The Posthumous Works of Thomas De Quincey, Vol. 2De Quincey, Thomas
General
The Posthumous Works of Thomas De Quincey, Vol. 2
De Quincey, Thomas
English essays
had its justification in those early days. If to be blooming was the
natural tendency and right of his face, blooming it then was, as we have
been assured by different women of education and taste, who saw him at
twenty-four in Bristol and Clifton. Two of these were friends of Hannah
More, and had seen all the world. They could judge: that is, they could
judge in conformity to the highest standards of taste; and both said,
with some enthusiasm, that he was a most attractive young man; one
adding, with a smile at the old pastoral name, 'Oh, yes, he was a
perfect Strephon.' Light he was in those days and agile as a feathered
Mercury; whereas he afterwards grew heavy and at times bloated; and at
that gay period of life his animal spirits ran up _naturally_ to the
highest point on the scale; whereas in later life, when most
tempestuous, they seemed most artificial. That this, which was the
ardent testimony of females, was also the true one, might have been
gathered from the appearance of his children. Berkeley died an infant,
and him only we never saw. The sole daughter of Coleridge, as she
inherited so much of her father's intellectual power, inherited also the
diviner part of his features. The upper part of her face, at seventeen,
when last we saw her, seemed to us angelic, and pathetically angelic;
for the whole countenance was suffused by a pensive nun-like beauty too
charming and too affecting ever to be forgotten. Derwent, the youngest
son, we have not seen since boyhood, but at that period he had a
handsome cast of features, and (from all we can gather) the
representative cast of the Coleridge family. But Hartley, the eldest
son, how shall we describe _him_? He was most intellectual and he was
most eccentric, and his features expressed all that in perfection.
Southey, in his domestic playfulness, used to call him the _Knave of
Spades_; and he certainly _had_ a resemblance to that well-known young
gentleman. But really we do not know that it would have been at all
better to resemble the knave of hearts. And it must be remembered that
the knave of spades may have a brother very like himself, and yet a
hundred times handsomer. There _are_ such things as handsome likenesses
of very plain people. Some folks pronounced Hartley Coleridge too
Jewish. But to be a Jew is to be an Arab. And our own feeling was, when
we met Hartley at times in solitary or desolate places of Westmoreland
and Cumberland, that here was a son of Ishmael walking in the wilderness
of Edom. The coruscating _nimbus_ of his curling and profuse black hair,
black as erebus, strengthened the Saracen impression of his features and
complexion. He wanted only a turban on his head, and a spear in his
right hand, to be perfect as a Bedouin. But it affected us as all things
are affecting which record great changes, to hear that for a long time
before his death this black hair had become white as the hair of
infancy. Much sorrow and much thought had been the worms that gnawed the
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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