COLERIDGE AN UNITARIAN PREACHER.
During his residence at Nether Stoney, Coleridge officiated as Unitarian preacher at Taunton, and afterwards at Shrewsbury. Mr. Hazlitt has described his walking ten miles on a winter day to hear Coleridge preach. “When I got there,” he says, “the organ was playing the 100th psalm, and, when it was done, Mr. Coleridge rose and gave out his text:—‘He departed again into a mountain himself alone.’ As he gave out his text, his voice rose like a stream of rich distilled perfume; when he came to the two last words, which he pronounced loud, deep, and distinct, it seemed to me, who was then young, as if the sounds had echoed from the bottom of the human heart, and as if that prayer might have floated in solemn silence through the universe. The idea of St. John came into my mind, of one crying in the wilderness, who had his loins girt about, and whose food was locusts and wild honey. The preacher then launched into his subject, like an eagle dallying with the wind. The sermon was upon peace and war—upon Church and State; not their alliance, but their separation; on the spirit of the world and the spirit of Christianity; not as the same, but as opposed to one another. He talked of those who had inscribed the cross of Christ on banners dripping with human gore! He made a poetical and pastoral excursion; and, to show the fatal effects of war, drew a striking contrast between the simple shepherd-boy driving his team a-field, or sitting under the hawthorn, piping to his flock, as though he should never be old, and the same poor country-lad crimped, kidnapped, brought into town, made drunk at an alehouse, turned into a wretched drummer-boy, with his hair sticking on end with powder and pomatum, a long cue at his back, and tricked out in the finery of the profession of blood.
“ ‘Such were the notes our once-loved poet sung;’
and, for myself, I could not have been more delighted if I had heard the music of the spheres.”
FONTENELLE’S INSENSIBILITY.
Fontenelle, who lived till within one month of a century, was very rarely known to laugh or cry, and even boasted of his insensibility. One day, a certain bon-vivant Abbé came unexpectedly to dine with him. The Abbé was fond of asparagus dressed with butter; Fontenelle, also, had a great goût for the vegetable, but preferred it dressed with oil. Fontenelle said, that, for such a friend, there was no sacrifice he would not make; and that he should have half the dish of asparagus which he had ordered for himself, and that half, moreover, should be dressed with butter. While they were conversing together, the poor Abbé fell down in a fit of apoplexy; upon which Fontenelle instantly scampered down stairs, and eagerly bawled out to his cook, “The whole with oil! the whole with oil, as at first!”
PAINS AND TOILS OF AUTHORSHIP.
The craft of authorship is by no means so easy of practice as is generally imagined by the thousands who aspire to its practice. Almost all our works, whether of knowledge or of fancy, have been the product of much intellectual exertion and study; or, as it is better expressed by the poet—