1772-1834
[Sidenote: de Quincey’s _Life and Writings_.]
“I had received directions for finding out the house where Coleridge
was visiting; and in riding down a main street of Bridgewater, I
noticed a gateway corresponding to the description given me. Under
this was standing and gazing about him, a man whom I shall describe!
In height he might seem to be about five feet eight (he was in reality
about an inch and a half taller, but his figure was of an order which
drowns the height); his person was broad and full, and tended even
to corpulence; his complexion was fair, though not what painters
technically style fair, because it was associated with black hair;
his eyes were large and soft in their expression, and it was from
the peculiar haze or dreaminess which mixed with their light that I
recognised my object. This was Coleridge.”--1807.
[Sidenote: Bryan Procter’s _Recollections of Men of Letters_.]
“Coleridge had a weighty head, dreaming gray eyes, full, sensual lips,
and a look and manner which were entirely wanting in firmness and
decision. His motions also appeared weak and undecided, and his voice
had nothing of the sharpness or ring of a resolute man. When he spoke
his words were thick and slow, and when he read poetry his utterance
was altogether a chant.”--About 1820.
[Sidenote: Froude’s _Life of Carlyle_.]
“I have seen many curiosities; not the least of them I reckon
Coleridge, the Kantian metaphysician and quondam Lake Poet. I will
tell you all about our interview when we meet. Figure a fat, flabby,
incurvated personage, at once short, rotund, and relaxed, with a
watery mouth, a snuffy nose, a pair of strange brown, timid, yet
earnest-looking eyes, a high tapering brow, and a great bush of gray
hair, and you have some faint idea of Coleridge. He is a kind, good
soul, full of religion and affection and poetry and animal magnetism.
His cardinal sin is that he wants _will_. He has no resolution. He
shrinks from pain or labour in any of its shapes. His very attitude
bespeaks this. He never straightens his knee-joints. He stoops with his
fat, ill-shapen shoulders, and in walking he does not tread, but shovel
and slide. My father would call it ‘skluiffing.’ He is also always
busied to keep, by strong and frequent inhalations, the water of his
mouth from overflowing, and his eyes have a look of anxious impotence.
He _would_ do with all his heart, but he knows he dares not. The
conversation of the man is much as I anticipated--a forest of thoughts,
some true, many false, more _part_ dubious, all of them ingenious in
some degree, often in a high degree. But there is no method in his
talk; he wanders like a man sailing among many currents, whithersoever
his lazy mind directs him; and, what is more unpleasant, he preaches,
or rather soliloquises. He cannot speak, he can only _tal-k_ (so he
names it). Hence I found him unprofitable, even tedious; but we parted
very good friends, I promising to go back and see him some evening--a
promise which I fully intend to keep. I sent him a copy of _Meister_,
about which we had some friendly talk. I reckon him a man of great and
useless genius: a strange, not at all a great man.”--1824.