Wandered about Holford. The apple-trees are in full blossom. One of them was a particularly exquisite survival of youth in old age. Its head was a white-and-pink mass, but it leaned almost horizontally, battered and weather-worn.
Thunder off and on all day till the afternoon. A low grey mist covered the whole sky at five o’clock, and the landscape was uninteresting, but in ten minutes the mist thinned a little, so that the sun came through it and lighted up the torn vapour.
Went over to East Quantock’s Head and came back across the hill. It was a dark day; the sky was overcast, and the moors were very lonely. The thought of London and other big cities over the horizon somewhat marred the solitude. Nevertheless there are the deserts of Arabia and Africa, the regions of the North and South Poles, the Ocean, and, encompassing the globe itself, silent, infinite space.
To Nether Stowey and Tom Poole’s house. In the hideous church is a monument to him fairly appreciative, but disfigured by snobbism. ‘His originality and grasp of mind,’ says the inscription, ‘counterbalanced the deficiencies of early education and secured him the friendship,’ etc. His ‘originality and grasp of mind’—his soul, that is to say, managed, when put in the scale, to turn it against those deficiencies which are made good to youths providentially directed to Eton and Oxford. According to the slab in the church, Poole died 8th September 1837, seventy-two years old. The house in which he lived in his later years is a pleasant place, but has been tortured into modern gentility. His revolving grate, which he turned round when he went out, has been replaced by an approved cast-iron ‘register.’ He was called ‘Justice Poole’ in the country round. Afterwards to Coleridge’s cottage—small, somewhat squalid rooms. Pity, pity, almost to tears. The second edition of his poems was published while he was here in 1797. In a note added to _Religious Musings_ in that edition he declares his belief in the Millennium; that ‘all who in past ages have endeavoured to ameliorate the state of man, will rise and enjoy the fruits and flowers, the imperceptible seeds of which they had sown in their former life; and that the wicked will, during the same period, be suffering the remedies adapted to their several bad habits.’ This period is to be ‘followed by the passing away of this earth, and by our entering the state of pure intellect; when all creation shall rest from its labours.’ The ‘coadjutors of God’ in _Religious Musings_ are Milton, Newton, Hartley, and Priestley. In the beginning of 1798 Coleridge was preaching at the Unitarian Chapel at Shrewsbury. But on the 13th November 1797, at half-past four in the afternoon (let us be particular in dating such an event), he and Dorothy and her brother began their walk over these Quantock hills, and _The Ancient Mariner_ was born. These are the facts, and rash indeed would anybody be who should attempt to deduce anything from them. Of all foolish criticism there is none more foolish than that which treats the mental movement of men like Coleridge or Wordsworth as if it were in an imaginary straight line. Excepting lines 123–270, composed in the latter part of 1796, Coleridge wrote his contribution to _Joan of Arc_ between 1794 and 1795. _The Rose_ and _Kisses_ were written in 1793, and _On a Discovery Made Too Late_ in 1794. Could anybody, not knowing the dates, have believed that these three poems last-named, if not written before the _Joan of Arc_, were contemporaneous with it? In the _Joan of Arc_ Coleridge is immature and led astray by politics, religion, and philosophy, but in the three little poems where he has subjects akin to him he is perfect, and could have done nothing better ten years later. Still more remarkable, _Lewti_, in its earliest form, cannot have been written later than 1794, for it was originally addressed to Mary Evans, from whom Coleridge parted in December 1794. As an example of the survival of his poetic power take _Love’s First Hope_, written probably in 1824: