Sir Humphry Davy, writing of Coleridge in 1808, says,—"His mind is a wilderness, in which the cedar and the oak, which might aspire to the skies, are stunted in their growth by underwood, thorns, briers, and parasitical plants; with the most exalted genius, enlarged views, sensitive heart, and enlightened mind, he will be the victim of want of order, precision, and regularity."
Leigh Hunt speaks of his open, indolent, good-natured mouth, and of his forehead as "prodigious,—a great piece of placid marble."
Wordsworth again:—
"Noisy he was, and gamesome as a boy,
Tossing his limbs about him in delight."
In the autumn of 1833, Emerson, on his second visit to England, called on Coleridge. He found him "to appearance a short, thick, old man, with bright blue eyes, and fine clear complexion."
A minute and certainly a true picture is that which Carlyle formed of him, in words, some years later, and probably not long before his removal from earth:—"Brow and head were round, and of massive weight, but the face was flabby and irresolute. The deep eyes, of a light hazel, were as full of sorrow as of inspiration; confused pain looked mildly from them, as in a kind of mild astonishment. The whole figure and air, good and amiable otherwise, might be called flabby and irresolute,—expressive of weakness under possibility of strength. He hung loosely on his limbs, with knees bent and stooping attitude; in walking he rather shuffled than decisively stepped; and a lady once remarked, he never could fix which side of the garden-walk would suit him best, but continually shifted in corkscrew fashion, and kept trying both. A heavy-laden, high-aspiring, and surely much-suffering man. His voice, naturally soft and good, had contracted itself into a plaintive snuffle and sing-song; he spoke as if preaching,—you would have said preaching earnestly, and also hopelessly, the weightiest things."
Such, according to these high authorities, was the outer man Coleridge,—he who
"in bewitching words, with happy heart,
Did chant the vision of that ancient man,
That bright-eyed mariner."
There are several portraits painted of him. The best would appear to be that which was made by Allston, at Rome, in 1806. Wordsworth speaks of it as "the only likeness of the great original that ever gave me the least pleasure." That by Northcote strongly recalls him to my remembrance: the dreamy eyes; the full, round, yet pale face,—
"that seemed undoubtedly
As if a blooming face it ought to be";