. 
 
 Two volumes are known from the pen of Cumicfc. One is 
 " Jehosaphat, with other poems," printed at Bristol in J8J5, and the 
 other is "De Eloquentia Sacra," a poem, to which is prefixed a 
 translation of Georgfe Buchanan's " Hymnus Matutinos ad Christum," 
 issued at the same place in J825. Years had perhaps tamed Mr. 
 Curnick's Muse, for he writes : ** As to the ode, the experience of the 
 realities of life during the last quarter of a century has quite eradicated 
 
INTRODUCTION 
 
 any morbid sensibility in my mind, cither as to the censure or the 
 approbation with which it may now be read." 
 
 When Galeridge wrote this letter he was in Bristol on a lecturing 
 expedition, which does not appear to have been very successful. His 
 discourses on Milton were "indifferently attended." The poet was 
 not in gfood physical condition. "An erysipelatous complaint," he 
 writes to Cottle, " of an alarming nature has rendered me barely able 
 to attend and go through with my lectures, the receipts of which have 
 almost paid the expenses of the room, advertisements, &c. Whether 
 this be to my discredit or to that of the good citizens of Bristol it is 
 not for me to judge." His statement that "Milton had represented 
 Satan as a Skeptical Socinism " gave offence to Estlin, and certainly 
 came with bad grace from one who at an earlier period was a willing 
 preacher of Unitarianism. To this visit, too, belongs the painful 
 correspondence with G}ttle, who had only then discovered the 
 enormous extent to which Coleridge was using — or misusing — opium. 
 To Cottle's faithful remonstrances and reproof S. T. C. sent the 
 mournful reply : " You bid me rouse myself. Go bid a man paralytic 
 in both arms to rub them briskly together and that will cure him. 
 *AIas!' he would reply, 'that I cannot move my arms is my com- 
 plaint and my misery.' " It was a wounded giant who amidst his 
 troubles physical and mental wrote this kindly letter to Thomas 
 Curnick. 
 
 WILLIAM E. A. AXON. 
 
The late Mr. William Edward Armytagc Axon was an 
 fndefatig:able bookman and bibliophile who lived in Manchester. 
 He was born there in J846, and died there in i9l3. He wrote a 
 bibliography of Mrs. Gaskeil and was an expert on the Manchester 
 authors, De Quincey and others. This letter, communicated by 
 him to the New York Nation together with its accompanying 
 ** foreword," seems to me to be worth preserving, as it is a revela- 
 tion of Gileridge of a singularly interesting character. Sir Walter 
 Scott's famous dictum that literature should be **a staff" but not 
 **a crutch" is here capped almost at the same date by Coleridge's 
 idea that it should stand for ** dessert" and not for "dinner." 
 
 CLEMENT SHORTER, 
 
THE THORNY PATH OF LITERATURE 
 
 To Mr. THOMAS CURNICK. 
 
 Dear Sir, 
 
 I have been much affected by your letter, and have 
 perused, with considerable pleasure, the poems which 
 accompanied it. But how can I serve you? Gold and 
 silver have I none; but, on the contrary, I am myself 
 sorely embarrassed. Mr. Southey and I married sisters; 
 and I am on terms of intimacy with him. But it was 
 not to Kirke White, but to his family, that Southey could 
 make himself serviceable, by becoming his biographer and 
 editor, after his premature death. 
 
 Many thoughts crowded on me during the perusal of 
 your letter, which pressing engagements prevent me 
 communicating at present; but within a short time I will 
 endeavour to perform that most arduous duty of one 
 sympathising Qiristian to another, that of telling what 
 appears to him to be the truth. O that I could convey 
 to you, in all its liveliness, the anguish of regret which I 
 have a thousand times felt (while obliged, for the bread of 
 the day, to be aiming at excellencies which in the most 
 
THE THORNY PATH OF LITERATURE 
 
 favoured natures require health, competence, tranquiflity, 
 and genial feelings), that I had not been taught to earn 
 my subsistence mechanically, where, if my fingers were 
 weary, my heart and brain at least were at rest! 
 
 From the time of Pope's translation of Homer, 
 inclusive, so countless have been the poetic metamorphoses 
 of almost all possible thoughts and connections of thought, 
 that it is scarcely practicable for a man to write in the 
 ornamental style on any subject without finding his poem, 
 against his will and without his previous consciousness, a 
 cento of lines that had pre-existed in other works; and 
 this it is which makes poetry so very difficult, because so 
 very easy, in the present day. I myself have for many 
 years past given it up in despair. 
 
 There is much fire and spirit in your ode on Lord 
 Wellington: and the chief defect is a confusion of 
 mythology. Cherubs have no connection with Mars; and 
 the first stanza is obscure, because the reader does not 
 know whether you mean Lord Wellington or an ima- 
 ginary god of war. If the latter, the after introduction of 
 the Almighty is irreverent; or (as the painter's phrase is). 
 
THE THORNY PATH OF LITERATURE 
 
 "out of keeping." If the former, the ponderous spear, 
 etc., is not translatable into sense and fact. Poetry must 
 be more than good sense, or it is not poetry ; but it dare 
 not be less, or disrepant. Good sense is not, indeed, the 
 superstructure; but it is the rock, not only on which the 
 edifice is raised, but likewise the rock-quarry from which 
 all its stones have been, by patient toil, dug out. 
 
 The whole of next week I am unfortunately pre- 
 engaged, day after day, and the whole of each day; but, 
 after that, you will generally find me at No. 2, Queen 
 Square, any time from seven in the evening to ten; and 
 if you can point out any mode in which I can be really 
 useful to you, be assured I shall be most ready to 
 attempt it. 
 
 Will you forgive a man who has had repeated 
 occasions for mourning that he had not himself pursued 
 the profession of the law (a profession which needs only 
 to be considered in the light of a manly philosophy to 
 present many charms to a thinking mind, and which, 
 beyond all others, gives an insight into the real state of 
 society, the hearts, morals, and passions of our fellow- 
 
THE THORNY PATH OF LITERATURE 
 
 creatures) to ask you why a man of genius should despair 
 of making genius effective and illustrious in the pursuit of 
 the profession in which it has pleased Providence to place 
 him? I do not know your age, but you inform me that 
 you are an attorney's clerk. Even such was Garrow — 
 such was Dunning. 
 
 Do I advise you to desert the Muses? No! I give 
 no advice which, I know, would be vain, but my 
 experience does warrant me, **with a warning and 
 dolorous blast" (as Milton says) to exhort all men of 
 genius to take care that they should rely on literature 
 only for private pleasure and solace; or, at most, for the 
 dessert to their dinner, not for the dinner itself. 
 
 I beg your acceptance of the enclosed ticket, which, 
 should you have leisure or inclination, will admit yourself 
 and a friend to my course of lectures. 
 
 "With sincere good wishes, yours, dear sir, 
 
 S. T. COLERIDGE. 
 
 Bristol 9tb April, 1614, 
 
Of this letter, which first ajfpeared 
 in the Nation (New York) of Aug. 21, 
 7973, iweniy-five copies only have been 
 privately printed by Clement Shorter 
 for distribution among his friends. ., ^ 
 
 London, March tst, 1917. 
 
 > 
 

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