Specimens of the Table Talk of Samuel Taylor Coleridge

"Exos" Exos, ó chat' ômmátton
s tázeos póthon eisagog glycheïan
Psuchä cháriu oûs èpithtzateúsei
mae moi totè sèn chachõ phaneiaes
maeô ãrruthmos ëlthois—x.t.l v.527

157

I take it for granted that Mr. Coleridge alluded to the chorus,—

[Greek: Su men, _o patrhis Ilias t_on aporhth_et_on polis ouketi lexei toion El- lan_on nephos amphi se krhuptei, dorhi d_e, dorhi perhsan—k. t. l.] v. 899.

Thou, then, oh, natal Troy! no more
The city of the unsack'd shalt be,
So thick from dark Achaia's shore
The cloud of war hath covered thee.
Ah! not again
I tread thy plain—
The spear—the spear hath rent thy pride;
The flame hath scarr'd thee deep and wide;
Thy coronal of towers is shorn,
And thou most piteous art—most naked and forlorn!

I perish'd at the noon of night!
When sleep had seal'd each weary eye;
When the dance was o'er,
And harps no more
Rang out in choral minstrelsy.
In the dear bower of delight
My husband slept in joy;
His shield and spear
Suspended near,
Secure he slept: that sailor band
Full sure he deem'd no more should stand
Beneath the walls of Troy.
And I too, by the taper's light,
Which in the golden mirror's haze
Flash'd its interminable rays,
Bound up the tresses of my hair,
That I Love's peaceful sleep might share.

I slept; but, hark! that war-shout dread,
Which rolling through the city spread;
And this the cry,—"When, Sons of Greece,
When shall the lingering leaguer cease;
When will ye spoil Troy's watch-tower high,
And home return?"—I heard the cry,
And, starting from the genial bed,
Veiled, as a Doric maid, I fled,
And knelt, Diana, at thy holy fane,
A trembling suppliant—all in vain.

158

They led me to the sounding shore—
Heavens! as I passed the crowded way,
My bleeding lord before me lay—
I saw—I saw—and wept no more,
Till, as the homeward breezes bore
The bark returning o'er the sea,
My gaze, oh Ilion, turn'd on thee!
Then, frantic, to the midnight air,
I cursed aloud the adulterous pair:—
"They plunge me deep in exile's woe;
They lay my country low:
Their love—no love! but some dark spell,
In vengeance breath'd, by spirit fell.
Rise, hoary sea, in awful tide,
And whelm that vessel's guilty pride;
Nor e'er, in high Mycene's hall,
Let Helen boast in peace of mighty Ilion's fall."

The translation was given to me by Mr. Justice Coleridge.—ED.

159

"The amotion or transposition will alter the thought, or the feeling, or at least the tone. They are as pieces of mosaic work, from which you cannot strike the smallest block without making a hole in the picture."– Quarterly Review, No. CIII. p. 7.

160

But Mr. Coleridge took a great distinction between North and the other writers commonly associated with him. In speaking of the Examen and the Life of Lord North, in the Friend, Mr. C. calls them "two of the most interesting biographical works in our language, both for the weight of the matter, and the incuriosa felicitas of the style. The pages are all alive with the genuine idioms of our mother tongue. A fastidious taste, it is true, will find offence in the occasional vulgarisms, or what we now call slang, which not a few of our writers, shortly after the Restoration of Charles the Second, seem to have affected as a mark of loyalty. These instances, however, are but a trifling drawback. They are not sought for, as is too often and too plainly done by L'Estrange, Collyer, Tom Brown, and their imitators. North never goes out of his way, either to seek them, or to avoid them; and, in the main, his language gives us the very nerve, pulse, and sinew of a hearty, healthy, conversational English."—Vol. ii. p. 307.—ED.

161

Burke, I am persuaded, was not so continuous a talker as Coleridge. Madame de Stael told a nephew of the latter, at Coppet, that Mr. C. was a master of monologue, mais qu'il ne savait pas le dialogue. There was a spice of vindictiveness in this, the exact history of which is not worth explaining. And if dialogue must be cut down in its meaning to small talk, I, for one, will admit that Coleridge, amongst his numberless qualifications, possessed it not. But I am sure that he could, when it suited him, converse as well as any one else, and with women he frequently did converse in a very winning and popular style, confining them, however, as well as he could, to the detail of facts or of their spontaneous emotions. In general, it was certainly otherwise. "You must not be surprised," he said to me, "at my talking so long to you—I pass so much of my time in pain and solitude, yet everlastingly thinking, that, when you or any other persons call on me, I can hardly help easing my mind by pouring forth some of the accumulated mass of reflection and feeling, upon an apparently interested recipient." But the principal reason, no doubt, was the habit of his intellect, which was under a law of discoursing upon all subjects with reference to ideas or ultimate ends. You might interrupt him when you pleased, and he was patient of every sort of conversation except mere personality, which he absolutely hated.—ED.

162

This was said, I believe, to the late Sir James Mackintosh.—ED.

163

This passage, and those following, will evidence, what the readers even of this little work must have seen, that Mr. Coleridge had an eye, almost exclusively, for the ideal or universal in painting and music. He knew nothing of the details of handling in the one, or of rules of composition in the other. Yet he was, to the best of my knowledge, an unerring judge of the merits of any serious effort in the fine arts, and detected the leading thought or feeling of the artist, with a decision which used sometimes to astonish me. Every picture which I have looked at in company with him, seems now, to my mind, translated into English. He would sometimes say, after looking for a minute at a picture, generally a modern one, "There's no use in stopping at this; for I see the painter had no idea. It is mere mechanical drawing. Come on; here the artist meant something for the mind." It was just the same with his knowledge of music. His appetite for what he thought good was literally inexhaustible. He told me he could listen to fine music for twelve hours together, and go away refreshed. But he required in music either thought or feeling; mere addresses to the sensual ear he could not away with; hence his utter distaste for Rossini, and his reverence for Beethoven and Mozart—ED.

164

Giovanni Pierluigi da Palestrina was born about 1529, and died in 1594. I believe he may be considered the founder or reformer of the Italian church music. His masses, motets, and hymns are tolerably well known amongst lovers of the old composers; but Mr. Coleridge used to speak with delight of some of Palestrina's madrigals which he heard at Rome.

Giacomo Carissimi composed about the years 1640—1650. His style has been charged with effeminacy; but Mr. C. thought it very graceful and chaste. Henry Purcell needs no addition in England.—ED.