"Noisy he was, and gamesome as a boy,
Tossing his limbs about him in delight."
In the autumn of 1833, Emerson, on his second visit to England, called
on Coleridge. He found him "to appearance a short, thick, old man, with
bright blue eyes, and fine clear complexion."
A minute and certainly a true picture is that which Carlyle formed of
him, in words, some years later, and probably not long before his
removal from earth:--"Brow and head were round, and of massive weight,
but the face was flabby and irresolute. The deep eyes, of a light hazel,
were as full of sorrow as of inspiration; confused pain looked mildly
from them, as in a kind of mild astonishment. The whole figure and
air, good and amiable otherwise, might be called flabby and
irresolute,--expressive of weakness under possibility of strength. He
hung loosely on his limbs, with knees bent and stooping attitude; in
walking he rather shuffled than decisively stepped; and a lady once
remarked, he never could fix which side of the garden-walk would suit
him best, but continually shifted in corkscrew fashion, and kept trying
both. A heavy-laden, high-aspiring, and surely much-suffering man. His
voice, naturally soft and good, had contracted itself into a plaintive
snuffle and sing-song; he spoke as if preaching,--you would have said
preaching earnestly, and also hopelessly, the weightiest things."
Such, according to these high authorities, was the outer man
Coleridge,--he who
"in bewitching words, with happy heart,
Did chant the vision of that ancient man,
That bright-eyed mariner."
There are several portraits painted of him. The best would appear to be
that which was made by Allston, at Rome, in 1806. Wordsworth speaks of
it as "the only likeness of the great original that ever gave me the
least pleasure." That by Northcote strongly recalls him to my
remembrance: the dreamy eyes; the full, round, yet pale face,--
"that seemed undoubtedly
As if a blooming face it ought to be";
the pleasant mouth; the "low-hung" lip; the broad and lofty forehead,--
"Profound, though not severe."
In his later days he took snuff largely, "Whatever he may have been in
youth," writes Mr. Gillman, "in manhood he was scrupulously clean in his
person, and especially took great care of his hands by frequent
ablutions."