Coleridge and Opium Eating and Other Writings

Excerpt from Coleridge and Opium Eating: And Other Writings <p>Coleridge. - From some misconception at the press, the account of Coleridge's personal appearance, in the paper entitled Coleridge and opium-eating, was printed ofi' whilst yet imperfect, and, in fact, wanting its more interesting half. It had been suggested to me, as a proper off-set to a very inaccurate report characterising Coleridge's person and conversation, by an American traveller, who had, how ever, the excuse that his visit was a very hasty one, and that Coleridge had then become corpulent and heavy wearing some indications that already (though, according to my present remembrance, not much more than forty eight at that time) he had entered within the shadows of premature old age. The authorities for my counter-report are-1. A Bristol lady who with her sisters had become successors in a young ladies' boarding-school to the cele brated Hannah More 2.wordsworth, in his supplementary stanzas to the Castle of Indolence 3. Two (if not three) artists. These shall be first called into court, as deposing to Coleridge's figure, i.e., to the permanent base in the description - all the rest being fugitive accompaniments. <p>One of these artists, who is now no longer such, took down, in the year 1810, at Allan Bank, Grasmere, the exact measurements of both Samuel Taylor Coleridge and William Wordsworth (at that time the host of Coleridge and myself). His memorandum on that oc casion is missing. But as he found the two poets agreeing in height to a hair's-breadth, which I myself, as an attentive bystander, can vouch for, it will be suf ficient for me to refer the curious reader to the Auto biography of Haydon, in whose studio Wordsworth was measured with technical nicety on a day regularly dated. The report is - 5 feet 10 inches, within a trifling fraction; and the same report, therefore, stands good to a nicety for Coleridge. Next, for the face and bearing of Cole ridge at the time referred to by the lady an ample authority is found in Wordsworth's fine stanzas Ahl piteous sight it was [i cannot recall the two or three words of filling up] when he. <p>About the Publisher <p>Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com <p>This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.