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
"I remember," says Elia, "Lamb at school, and can well recollect that
he had some peculiar advantages, which I and others of his
schoolfellows had not. His friends lived in town and were at hand, and
he had the privilege of going to see them almost as often as he
wished, through some invidious distinction which was denied to us. The
present treasurer of the Inner Temple can explain how it happened. He
had his tea and hot rolls in the morning, while we were battening upon
our quarter of penny loaf--our 'crug' moistened with attenuated small
beer in wooden piggins, smacking of the pitched leathern jack it was
poured from. On Monday's milk porritch, blue and tasteless, and the
pease-soup of Saturday, coarse and choking, were enriched for him with
a slice of 'extraordinary bread and butter,' from the hot-loaf of the
Temple. The Wednesday's mess of millet, somewhat less repugnant--(we
had three banyan to four meat-days in the week)--was endeared to his
palate with a lump of double-refined, and a smack of ginger, (to make
it go down the more glibly) or the fragrant cinnamon. In lieu of our
'half-pickled' Sundays, or 'quite fresh' boiled beef on Thursdays,
(strong as caro equina), with detestable marigolds floating in the
pail to poison the broth--our scanty mutton crags on Fridays--and
rather more savoury, but grudging, portions of the same flesh,
rotten-roasted or rare, on the Tuesdays (the only dish which excited
our appetites, and disappointed our stomachs, in almost equal
proportion) he had his hot plate of roast veal, or the more tempting
griskin (exotics unknown to our palates), cooked in the paternal
kitchen.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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