CCXXIV. TO J. H. GREEN.
[Postmark, January 16, 1819.]
My dear Green,—I forgot both at the Lecture Room and at Mr. Phillips’s to beg you to leave out for me Goethe’s “Zur Farbenlehre.” It is for a passage in the preface in which he compares Plato with Aristotle, etc., as far as I recollect, in a spirited manner. The books are at your service again, after the lecture. Either Mr. Cary or some messenger will call for them to-morrow! I piously resolve on Tuesday to put my books in some order, but at all events to select yours and send all of them that I do not want (and I do not recollect any that I do, unless perhaps the little volume edited by Tieck of his friend’s composition), back to you. I am more and more delighted with Chantrey. The little of his conversation which I enjoyed ex pede Herculem, left me no doubt of the power of his insight. Light, manlihood, simplicity, wholeness. These are the entelechy of Phidian Genius; and who but must see these in Chantrey’s solar face, and in all his manners? Item: I am bewitched with your wife’s portrait. So very like and yet so ideal a portrait I never remember to have seen. But as Mr. Phillips[175] said: “Why, sir! she was a sweet subject, sir! That’s a great thing.”
As to my own, I can form no judgment. In its present state, the eyes appear too large, too globose, and their colour must be made lighter, and I thought that the face, exclusive of the forehead, was stronger, more energetic than mine seems to be when I catch it in the glass, and therefore the forehead and brow less so—not in themselves, but in consequence of the proportion. But of course I can form no notion of what my face and look may be when I am animated in friendly conversation. My kind and respectful remembrances to your Mother, and believe me, most affectionately,
Your obliged friend,
S. T. Coleridge.