CONTEMPORARY PORTRAITS OF COLERIDGE
(From Mr. Wordsworth's Stanzas written in my Pocket-copy of
Thomson's 'Castle of Indolence'.)
With him there often walked in friendly guise,
Or lay upon the moss by brook or tree,
A noticeable Man with large grey eyes,
And a pale face that seemed undoubtedly
As if a blooming face it ought to be;
Heavy his low-hung lip did oft appear,
Deprest by weight of musing Phantasy;
Profound his forehead was, though not severe;
Yet some did think that he had little business here:
Sweet heaven forefend! his was a lawful right:
Noisy he was, and gamesome as a boy;
His limbs would toss about him with delight,
Like branches when strong winds the trees annoy.
Nor lacked his calmer hours device or toy
To banish listlessness and irksome care;
He would have taught you how you might employ
Yourself; and many did to him repair,--
And certes not in vain; he had inventions rare.
For Josiah Wade, the gentleman to whom the letters, placed at the
beginning of the last chapter, were written, the fine portrait of Mr.
Coleridge by Allston, (nearly full length, in oils,) was painted at Rome
in 1806,[1]--I believe in the spring of that year. Mr. Allston himself
spoke of it, as in his opinion faithfully representing his friend's
features and expression, such as they commonly appeared. His
countenance, he added, in his high poetic mood, was quite beyond the
painter's art: "it was indeed "spirit made visible"."
Mr. Coleridge was thirty-three years old when this portrait was painted,
but it would be taken for that of a man of forty. The youthful, even
boyish look, which the original retained for some years after boyhood,
must rather suddenly have given place, to a premature appearance, first
of middle-agedness, then of old age, at least in his general aspect,
though in some points of personal appearance,--his fair smooth skin and
"large grey eyes," "at once the clearest and the deepest"--so a friend
lately described them to me,--"that I ever saw," he grew not old to the
last. Sergeant Talfourd thus speaks of what he was at three or four and
forty. "Lamb used to say that he was inferior to what he had been in his
youth; but I can scarcely believe it; at least there is nothing in his
early writing which gives any idea of the richness of his mind so
lavishly poured out at this time in his happiest moods. Although he
looked much older than he was, his hair being silvered all over, and his
person tending to corpulency, there was about him no trace of bodily
sickness or mental decay, but rather an air of voluptuous repose. His
benignity of manner placed his auditors entirely at their ease; and
inclined them to listen delighted to the sweet low tone in which he
began to discourse on some high theme. At first his tones were
conversational: he seemed to dally with the shallows of the subject and
with fantastic images which bordered it: but gradually the thought grew
deeper, and the voice deepened with the thought; the stream gathering
strength, seemed to bear along with it all things which opposed its
progress, and blended them with its current; and stretching away among
regions tinted with etherial colours, was lost at airy distance in the
horizon of fancy. Coleridge was sometimes induced to repeat portions of
'Christabel', then enshrined in manuscript from eyes profane, and gave a
bewitching effect to its wizard lines. But more peculiar in its beauty
than this was his recitation of 'Kubla Khan'. As he repeated the
passage--
A damsel with a dulcimer
In a vision once I saw:
It was an Abyssinian maid,
And on her dulcimer she played
Singing of Mount Abora!
--his voice seemed to mount and melt into air, as the images grew more
visionary, and the suggested associations more remote."[2]
Mr. De Quincey thus describes him at thirty-four, in the summer season
of 1807, about a year and a half after the date of Mr. Allston's
portrait.
"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 above five feet eight: (he was in reality about an
inch and a half taller;) 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 appearance of haze or dreaminess, which mixed with their light,
that I recognised my object. This was Coleridge. I examined him
steadfastly for a minute or more: and it struck me that he saw neither
myself nor any object in the street.
He was in a deep reverie, for I had dismounted, made two or three
trifling arrangements at an inn door, and advanced close to him, before
he had apparently become conscious of my presence. The sound of my
voice, announcing my own name, first awoke him; he started, and for a
moment, seemed at a loss to understand my purpose or his own situation;
for he repeated rapidly a number of words which had no relation to
either of us. There was no 'mauvaise honte' in his manner, but simple
perplexity, and an apparent difficulty in recovering his position among
daylight realities. This little scene over, he received me with a
kindness of manner so marked that it might be called gracious.
Coleridge led me to a drawing room and rang the bell for refreshments,
and omitted no point of a courteous reception. He told me that there
would be a very large dinner party on that day, which perhaps might be
disagreeable to a perfect stranger; but, if not, he could assure me of a
most hospitable welcome from the family. I was too anxious to see him,
under all aspects, to think of declining this invitation. And these
little points of business being settled, Coleridge, like some great
river, the Orellana, or the St. Lawrence, that had been checked and
fretted by rocks or thwarting islands, and suddenly recovers its volume
of waters, and its mighty music, swept, at once, as if returning to his
natural business, into a continuous strain of eloquent dissertation,
certainly the most novel, the most finely illustrated, and traversing
the most spacious fields of thought, by transitions, the most just and
logical, that it was possible to conceive."
I will now present him as he appeared to William Hazlitt in the February
of 1798, when he was little more than five and twenty.
"It was in January, 1798, that I rose one morning before daylight, to
walk ten miles in the mud, to hear this celebrated person preach. Never,
the longest day I have to live, shall I have such another walk as this
cold, raw, comfortless one, in the winter of the year 1798. 'Il y a des
impressions que ni le temps ni les circonstances peuvent effacer.
Dusse-je vivre des siecles entiers, le doux temps de majeunesse ne pent
renatre pour moi, ni s'effacer jamais dans ma memoire.' When I got
there, the organ was playing the hundredth psalm, and when it was done,
Mr. Coleridge rose and gave out his text. "He departed again into a
mountain 'himself alone'." As he gave out this text his voice 'rose like
a stream of rich distilled perfumes;' and when he came to the two last
words, which he pronounced loud, deep, and distinct, it seemed to me,
who was then young, as if the sounds had echoed from the bottom of the
human heart, and as if that prayer might have floated in solemn silence
through the universe. The idea of St. John came into my mind, of one
crying in the wilderness, who had his loins girt about, and whose food
was locusts, and wild honey. The preacher then launched into his
subject, like an eagle dallying with the wind. The sermon was upon peace
and war--upon church and state--not their alliance, but their
separation--on the spirit of the world, and the spirit of Christianity,
not as the same, but as opposed to one another. He talked of those who
had inscribed the cross of Christ on banners dripping with human gore.
He made a poetical and pastoral excursion,--and to shew the fatal
effects of war, drew a striking contrast between the simple shepherd
boy, driving his team afield, or sitting under the hawthorn, piping to
his flock, as though he should never be old, and the same poor country
lad, crimped, kidnapped, brought into town, made drunk at an alehouse,
turned into a wretched drummer-boy, with his hair sticking on end with
powder and pomatum, a long cue at his back, and tricked out in the
finery of the profession of blood.
Such were the notes our once loved poet sung:
and for myself, I could not have been more delighted if I had heard the
music of the spheres. Poetry and Philosophy had met together, Truth and
Genius had embraced, under the eye and with the sanction of Religion.
This was even beyond my hopes. I returned home well satisfied. The sun
that was still labouring pale and wan through the sky, obscured by thick
mists, seemed an emblem of the 'good cause'; and the cold dank drops of
dew, that hung half melted on the beard of the thistle, had something
genial and refreshing in them." [3]
A glowing dawn was his, but noon's full blaze
Of 'perfect day' ne'er fill'd his heav'n with radiance.
Scarce were the flow'rets on their stems upraised
When sudden shadows cast an evening gloom
O'er those bright skies!--yet still those skies were lovely;
The roses of the morn yet lingered there
When stars began to peep,--nor yet exhaled
Fresh dew-drops glittered near the glowworm's lamp,
And many a snatch of lark-like melody
Birds of the shade trilled forth'mid plaintive warbling.
The principal portraits of Coleridge are, besides the one by Allston
referred to by Sara Coleridge, engraved by Samuel Cousins, one by Peter
Vandyke, painted in 1795; one by Hancock, drawn in 1796; another by
Allston, unfinished, painted in Rome; one by C. R. Leslie, taken before
1819, one by T. Phillips, belonging to Mr. John Murray, engraved for the
frontispiece of Murray's edition of the 'Table Talk'; another by
Phillips, in the possession of William Rennell Coleridge, of Salston,
Ottery St. Mary; and a crayon sketch by George Dawe, now at The
Chanter's House. These portraits have often been engraved for
biographies and editions of Coleridge's 'Poems'. Vandyke's portrait
appears in Brandl's Life and Dykes-Campbell's edition of the 'Poems';
Hancock's in the Aldine edition of the 'Poems'; and Leslie's in the Bohn
Library 'Friend' and in E. H. Coleridge's 'Letters of S. T. C'.
Allston's portrait of 1814 is given in Flagg's 'Life of Allston'. The
two best reproductions of Vandyke's and Hancock's portraits are to be
found in Cottle's 'Early Recollections'.
A small portrait in oils (three replicas), taken by a Bristol artist,
'circ.' 1798, engraved for Moxon's edition of 1863.
A portrait in oils by James Northcote, taken in 1804 for Sir G.
Beaumont, engraved in mezzotint by William Say.
A portrait in oils taken at the Argyll Baths, 'circ.' 1828 (see
'Letters', 1895, ii, 758).
A pencil sketch of S. T. C., et. 61, by J. Kayser (see 'Letters', ii,
frontispiece).
[Bust by Spurzheim. Bust by Hamo Thornycroft, Westminster Abbey.]
[Footnote 1: An error of Sara Coleridge. This portrait was painted for
Wade in Bristol, 1814: and is now in the National Portrait Gallery
(Flagg's 'Life of Allston', pp. 105-7). The portrait of 1806 was given
to Allston's niece, Miss R. Charlotte Dana, Boston.]
[Footnote 2: Talfourd's full description is found in "Final Memorials of
Ch. Lamb", last chapter.]
[Footnote 3: Hazlitt's full description is found in 'Essays of William
Hazlitt', Camelot Series, pp. 18-38.]