Coelenterata

“ She stood like one inspired. "Coelred! Coelred! run to my eame the Atheling and to your father; tell them to arm and to assemble all their forces, for the enemy approaches. Coifi, go thou to alarm the people. Bid them to assemble armed and ready to march." Coelred was off like an arrow from a bow. Coifi also obeyed. The alarm–horns were heard in the valley. In half an hour the Stillingas were drawn up fully armed outside the hedge. Elfric and Seomel, also fully armed, had entered the enclosure and asked eagerly for the cause of the alarm. Alca was still standing under the ash tree. ”

“ The perfect flower of any elementary type of life must always be precious to humanity, and Coleridge is a true flower of the ennuyé, of the type of René. More than Childe Harold, more than Werther, more than René himself, Coleridge, by what he did, what he was, and what he failed to do, represents that inexhaustible discontent, languor, and homesickness, that endless regret, the chords of which ring all through our modern literature. It is to the romantic element in literature that those qualities belong. ”

“ Coleridge also, who of late had been almost as much lost to his friends as if he too were in Tartary or Thibet, though now and then "like a re-appearing star" standing up before them when least expected, was at the beginning of April 1816 once more in London, endeavouring to get his tragedy of Remorse accepted at Covent Garden. "Nature, who conducts every creature by instinct to its best end, has skilfully directed C. to take up his abode at a chemist's laboratory in Norfolk Street," writes Lamb to Wordsworth. ”

“ In truth we have had several affrays since we landed in Egypt, and have escaped death or imprisonment mainly by good fortune, and all have been due to the quick temper of our chief." "We cannot always guide our own thoughts and actions," mused Coelred, "how much less those of our companions. So we must often leave all to chance; yet there are those who take all these things into account, weigh them, and give each its just value, and who can then offer sage counsel; and you are one, my Porlor." ”

“ Soon the "penniless and friendless" man was to find another supporter, Thomas de Quincey, who, after meeting the poet and spending one evening in his company, supplied him anonymously, through Cottle the publisher, with a loan of three hundred pounds, without any conditions, in order that his financial troubles might be ended.
Here we have another proof of the extraordinary personal magnetism of Coleridge. However badly he might behave, his friends forgave him and continued to love him, strangers helped to smooth the rough road over which his follies drew him—all in vain. ”

“ In a letter of Sir H. Davy, addressed to his friend Mr. Poole, 1803, he thus writes of S. T. C.
"Coleridge has left London for Keswick. During his stay in town, I saw him seldomer than usual; when I did see him, it was generally in the midst of large companies, where he is the image of power and activity. His eloquence is unimpaired; perhaps it is softer and stronger. His will is less than ever commensurate with his ability. Brilliant images of greatness float upon his mind, like images of the morning clouds on the waters. ”

“ What think you, my Coelred?" "My rede is," said Coelred, "that, accepting the counsel and the warning of Porlor, we should keep silence until such time as the knowledge that any of us possesses above that of our countrymen would be useful to them. Then we should use it, but even then by action rather than by speech. Such conduct will be very hard to adopt, and we shall need much counsel amongst ourselves." Hereric added that he agreed with all that had been said, except that the Princess Alca and their other loved ones must be told all they knew, withholding nothing. ”

“ With the exception of the Mammalia and the Birds, the fauna of Ceylon has, up to the present, failed to receive that systematic attention to which its richness and variety so amply entitle it. The Singhalese themselves, habitually indolent and singularly unobservant of nature in her operations, are at the same time restrained from the study of natural history by tenets of their religion which forbid the taking of life under any circumstances. From the nature of their avocations, the majority of the European residents engaged in planting and commerce, are discouraged from gratifying this taste ”

“ Strange accidents have more than once occurred in Ceylon arising from the habit of the native anglers; who, having neither baskets nor pockets in which to place what they catch, will seize a fish in their teeth whilst putting fresh bait on their hook. In August 1853, a man carried into the Pettah hospital at Colombo, having a climbing perch, which he thus attempted to hold, firmly imbedded in his throat. The spines of its dorsal fin prevented its descent, whilst those of the gill-covers equally forbade its return. ”

“ How little Enrique thought, as he listened with tender indulgence to his little brother’s troubled conscience, with what awful force that question would one day ring in his own ears. Now he put it aside.
“If we were fighting side by side, Fernando, we should not hold each other back; but if it were easy to imitate the holy martyrs, they would the less have deserved their crowns. If we would seek any object earnestly, we most count the cost. But it was ill-managed that you should have had such an alarm. Never heed it. I am safe, and Ceuta is ours, and will be a Christian city soon. ”

“ Coleridge's art is temperate and suggestive, spiritual, too, with an unequalled power of haunting the mind with a sense of ghostly presences. In his scene the touches are light and few; all is hurried, mysterious, shadowy. But Keats was a word painter, his treatment more sensuous than Coleridge's, and fuller of imagery. He lingers over the figure of the maiden disrobing, and over the furnishings of her room. The Catholic elegancies of his poem, as Hunt called them, and the architectural details are there for their own sake—as pictures ”

“ In selecting Ceylon for his exile, England showed her appreciation of the man’s worth. Besides its loveliness, Ceylon is inhabited by people of the same faith. But all the gilding one may lay on to the cage fails to hide the bars. While Arabi moves in apparent freedom in Colombo, his movements are those of the caged lion.
One cannot be in Colombo many days without feeling an inclination to see Kandy—a trip which can be accomplished without much inconvenience or heavy tax on one’s exchequer. ”

“ The cave in the mountain was certainly named Co-el, the house of God; equivalent to Cœlus of the Romans. To this the people made their offerings: and this was the heaven which Atlas was supposed to support. It seems to have been no uncommon term among the Africans. There was a city in Libya named Coël, which the Romans rendered Coëlu. They would have expressed it Coelus, or Cœlus; but the name was copied in the time of the Punic wars, before the s final was admitted into their writings. ”

“ He specified as points on which they were uncomfortable, Coleridge's own letter, or letters, respecting opium, and the circumstances of a gift of three hundred pounds from Mr. De Quincey.
The truth is, that Coleridge's relations are placed in a most uncomfortable position. They cannot say that any one of themselves will bring out a full and authentic account of C. because they know how much there is, which all who have any regard for Coleridge's memory, would wish to be buried with him. But we will talk over the subject when we meet. ”

“ It could hardly be supposed, that in the element of so much excitement, the spirit of inspiration should remain slumbering. On my next seeing Mr. C. he read me, with more than his accustomed enthusiasm, those tenderly affectionate lines to his "Sara," beginning
"My pensive Sara, thy soft cheek reclined." &c,
Mr. Coleridge now began to console himself with the suspicion, not only that felicity might be found on this side the Atlantic, but that Clevedon concentrated the sum of all that Earth had to bestow. ”

“ Calne, it is to be supposed, was still Coleridge's place of abode when Southey (17th October) wrote Cottle that letter which appears in his Correspondence, and which illustrates with such sad completeness the contrast between the careers of the two generous, romantic, brilliant youths who had wooed their wives together – and between the fates, one must add, of the two sisters who had listened to their wooing – eighteen years before: a letter as honourable to the writer as it is the reverse to its subject. "Can you," asks Southey, "tell me anything of Coleridge? ”

“ On a newly planted coco-nut tope, at Hang-welle, within a few miles of Colombo, I have heard of as many as twenty-seven being thus captured in a single night; but such success is rare. The more ordinary expedient is to smoke them out by burning straw at the apertures of their burrows. The flesh is esteemed a delicacy in Ceylon, and in consistency, colour, and flavour, it very much resembles that of a young pig. ”

“ We are not unprofitable servants. Our work is done. I feel that our time is near. My [Pg 329] Coelred, we will die together." They wound their arms round each other in a brotherly embrace, as they had done under the palm trees by the Red Sea.
Presently the sound of horse's hoofs was heard, and Godric emerged from the forest. He had come on a visit to Stillingfleet for a day or two, and announced that on the third day they were all summoned to attend the King to Adgefrin. The days passed away happily, and when the time came, Coelred and Porlor bade their sisters a tender farewell. ”

“ Do you as you think best. My own opinion is, that Coleridge ought to come here, and employ himself, collecting money by the way by lecturing at Birmingham and Liverpool. Should you proceed in your intention, my name must not be mentioned. I subscribe enough. Here he may employ himself without any disquietude about immediate subsistence. Nothing is wanting to make him easy in circumstances, and happy in himself, but to leave off opium, and to direct a certain portion of his time to the discharge of his duties. ”

“ Gillman, pp. 22, 23.
3. Of this Coleridge afterwards remarked with justice that its "ideas were better than the language or metre in which they were conveyed." Porson, with little magnanimity, as De Quincey complains, was severe upon its Greek, but its main conception – an appeal to Death to come, a welcome deliverer to the slaves, and to bear them to shores where "they may tell their beloved ones what horrors they, being men, had endured from men" – is moving and effective. De Quincey, however, was undoubtedly right in his opinion that Coleridge's Greek scholarship was not of the exact order. ”

“ Coleridge, asking for a pen and ink, and going to a table to write something on a bit of card, advanced towards me with undulating step, and giving me the precious document, said that that was his address, Mr. Coleridge, Nether-Stowey, Somersetshire; and that he should be glad to see me there in a few weeks’ time, and, if I chose, would come half-way to meet me. I was not less surprised than the shepherd-boy (this simile is to be found in Cassandra) when he sees a thunderbolt fall close at his feet. ”

“ My dear Southey,—I arrived at Keswick with T. Wedgwood on Friday afternoon, that is to say, [Pg 416] yesterday, and had the comfort to find that Sara was safely brought to bed, the morning before, that is on Thursday, half-past six, of a healthy Girl. I had never thought of a girl as a possible event; the words child and man-child were perfect synonyms in my feelings. However, I bore the sex with great fortitude, and she shall be called Sara. Both Mrs. Coleridge and the Coleridgiella are as well as can be. I left the little one sucking at a great rate. Derwent and Hartley are both well. ”

“ One of the officers of the dragoon regiment, finding a Latin sentence inscribed on a wall, discovered the condition of the very awkward recruit. Shortly afterwards an old school-fellow (G. L. Tuckett) heard of his whereabouts, and by the intervention of his brother, Captain James Coleridge, his discharge was procured. He returned for a short time to Cambridge, but quitted the university without a degree in 1794. In the same year he visited Oxford, and after a short tour in Wales went to Bristol, where he met Southey. The French Revolution had stirred the mind of Southey to its depths. ”

“ Of the lesser feline species, the number and variety in Ceylon is inferior to those of India. The Palm-cat322 lurks by day among the fronds of the coco-nut palms, and by night makes destructive forays on the fowls of the villagers; and, in order to suck the blood of its victim, inflicts a wound so small as to be almost imperceptible. The glossy genette323, the "Civet" of Europeans, is common in the northern province, where the Tamils confine it in cages for the sake of its musk, which they collect from the wooden bars on which it rubs itself. ”

“ The poet made a poor dragoon, and never advanced beyond the awkward squad. He wrote letters, however, for all his comrades, and they attended to his horse and accoutrements. After four months service, (December 1793 to April 1794) , the history and circumstances of Coleridge became known. He had written under his saddle, on the stable wall, a Latin sentence (Eheu! quam infortunii miserrimum est fuisse felicem!) which led to an inquiry on the part of the captain of his troop, who had more regard for the classics than Ensign Northerton, in Tom Jones. ”