LEIGH HUNT DROWNING.
At Oxford, my love of boating had nearly cost me my life. I had already had a bit of a taste of drowning in the river Thames, in consequence of running a boat too hastily on shore; but it was nothing to what I experienced on this occasion. The schoolfellow whom I was visiting was the friend whose family lived in Spring Gardens. We had gone out in a little decked skiff, and not expecting disasters in the gentle Isis, I had fastened the sail-line, of which I had the direction, in order that I might read a volume which I had with me, of Mr. Cumberland's novel called "Henry." My friend was at the helm. The wind grew a little strong, and we had just got into Iffley Reach, when I heard him exclaim, "Hunt, we are over!" The next moment I was under the water, gulping it, and giving myself up for lost. The boat had a small opening in the middle of the deck, under which I had thrust my feet; this circumstance had carried me over with the boat, and the worst of it was, I found I had got the sail-line round my neck. My friend, who sat on the deck itself, had been swept off, and got comfortably to shore, which was at a little distance.
My bodily sensations were not so painful as I should have fancied they would have been. My mental reflections were very different, though one of them, by a singular meeting of extremes, was of a comic nature. I thought that I should never see the sky again, that I had parted with all my friends, and that I was about to contradict the proverb which said that a man who was born to be hung would never be drowned; for the sail-line, in which I felt entangled, seemed destined to perform for me both the offices. On a sudden, I found an oar in my hand, and the next minute I was climbing, with assistance, into a wherry, in which there sat two Oxonians, one of them helping me, and loudly and laughingly differing with the other, who did not at all like the rocking of the boat, and who assured me, to the manifest contradiction of such senses as I had left, that there was no room. This gentleman is now no more, and I shall not mention his name, because I might do injustice to the memory of a brave man struck with a panic. The name of his companion, if I mistake not, was Russell. I hope he was related to an illustrious person of the same name, to whom I have lately been indebted for what may have been another prolongation of my life.
On returning to town, which I did on the top of an Oxford coach, I was relating this story to the singular person who then drove it (Bobart, who had been a collegian), when a man who was sitting behind surprised us with the excess of his laughter. On asking him the reason, he touched his hat, and said, "Sir, I'm his footman." Such were the delicacies of the livery, and the glorifications of their masters with which they entertain the kitchen.—From the Autobiography of Leigh Hunt.
WILLIAM PITT.
BY S. T. COLERIDGE.
The following very graphic and very severe critical estimate of William Pitt, the great Prime Minister of England during the stormy era of the French Revolution, was written by Coleridge for the London Morning Post, with which he was then connected. It appeared in the number of that paper, dated Wednesday, March 19, 1800. We copy it from Coleridge's "Essays on His Own Times," just published in London.