Coleridges Ancient Mariner and Select Poems | Page 9

and uncertain, to muse on fundamental and general causes, the 'causae
causarum.' I devote myself to such works as encroach not on the anti-social passions--in
poetry, to elevate the imagination and set the affections in right tune by the beauty of the
inanimate impregnated as with a living soul by the presence of life--in prose to the
seeking with patience and a slow, very slow mind, 'Quid sumus, et quidnam victuri
gignimus,'--what our faculties are and what they are capable of becoming." This last
sentence is a sort of half-prophetic summary of his life's work; but the poetry soon gave
way to the prose, and he never again so nearly realized his poetical ideal as he had
already done in "The Ancient Mariner."
Of his person and the impression he made upon people at this time there are various
contemporary accounts. To Thelwall, in November, 1796, he sent the following
description of himself: "... my face, unless when animated by immediate eloquence,
expresses great sloth, and great, indeed almost idiotic good-nature. 'Tis a mere carcass of
a face; fat, flabby, and expressive chiefly of inexpression. Yet I am told that my eyes,
eyebrows, and forehead are physiognomically good; but of this the deponent knoweth not.
As to my shape, 'tis a good shape enough if measured, but my gait is awkward, and the
walk of the whole man indicates indolence capable of energies.... I cannot breathe
through my nose, so my mouth, with sensual thick lips, is almost always open. In
conversation I am impassioned, and oppose what I deem error with an eagerness which is
often mistaken for personal asperity; but I am ever so swallowed up in the thing_ said
that I forget my _opponent. Such am I." The Rev. Leapidge Smith, in his "Reminiscences
of an Octogenarian," remembered him as "a tall, dark, handsome young man, with long,
black, flowing hair; eyes not merely dark, but black, and keenly penetrating; a fine
forehead, a deep-toned, harmonious voice; a manner never to be forgotten, full of life,
vivacity, and kindness; dignified in person and, added to all these, exhibiting the elements
of his future greatness."[1] Hazlitt, in "My First Acquaintance with Poets" (a paper that
every student of Coleridge's life and poetry should read), describing him as he appeared
on his visit to Hazlitt's father at Wem in 1798, says: "His complexion was at that time
clear, and even bright. His forehead was broad and high, light as if built of ivory, with
large projecting eyebrows, and his eyes rolling beneath them like a sea with darkened
lustre.... His mouth was gross, voluptuous, open, eloquent; his chin good-humored and
round, but his nose, the rudder of the face, the index of the will, was small, feeble,
nothing--like what he has done." And Dorothy Wordsworth (to close with a
contemporary and sympathetic impression) set him down in her journal after their first
meeting at Racedown thus: "He is a wonderful man. His conversation teems with soul,
mind, and spirit.... At first I thought him very plain, that is for about three minutes: he is
pale, thin, has a wide mouth, thick lips, and not very good teeth, longish, loose-growing,
half-curling, rough black hair. But if you hear him speak for five minutes you think no
more of them. His eye is large and full, and not very dark, but grey[2]--such an eye as
would receive from a heavy soul the dullest expression; but it speaks every emotion of
his animated mind; it has more of 'the poet's eye in a fine frenzy rolling' than I ever
witnessed. He has fine dark eyebrows, and an overhanging forehead." The friendly and
keen-sighted woman gives a more sympathetic picture than the others; but there must
have been truth, too, in the view of the equally keen-sighted and less friendly Hazlitt,
whose description accords well with Coleridge's self-portraiture, and in the last sarcastic
item, too well, with the remainder of the poet's career.

FOOTNOTES:
[Footnote 1: "Letters of Samuel Taylor Coleridge," ed. by E.H. Coleridge, Vol. I., p. 180,
note.]
[Footnote 2: The uncertainty as to the color of his eyes is a tribute to their expressiveness.
Carlyle described him in 1824 as having "a pair of strange brown, timid, yet
earnest-looking eyes." Emerson visited him in 1833 and found him "with bright blue eyes
and fine clear complexion."]
III. THE REST OF THE STORY
Coleridge lived for thirty-six years after he left Stowey for Germany in 1798. His fame as
a poet grew as the world became acquainted with and learned to feel the peculiar charm
of his poetry, and he was even more famous, for a while, as a literary critic and a moral
philosopher. But they were years of weak-willed wandering, of vast hazy plans and
feeble performance, lighted only here