P. S.—I was a witness to the breathless delight with which he hastened to give his friends intelligence of his success. The following lines, in his "Verses written in Early Youth," are a memorial of the pleasure, which he felt in the sympathy of one who was then most dear to him:—
"With faery wand, O bid the maid arise,
Chaste joyance dancing in her bright blue eyes,
As erst, when, from the Muse's calm abode,
I came with learning's meed not unbestowed."
See Poems, Edit. 1805, p. 34.
He wrote, to my certain knowledge, for the prize in the ensuing year; but it was most deservedly given to Keate's beautiful Ode. The subject Laus Astronomiae. No one was more convinced of the propriety of the decision than Coleridge himself. He used to repeat Ramsden's Greek Ode on Gibraltar, and Smith's Latin one on Mare Liberum, with incessant rapture. It would have been his glory to have caught their spirit,—he was absorbed in these things. A Classical Tripos would have changed Coleridge's destiny."—Gentleman's Magazine, Dec. 1834.
* * * * *
The reader's attention will now be directed to Mr. Coleridge, after he left Malta, when he visited Bristol, in the year 1807. I accidentally learned that Mr. C. had returned to England, not in good health, and that he was at Mr. Poole's, when I addressed a letter to him, expressing a hope that his health would soon allow him to pay me a visit, in Bristol. To this letter he thus replied:
"Dear Cottle,
On my return to Bristol, whenever that may be, I will certainly give you the right hand of old fellowship; but, alas! you will find me the wretched wreck of what you knew me, rolling, rudderless. My health is extremely bad. Pain I have enough of, but that is indeed to me, a mere trifle, but the almost unceasing, overpowering sensations of wretchedness: achings in my limbs, with an indescribable restlessness, that makes action to any available purpose, almost impossible: and worst of all, the sense of blighted utility, regrets, not remorseless. But enough; yea, more than enough; if these things produce, or deepen the conviction of the utter powerlessness of ourselves, and that we either perish, or find aid from something that passes understanding.
Affectionately,