Crede mihi, turn est parvæ fiduciæ, polliceri opem decertantibus, consilium dubiis, lumen cæcis, spem dejectis, refrigerium fessis. Magna quidem hæc sunt, si fiant: parva, si promittantur. Verum ego non tam aliis legem ponam, quam legem vobis meæ propriæ mentis exponam: quam qui probaverit, teneat; cui non placuerit, abjiciat. Optarem, fateor, talis esse, qui prodesse possem quam plurimis.
Petrarch: “De vita solitaria.”
Believe me, it requires no little Confidence, to promise Help to the Struggling, Counsel to the Doubtful, Light to the Blind, Hope to the Despondent, Refreshment to the Weary. These are indeed treat Things, if they be accomplished; trifles if they exist but in a Promise. I however aim not so much to prescribe a Law for others, as to set forth the Law of my own Mind; which let the man, who shall have approved of it, abide by; and let him, to whom it shall appear not reasonable, reject it. It is my earnest wish, I confess, to employ my understanding and acquirements in that mode and direction, in which I may be enabled to benefit the largest number possible of my fellow-creatures.
If it be usual with writers in general to find the first paragraph of their works that which has given them the most trouble with the least satisfaction, the Author of The Friend may be allowed to feel the difficulties and anxiety of a first introduction in a more than ordinary degree. He is embarrassed by the very circumstances, that discriminate the plan and purposes of the present weekly paper from those of its' periodical brethren, as well as from its' more dignified literary relations, which come forth at once and in full growth from their parents. If it had been his ambition to copy its' whole scheme and fashion from the great founders of the race, The Tatler and Spectator, he would indeed have exposed his Essays to a greater hazard of unkind comparison. An imperfect imitation is often felt as a contrast. On the other hand, however, the very names and descriptions of the fictitious characters, which he had proposed to assume in the course of his work, would have put him at once in possession of the stage; and his first act have opened with a succession of masks. Again, if the Author had proposed to himself one unbroken work on one given subject, the same acquaintance with its' grounds and bearings, which had authorized him to publish his opinions, would with its principles or fundamental facts have supplied him with his best and most appropriate commencement.
More easy still would my task have been, had I planned The Friend chiefly as a vehicle for a weekly descant on public characters and political parties. Perfect freedom from all warpiug influences; the distance which permitted a distinct view of the game, yet secured the Looker-on from its' passions; the Liberty of the Press; and its' especial importance at the present period from—whatever event or topic might happen to form the great interest of the day;—this would have been my recipe! it was ready to my hand! and it was framed so skilfully and has been practised with such constant effect, that it would have been affectation to have deviated from it. Excuse me therefore, gentle reader! if borrowing from my title a right of anticipation, I avail myself of the privileges of a friend before I have earned them; and waiving the ceremony of a formal introduction, permit me fo proceed at once to a Principle, trite indeed and familiar as the first lessons of childhood; which yet must be the foundation of my future Superstructure with all its ornaments, the hidden Root of the Tree, I am attempting to rear, with all its Branches and Boughs. But if from this principle I have deduced my strongest moral motives for the present undertaking, it has at the same time been. applied in suggesting the most formidable obstacle to my success—as far, I mean, as my Plan alone is concerned, and not the Talents necessary for its' Completion.
Conclusions drawn from facts which Subsist in perpetual flux, without definite place or fixed quantity, must always be liable to plausible objections, nay, often to unanswerable difficulties; and yet having their foundation in uncorrupted feeling are assented to by mankind at large, and in all ages, as undoubted truths. Such are all those facts, the knowledge of which is not received from the senses, but must be acquired by reflection; and the existence of which we can prove to others, only as far as we can prevail on them to go into themselves and make their own minds the Object of their stedfast attention. As our notions concerning them are almost equally obscure, so are our convictions almost equally vivid, with those of our life and individuality. Regarded with awe, as guiding principles by the founders of law and religion, they are the favourite objects of attack with mock philosophers, and the demagogues in church, state, and literature; and the denial of them has in all times, though at various intervals, formed heresies and systems, which, after their day of wonder, are regularly exploded, and again as regularly revived, when they have re-acquired novelty by courtesy of oblivion.
Among these universal persuasions we must place the sense of a self-contradicting principle in our nature, or a disharmony in the different impulses that constitute it —the sense of a something which essentially distinguishes man both from all other animals, that are known to exist, and from the idea of his own nature, from his own con- ceplion of the original man. In health and youth we may indeed connect the glow and buoyance of our bodily sensations with the words of a theory, and imagine that we hold it with a firm belief. The pleasurable heat which the Blood or the Breathing generates, the sense of external reality which comes with the strong Grasp of the hand or the vigorous Tread of the foot, may indifferently become associated with the rich eloquence of a Shaftesbury, imposing on us man's possible perfections for his existing1 nature; or with the cheerless and hardier impieties of a Hobbes, while cutting the gordian knot he denies the reality of either vice or virtue, and explains away the mind's self-reproach into a distempered ignorance, an epidemic affection of the human nerves and their habits of motion. “Vain wisdom all, and false philosophy!” I shall hereafter endeavour to prove, how distinct and different the sensation of positiveness is from the sense of certainty, the turbulent heat of temporary fermentation from the mild warmth of essential life. Suffice it for the present to affirm, (to declare it at least, as my own creed) that whatever humbles the heart and forces the mind inward, whether it be sickness, or grief, or remorse, or the deep yearnings of love (and there have been children of affliction, for whom all these have met and made up one complex suffering) in proportion as it acquaints us with “the thing, we are,” renders us docile to the concurrent testimony of our fellow-men in all ages and in all nations. From Pascal in his closet, resting the arm, which supports his thoughtful brow, on a pile of demonstrations, to the poor pensive Indian, that seeks the missionary in the American wilderness, the humiliated self-examinant feels that there is Evil in our nature as well as Good, an evil and a good for a just analogy to which he questions all other natures in vain. It is still the great definition of humanity, that we have a conscience, which no mechanic compost, no chemical combination, of mere appetence, memory, and understanding, can solve; which is indeed an Element of our Being!—a conscience, unrelenting, yet not absolute; which we may stupify but cannot delude; which we may suspend, but cannot annihilate; although we may perhaps find a treacherous counterfeit in the very quiet which we derive from its slumber, or its entrancement.
Of so mysterious a phænomenon we might expect a cause as mysterious. Accordingly, we find this (cause be it, or condition, or necessary accompaniment) involved and implied in the fact, which it alone can explain. For If our permanent Consciousness did not reveal to us our Free-agency, we should yet be obliged to deduce it, as a necessary Inference, from the fact of our Conscience: or rejecting both the one and the other, as mere illusions of internal Feeling, forfeit all power of thinking consistently with our Actions, or acting consistently with our Thought, for any single hour during our whole Lives, But I am proceeding farther than I had wished or intended. It will be long, ere I shall dare flatter myself, that I have won the confidence of my Reader sufficiently to require of him that effort of attention which the regular Establishment of this Truth would demand.
After the brief season of youthful hardihood, and the succeeding years of uneasy fluctuation, after long. continued and patient study of the most celebrated works, in the languages of ancient and modern Europe, in defence or denial of this prime Article of human Faith, which (save to the Trifler or the Worldling,) no frequency of discussion can superannuate, I at length satisfied my own mind by arguments, which placed me on firm land. This one conviction, determined, as in a mould, the form and feature of my whole system in Religion, in Morals, and even-. in Literature. These arguments were not suggested to me by Books, but forced on me by reflection on my own Being, and by Observation of the Ways of those about me, especially of Children. And as they had the power of fixing the same persuasion in some valuable minds, much interested, and not unversed in the controversy, and from the manner probably rather than the subtance, appeared to them in some sort original—(for oldest Reasons will put on an impressive semblance of novelty, if they have indeed been drawn from the fountain-head of genuine self-research) and since the arguments are neither abstruse, nor dependent on a long chain of Deductions, nor such as suppose previous Habits of metaphysical disquisition; I shall deem it my Duty to state them with what skill I can, at a fitting opportunity, though rather as the Biographer of my own sentiments than a Legislator of the opinions of other men.
At present, however, I give it merely as an article of my own faith, closely connected with all my hopes of amelioration in man, and leading to the methods, by which alone I hold any fundamental or permanent amelioration practicable : that there is Evil distinct from Error and from Pain, an Evil in human nature which is not wholly grounded in the limitation of our understandings. And this too I believe to operate equally in subjects of Taste, as in the higher concerns of Morality. Were it my conviction, that our Follies, Vice, and Misery, have their entire origin in miscalculation from Ignorance, I should act irrationally in attempting other task than that of adding new lights to the science of moral Arithmetic, or new facility to its acquirements. In other words, it would have been my worthy business to have set forth, if it were in my power, an improved system of Bookkeeping for the Ledgers of calculating Self-love. If, on the contrary, I believed our nature fettered to all its' wretchedness of Head and Heart by an absolute and innate necessity, at least by a necessity which no human power, no efforts of reason or eloquence could remove or lessen; (no, nor even prepare the way for such removal or ' diminution) I should then yield myself at once to the admonitions of one of my Correspondents (unless indeed it should better suit my humour to do nothing than nothings, nihil quam nihili) and deem it even presumptuous to aim at other or higher object than that of amusing, during some ten minutes in every week, a small portion of the reading Public. Relaxed by these principles from all moral obligation, and ambitious of procuring Pastime and Self-oblivion for a Race, which could have nothing noble to remember, nothing desirable to anticipate, I might aspire even to the praise of the Critics and Dilettanti of the higher circles of Society; of some trusty Guide of blind Fashion; some pleasant Analyst of Taste, as it exists both in the Palate and the Soul; some living Guage and Mete-wand of past and present Genius. But alas! my former studies would still have left a wrong Bias! If instead of perplexing my common sense with the Flights of Plato, and of stiffening over the meditations of the Imperial Stoic, I had been labouring to imbibe the gay spirit of a Casti, or had employed my erudition, for the benefit of the favoured Few, in elucidating the interesting Deformities of ancient Greece and India, what might I not have hoped from the Suffrage of those, who turn in weariness from the Paradise Lost, because compared with the prurient Heroes and grotesque Monsters of Italian Romance, or even with the narrative dialogues of the melodious Metastasio, that—“Adventurous Song,
“Which justifies the ways of God to Man,”
has been found a poor Substitute for a Grimaldi, a most inapt medicine for an occasional propensity to yawn? For, as hath been decided, to fill up pleasantly the brief intervals of fashionable pleasures, and above all to charm away the dusky Gnome of Ennui, is the chief and appropriate Business of the Poet and—the Novellist! This duty unfulfilled, Apollo will have lavished his best gifts in vain; and Urania henceforth must be content to inspire Astronomers alone, and leave the Sons of Verse to more amusive Patronesses.
I must rely on my Readers' Indulgence for the pardon of this long and, I more than fear, prolix introductory explanation. I knew not by what means to avoid it without the hazard of becoming unintelligible in my succeeding Papers, dull where animation might justly be dem anded, and worse than all, dull to no purpose. The Musician may tune his instrument in private, ere his audience have yet assembled: the Architect conceals the Foundation of his Building beneath the Superstructure. But an Author's Harp must be tuned in the hearing of those, who are to understand it's after harmonies; the foundation stones of his Edifice must lie open to common view, or his friends will hesitate to trust themselves beneath the roof. I forsee too, that some of my correspondents will quote my own opinions against me in confirmation of their former advice, and remind me that I have only in sterner language re-asserted the old adage,
Ille sinistrorsum, hie dextrorsum, unus utrique
Error, sed variis illudit partibus omnes;
that the Will or Free Agency, by which I have endeavoured to secure a retreat, must needs be deemed inefficient if error be universal! that to amuse, though only to amuse, our Visitors, is both Wisdom and Goodness, where it is presumption to attempt their amendment. And finally they will ask, by what right I affect to stand aloof from the crowd, even were it prudent; and with what prudence, did I even possess the right?—“One of the later Schools of the Grecians (says Lord Bacon) is at a stand to think what should be in it that men should love Lies, where neither they make for pleasure, as with poets; nor for Advantage, as with the merchant; but for the Lie's sake. I cannot tell why, this same Truth is a naked and open day-light, that doth not shew the Masques and Mummeries and Triumphs of the present World half so stately and daintily, as Candle-lights. Truth may perhaps come to the Price of a Pearl, that sheweth best by day; but it will not rise to the price of a Diamond or Carbuncle, which sheweth best in varied lights. A mixture of Lies doth ever add pleasure. Doth any man doubt, that if there were taken from mens' minds vain opinions, flattering hopes, false valuations, imaginations as one would, and the like vinum Dæmonum (as a Father calleth poetry) but it would leave the minds of a number of men poor shrunken things, full of melancholy and Indisposition, and unpleasing to themselves?”
This formidable Objection, (which however grounds itself on the false assumption, that I wage war with all amusement unconditionally, with all delight from the blandishments of style, all interest from the excitement of Sympathy or Curiosity, when in truth I protest only against the habit of seeking in books for an idle and barren amusement,) this objection of my friends brings to my recollection a fable or allegory, which I read during my Freshman's Term in Cambridge, in a modern Latin Poet: and if I mistake not, in one of the philosophical Poems. of B. Stay, which are honoured with the prose commentary of the illustrious Boscovich. After the lapse of so many years, Indeed of nearly half my present Life, I retain no more of it than the bare outlines.
It was toward the close of that golden age (the tradition of which the self-dissatisfied Race of Men have every where preserved and cherished) when Conscience, or the effective Reason, acted in Man with the ease and uniformity of Instinct; when Labor was a sweet name for the activity of sane Minds in healthful Bodies, and all enjoyed in common the bounteous harvest produced, and gathered in, by common effort; when there existed in the Sexes, and in the Individuals of each Sex, just variety enough to permit and call forth the gentle rcstlesness and final union of chaste love and individual attachment, each seeking and finding the beloved one by the natural affinity of their Beings; when the dread Sovereign of the Universe was known only as the universal Parent, no Altar but the pure Heart, and Thanksgiving and grateful Love the sole Sacrifice—in this blest age of dignified Innocence one of their honored Elders, whose absence they were beginning to notice, entered with hurrying steps the place of their common assemblage at noon, and instantly attracted the general attention and wonder by the perturbation of his gestures, and by a strange Trouble both in his Eyes and over his whole Countenance. After a short but deep Silence, when the first Buz of varied Inquiry was becoming audible, the old man moved toward a small eminence, and having ascended it, he thus addressed the hushed and listening Company.
“In the warmth of the approaching Mid-day as I was reposing in the vast cavern, out of which, from its' northern Portal, issues the River that winds through our vale, a Voice powerful, yet not from its' loudness, suddenly hailed me. Guided by my Ear I looked toward the supposed place of the sound for some Form, from which it had proceeded. I beheld nothing but the glimmering walls of the cavern. Again, as I was turning round, the same voice hailed me; and whithersoever I turned my face, thence did the voice seem to proceed. I stood still therefore, and in reverence awaited its' continuance. 'Sojourner of Earth! (these were its words) hasten to the meeting of thy Brethren, and the words which thou now hearest, the same do thou repeat unto them. On the thirtieth morn from the morrow's sunrising, and during the space of thrice three Days and Nights, a thick cloud will cover the sky, and a heavy rain fall on the earth. Go ye therefore, ere the thirtieth sun ariseth, retreat to the Cavern of the River and there abide, till the Clouds have passed away and the Rain be over and gone. For know ye of a certainty that whomever that Rain wetteth, on him, yea, on him and on his Children's Children will fall—the spirit of Madness.” Yes! Madness was the word of the voice: what this be, I know not! But at the sound of the word Trembling came upon me, and a Feeling which I would not have had; and I remained even as ye beheld and now behold me.'
The old man ended, and retired. Confused murmurs succeeded, and wonder, and doubt. Day followed day, and every day brought with it a diminution of the awe impressed. They could attach no image, no remembered sensations to the Threat. The ominous Morn arrived, the Prophet had retired to the appointed Cavern, and there remained alone during the space of the nine Days and Nights. On the tenth, he emerged from his place of Shelter, and sought his Friends and Brethren. But alas! how affrightful the change! Instead of the Common Children of one great Family, working toward the same aim by Reason even as the Bees in their hives by Instinct, he looked and beheld, here a miserable wretch watching over a heap of hard and unnutritious small substances, which he had dug out of the earth, at the cost of mangled limbs and exhausted faculties, and appearing to worship it with greater earnestness, than the Youths had been accustomed to gaze at their chosen Virgins in the first season of their choice. There he saw a former Companion speeding on and panting after a Butterfly, or a withered Leaf whirling onward in the breeze; and another with pale and distorted countenance following close behind, and still stretching forth a dagger to stab his Precursor in the Back. In another place he observed a whole Troop of his fellow-men famished, and in fetters, yet led by one of their Brethren who had enslaved them, and pressing furiously onwards in the hope of famishing and enslaving another Troop moving in an opposite direction. For the first time, the Prophet missed his accustomed power of distinguishing between his Dreams, and his waking Perceptions. He stood gazing and motionless, when several of the Race gathered around him, and enquired of each ether, Who is this Man? how strangely he looks! how wild!—a worthless Idler! exclaims one: assuredly, a very dangerous madman! cries a second. In short, from words they proceeded to violence: till harrassed, endangered, solitary in a world of forms like his own, without sympathy, without object of Love, he at length espied in some foss or furrow a quantity of the mad'ning water stilt unevaporated, and uttering the last words of Reason, “It is in vain to be sane in a World of Madmen,” plunged and rolled himself in the liquid poison, and came out as mad and not more wretched than his neighbours and acquaintance.
This tale or allegory seems to me to contain the objections to the practicability of my plan in all their strength. Either, says the Sceptic, you are the Blind offering to lead the Blind, or you are talking the language of Sight to those who do not possess the sense of Seeing. To such objections it would be amply sufficient, on my system of faith, to answer, that we are not all blind, but all subject to distempers of “the mental sight,” differing in kind and in degree; that though all men are in error, they are not all in the same error, nor at the same time; and that each therefore may possibly heal the other (for the possibility of the cure is supposed in the free-agency) even as two or more physicians, all diseased in their general health yet under the immediate action of the disease on different days, may remove or alleviate the complaints of each other. But in respect to the entertainingness of moral writings, if in entertainment be included whatever delights the imagination or affects the generous passions, so far from rejecting such a mean of persuading the humao soul, or of declaring it with Mr. Locke a mere imposture, my very system compels me to defend not only the propriety but the absolute necessity of adopting it, if we really intend to render our fellow-creatures better or wiser.
Previous to my ascent of Etna, as likewise of the Brocken in North Germany, I remember to have amused myself with examining the Album or Manuscript presented to Travellers at the first stage of the Mountain, in which on their return the Fore-runners had sometimes left their experience, and more often disclosed or betrayed their own characters. Something like this I have endeavoured to do Relatively to my great predecessors in periodical Literature, from the Spectator to the Mirror, or whatever later work of merit there may be. But the distinction between my proposed plan and all and each of theirs' I must defer to a future Essay. From all other works the Friend is sufficiently distinguished either by the very form and intervals of its Publication, or by its avowed exclusion of the Events of the Day, and of all personal Politics.
For a detail of the principal subjects, which I have proposed to myself to treat in the course of this work, I must refer to the Prospectus, printed at the end of this Sheet. But I own, I am anxious to explain myself more fullv on the delicate subjects of Religion and Politics. Of the former perhaps it may, for the present, be enough to say that I have confidence in myself that I shall neither directly or indirectly attack its Doctrines or Mysteries, much less attempt basely to undermine them by allusion, or tale, or anecdote. What more I might dare promise of myself, 1 reserve for another occasion. Concerning Politics, however, I have many motives to declare my intentions more explicitly. It is my object to refer men to Principles inall things; in Literature, in the Fine Arts, in Morals, in Legislation, in Religion. Whatever therefore of a political nature maybe reduced to general Principles, necessarily indeed dependant on the circumstances of a nation internal and external, yet not especially connected with this year or the preceding—this I do not exclude from my Scheme. Thinking it a sort of Duty to place my Readers in full possession both of my opinions and the only method in which I can permit myself to recommend them, and aware too of many calumnious accusations, as well as gross misapprehensions, of my political creed, I shall dedicate my early numbers entirely to the views, which a British Subject in the present state of his Country ought to entertain of its actual and existing Constitution of Government. If lean do no positive good, I may perhaps aid in preventing others from doing harm. But all intentional allusions to particular persons, all support of, or hostility to, particular parties or factions, I now and for ever utterly disclaim. My Principles command this Abstinence, my Tranquillity requires it.
Tranquility! thou better Name
Than all the family of Fame!
Thou ne'er wilt leave my riper age
To low Intrigue, or factious Rage:
For O! dear Child of thoughtful Truth,
To thee I gave my early youth,
And left the bark, and blest the stedfast shore,
Ere yet the Tempest rose and scar'd me with its' Roar.
Who late and lingering seeks thy shrine,
On Him but seldom, Power divine,
Thy Spirit rests! Satiety
And Sloth, poor Counterfeits of Thee,
Mock the tir'd Worldling. Idle Hope
And dire Remembrance interlope,
And vex the fev'rish Slumbers of the Mind:
The Bubble floats before, the Spectre stalks behind!
But me thy gentle Hand will lead,
At morning, through th' accustom'd Mead;
And in the sultry Summer's Heat
Will build me up a mossy Seat;
And when the Gust of Autumn crowds,
And breaks the busy moonlight Clouds,
Thou best the Thought canst raise, the Heart attune,
Light as the busy Clouds, calm as the gliding Moon.
The feeling Heart, the searching Soul,
To Thee I dedicate the whole!
And while within myself I trace
The Greatness of some future Race,
Aloof with Hermit Eye I scan
The present Works of present Man—
A wild and dream-like trade of Blood and Guile
Too foolish for a Tear, too wicked for a Smile!
But I have transgressed from a Rule, which I had intended to have established for myself, that of never troubling my Readers with my own Verses.
Ite hine, Camænæ!
vos quoque, ite suaves,
Dulces Camæntæ! Nam (fatebimur verum)
Dulces fuistis: et tamen meas chartas
Rerisitote; sed pudentur et raro.
Virgil: Catalect. vii.
I shall indeed very rarely and cautiously avail myself of this privilege. For long and early Habits of exerting any intellect in metrical composition have not so enslaved me, but that for some years I have felt and deeply felt, that the Poet's high functions were not rny proper assignment; that many may be worthy to listen to the strains of Apollo, neighbours of the sacred choir, and able to discriminate, and feel, and love its genuine harmonies: yet not therefore called to receive the Harp in their own hands, and join in the concert. I am content and gratified, that Spenser, Shakespere, Milton, have not been born in vain for me: and I feel it as a Blessing, that even among my Contemporaries I know one at least, who has been deemed worthy of the Gift; who has received the Harp with reverence, and struck it with the hand of power.
Let me be permitted to conclude this prefatory Apology, or Catalogue raisonne of my future work, by addressing myself more particularly to my learned and critical Readers. And that I may win the more on them, let me avail myself of the words of one, who was himself at once a great Critic and a great Genius:
Sic opdrtet ad librum, presertim miscellanei generis, legendum accedere lector em, ut solct ad convivium conviva chilis. Gonvivator annititur omnibus satis facere: et tamen si quid apponitur, quod hujus out illius palato non rcspondeat, et hie et ille urbane dissimulant, et alia fercula probant, vie quid contristent convivatorem. Quis emm eum coxviv am ferat, qui tantum hoc animo venial ad mensam, tit carpetis qua; apponuntur nee vescaiur ipse, nee alias vesci sinat? et tamen his quoque reperias inciviliores, qui palam, qui sine fine damnent ac lacerent opus, quod nunquam legerinit. Ast hoc plusquam sycophauticum est damnare quod nescias.
ERASMUS.
PROSPECTUS
OF
THE FRIEND,
A WEEKLY ESSAY, BY S. T. COLERIDGE.
(Extracted from a Letter to a Correspondent.)
“It is not unknown to you, that I have employed almost the whole of my Life in acquiring, or endeavouring to acquire, useful Knowledge by Study, Reflection, Observation, and by cultivating the Society of my Superiors in Intellect, both at Home and in foreign Countries. You know too, that ait different Periods of my Life I have not only planned, but collected the Materials for, many Works on various and important Subjects: so many indeed, that the Number of my unrealized Schemes, and the Mass of my miscellaneous Fragments, have often furnished my Friends with a Subject of Raillery, and sometimes of Regret and Reproof. Waiving the Mention of all private and accidental Hindrances, I am inclined to believe, that this Want of Perseverance has been produced in the Main by an Over-activity of Thought, modified by a constitutional Indolence, which made it more pleasant to me to continue acquiring, than to reduce what I had acquired to a regular Form. Add too, that almost daily throwing off my Notices or Reflections in desultory Fragments, I was still tempted onward by an increasing Sense of the Imperfection of my Knowledge, and by the Conviction, that, in Order fully to comprehend and develope any one Subject, it was necessary that I should make myself Master of some other, which again as regularly involved a third, and so on, with an ever-widening Horizon. Yet one Habit, formed during long Absences from those, with whom I could converse with full Sympathy, has been of Advantage to me — that of daily noting down, in my Memorandum or Common-place Books, both Incidents and Observation; whatever had occurred to me from without, and all the Flux and Reflux of my Mind within itself. The Number of these Notices, and their Tendency, miscellaneous as they were, to one common End (“quid sumuset quid futuri gignimur,” what use are and what we are born to become; and thus from the End of our Being to deduce its proper Objects) first encouraged me to undertake the Weekly Essay, of which you will consider this Letter as the Propectus.
Not only did the plan seem to accord better than any other with the Nature of my own Mind, both in its Strength and in its Weakness } but conscious that, in upholding some Principles both of Taste and Philosophy, adopted by the great Men of Europe from the Middle of the fifteenth till toward the Close of the seventeenth Century, I must run Counter to many Prejudices of many of my readers (for old Faith is often modern Heresy) I perceived too in a periodical Essay the most likely Means of winning, intead of forcing my Way. Supposing Truth on my Side, the Shock of the first Day might be so far lessened by Reflections of the succeeding Days, as to procure for my next Week's Essay a less hostile Reception, than it would have met with, had it been only the next Chapter of a present Volume. I hoped to disarm the Mind of those Feelings, which preclude Conviction by Contempt, and, as it were, fling the Door in the Face of Reasoning by a Presumption of its Absurdity. A Motive too for honourable Ambition was supplied by the Fact, that every periodical Paper of the Kind now attempted, which had been conducted with Zeal and Ability, was not only well received at the Time, but has become permanently, and in the best Sensaof the Word, popular. By honorable Ambition I mean the strong Desire to be useful, aided by the Wish to be generally acknowledged to have been so. As I feel myself actuated in no ordinary Degree by this Desire, so the Hope of realizing it appears less and less presumptuous to me, since I have received from Men of highest Rank and established Character in the Republic of Letters, not only strong Encouragements as to my own Fitness for the Undertaking, but likewise Promises of Support from their own Stores.
The Object of “The Friend,” briefly and generally expressed, is—to uphold those Truths and those Merits, which are founded in the nobler and permanent Parts of our Nature, against the Caprices of Fashion, and such Pleasures, as either depend on transitory and accidental Causes, or are pursued from less worthy Impulses. The chief Subjects of my own Essays will be:
The true and sole Ground of Morality, or Virtue, as distinguished from Prudence.
The Origin and Growth of moral Impulses, as distinguished from external and immediate Motives.
The necessary Dependence of Taste on moral Impulses and Habits: and the Nature of Taste (relatively to Judgement in general and to Genius) defined, illustrated, and applied. Under this Head I comprize the Substance of the Lectures given, and intended to have been given, at the Royal Institution, on the distinguished English Peets, in illustration of the general Principles of Poetry; together with Suggestions concerning the Affinity of the Fine Arts to each other, and the Principles common to them all: Architecture; Gardening; Dress; Music; Painting; Poetry.
The opening out of new Objects of just Admiration in our own Language; and Information of the present State and past History of Swedish, Danish. German, and Italian Literature (to which, but as supplied by a Friend, I may add the Spanish, Portuguese and French) as far as the same has not been already given to English Readers, or is not to be found in common French Authors.
Characters met with in real Life:—Anecdotes and Results of my own Life and Travels, &c. &c. as far as they are illustrative of general moral. Laws, and have no immediate Bearing on personal or immediate Politics.
Education in its widest Sense, private and national.
Sources of Consolation to the afflicted in Misfortune, or Disease, or Dejection of Mind, from the Exertion and right Application of the Reason, the Imagination, and the moral Sense; and new Sources of Enjoyment opened out, or an Attempt (as an illustrious Friend once expressed the Thought to me) to add Sunshine to Daylight, by making the Happy more happy. In the words “Dejection of Mind” I refer particularly to Doubt or Disbelief of the moral Government of the World, and the grounds and arguments for the religious Hopes of Human Nature.
Orders for the Friend received by the Publisher, J. Brown, Penrith; by Messrs. Longman, Hurst, Rees, and Orme, Paternoster Row; by Clement, Bookseller, opposite St. Clement's, Strand; London.
Orders likewise, and all Communications, to be addressed to S. T. Coleridge, Grasmere, Kendal.
Penrith: printed and published by J. Brown.
Online typesetting and general maintainance by Sean B. Palmer.