Winterslow: Essays and Characters Written There — John Shaqi
Winterslow: Essays and Characters Written ThereHazlitt, William
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Winterslow: Essays and Characters Written There
Hazlitt, William
English essays
On the Tuesday following, the half-inspired speaker came. I was called
down into the room where he was, and went half-hoping, half-afraid. He
received me very graciously, and I listened for a long time without
uttering a word. I did not suffer in his opinion by my silence. 'For
those two hours,' he afterwards was pleased to say, 'he was conversing
with William Hazlitt's forehead!' His appearance was different from
what I had anticipated from seeing him before. At a distance, and in
the dim light of the chapel, there was to me a strange wildness in his
aspect, a dusky obscurity, and I thought him pitted with the
small-pox. His complexion was at that time clear, and even bright--
'As are the children of yon azure sheen.'
His forehead was broad and high, light as if built of ivory, with
large projecting eyebrows, and his eyes rolling beneath them, like a
sea with darkened lustre. 'A certain tender bloom his face
o'erspread,' a purple tinge as we see it in the pale thoughtful
complexions of the Spanish portrait-painters, Murillo and Valasquez.
His mouth was gross, voluptuous, open, eloquent; his chin
good-humoured and round; but his nose, the rudder of the face, the
index of the will, was small, feeble, nothing--like what he has done.
It might seem that the genius of his face as from a height surveyed
and projected him (with sufficient capacity and huge aspiration) into
the world unknown of thought and imagination, with nothing to support
or guide his veering purpose, as if Columbus had launched his
adventurous course for the New World in a scallop, without oars or
compass. So, at least, I comment on it after the event. Coleridge, in
his person, was rather above the common size, inclining to the
corpulent, or like Lord Hamlet, 'somewhat fat and pursy.' His hair
(now, alas! grey) was then black and glossy as the raven's, and fell
in smooth masses over his forehead. This long pendulous hair is
peculiar to enthusiasts, to those whose minds tend heavenward; and is
traditionally inseparable (though of a different colour) from the
pictures of Christ. It ought to belong, as a character, to all who
preach _Christ crucified_, and Coleridge was at that time one of
those!
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