Biographia Epistolaris, Volume 1Coleridge, Samuel Taylor
General
Biographia Epistolaris, Volume 1
Coleridge, Samuel Taylor
Coleridge, Samuel Taylor, 1772-1834 -- Correspondence
A "beautiful" prospect is always more picturesque when seen at some
little distance through an arch. I have frequently thought of Michael
Taylor's way of viewing a landscape between his thighs. Under the arch
was the most perfect echo I ever heard. Hucks sang "Sweet Echo" with
great effect.
At Holywell I bathed in the famous St. Winifred's Well. It is an
excellent cold bath. At Rudland is a fine ruined castle. Abergeley is a
large village on the sea-coast. Walking on the sea sands I was surprised
to see a number of fine women bathing promiscuously with men and boys
perfectly naked. Doubtless the citadels of their chastity are so
impregnably strong, that they need not the ornamental bulwarks of
modesty; but, seriously speaking, where sexual distinctions are least
observed, men and women live together in the greatest purity.
Concealment sets the imagination a-working, and as it were,
"cantharadizes" our desires.
Just before I quitted Cambridge, I met a countryman with a strange
walking-stick, five feet in length. I eagerly bought it, and a most
faithful servant it has proved to me. My sudden affection for it has
mellowed into settled friendship. On the morning of our leaving
Abergeley, just before our final departure, I looked for my stick in the
place in which I had left it over night. It was gone. I alarmed the
house; no one knew any thing of it. In the flurry of anxiety I sent for
the Crier of the town, and gave him the following to cry about the town
and the beach, which he did with a gravity for which I am indebted to
his stupidity.
"Missing from the Bee Inn, Abergeley, a curious walking-stick. On one
side it displays the head of an eagle, the eyes of which represent
rising suns, and the ears Turkish crescents; on the other side is the
portrait of the owner in wood-work. Beneath the head of the eagle is a
Welsh wig, and around the neck of the stick is a Queen Elizabeth's ruff
in tin. All down it waves the line of beauty in very ugly carving. If
any gentleman (or lady) has fallen in love with the above described
stick, and secretly carried off the same, he (or she) is hereby
earnestly admonished to conquer a passion, the continuance of which must
prove fatal to his (or her) honesty. And if the said stick has slipped
into such gentleman's (or lady's) hand through inadvertence, he (or she)
is required to rectify the mistake with all convenient speed. God save
the king."
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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