The Life of Samuel Taylor Coleridge: 1838Gillman, James
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The Life of Samuel Taylor Coleridge: 1838
Gillman, James
Coleridge, Samuel Taylor, 1772-1834; Critics -- Great Britain -- Biography; Poets, English -- 19th century -- Biography
"Towards the close of the first year, that inauspicious hour," (it was,
indeed, and for several reasons an "inauspicious hour" for him,) "when I
left the friendly cloisters, and the happy grove of quiet, ever-honoured
Jesus' College, Cambridge, to set on foot a periodical, entitled the
'Watchman,' that (according to the motto of the work) 'all might know
the truth, and that truth might make us free!'
"With a flaming prospectus 'Knowledge is power,' &c. and to cry the
state of the political atmosphere and so forth, I set off on a tour to
the north, from Bristol to Sheffield, for the purpose of procuring
customers, preaching by the way in most great towns, as a hireless
volunteer, in a blue coat and white waistcoat, that not a rag of the
woman of Babylon might be seen on me; for I was at that time, though a
Trinitarian (i.e. ad normam Platonis) in philosophy, yet a zealous
Unitarian in religion; more accurately, I was a psilanthropist, one of
those who believe our Lord to have been the real son of Joseph, and
who lay the main stress on the resurrection rather than on the
crucifixion. Oh! never can I remember those days with either shame or
regret, for I was most sincere! most disinterested! My opinions were,
indeed, in many and most important points erroneous, but my heart was
single! Wealth, rank, life itself then seemed cheap to me, compared
with the interests of (what I believe to be) the truth and the will of
my Maker. I cannot even accuse myself of having been actuated by
vanity; for, in the expansion of my enthusiasm, I did not think of
myself at all.
My campaign commenced at Birmingham, and my first attack was on a
rigid Calvinist, a tallow-chandler by trade. He was a tall dingy man,
in whom length was so predominant over breadth, that he might almost
have been borrowed for a foundry poker. O that face! a face, [Greek:
kat' emphasin!] I have it before me at this moment. The lank, black
twine-like hair, pingui-nitescent, cut in a straight line, along the
black stubble of his thin gunpowder eyebrows, that looked like a
scorched aftermath from a last week's shaving. His coat collar behind
in perfect unison, both of colour and lustre, with the coarse, yet
glib cordage that I suppose he called his hair, and which with a
'bend' inward at the nape of the neck, (the only approach to flexure
in his whole figure) slunk in behind his waistcoat; while the
countenance lank, dark, very 'hard', and with strong perpendicular
furrows, gave me a dim notion of some one looking at me through a
'used' gridiron, all soot, grease, and iron! A person to whom one of
my letters of recommendation had been addressed, was my introducer.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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