Scott (who had orga-derings of Cain. The Death of Abel (1758) is by the nized the king's visit), an ardent supporter of the once celebrated Swiss poet Salomon Gessner. unpopular monarchy. I. By James Thomson, published in 1726?30.
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MY FIRST ACQUAINTANCE WITH POETS / 55 3
is true fame!' He said Thomson was a great poet, rather than a good one; his style was as meretricious as his thoughts were natural. He spoke of Cowper as the best modern poet. He said the Lyrical Ballads were an experiment about to be tried by him and Wordsworth, to see how far the public taste would endure poetry written in a more natural and simple style than had hitherto been attempted; totally discarding the artifices of poetical diction, and making use only of such words as had probably been common in the most ordinary language since the days of Henry II. Some comparison was introduced between Shakespeare and Milton. He said 'he hardly knew which to prefer. Shakespeare appeared to him a mere stripling in the art; he was as tall and as strong, with infinitely more activity than Milton, but he never appeared to have come to man's estate; or if he had, he would not have been a man, but a monster.' He spoke with contempt of Gray, and with intolerance of Pope. He did not like the versification of the latter. He observed that 'the ears of these couplet-writers might be charged with having short memories, that could not retain the harmony of whole passages.' He thought little of Junius2 as a writer; he had a dislike of Dr. Johnson; and a much higher opinion of Burke as an orator and politician, than of Fox or Pitt.3 He however thought him very inferior in richness of style and imagery to some of our elder prose writers, particularly Jeremy Taylor.4 He liked Richardson, but not Fielding; nor could I get him to enter into the merits of Caleb Williams,5 In short, he was profound and discriminating with respect to those authors whom he liked, and where he gave his judgment fair play; capricious, perverse, and prejudiced in his antipathies and distastes. We loitered on the 'ribbed sea-sands,'6 in such talk as this, a whole morning, and I recollect met with a curious seaweed, of which John Chester told us the country name! A fisherman gave Coleridge an account of a boy that had been drowned the day before, and that they had tried to save him at the risk of their own lives. He said 'he did not know how it was that they ventured, but, sir, we have a nature towards one another.' This expression, Coleridge remarked to me, was a fine illustration of that theory of disinterestedness which I (in common with Butler) had adopted. I broached to him an argument of mine to prove that likeness was not mere association of ideas. I said that the mark in the sand put one in mind of a man's foot, not because it was part of a former impression of a man's foot (for it was quite new) but because it was like the shape of a man's foot. He assented to the justness of this distinction (which I have explained at length elsewhere, for the benefit of the curious) and John Chester listened; not from any interest in the subject, but because he was astonished that I should be able to suggest anything to Coleridge that he did not already know. We returned on the third morning, and Coleridge remarked the silent cottage-smoke curling up the valleys where, a few evenings before, we had seen the lights gleaming through the dark.
In a day or two after we arrived at Stowey, we set out, I on my return home, and he for Germany. It was a Sunday morning, and he was to preach that day for Dr. Toulmin of Taunton. I asked him if he had prepared anything for the occasion? He said he had not even thought of the text, but should as soon as we
2. The pseudonym of the author (whose identity (1650) and Holy Dying (1651). is still uncertain) of a series of attacks on George 5. A 1794 novel by William Godwin. Samuel III and various politicians, 1769?72. Richardson and Henry Fielding, the great 18th3. The liberal parliamentarian Charles James Fox century novelists. (1749?1806); the Conservative prime minister 6. Echoing The Rime of the Ancient Mariner, line William Pitt (1759 -1806). 227. 4. The 17th-century divine, author of Holy Living
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55 4 / THOMAS DE QUINCEY
parted. I did not go to hear him?this was a fault?but we met in the evening at Bridgewater. The next day we had a long day's walk to Bristol, and sat down, I recollect, by a well-side on the road, to cool ourselves and satisfy our thirst, when Coleridge repeated to me some descriptive lines from his tragedy of Remorse; which I must say became his mouth and that occasion better than they, some years after, did iMr. Elliston's7 and the Drury Lane boards,
Oh memory! shield me from the world's poor strife, And give those scenes thine everlasting life.
I saw no more of him for a year or two, during which period he had been wandering in the Hartz Forest in Germany; and his return was cometary, meteorous, unlike his setting out. It was not till some time after that I knew his friends Lamb and Southey. The last always appears to me (as I first saw him) with a commonplace-book under his arm, and the first with a bon mot8 in his mouth. It was at Godwin's that I met him with Holcroft and Coleridge, where they were disputing fiercely which was the best?Man as he was, or man as he is to be. 'Give me,' says Lamb, 'man as he is not to be.' This saying was the beginning of a friendship between us, which I believe still continues.? Enough of this for the present.
But there is matter for another rhyme, And I to this may add a second tale.9
1823
7. Robert William Elliston, a well-known actor. script notebook of personal reflections and favorite Coleridge's Remorse was produced at Drury Lane quotations culled from one's reading. in 1813. 9. Wordsworth, Hart-Leap Well, lines 95-96. 8. A witticism. 'Commonplace-book': a manu- THOMAS DE QUINCEY 1785-1859
Born in Manchester, the son of a wealthy merchant involved in the West Indian cotton trade, De Quincey was the fourth of eight children. Before his tenth birthday he experienced the deaths of a series of family members, his father included; the loss that more than any other haunted him his entire life was that of his favorite sister and 'nursery playmate,' Elizabeth, two years his senior, who died suddenly in 1792. Sent from home to school at seven, De Quincey was a precocious scholar, especially in Latin and Greek, and a gentle and bookish introvert; he found it difficult to adapt himself to discipline and routine and was thrown into panic by any emergency that called for decisive action. He ran away from Manchester Grammar School and, after a summer spent tramping through Wales, broke off completely from his family and guardians and went to London in the hope that he could obtain from moneylenders an advance on his prospective inheritance. There at the age of seventeen he spent a terrible winter of loneliness and poverty, befriended only by some kindly prostitutes. These early experiences with the sinister aspect of city life later became persistent elements in his dreams of terror.
After a reconciliation with his guardians, he entered Worcester College, Oxford, on an inadequate allowance. He spent the years 1803?08 in sporadic attendance,
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THOMAS DE QUINCEY / 555
isolated as usual, then left abruptly in the middle of his examination for the A.B. with honors because he could not face the ordeal of an oral examination.
De Quincey had been an early admirer of Wordsworth and Coleridge. No sooner did he come of age and into his inheritance than, with his usual combination of generosity and recklessness, he made Coleridge an anonymous
