"To Pitt" was written by Samuel Taylor Coleridge

Samuel Taylor Coleridge

Samuel Taylor Coleridge was an English poet, Romantic, literary critic and philosopher who, with his friend William Wordsworth, was a founder of the Romantic Movement in England and a member of the Lake Poets. He is probably best known for his poems The Rime of the Ancient Mariner and Kubla...

 and published in the 26 December 1794 Morning Chronicle as part of the Sonnets on Eminent Characters

Sonnets on Eminent Characters

Sonnets on Eminent Characters or Sonnets on Eminent Contemporaries is an 11 part sonnet series created by Samuel Taylor Coleridge and printed in the Morning Chronicle between 1 December 1794 and 31 January 1795...

series. Describing William Pitt the Younger

William Pitt the Younger

William Pitt the Younger was a British politician of the late 18th and early 19th centuries. He became the youngest Prime Minister in 1783 at the age of 24 . He left office in 1801, but was Prime Minister again from 1804 until his death in 1806...

 and his role as Prime Minister of Great Britain, the poem is one of the few in the series that is not about a hero of Coleridge. Instead, Pitt is described as Judas, the betrayer of Christ, because of, among other issues, his treatment of political dissidents.

Background

During the end of 1794, Coleridge began work on the series Sonnets on Eminent Characters which he dedicated to people he respected. The first, "To Erskine", was printed on 1 December in the Morning Chronicle, and was followed by 10 further sonnets. "To Pitt", printed on 23 December, was the sixth in the series and was Coleridge's attempt to write a poem contrary in nature to the earlier poems. It was reprinted with a small revision in his magazine The Watchman on 2 April 1796 and included in Coleridge's 1796 collection of poems, under the name "Effusion 3, to Mercy". This edition was soon reprinted in The Universal Magazine for the October 1796 edition.

In May 1794, Pitt suspended Habeas Corpus

Habeas corpus

is a writ, or legal action, through which a prisoner can be released from unlawful detention. The remedy can be sought by the prisoner or by another person coming to his aid. Habeas corpus originated in the English legal system, but it is now available in many nations...

 in response to allegations that both the London Constitutional Society and the London Corresponding Society were plotting against the government. This crack down on opposition to his Prime Ministry was followed by 1794 Treason Trials

1794 Treason Trials

The 1794 Treason Trials, arranged by the administration of William Pitt, were intended to cripple the British radical movement of the 1790s. Over thirty radicals were initially arrested; three were tried for high treason: Thomas Hardy, John Horne Tooke and John Thelwall...

, which charged political dissidents with treason. Coleridge witnessed the trials and was affected to the point that he wrote "To Erskine", the first of the Sonnets on Eminent Characters, about Thomas Erskine

Thomas Erskine, 1st Baron Erskine

Thomas Erskine, 1st Baron Erskine KT PC KC was a British lawyer and politician. He served as Lord Chancellor of the United Kingdom between 1806 and 1807 in the Ministry of All the Talents.-Background and childhood:...

's defense of the accused. Although Coleridge was an opponent of Pitt's at the time of writing the sonnet "To Pitt", he was to later change his mind about politics and Pitt's government. Coleridge changed his mind about the content of "To Pitt", but still included the poem in his 1803 edition of works under the probable advisement by his friend Charles Lamb. Later, he revised the poem again for an 1828 collection and it kept that form in the two collections that followed in 1829 and 1834.

Poem

The 1796 collected version of the poem reads:

Not always should the tear's ambrosial dew

Roll its soft anguish down thy furrow'd cheek!

Not always haven-breath'd tones of suppliance meek

Beseem thee, MERCY! Yon dark Scowler view,

Who with proud words of dear-lov'd Freedom came—

More blasting, than the mildew from the South!

And kiss'd his country with Iscariot mouth

Then fix'd her on the cross of deep distress,

And at safe distance marks the thirsty lance

Pierce her big side! But o! if some strange trance

The eye-lids of thy stern-brow'd Sister press,

Seize, MERCY! thou more terrible the brand,

And hurl her thunderbolts with fiercer hand! (lines 1–14)

In the original edition, the 8th line to the 13th read:!

Then fix'd her on the cross of deep distress,

And at safe distance marks the thirsty lance

Pierce her big side! But o! if some strange trance

The eye-lids of thy stern-brow'd Sister press,

Seize thou, more terrible, th' avenging brand—

To this, a footnote to the 8th line read explaining that the reference was to the Earl of Chatham and a footnote to the 12th line explaining that the reference was to Justice.

Themes

"To Pitt" is one of the few poems in the Sonnets on Eminent Characters series that does not address one of the writer's heroes. It deals with actions of the Prime Minister that resulted in the suspension of Habeas Corpus, as well as the government's response to those opposed to Pitt's actions. As Rosemary Ashton, the 20th-century Coleridge biographer, points out that, "Coleridge undoubtedly courted prosecution of this attack, not least because of the emotive allusion to Britain as Christ betrayed by Judas-Pitt." Fellow biographer Richard Holmes described the poem as Coleridge having "daringly attacked" Pitt.

However, the political ramifications and effect of the poem were ephemeral. In a 1901 account, H D Traill claimed that Coleridge's sonnets are do not fully achieve the effect the poet sought. Even though the thought behind the sonnet is "neatly wrapped up in its envelope of words [...] as in the sonnet to Pitt" it "is too frequently only another word ford for an ephemeral violence of political feeling which, whether displayed on one side or the other, cannot be expected to reproduce its effect in the minds of comparatively passionless posterity."

The poem is related to the earlier "To Burke", from the same series. In that poem, Coleridge looked at Burke's rhetorical abuse of the concept of "freedom". This idea is examined again and, as with the earlier poem, the abusive figure is seen as a male dominating a female image. Pitt, as Judas, kisses a female version of Christ while simultaneously seeking to seduce that female character, which represents Britain. Other female characters, justice and mercy, are said to destroy Pitt, but it is uncertain within the poem as how they attain this destruction. The use of symbolic female characters is relied on in many of Coleridge's poems for positive and negative images.