and motionless, with the strongest expression first of wonder & then of Grief in his eyes and countenance, and at length said “And where is the Ship? But that is sunk! – and the men all drowned!” – still keeping his eye fixed upon the Print. Now what Pictures are to little Children, Stage-Illusion is to Men, provided they retain any part of the Child’s sensibility: except that in the latter instance, this suspension of the Act of Comparison, which permits this sort of Negative Belief, is somewhat more assisted by the Will, than in that of the Child respecting a picture.66
This argument proclaims the enduring, childlike part of the creative sensibility. But it also first uses the striking idea of “Negative Belief” (the metaphor drawn from positive and negative electrical polarities). He would later apply this doctrine of the “suspended state” of Imagination to poetry as a whole, in the Biographia Literaria, to produce one of the most influential of all his critical formulations, the “willing suspension of disbelief”. In other lectures he drew similar analogies with dream states and nightmares.*
The most talked-about lecture of the whole series took place on 3 May 1808, and was a single digression from beginning to end. Still anxious to make good the casual impression of his postponements, Coleridge volunteered to give a free “supernumerary” double lecture on a subject of topical debate. His lecture was scheduled to last over two hours. The theatre and even the gallery were packed out with fashionable figures, and among his supporters were Davy, William Sotheby, Godwin, Basil Montagu, William Rogers, and Crabb Robinson (still busily taking notes).67
The subject he chose was intensely controversial, and bound to be popular. Two educationalists, Dr Andrew Bell and Mr Joseph Lancaster, had recently published rival schemes to expand national schools by using a “monitor” system, in which older pupils were trained to teach younger ones. (By 1815 over 500 schools were using their methods.) Bell was an Anglican and saw his schools as state foundations, while Lancaster was a Quaker and saw them as independent institutions. Coleridge believed passionately that education, especially in poorer areas, should be the responsibility of the state, and supported Bell’s “Madras System” (so-called because it had been pioneered in India). But what most engaged his attention was Lancaster’s enforcement of rote-learning by an elaborate system of punishment and penalties. These particularly outraged Coleridge, who was otherwise a great admirer of the Quaker philosophy. They included an astonishing panoply of cruelties and humiliations: makeshift pillories, shackling of the leg with wooden logs, trussing up in a sack, walking backwards through the corridors, and being suspended in a “punishment basket” from the classroom ceiling.68
Southey later reported an eyewitness account of how Coleridge had riveted his audience by “throwing down” Lancaster’s book with “contempt and indignation”, and exclaiming: “No boy who has been subject to punishments like these will stand in fear of Newgate, or feel any horror at the thought of a slave ship!”69 Coleridge bitterly attacked these practices, not merely as inhumane, but as an essential perversion of the educational principle, which was to “lead forth” by love and imagination, not to instil by rivalry and terror. Instead he proposed three cardinal rules for early education. “These are 1. to work by love and so generate love; 2. to habituate the mind to intellectual accuracy or truth; 3. to excite power.”70
“He enforced a great truth strikingly,” noted Robinson, taking down his words verbatim. “My experience tells me that little is taught or communicated by contest or dispute, but everything by sympathy and love. Collision elicits truth only from the hardest heads.” He said that the text, “he that spareth the rod, spoileth the child”, was the “source of much evil”. He was against cramming, severe religious observance, or an atmosphere of “quiet and gloom” in the classroom. Everything should be done to draw out each child, most especially those from poor and deprived backgrounds.
What really moved his audience was, once again, Coleridge’s “inter-weaving” of his own experiences. He retold the story of John Thelwall in the weed-covered garden at Stowey: “‘What is this?…Only a garden educated according to Rousseau’s principles.’” And according to Robinson, he deeply moved his audience with recollections of his sufferings at Christ’s Hospital, leaving an image which remained with them long after. “On disgraceful punishments…he spoke with great indignation and declared that even now his life is embittered by the recollection of ignominious punishment he suffered when a child. It comes to him in disease and when his mind is dejected. – This part was delivered with fervour. Could all the pedagogues of the United Kingdom have been before him!”71
Crabb Robinson summarized the impact of this remarkable performance in a letter to Mrs Clarkson. “The extraordinary lecture on Education was most excellent, delivered with great animation and extorting praise from those whose prejudices he was mercilessly attacking. And he kept his audience on the rack of pleasure and offence two whole hours and 10 minutes, and few went away during the lecture…”
But the lecture also caused a scandal. Supporters of Lancaster threatened Coleridge, and talked of a prosecution for libel. The management of the Royal Institution complained that he had exceeded his functions as a literary lecturer, and eventually passed a motion of censure.72 When accounts reached the Lake District, Wordsworth was troubled and Southey astounded. No one had expected such an explosive return of Coleridge’s energy and daring.
The lecture on education established the controversial reputation of the entire series. Coleridge was regarded as brilliant, unorthodox, uneven, and prone to plunge without warning between metaphysics and melodrama. No one could tell from one performance to the next if he would be inspired or obscure, rambling or provocative. But he tasted a new kind of fame, and even notoriety, in London. His rooms in the Strand were besieged by smart visitors (seven in one evening); he dined with the Bishop of Durham; went to fashionable routs in Portman Square; was insulted publicly by Sir Henry Englefield; was jostled in the streets by “Bullies of Lancaster’s Faction”; was praised by Sir George Beaumont; was invited to a celebration dinner by the Literary Fund and by “a very droll mistake” dined at the Whig Club instead.73
He was asked to sit for his portrait by the society painter Matilda Betham, but, on the way to her studio across the Thames, fell out of the boat (“two mere children were my Charons”) and knocked himself out on the landing stage.74 His next lecture began with a vivid account of this accident, which rather characteristically no one believed. He was now at last able to write to Mrs Coleridge, with an account of his activities: “Now, my dear! I leave it to you to judge whether I can do more than I do – having besides all this to prepare William’s Poem for the Press.”75
He had found time to conclude the negotiations with Longman for Wordsworth’s “White Doe”, to go over the text in detail, and write Wordsworth a long appreciation of the poem.76 But by contrast he spoke deprecatingly of his lectures, and the stir they had caused: “whole Hods full of plaister of Paris – flatteries about as pleasant to me as rancid large Spanish Olives – these on the one side – & permanent hatred, & the most cruel public Insults on the other”.77 He found it difficult to boast of any success to Wordsworth.
His fame in London, besides helping to renew old friendships with Godwin, Sotheby, Montagu and others, brought him one unexpected and strangely upsetting encounter. At the end of one lecture, a plump, anxious, middle-aged woman appeared at his dais and introduced herself as Mrs Mary Todd. It took Coleridge several agonizing seconds to realize that he was talking to his old love