"Perhaps our readers may have heard repeated a saying of Mr. Wordsworth, 'that many men of his age had done wonderful things, as Davy, Scott, Cuvier, &c.; but that Coleridge was the only wonderful man he ever knew.' Something of course must be allowed in this, as in all other such cases, for the antithesis; but we believe the fact really to be, that the greater part of those who have occasionally visited Mr. Coleridge, have left him with the feeling akin to the judgment indicated in the above remark. They admire the man more than his works, or they forget the works in the absorbing impression made by the living author; and no wonder. Those who remember him in his more vigorous days, can bear witness to the peculiarity and transcendant power of his conversational eloquence. It was unlike anything that could be heard elsewhere; the kind was different, the degree was different, the manner was different. The boundless range of scientific knowledge, the brilliancy and exquisite nicety of illustration, the deep and ready reasoning, the strangeness and immensity of bookish lore, were not all; the dramatic story, the joke, the pun, the festivity, must be added; and with these, the clerical looking dress, the thick waving silver hair, the youthful coloured cheek, the indefinable mouth and lips, the quick yet steady and penetrating greenish grey eye, the slow and continuous enunciation, and the everlasting music of his tones,—all went to make up the image, and to constitute the living presence of the man. Even now his conversation is characterized by all the essentials of its former excellence; there is the same individuality, the same unexpectedness, the same universal grasp; nothing is too high, nothing too low for it—it glances from earth to heaven, from heaven to earth, with a speed and a splendour, an ease and a power, which almost seemed inspired."
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As a conclusion to these honourable testimonies, it may be added, the wish has often been expressed, that more were known respecting Mr. Coleridge's school and college life, so briefly detailed in his "Biographia." There was one friend of whom he often used to talk, and always with a kind feeling, who sat next to him at Christ Church School, and who afterwards accompanied him to Cambridge, where their friendship was renewed, and their intercourse uninterrupted. This gentleman was the Rev. C. V. Le Grice, the respected and erudite incumbent of a living near Penzance. Mr. Le G. might contribute largely toward the elucidation of Mr. Coleridge's school and college life; but as the much has been denied, we must be thankful for the little. The following are Mr. Le Grice's brief, but interesting notices of his friend:
"Mr. Urban,
In the various and numerous memoirs, which have been published of the late Mr. Coleridge, I have been surprised at the accuracy in many respects, and at the same time their omission of a very remarkable, and a very honourable anecdote in his history. In the memoir of him in your last number, you do not merely omit, but you give an erroneous account of this very circumstance, to which I mean to allude. You assert that he did not obtain, and indeed did riot aim to obtain, the honours of the University. So far is this from the fact, that in his Freshman's year he won the gold medal for the Greek Ode; and in his second year he became a candidate for the Craven scholarship, a University scholarship, for which undergraduates of any standing are entitled to become candidates. This was in the winter of 1792. Out of sixteen or eighteen competitors a selection of four was made to contend for the prize, and these four were Dr. Butler, now the Head Master of Shrewsbury; Dr. Keate, the late Head Master of Eton; Mr. Bethell, the late Member for Yorkshire; and S. T. Coleridge. Dr. Butler was the successful candidate.
Pause a moment in Coleridge's history, and think of him at this period! Butler! Keate! Bethell! and Coleridge!! How different the career of each in future life! O Coleridge; through what strange paths did the meteor of genius lead thee! Pause a moment, ye distinguished men! and deem it not the least bright spot in your happier career, that you and Coleridge were once rivals, and for a moment running abreast in the pursuit of honour. I believe that his disappointment at this crisis damped his ardour. Unfortunately, at that period there was no classical Tripos; so that if a person did not obtain the classical medal, he was thrown back among the totally undistinguished; and it was not allowable to become a candidate for the classical medal, unless you had taken a respectable degree in mathematics. Coleridge had not the least taste for these, and here his case was hopeless; so that he despaired of a Fellowship, and gave up, what in his heart he coveted, college honours, and a college life. He had seen his schoolfellow and dearest friend, Middleton, (late Bishop of Calcutta) quit Pembroke under similar circumstances. Not quite similar, because Middleton studied mathematics so as to take a respectable degree, and to enable him to try for the medal; but he failed, and therefore all hopes failed of a Fellowship—most fortunately, as it proved in after life, for Middleton, though he mourned at the time most deeply, and exclaimed, 'I am Middleton, which is another name for Misfortune!'
'There is a Providence which shapes our ends,
Rough hew them how you will.'
That, which Middleton deemed a misfortune, drew him from the cobwebs of a college library to the active energies of a useful and honoured life. But to return to Coleridge. When he quitted College, which he did before he had taken a degree, in a moment of mad caprice—it was indeed an inauspicious hour! 'In an inauspicious hour I left the friendly cloisters, and the happy grove of quiet, ever honoured Jesus College, Cambridge.' Short, but deep and heart-felt reminiscence! In a literary Life of himself this short memorial is all that Coleridge gives of his happy days at college. Say not, that he did not obtain, and did not wish to obtain classical honours! He did obtain them, and was eagerly ambitious of them; but he did not bend to that discipline which was to qualify him for the whole course. He was very studious, but his reading was desultory and capricious. He took little exercise merely for the sake of exercise; but he was ready at any time to unbend his mind in conversation, and for the sake of this, his room (the ground-floor room on the right hand of the staircase facing the great gate) was a constant rendezvous of conversation loving friends, I will not call them loungers, for they did not call to kill time, but to enjoy it. What evenings have I spent in those rooms! What little suppers, or sizing, as they were called, have I enjoyed; when Aeschylus, and Plato, and Thucydides, were pushed aside, with a pile of lexicons, &c., to discuss the pamphlets of the day. Ever and anon, a pamphlet issued from the pen of Burke. There was no need of having the book before us. Coleridge had read it in the morning; and in the evening he would repeat whole pages verbatim. Freud's trial was then in progress. Pamphlets swarmed from the press. Coleridge had read them all; and in the evening, with our negus, we had them viva voce gloriously. O Coleridge! it was indeed an inauspicious hour, when you quitted the friendly cloisters of Jesus. The epithet 'friendly' implied what you were thinking of, when you thought of college. To you, Coleridge, your contemporaries were indeed friendly, and I believe, that in your literary life you have passed over your college life so briefly, because you wished to banish from your view the 'visions of long-departed joys.' To enter into a description of your college days would have called up too sadly to your memory 'the hopes which once shone bright,' and would have made your heart sink.
Yours, &c.,
C. V. Le Grice.