Coleridge and opium-eating, and other writings / [Thomas De Quincey].

  • Thomas De Quincey
Date:
1863
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Coleridge and opium-eating, and other writings / [Thomas De Quincey]. Source: Wellcome Collection.

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    (what afterwards my own experience verified) that his eyes were large, and in colour were grey :— • “Profound his forehead was, hut not severe ; And some did think” [viz., in the Castle of Indolence'] “ that he had little business there.” The lady, as her little contribution to this pic-nic por- trait, insisted on his beautiful black hair, which lay in masses of natural curls half-way down his back. Among all his foibles, however, it ought to be men- tioned that vanity connected with personal advantages was never one: he had been thoroughly laughed out of that by his long experience of life at a great public school. But that which he himself utterly ignored fe- male eyes bore witness to; and the lady of Bristol assured me that in the entire course of her life she had not seen a young man so engaging by his exterior. He was then a very resurrection of the old knight’s son in Chaucer, of him that had jousted with infidels, “ And ridden in Belmarie.” I should add that, whereas throughout his thirty-five years of opium he was rather corpulent, not at any period emaciated, as those who write romances about opium fancy to be its effect,—in 1796, when he had nearly accom- plished his twenty-sixth year, he was slender in the degree most approved by ladies. Such was Samuel Taylor Coleridge in 1796. Ask for him ten years later, and the vision had melted into air.
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