Biographia Epistolaris, vol 1 | Page 9

allowed to be both sonorous and expressive. "Exempli gratia", he calls the ablative case "the quare-quale-quidditive case!" He made the world his confidant with respect to his learning and ingenuity, and the world seems to have kept the secret very faithfully. His various works, uncut, unthumbed, were preserved free from all pollution in the family archives, where they may still be for anything that I know. This piece of good luck promises to be hereditary; for all "my" compositions have the same amiable home-staying propensity. The truth is, my Father was not a first-rate genius; he was, however, a first-rate Christian, which is much better. I need not detain you with his character. In learning, goodheartedness, absentness of mind, and excessive ignorance of the world, he was a perfect Parson Adams.
My Mother was an admirable economist, and managed exclusively. My eldest brother's name was John. He was a Captain in the East India Company's service; a successful officer and a brave one, as I have heard. He died in India in 1786. My second brother William went to Pembroke College, Oxford. He died a clergyman in 1780, just on the eve of his intended marriage. My brother James has been in the army since the age of fifteen, and has married a woman of fortune, one of the old Duke family of Otterton in Devon. Edward, the wit of the family, went to Pembroke College, and is now a clergyman. George also went to Pembroke. He is in orders likewise, and now has the same School, a very flourishing one, which my Father had. He is a man of reflective mind and elegant talent. He possesses learning in a greater degree than any of the family, excepting myself. His manners are grave, and hued over with a tender sadness. In his moral character he approaches every way nearer to perfection than any man I ever yet knew. He is worth us all. Luke Herman was a surgeon, a severe student, and a good man. He died in 1790, leaving one child, a lovely boy still alive. [1] My only sister, Ann, died at twenty-one, a little after my brother Luke:--
Rest, gentle Shade! and wait thy Maker's will; Then rise unchang'd, and be an angel still!
Francis Syndercombe went out to India as a midshipman under Admiral Graves. He accidentally met his brother John on board ship abroad, who took him ashore, and procured him a commission in the Company's army. He died in 1792, aged twenty-one, a Lieutenant, in consequence of a fever brought on by excessive fatigue at and after the siege of Seringapatam, and the storming of a hill fort, during all which his conduct had been so gallant that his Commanding Officer particularly noticed him, and presented him with a gold watch, which my Mother now has. All my brothers are remarkably handsome; but they were as inferiour to Francis as I am to them. He went by the name of "the handsome Coleridge." The tenth and last child was Samuel Taylor, the subject and author of these Epistles.
From October 1772 to October 1773. Baptized Samuel Taylor, my Godfather's name being Samuel Taylor, Esquire. I had another called Evans, and two Godmothers, both named Munday.
From October 1773 to October 1774. In this year I was carelessly left by my nurse, ran to the fire, and pulled out a live coal, and burned myself dreadfully. While my hand was being drest by Mr. Young, I spoke for the first time, (so my Mother informs me) and said, "nasty Dr. Young!" The snatching at fire, and the circumstance of my first words expressing hatred to professional men--are they at all ominous? This year I went to school. My Schoolmistress, the very image of Shenstone's, was named Old Dame Key. She was nearly related to Sir Joshua Reynolds.
From October 1774 to 1775. I was inoculated; which I mention, because I distinctly remember it, and that my eyes were bound; at which I manifested so much obstinate indignation, that at last they removed the bandage, and unaffrighted I looked at the lancet, and suffered the scratch. At the close of this year I could read a chapter in the Bible.
Here I shall end, because the remaining years of my life all assisted to form my particular mind;--the first three years had nothing in them that seems to relate to it.
God bless you and your sincere S. T. COLERIDGE.
Sunday, March, 1797.
[Footnote 1: William Hart Coleridge, Bishop of Barbadoes and the Leeward Islands.
(He was appointed to that See in 1824, retired from it in 1842; and afterwards accepted the Wardenship of St. Augustine's College, Canterbury. S. C.) [He died in 1849.] ]
A letter from Francis S. Coleridge to his sister has been preserved in the family, in which a particular account is given of