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
If you perchance, my dearest friend, should still continue
to admire the works of nature at your home, as we have done
together on the Hartz; recall to your recollection the Hartz,
and then I dare hope that you will also think of me.
Farewell, may you have a prosperous voyage.
(Signed) yours, BLUMENBACH.
Coleridge returned to England after an absence of fourteen mouths, and
arrived in London the 27th November, 1799.
He went to Germany but little versed in the language, and adopted the
following plan of acquiring it, which he recommends to others
"To those," says he, "who design to acquire the language of a country
in the country itself, it may be useful, if I mention the incalculable
advantages which I derived from learning all the words that could
possibly be so learnt, with the objects before me, and without the
intermediation of the English terms. It was a regular part of my
morning studies for the first six weeks of my residence at Ratzeburg,
to accompany the good and kind old pastor, with whom I lived, from the
cellar to the roof, through gardens, farm-yards, &c., and to call
every the minutest thing by its German name. Advertisements, farces,
jest-books, and conversation of children while I was at play with
them, contributed their share to a more homelike acquaintance with the
language, than I could have procured from books of polite literature
alone, or even from polite society."
In support of this plan, he makes a quotation from the massive folios of
Luther--a passage as he calls it of "_hearty_ sound sense," and gives
the simple, sinewy, idiomatic words of the "original," with a
translation of his own:
"For one must not ask the letters in the Latin tongue, how one ought
to speak German; but one must ask the mother in the house, the
children in the lanes and alleys, the common man in the market,
concerning this; yea, and look at the _moves_ of their mouths while
they are talking, and thereafter interpret. They understand then, and
mark that one talks German with them."
Whether he owed his successful acquirement of the language to these
plans adopted by him, or whether to his extraordinary powers of mind, it
must be left to others to judge. To form any thing like an accurate
opinion, it may be necessary to re-state, that during this fourteen
months' residence, he acquired such a knowledge of the German, as
enabled him to make that extraordinary translation of the Wallenstein,
(which will be presently noticed), reading at the same time several
German authors, and storing up for himself the means of becoming
familiar with others, on subjects in which the English language was
deficient. In addition to what in this short period he effected, I may
say that some part of this time was employed in receiving many lessons
from professor Tychsen, in the Gothic of Ulphilas, which, says he,
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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