Samuel Coleridge - The Complete Works of Samuel Taylor Coleridge

And immediately he began to view things couleur de rose . The sharp tongue and angry face of Sara became transmogrified into the gentle semblance of her anagram, the imaginary Asra of his poems,—

To be beloved is all I need,

And whom I love I love indeed.

· · · · · ·

O ever—ever be thou blest!

For dearly, Asra! love I thee!

This brooding warmth across my breast,

This depth of tranquil bliss—ah, me!

Fount, tree and shed are gone, I know not whither,

But in one quiet room we three are still together.

The shadows dance upon the wall,

By the still dancing fire-flames made;

And now they slumber moveless all!

And now they melt to one deep shade!

But not from me shall this mild darkness steal thee:

I dream thee with mine eyes, and at my heart I feel thee!

The visions born of opium floated in vague, rich phantasmagoria across his slumbrous brain,

And so, his senses gradually wrapt

In a half-sleep, he dreams of better worlds,

—sitting in the failing firelight. With a great effort he roused himself to creep up the stair-ladder, and to lay his drugged limbs upon the hard straw bed. The child and Sara were already dreaming: he gazed at them with serene affection:

Dear Babe, that sleepest cradled by my side,

Whose gentle breathings, heard in this deep calm,

Fill up the interspersed vacancies

And momentary pauses of the thought!

My babe so beautiful! it thrills my heart

With tender gladness, thus to look at thee!

and lastly, with all the mental power yet left him, he committed himself to the God of whom he was so weak, so well-intentioned a worshipper:

Ere on my bed my limbs I lay,

It hath not been my use to pray

With moving lips or bended knees;

But silently, by slow degress,

My spirit I to Love compose,

In humble trust mine eye-lids close,

With reverential resignation,

No wish conceived, no thought expressed.

Only a sense of supplication,— A sense o'er all my soul impressed That I am weak, yet not unblest, Since in me, round me, every where Eternal Strength and Wisdom are.

But now the stealthy narcotic utterly beclouded him: he sank away as through unfathomable gulfs of somnolence. Samuel Taylor Coleridge had closed another day.

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PREFACE.

CHAPTER I.

CHAPTER II.

CHAPTER III.

CHAPTER IV.

‘… But some to higher hopes

Were destined; some within a finer mould

Were wrought, and temper’d with a purer flame:

To these the Sire Omnipotent unfolds

The world’s harmonious volume, there to read

The transcript of himself ….’

TO JOSEPH HENRY GREEN, F.R.S.

PROFESSOR OF ANATOMY OF THE ROYAL ACADEMY, ETC. ETC.

THE HONOURED FAITHFUL AND BELOVED FRIEND OF

SAMUEL TAYLOR COLERIDGE,

THESE VOLUMES

ARE MOST RESPECTFULLY AND AFFECTIONATELY INSCRIBED.

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The more frequently we read and contemplate the lives of those eminent men so beautifully traced by the amiable Izaak Walton, the more we are impressed with the sweetness and simplicity of the work. Walton was a man of genius — of simple calling and more simple habits, though best known perhaps by his book on Angling; yet in the scarcely less attractive pages of his biographies, like the flowing of the gentle stream on which he sometimes cast his line, to practise “the all of treachery he ever learnt,” he leads the delighted reader imperceptibly on, charmed with the natural beauty of his sentiments, and the unaffected ease and simplicity of his style.

In his preface to the Sermons of (that pious poet and divine,) Dr. Donne, so much may be found applicable to the great and good man whose life the author is now writing, that he hopes to be pardoned for quoting from one so much more able to delineate rare virtues and high endowments: “And if he shall now be demanded, as once Pompey’s poor bondman was, who art thou that alone hast the honour to bury the body of Pompey the great?” so who is he who would thus erect a funeral pile to the memory of the honoured dead? …

With the writer of this work, during the latter twenty years of his life, Coleridge had been domesticated; and his intimate knowledge of that illustrious character induces him to hope that his present undertaking, “however imperfectly it may set forth the memory he fain would honour,” will yet not be considered presumptuous; inasmuch as he has had an opportunity of bringing together facts and anecdotes, with various memoranda never before published, some of which will be found to have much of deep interest, of piety and of loveliness.

At the same time he has also been desirous of interweaving such information as he has been enabled to collect from the early friends of Coleridge, as well as from those of his after-life. Thus, he trusts, he has had the means of giving, with truth and correctness, a faithful portraiture of one whom he so dearly loved, so highly prized. Still he feels that from various causes, he has laboured under many and great difficulties.

First, he never contemplated writing this Memoir, nor would he have made the attempt, had it not been urged on him as a duty by friends, whom Coleridge himself most respected and honoured; they, “not doubting that his intimate knowledge of the author, and dear love to his memory, might make his diligence useful.”

Secondly, the duties of a laborious profession, rendered still more arduous by indifferent health — added to many sorrows, and leisure (if such it might be called,) which permitted only occasional attention to the subject — and was liable to frequent interruptions; will, he flatters himself, give him a claim to the candour and kindness of his readers. And if Coleridge’s “glorious spirit, now in heaven, could look down upon him, he would not disdain this well meant sacrifice to his memory — for whilst his conversation made him, and many others happy below, his humility and gentleness were also preeminent; — and divines have said, those virtues that were but sparks upon earth, become great and glorious flames in heaven.”

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BIRTHPLACE OF COLERIDGE. — SLIGHT SKETCH OF HIS PARENTS. — WHIMSICAL ANECDOTES HE USED TO RELATE OF HIS FATHER, &C. — AS A PASTOR, HOW MUCH BELOVED. — HIS BROTHERS AND SISTERS ENUMERATED. — THE DEATH OF HIS FATHER. — HIS ENTRANCE AT CHRIST’S HOSPITAL. — LAMB’S ACCOUNT OF HIM WHEN AT SCHOOL. — WRITES THIS ACCOUNT UNDER THE NAME OF ELIA. — LAMB’S ADMISSION THAT HE MEANT COLERIDGE FOR THE “FRIENDLESS BOY.” — THE DELICACY OF HIS STOMACH. — HIS FIRST ATTEMPT AT MAKING VERSE WHEN A SCHOOL BOY. — AND CONTINUATION OF HIS SUFFERINGS WHEN AT SCHOOL. — HIS WATER EXCURSIONS, THE ORIGIN OF MOST OF HIS SUBSEQUENT SUFFERING.

SAMUEL TAYLOR COLERIDGE, the subject of this memoir, was born at Ottery St. Mary, Devonshire, the 21st October, 1772. His father, the Rev. John Coleridge, was vicar of Ottery, and head master of Henry VIII Free Grammar School, usually termed the King’s School; a man of great learning, and one of the persons who assisted Dr. Kennicott in his Hebrew Bible. Before his appointment to the school at Ottery he had been head master of the school at South Molton. Some dissertations on the 17th and 18th chapters of the Book of Judges, and a Latin grammar for the use of the school at Ottery were published by him. He was an exceedingly studious man, pious, of primitive manners, and of the most simple habits: passing events were little heeded by him, and therefore he was usually characterized as the “absent man”.