Gents Mag 1851 part 1 p.584
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Gentleman's Magazine 1851 part 1 p.584
(with one or two short intervals which we need not stay to describe) the life of a solitary student by the banks of Grasmere and Rydal; dependent indeed upon the help of his relations for what small provision he needed, but requiring no more than they could cheerfully supply; condemned indeed to hopeless poverty and (which to him was a sadder thought) to hopeless celibacy - but everywhere a welcome guest to the high and the low, the learned and the ignorant; producing little indeed which brought him money, but much which will be found to be of more real worth than the most marketable produce which he could have raised. For it was part of his singular case that the conditions which steady the character and stimulate the powers of other men had the contrary effect upon him. By some strange misdirection of the moral sensibility, which seems indeed to have been hereditary, a formal engagement to do a thing frightened him from his purpose, and paralysed his power of perfomance. It is Cowper, we think, who somewhere says he could sit in his room all day without desiring to go out, until the door were locked upon him; but the moment he felt that he could not let himself out when he pleased, it became a misery to him to stay in. So Hartley Coleridge could read and write assiduously and copiously, so long as he did not feel himself under an obligation to go on; but a promise to finish took away his power to proceed. The lot therefore upon which he had at last fallen, with all its privations and disadvantages, gave probably the freest scope to his peculiar faculties of which they were capable. Here his defects could do least injury to himself or others; here his genius could bear its best fruit. His wanderings were but transient eclipses. The shadow past, he came forth as pure and bright as before. Never, perhaps, was a man who was so unlike other men more justly appreciated by those among whom he lived. We doubt whether they could have understood him half so well at Oriel. The breeze which is so healthful and so refreshing in its native mountains would spread consternation through the Combination Room; and Hartley's mind flowed where it listed, obedient to the inner impulses, with little respect for persons or places. What the tutors might have thought of it we do not know; but the "untutored dales" were charmed with the various stream of his talk, so singular yet so unaffected, so familiar yet so unvulgar, so full of drollery yet so full of wisdom, so keen and pungent and yet so truly genial, liberal, and humane. Those who never heard him talk will get the best notion of his manner from the letters of Mrs. Thomas Blackburn (pp.cxv. cxxxii.), who has the art of picturesque narration, and from whom we should be glad to have a fuller reminiscence and a more complete delineation. But no report of what he said can convey the effect, or even the true meaning of his words, unless a notion could at the same time be given of the rapid transitions of his eye and voice from boisterous mirth to thoughfulness, tenderness, or sadness, as one idea called up another. Therefore the peculiar charm of his conversation will probably live only in tradition. It was not in his conversation however, only or chiefly, that the real spell lay. It was his affectionate and large-hearted sympathy with man, woman, and child, of whatever degree - his true delicacy and generosity of nature - that endeared him to all hearts. Several years ago, when some of his friends thought of asking him to visit them in the south of England, the project being mentioned to Wordsworth, he strongly disapproved of it: "It is far better for him," said he (we heard the words ourselves), "to remain where he is, - where everbody knows him, and everybody loves and takes care of him." What can we add to such testimony from such a witness? The literary produce of these later years, when all is gathered together, will amount to something very considerable, both in quantity and quality. The excitement of conversation did not exhaust, but rather stimulated him, and he would often on returning from a party fall to his desk and continue writing far into the night. "The quantity, (says his brother, p.cxliv.) the variety, and I venture to add the quality, of the thought which passed through his mind during these latter years, |
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