He is a wonderful man. His conversation teems
with soul, mind, and spirit. Then he is so benevolent, so good tempered
and cheerful, and, like William, interests himself so much about every
little trifle. 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, 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 first thing that was read after he came was William's new poem,
"The Ruined Cottage", with which he was much delighted; and after tea he
repeated to us two acts and a half of his tragedy, "Osorio". The next
morning William read his tragedy, "The Borderers"." (Knight's "Life of
Wordsworth", i, 111-112.)
The line Coleridge quotes in his description of Dorothy:
Guilt is a thing impossible in her
occurs in the additional verses Coleridge had written to the "Joan of
Arc" lines sent to Lamb.
John Thelwall, one of the sturdy democrats of the time who had made no
small commotion with his Revolutionary principles, had also visited
Coleridge at Stowey in the summer of 1797.
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