Volume 2 / Part 2 / Act 4 — JEUX D'ESPRIT
Reading edition
1
MY GODMOTHER'S BEARD[976:1]
So great the charms of Mrs. Mundy, That men grew rude, a kiss to gain: This so provok'd the dame that one day To Pallas chaste she did complain: Nor vainly she address'd her prayer, Nor vainly to that power applied; The goddess bade a length of hair In deep recess her muzzle hide: Still persevere! to love be callous! For I have your petition heard! To snatch a kiss were vain (cried Pallas) Unless you first should shave your beard.
? 1791
First published in Table Talk and Omniana, 1888, p. 392. The lines were inscribed by Coleridge in Gillman's copy of the Omniana of 1812. An apologetic note is attached. J. P. Collier (Old Man's Diary, 1871, March 5, 1832, Part I, p. 34) says that Coleridge 'recited the following not very good epigram by him on his godmother's beard; the consequence of which was that he was struck out of her will'. Most probably the lines, as inscribed on the margin of Omniana, were written about 1830 or 1831. First collected in Coleridge's Poems, 1907.
LINENOTES:
[4]
Pallas chaste] Wisdom's Power S. T. C.
2
LINES TO THOMAS POOLE
[Quoted in a letter from Coleridge to John Thelwall, dated Dec. 17, 1796.]
. . . . Joking apart, I would to God we could sit by a fire-side and joke vivâ voce, face to face—Stella [Mrs. Thelwall] and Sara [Mrs. S. T. Coleridge], Jack Thelwall and I!—as I once wrote to my dear friend T. Poole,—
[977] Repeating Such verse as Bowles, heart honour'd Poet sang, That wakes the Tear, yet steals away the Pang, Then, or with Berkeley, or with Hobbes romance it, Dissecting Truth with metaphysic lancet. Or, drawn from up these dark unfathom'd wells, In wiser folly chink the Cap and Bells. How many tales we told! what jokes we made, Conundrum, Crambo, Rebus, or Charade; Ænigmas that had driven the Theban mad, And Puns, these best when exquisitely bad; And I, if aught of archer vein I hit, With my own laughter stifled my own wit.
1796. First published in 1893.
3
TO A WELL-KNOWN MUSICAL CRITIC, REMARKABLE FOR HIS EARS STICKING THROUGH HIS HAIR.
O ——! O ——! of you we complain For exposing those ears to the wind and the rain. Thy face, a huge whitlow just come to a head, Ill agrees with those ears so raw and so red. A Musical Critic of old fell a-pouting When he saw how his asinine honours were sprouting; But he hid 'em quite snug, in a full friz of hair, And the Barber alone smoked his donkeys [so] rare. Thy judgment much worse, and thy perkers as ample, O give heed to King Midas, and take his example. Thus to publish your fate is as useless as wrong— You but prove by your ears, what we guessed from your tongue.
Laberius.
First published in the Morning Post, January 4, 1798. First collected P. and D. W., 1877-80, ii. 370.
4
TO T. POOLE
AN INVITATION
Plucking flowers from the Galaxy On the pinions of Abstraction, I did quite forget to ax 'e, Whether you have an objaction, With us to swill 'e and to swell 'e And make a pig-stie of your belly. A lovely limb most dainty Of a ci-devant Mud-raker, I makes bold to acquaint 'e We've trusted to the Baker: And underneath it satis Of the subterrene apple By the erudite 'clep'd taties— With which, if you'ld wish to grapple, As sure as I'm a sloven, The clock will not strike twice one, When the said dish will be out of the oven, And the dinner will be a nice one. P.S. Besides we've got some cabbage. You Jew-dog, if you linger, May the Itch in pomp of scabbage Pop out between each finger.
January, 1797.
First published (minus the postscript) in Thomas Poole and His Friends, 1888, i. 211.
5
SONG
TO BE SUNG BY THE LOVERS OF ALL THE NOBLE LIQUORS COMPRISED UNDER THE NAME OF ALE.
A. Ye drinkers of Stingo and Nappy so free, Are the Gods on Olympus so happy as we? B. They cannot be so happy! For why? they drink no Nappy. [979] A. But what if Nectar, in their lingo, Is but another name for Stingo? B. Why, then we and the Gods are equally blest, And Olympus an Ale-house as good as the best!
First published in Morning Post, September 18, 1801. Included in Essays, &c., iii. 995-6. First collected P. and D. W., 1877, ii. 167.
6
DRINKING versus THINKING
OR, A SONG AGAINST THE NEW PHILOSOPHY
My Merry men all, that drink with glee This fanciful Philosophy, Pray tell me what good is it? If antient Nick should come and take, The same across the Stygian Lake, I guess we ne'er should miss it. Away, each pale, self-brooding spark That goes truth-hunting in the dark, Away from our carousing! To Pallas we resign such fowls— Grave birds of wisdom! ye're but owls, And all your trade but mousing! My merry men all, here's punch and wine, And spicy bishop, drink divine! Let's live while we are able. While Mirth and Sense sit, hand in glove, This Don Philosophy we'll shove Dead drunk beneath the table!
First published in Morning Post, September 25, 1801. Included in Essays, &c., iii. 966-7. First collected P. and D. W., 1877, ii. 168.
7
THE WILLS OF THE WISP
A SAPPHIC
Vix ea nostra voco
Lunatic Witch-fires! Ghosts of Light and Motion! Fearless I see you weave your wanton dances Near me, far off me; you, that tempt the traveller Onward and onward. [980] Wooing, retreating, till the swamp beneath him Groans—and 'tis dark!—This woman's wile—I know it! Learnt it from thee, from thy perfidious glances! Black-ey'd Rebecca!
First published in Morning Post, December 1, 1801. First collected P. and D. W., 1877, ii. 169.
8
TO CAPTAIN FINDLAY
When the squalls were flitting and fleering And the vessel was tacking and veering; Bravo! Captain Findlay, Who foretold a fair wind Of a constant mind; For he knew which way the wind lay, Bravo! Captain Findlay. A Health to Captain Findlay, Bravo! Captain Findlay! When we made but ill speed with the Speedwell, Neither poets nor sheep could feed well: Now grief rotted the Liver, Yet Malta, dear Malta, as far off as ever! Bravo! Captain Findlay, Foretold a fair wind, Of a constant mind, For he knew which way the wind lay!
May 4, 1804.
Now first published from a Notebook. The rhymes are inserted between the following entries:—'Thursday night—Wind chopped about and about, once fairly to the west, for a minute or two—but now, 1/2 past 9, the Captain comes down and promises a fair wind for to-morrow. We shall see.' 'Well, and we have got a wind the right way at last!'
9
ON DONNE'S POEM 'TO A FLEA'
Be proud as Spaniards! Leap for pride ye Fleas! Henceforth in Nature's mimic World grandees. In Phœbus' archives registered are ye, And this your patent of Nobility. No skip-Jacks now, nor civiller skip-Johns, Dread Anthropophagi! specks of living bronze, [981] I hail you one and all, sans Pros or Cons, Descendants from a noble race of Dons. What tho' that great ancestral Flea be gone, Immortal with immortalising Donne, His earthly spots bleached off a Papist's gloze, In purgatory fire on Bardolph's nose.
1811.
Now first published from an MS.
10
[EX LIBRIS S. T. C.][981:1]
This, Hannah Scollock! may have been the case; Your writing therefore I will not erase. But now this Book, once yours, belongs to me, The Morning Post's and Courier's S. T. C.;— Elsewhere in College, knowledge, wit and scholarage To Friends and Public known as S. T. Coleridge. Witness hereto my hand, on Ashley Green, One thousand, twice four hundred, and fourteen Year of our Lord—and of the month November The fifteenth day, if right I do remember.
15th Nov. 1814. Ashley, Box, Bath.
First published in Lit. Rem., iii. 57. First collected P. and D. W., 1877, ii. 387.
11
ΕΓΩΕΝΚΑΙΠΑΝ
The following burlesque on the Fichtean Egoismus may, perhaps, be amusing to the few who have studied the system, and to those who are unacquainted with it, may convey as tolerable a likeness of Fichte's idealism as can be expected from an avowed caricature. [S. T. C.]
The Categorical Imperative, or the annunciation of the New Teutonic God, ΕΓΩΕΝΚΑΙΠΑΝ: a dithyrambic Ode, by Querkopf Von Klubstick, Grammarian, and Subrector in Gymnasio. . . .
Eu! Dei vices gerens, ipse Divus, (Speak English, Friend!) the God Imperativus, Here on this market-cross aloud I cry: 'I, I, I! I itself I! [982] The form and the substance, the what and the why, The when and the where, and the low and the high, The inside and outside, the earth and the sky, I, you, and he, and he, you and I, All souls and all bodies are I itself I! All I itself I! (Fools! a truce with this starting!) All my I! all my I! He's a heretic dog who but adds Betty Martin!' Thus cried the God with high imperial tone: In robe of stiffest state, that scoff'd at beauty, A pronoun-verb imperative he shone— Then substantive and plural-singular grown, He thus spake on:—'Behold in I alone (For Ethics boast a syntax of their own) Or if in ye, yet as I doth depute ye, In O! I, you, the vocative of duty! I of the world's whole Lexicon the root! Of the whole universe of touch, sound, sight, The genitive and ablative to boot: The accusative of wrong, the nom'native of right, And in all cases the case absolute! Self-construed, I all other moods decline: Imperative, from nothing we derive us; Yet as a super-postulate of mine, Unconstrued antecedence I assign, To X Y Z, the God Infinitivus!'
1815.
First published in Biographia Literaria, 1817, i. 148n. First collected P. and D. W., 1877, ii. 370.
12
THE BRIDGE STREET COMMITTEE
Jack Snipe Eats Tripe: It is therefore credible That tripe is edible. And therefore, perforce, It follows, of course, That the Devil will gripe All who do not eat Tripe. And as Nic is too slow To fetch 'em below: [983] And Gifford, the attorney, Won't quicken their journey; The Bridge-Street Committee That colleague without pity, To imprison and hang Carlile and his gang, Is the pride of the City, And 'tis Association That, alone, saves the Nation From Death and Damnation.
First published in Letters and Conversations, &c., 1836, i. 90, 91. These lines, which were inscribed in one of Coleridge's notebooks, refer to a 'Constitutional association' which promoted the prosecution of Richard Carlile, the publisher of Paine's Age of Reason, for blasphemy. See Diary of H. C. Robinson, 1869, ii. 134, 135. First collected P. W., 1885, ii. 405.
13
NONSENSE SAPPHICS[983:1]
Here's Jem's first copy of nonsense verses, All in the antique style of Mistress Sappho, Latin just like Horace the tuneful Roman, Sapph's imitator: But we Bards, we classical Lyric Poets, Know a thing or two in a scurvy Planet: Don't we, now? Eh? Brother Horatius Flaccus, Tip us your paw, Lad:— Here's to Mæcenas and the other worthies; Rich men of England! would ye be immortal? Patronise Genius, giving Cash and Praise to Gillman Jacobus; Gillman Jacobus, he of Merchant Taylors', Minor ætate, ingenio at stupendus, Sapphic, Heroic, Elegiac,—what a Versificator!
First published in Essays, &c., 1850, iii. 987. First collected 1893.
14
TO SUSAN STEELE ON RECEIVING THE PURSE
EXTRUMPERY LINES
My dearest Dawtie! That's never naughty— When the Mare was stolen, and not before, The wise man got a stable-door: And he and I are brother Ninnies, One Beast he lost and I two guineas; And as sure as it's wet when it above rains, The man's brains and mine both alike had thick coverings, For if he lost one mare, poor I lost two sovereigns! A cash-pouch I have got, but no cash to put in it, Tho' there's gold in the world and Sir Walter can win it: For your sake I'll keep it for better or worse, So here is a dear loving kiss for your purse.
S. T. Coleridge.
1829. Now first published from an MS.
15
ASSOCIATION OF IDEAS[984:1]
I.—By Likeness
Fond, peevish, wedded pair! why all this rant? O guard your tempers! hedge your tongues about This empty head should warn you on that point— The teeth were quarrelsome, and so fell out.
S. T. C.
II.—Association by Contrast
Phidias changed marble into feet and legs. Disease! vile anti-Phidias! thou, i' fegs! Hast turned my live limbs into marble pegs.
III.—Association by Time
simplicius snipkin loquitur
I touch this scar upon my skull behind, And instantly there rises in my mind Napoleon's mighty hosts from Moscow lost, Driven forth to perish in the fangs of Frost. [985]For in that self-same month, and self-same day, Down Skinner Street I took my hasty way— Mischief and Frost had set the boys at play; I stept upon a slide—oh! treacherous tread!— Fell smash with bottom bruised, and brake my head! Thus Time's co-presence links the great and small, Napoleon's overthrow, and Snipkin's fall.
? 1830. First published in Fraser's Magazine, Jan. 1835, Art. 'Coleridgeiana'. First collected 1893.
16
VERSES TRIVOCULAR
Of one scrap of science I've evidence ocular. A heart of one chamber they call unilocular, And in a sharp frost, or when snow-flakes fall floccular, Your wise man of old wrapp'd himself in a Roquelaure, Which was called a Wrap-rascal when folks would be jocular. And shell-fish, the small, Periwinkle and Cockle are, So with them will I finish these verses trivocular.
Now first published from an MS.
17
CHOLERA CURED BEFORE-HAND
Or a premonition promulgated gratis for the use of the Useful Classes, specially those resident in St. Giles's, Saffron Hill, Bethnal Green, etc.; and likewise, inasmuch as the good man is merciful even to the beasts, for the benefit of the Bulls and Bears of the Stock Exchange.
Pains ventral, subventral, In stomach or entrail, Think no longer mere prefaces For grins, groans, and wry faces; But off to the doctor, fast as ye can crawl! 5 Yet far better 'twould be not to have them at all. Now to 'scape inward aches, Eat no plums nor plum-cakes; Cry avaunt! new potato— And don't drink, like old Cato. 10 Ah! beware of Dispipsy, And don't ye get tipsy! For tho' gin and whiskey May make you feel frisky, [986] They're but crimps to Dispipsy; 15 And nose to tail, with this gipsy Comes, black as a porpus, The diabolus ipse, Call'd Cholery Morpus; Who with horns, hoofs, and tail, croaks for carrion to feed him, 20 Tho' being a Devil, no one never has seed him! Ah! then my dear honies, There's no cure for you For loves nor for monies:— You'll find it too true. 25 Och! the hallabaloo! Och! och! how you'll wail, When the offal-fed vagrant Shall turn you as blue As the gas-light unfragrant, 30 That gushes in jets from beneath his own tail;— 'Till swift as the mail, He at last brings the cramps on, That will twist you like Samson. So without further blethring, 35 Dear mudlarks! my brethren! Of all scents and degrees, (Yourselves and your shes) Forswear all cabal, lads, Wakes, unions, and rows, 40 Hot dreams and cold salads, And don't pig in styes that would suffocate sows! Quit Cobbett's, O'Connell's and Beelzebub's banners, And whitewash at once bowels, rooms, hands, and manners!
July 26, 1832. First published in P. W. 1834. These lines were enclosed in a letter to J. H. Green, dated July 26, 1832, with the following introduction: 'Address premonitory to the Sovereign People, or the Cholera cured before-hand, promulgated gratis for the use of the useful classes, specially of those resident in St. Giles, Bethnal Green, Saffron Hill, etc., by their Majesties', i. e. the People's, loyal subject—Demophilus Mudlarkiades.'
LINENOTES:
[
1-6
]
om. Letter 1832.
[
7-8
]
To escape Belly ache Eat no plums nor plum cake Letter 1832.
[
12
]
And therefore don't get tipsy Letter 1832.
[
16
]
with this gipsy] of Dys Pipsy Letter 1832.
[
22
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And oh! och my dear Honies Letter 1832.
[
28
]
offal-fed] horn-and-hoof'd Letter 1832.
[
41
]
dreams] drams Letter 1832.
[
44
]
And whitewash at once your Guts, Rooms and Manners Letter 1832.
After 44
Vivat Rex Popellio! Vivat Regina Plebs! Hurra! 3 times 3 thrice repeated Hurra!
Letter, 1832.
18
TO BABY BATES
You come from o'er the waters, From famed Columbia's land, And you have sons and daughters, And money at command. But I live in an island, Great Britain is its name, With money none to buy land, The more it is the shame. But we are all the children Of one great God of Love, Whose mercy like a mill-drain Runs over from above. Lullaby, lullaby, Sugar-plums and cates, Close your little peeping eye, Bonny Baby B——s.
First collected 1893. 'Baby Bates' was the daughter of Joshua Bates, one of the donors of the Boston Library. Her father and mother passed a year (1828-1829) at Highgate, 'close to the house of Dr. and Mrs. Gillman.' See a letter to Mrs. Bates from S. T. C. dated Jan. 23, 1829. N. and Q. 4th Series, i. 469.
19
TO A CHILD[987:1]
Little Miss Fanny, So cubic and canny, With blue eyes and blue shoes— The Queen of the Blues! As darling a girl as there is in the world— If she'll laugh, skip and jump, And not be Miss Glump!
1834. First published in Athenæum, Jan. 28, 1888. First collected 1893.