Gents Mag 1851 part 1 p.581

---

	introduction
	list, 3rd qtr 19th century
	previous page next page
	Gentleman's Magazine 1851 part 1 p.581 horses, passages into turnpike roads, sofas into market-towns, faster than by the slap of Harlequin's sword. But in ordinary cases these brain-creations are abstracted from the simple events of everyday life, and pass like the day-dreams of maturer age in swift succession, having no coherency, and leaving no trace. The instances must be very rare in which this imaginative faculty is equal to the foundation, peopling, and government of an empire; rarer still in which it can maintain the illusion for years together, and carry on the history of the ideal people through all the vicissitudes of peace and war and social progress. Yet it seems that Hartley Coleridge not only imagined such a kingdom at a very early age, and made a map of it, and peopled it with "many nations, continental and insular, each with its separate history, civil, ecclesiastical, and literary, its forms of religion and government, and specific national character," but actually continued to govern it, as seriously as an ordinary child rides his stick, for years together, till he was on the verge of manhood. This fact rests on no vague or doubtful tradition, but upon the distinct testimony of the Editor, who was his brother's companion and confidant all the time, and to whom the substance of all "letters and papers from Ejuxria" was regularly imparted as they were supposed to arrive. Probably this process of imparting the news to a listener who seems to have been almost as much in ernest as himself, helped to feed and stimulate the fancy and preserve the outward form of the fiction from its natural dissolution; and the brother of twelve years old may have fancied the brother of sixteen more in earnest than he really was. But, when all allowances have been made, there still remains a very singular and interesting story, well worth recording for the consideration of psychologists. It will be found at p.xxxvi-xliii. of the memoir. From this, and other singular amusements of his childhood, it might have been supposed that the creative imagination was unusually strong in Hartley; and yet the productions of his after-life show scarcely any traces of such a gift. His tenth year must have contributed largely to the history of Ejuxria. In the days of the terror of Napoleon and the glory of Grimaldi (not to mention the abolition of the slave trade, and the noises of a change of ministry, a dissolution of Parliament, and a general election,) he passed the spring of 1807 at Sir George Beaumont's in Leicestershire, where Wordsworth and Wilkie were; the summer in London with Mr. and Mrs. Montagu; the autumn at Bristol with his mother's family. He "read every word about the battle of Aylau, and was enraged if a doubt were hinted of the Russian victory." He saw the Wood Demon and Jack Bannister at Drury Lane, Mother Goose and Grimaldi at Covent Garden; went over the Tower in company of Wordsworth and Walter Scott; and was introduced to the wonders of chemistry by Sir Humphry Davy: a year of impressions never to be forgotten. In the summer of 1808 he was sent with his brother to a small school at Ambleside, kept by a gentleman of manly character and vigourous understanding, but no great scholar; fortunate, it seems, in the character of his schoolfellows, and in an ample allowance of leisure and mountain-liberty; eminently fortunate in the neighbourhood of some of his father's most distinguished friends; not very fortunate into the nicer mysteries of Greek and Latin. Here he remained for seven or eight years, composing themes and verses, not in any remarkable degree superior to those of his schoolfellows, and with visible effort; wandering at large among the hills with one intimate companion, or gathering desultory knowledge from the libraries and conversation of Wordsworth, Wilson, De Quincey, and Charles Lloyd; helping his school-mates to construe their lesons, or entertaining them with tales; say rather with one continuous tale, having for its moral the injustice of society, which he spun on night after night (we are told) for years together; admired and loved, yet suffering the penalty of his small stature and odd ways in being plagued and teased; joining in no school-games, and forming no intimacies; but "reading, walking, dreaming to himself, or talking his dreams to others."
	next page

Lakes Guides menu.

---