"To Priestley" is a sonnet 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...

 first published in the 11 December 1794 Morning Chronicle

Morning Chronicle

The Morning Chronicle was a newspaper founded in 1769 in London, England, and published under various owners until 1862. It was most notable for having been the first employer of Charles Dickens, and for publishing the articles by Henry Mayhew which were collected and published in book format in...

. Like most 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...

, "To Priestley" addresses an individual Coleridge particularly admired; Joseph Priestley

Joseph Priestley

Joseph Priestley, FRS was an 18th-century English theologian, Dissenting clergyman, natural philosopher, chemist, educator, and political theorist who published over 150 works...

 held many political and theological beliefs that Coleridge adopted during this time.

Background

Coleridge completed "To Priestley" at the beginning of December 1794. Following "To Burke", "To Priestley was published in the 11 December 1794 Morning Chronicle as the third poem in the Sonnets on Eminent Characters series. The poem was later included in Coleridge's 1796 collection of poems and collections printed after with few changes.

After a mob burned Priestley's Birmingham house during the summer of 1791, he left England for America. The mob that drove Priestley away were motivated by Priestley's support of the French Revolution. Coleridge's own views were similar to Priestley's and even Priestley's ideas expressed in Experiments and Observations on Different Kinds of Air

Experiments and Observations on Different Kinds of Air

Experiments and Observations on Different Kinds of Air is a six-volume work published by 18th-century British polymath Joseph Priestley which reports a series of his experiments on "airs" or gases, most notably his discovery of oxygen gas .-Airs:While working as a companion for Lord Shelburne,...

and Disquisitions relating to Matter and Spirit

Disquisitions relating to Matter and Spirit

Disquisitions relating to Matter and Spirit is a major work of metaphysics written by eighteenth-century British polymath Joseph Priestley and published by Joseph Johnson....

were discussed in part in Coleridge's poetry.

Coleridge was also corresponding with Priestley at the time, to discuss Coleridge and Robert Southey's idea of Pantisocracy

Pantisocracy

Pantisocracy was a utopian scheme devised in 1794 by the poets Samuel Taylor Coleridge and Robert Southey for an egalitarian community...

. During this time, Priestley's sons were working with Thomas Cooper to find an appropriate location for Coleridge to start up his community. In general, Coleridge viewed Priestley as both a spiritual and intellectual leader, and Coleridge's political life was to spread Priestley's views after Priestley left for America. However, Coleridge was to abandon Priestley's ideas about Unitarianism and religion a decade later as he turned to Anglicanism.

Poem

Tho' rous'd by that dark Vizir RIOT rude

Have driven our PRIESTLY o'er the ocean swell;

Tho' SUPERSTITION and her wolfish brood

Bay his mild radiance, impotent and fell;

Calm in his halls of Brightness he shall dwell!

For lo! RELIGION at his strong behest

Starts with mild anger from the Papal spell,

And flings to Earth her tinsel-glittering vest,

Her mitred state and cumbrous pomp unholy;

And JUSTICE wakes to bid th' Oppressor wail

Insulting aye the wrongs of patient Folly;

And from her dark retreat by Wisdom won

Meek NATURE slowly lifts her matron veil

To smile with fondness on her gazing son! (lines 1–14)

The original first line read "Tho' King-bred rage, with lawless uproar rude", the original seventh line read "Disdainful rouses from the Papal spell", and the original eleventh line read "That ground th' ensnared soul of patient Folly".

Themes

Like many of the Sonnets on Eminent Characters, "To Priestley" was dedicated to an individual that Coleridge viewed as one of his heroes. The imagery within the poem corresponds to the ideas in "To Burke" with an emphasis on Priestley being a defender of freedom and without flaws. The original line 1 of the poem described the royalty's role in the events leading up to the destruction of Priestley's home. The revised version describes John Reeves as the "dark Vizir" or, in the 1796 edition, describes Pitt.

Coleridge's views on Priestley appear in many of his works, including Religious Musings written at the end of 1794. John Bowring, in an 1830 review for the Westminster Review, emphasized how the poem served to represent a transitional stage in Coleridge's poetic career: "Happily he soon ascended into a purer region of fancy; and that not without leaving the print of his steps in the clay from which he sprung. The personifications in his Sonnet on the expatriation of Dr. Priestley, are as good as such things can be. The concluding reference to Priestley's philosophical discoveries, might suggest a noble group for the sculptor."