Courtney Ryley Cooper - "The Cross Cut"

Charles K. Dillaway - "Roman Antiquities, and Ancient Mythology"

Angelina Emily Grimke - "An Appeal to the Christian Women of the South"

W. Gilmore Simms - "Confession"

Annual Bibliography of Commonwealth Literature 2007
This paper argues that discourses of love in Ghanaian market literature for youth offer a view into complex negotiations of agency and empowerment. Drawing on Deborah Durham's notion of youth as "social `shifters'" and Francis Nyamnjoh's conception of the "interconnectedness" of agency, I take Ghanaian market literature as one specific case of how African literature for youth foregrounds questions of continuity and change as African societies enter into increasingly complex global relations. In this literature for youth, received notions of love, often constructed out of impressions from American pop and hip hop music, carry new notions of agency that compete with existing "domesticated" forms. Authors like Ike Tandoh and Evelyn Tay employ discourses of love to offer youth alternative avenues for empowerment in a context of socio-economic disenfranchizement. In a creative process of "straddling", this writing both reveals and reproduces the contradictions that obtain in youth configurations of agency.

Reminiscences of Samuel Taylor Coleridge and Robert Southey

J >> Joseph Cottle >> Reminiscences of Samuel Taylor Coleridge and Robert Southey




These various testimonies to the conversational eminence of Mr.
Coleridge, and from men the best qualified to decide, must satisfy every
mind, that in this one quality he scarcely ever had a superior, or
perhaps an equal. In the 103rd No. of the "Quarterly Review," there is a
description of his conversation, evidently written by one competent to
judge, and who well knew the subject of his praise; but though the
writer's language is highly encomiastic, corresponding with his
eloquence, yet to all who knew Coleridge, it will not be considered as
exceeding the soberest truth. When and where are such descriptions as the
preceding and the following to be found?

"Perhaps our readers may have heard repeated a saying of Mr.
Wordsworth, 'that many men of his age had done wonderful _things_, as
Davy, Scott, Cuvier, &c.; but that Coleridge was the only wonderful
_man_ he ever knew.' Something of course must be allowed in this, as
in all other such cases, for the antithesis; but we believe the fact
really to be, that the greater part of those who have occasionally
visited Mr. Coleridge, have left him with the feeling akin to the
judgment indicated in the above remark. They admire the man more than
his works, or they forget the works in the absorbing impression made
by the living author; and no wonder. Those who remember him in his
more vigorous days, can bear witness to the peculiarity and
transcendant power of his conversational eloquence. It was unlike
anything that could be heard elsewhere; the kind was different, the
degree was different, the manner was different. The boundless range
of scientific knowledge, the brilliancy and exquisite nicety of
illustration, the deep and ready reasoning, the strangeness and
immensity of bookish lore, were not all; the dramatic story, the
joke, the pun, the festivity, must be added; and with these, the
clerical looking dress, the thick waving silver hair, the youthful
coloured cheek, the indefinable mouth and lips, the quick yet steady
and penetrating greenish grey eye, the slow and continuous
enunciation, and the everlasting music of his tones,--all went to
make up the image, and to constitute the living presence of the man.
Even now his conversation is characterized by all the essentials of
its former excellence; there is the same individuality, the same
unexpectedness, the same universal grasp; nothing is too high,
nothing too low for it--it glances from earth to heaven, from heaven
to earth, with a speed and a splendour, an ease and a power, which
almost seemed inspired."

* * * * *

As a conclusion to these honourable testimonies, it may be added, the
wish has often been expressed, that more were known respecting Mr.
Coleridge's school and college life, so briefly detailed in his
"Biographia." There was one friend of whom he often used to talk, and
always with a kind feeling, who sat next to him at Christ Church School,
and who afterwards accompanied him to Cambridge, where their friendship
was renewed, and their intercourse uninterrupted. This gentleman was the
Rev. C. V. Le Grice, the respected and erudite incumbent of a living near
Penzance. Mr. Le G. might contribute largely toward the elucidation of
Mr. Coleridge's school and college life; but as the much has been denied,
we must be thankful for the little. The following are Mr. Le Grice's
brief, but interesting notices of his friend:

"Mr. Urban,

In the various and numerous memoirs, which have been published of the
late Mr. Coleridge, I have been surprised at the accuracy in many
respects, and at the same time their omission of a very remarkable,
and a very honourable anecdote in his history. In the memoir of him
in your last number, you do not merely omit, but you give an
erroneous account of this very circumstance, to which I mean to
allude. You assert that he did not obtain, and indeed did riot aim to
obtain, the honours of the University. So far is this from the fact,
that in his Freshman's year he won the gold medal for the Greek Ode;
and in his second year he became a candidate for the Craven
scholarship, a University scholarship, for which undergraduates of
any standing are entitled to become candidates. This was in the
winter of 1792. Out of sixteen or eighteen competitors a selection of
four was made to contend for the prize, and these four were Dr.
Butler, now the Head Master of Shrewsbury; Dr. Keate, the late Head
Master of Eton; Mr. Bethell, the late Member for Yorkshire; and S. T.
Coleridge. Dr. Butler was the successful candidate.

Pause a moment in Coleridge's history, and think of him at this
period! Butler! Keate! Bethell! and Coleridge!! How different the
career of each in future life! O Coleridge; through what strange
paths did the meteor of genius lead thee! Pause a moment, ye
distinguished men! and deem it not the least bright spot in your
happier career, that you and Coleridge were once rivals, and for a
moment running abreast in the pursuit of honour. I believe that his
disappointment at this crisis damped his ardour. Unfortunately, at
that period there was no classical Tripos; so that if a person did
not obtain the classical medal, he was thrown back among the totally
undistinguished; and it was not allowable to become a candidate for
the classical medal, unless you had taken a respectable degree in
mathematics. Coleridge had not the least taste for these, and here
his case was hopeless; so that he despaired of a Fellowship, and gave
up, what in his heart he coveted, college honours, and a college
life. He had seen his schoolfellow and dearest friend, Middleton,
(late Bishop of Calcutta) quit Pembroke under similar circumstances.
Not _quite_ similar, because Middleton studied mathematics so as to
take a respectable degree, and to enable him to try for the medal;
but he failed, and therefore all hopes failed of a Fellowship--most
fortunately, as it proved in after life, for Middleton, though he
mourned at the time most deeply, and exclaimed, 'I am Middleton,
which is another name for Misfortune!'

'There is a Providence which shapes our ends,
Rough hew them how you will.'

That, which Middleton deemed a misfortune, drew him from the cobwebs
of a college library to the active energies of a useful and honoured
life. But to return to Coleridge. When he quitted College, which he
did before he had taken a degree, in a moment of mad caprice--it was
indeed an inauspicious hour! 'In an inauspicious hour I left the
friendly cloisters, and the happy grove of quiet, ever honoured Jesus
College, Cambridge.' Short, but deep and heart-felt reminiscence! In
a literary Life of himself this short memorial is all that Coleridge
gives of his happy days at college. Say not, that he did not obtain,
and did not wish to obtain classical honours! He did obtain them, and
was eagerly ambitious of them; but he did not bend to that discipline
which was to qualify him for the whole course. He was very studious,
but his reading was desultory and capricious. He took little exercise
merely for the sake of exercise; but he was ready at any time to
unbend his mind in conversation, and for the sake of this, his room
(the ground-floor room on the right hand of the staircase facing the
great gate) was a constant rendezvous of conversation loving friends,
I will not call them loungers, for they did not call to kill time,
but to enjoy it. What evenings have I spent in those rooms! What
little suppers, or _sizing_, as they were called, have I enjoyed;
when Aeschylus, and Plato, and Thucydides, were pushed aside, with a
pile of lexicons, &c., to discuss the pamphlets of the day. Ever and
anon, a pamphlet issued from the pen of Burke. There was no need of
having the book before us. Coleridge had read it in the morning; and
in the evening he would repeat whole pages verbatim. Freud's trial
was then in progress. Pamphlets swarmed from the press. Coleridge had
read them all; and in the evening, with our negus, we had them _viva
voce_ gloriously. O Coleridge! it was indeed an inauspicious hour,
when you quitted the friendly cloisters of Jesus. The epithet
'friendly' implied what you were thinking of, when you thought of
college. To you, Coleridge, your contemporaries were indeed friendly,
and I believe, that in your literary life you have passed over your
college life so briefly, because you wished to banish from your view
the 'visions of long-departed joys.' To enter into a description of
your college days would have called up too sadly to your memory 'the
hopes which once shone bright,' and would have made your heart sink.

Yours, &c.,

C. V. Le Grice.

P. S.--I was a witness to the breathless delight with which he
hastened to give his friends intelligence of his success. The
following lines, in his "Verses written in Early Youth," are a
memorial of the pleasure, which he felt in the sympathy of one who
was then most dear to him:--

"With faery wand, O bid the maid arise,
Chaste joyance dancing in her bright blue eyes,
As erst, when, from the Muse's calm abode,
I came with learning's meed not unbestowed."

See Poems, Edit. 1805, p. 34.

He wrote, to my certain knowledge, for the prize in the ensuing year;
but it was most deservedly given to Keate's beautiful Ode. The
subject Laus Astronomiae. No one was more convinced of the propriety
of the decision than Coleridge himself. He used to repeat Ramsden's
Greek Ode on Gibraltar, and Smith's Latin one on Mare Liberum, with
incessant rapture. It would have been his glory to have caught their
spirit,--he was absorbed in these things. A Classical Tripos would
have changed Coleridge's destiny."--_Gentleman's Magazine_, Dec.
1834.

* * * * *

The reader's attention will now be directed to Mr. Coleridge, after he
left Malta, when he visited Bristol, in the year 1807. I accidentally
learned that Mr. C. had returned to England, not in good health, and that
he was at Mr. Poole's, when I addressed a letter to him, expressing a
hope that his health would soon allow him to pay me a visit, in Bristol.
To this letter he thus replied:


"Dear Cottle,

On my return to Bristol, whenever that may be, I will certainly give you
the right hand of old fellowship; but, alas! you will find me the
wretched wreck of what you knew me, rolling, rudderless. My health is
extremely bad. Pain I have enough of, but that is indeed to me, a mere
trifle, but the almost unceasing, overpowering sensations of
wretchedness: achings in my limbs, with an indescribable restlessness,
that makes action to any available purpose, almost impossible: and worst
of all, the sense of blighted utility, regrets, not remorseless. But
enough; yea, more than enough; if these things produce, or deepen the
conviction of the utter powerlessness of ourselves, and that we either
perish, or find aid from something that passes understanding.

Affectionately,

S. T. C."

The preceding letter of Mr. Coleridge led me to anticipate a worse state
of health, on his arrival in Bristol, than appearances authorized. I knew
nothing of opium, and was pleased to notice the clearness of his
understanding, as well as much struck with the interesting narratives he
gave of Malta, Italy, and his voyage to England. I knew that Mr. C. was
somewhat in the habit of accommodating his discourse to the sentiments of
the persons with whom he was conversing; but his language was now so
pious and orthodox, that the contrast between his past and present
sentiments was most noticeable. He appeared quite an improved character,
and was about, I thought, to realise the best hopes of his friends. I
found him full of future activity, projecting new works, and particularly
a 'New Review,' of which he himself was to be the Editor! At this time
not one word was said about opium, Colerton, Ottery, or Mrs. Coleridge,
and I thought the prospect never appeared so cheering.

In my state of exultation, I invited Mr. Foster to come to Bristol, from
Frome, to renew his acquaintance with the improved and travelled Mr.
Coleridge. Mr. Tester's reply is here given.


"Frome, June, 1807.

My dear sir,

I am very unfortunate in having made an engagement, two or three weeks
back, to go just at this time on a very particular occasion, to a distant
place in this county, and therefore being deprived of the very high
luxury to which you so kindly invite me. I shall be unavoidably detained,
for a very considerable time, and my imagination will strongly represent
to me the pleasure and advantage of which an inevitable necessity
deprives me. But I will indulge the hope, that I shall sometime be known
to Mr. Coleridge, under more favourable circumstances, in a literary
respect, than I can at present, after a regular application to the
severer order of studies shall in some measure have retrieved the
consequences of a very loose and indolent intellectual discipline, and
shall have lessened a certain feeling of imbecility which always makes me
shrink from attempting to gain the notice of men whose talents I admire.

No man can feel a more animated admiration of Mr. Coleridge than I have
retained ever since the two or three times that I was a little while in
his company; and during his absence in the south and the east, I have
very often thought with delight of the immense acquisitions which he
would at length bring back to enrich the works, which I trust the public
will in due time receive from him, and to which it has an imperious
claim. And still I trust he will feel the solemn duty of making his very
best and continued efforts to mend as well as delight mankind, now that
he has attained the complete mastery and expansion of his admirable
powers. You do not fail, I hope, to urge him to devote himself
strenuously to literary labour. He is able to take a station amongst the
most elevated ranks, either of the philosophers or the poets. Pray tell
me what are his immediate intentions, and whether he has any important
specific undertaking in hand. For the sake of elegant literature, one is
very glad, that he has had the opportunity of visiting those most
interesting scenes and objects which you mention. Will you express to him
in the strongest terms, my respect and my animated wishes for his health,
his happiness, and his utility. You can inform me what is the nature of
that literary project to which you allude. Tell me also, what is the
state and progress of your own literary projects, and, I hope I may say,
labours. I behaved shabbily about some slight remarks which I was to have
ventured on Mr. Southey's 'Madoc,' in the 'Eclectic Review.' On reading
the critiques in the 'Edinburgh Review,' on 'Thalaba' and 'Madoc,' I
found what were substantially my own impressions, so much better
developed than I could have done, that I instantly threw my remarks away.
Let me hear from you when you have half an hour of leisure, and believe
me to be, with every kind remembrance to your most excellent, family, my
dear sir,

Most cordially yours,

John Foster.

To Joseph Cottle."


Some weeks after, Mr. Coleridge called on me; when, in the course of
conversation, he entered into some observations on his own character,
that made him appear unusually amiable. He said that he was naturally
very arrogant; that it was his easily besetting sin; a state of mind
which he ascribed to the severe subjection to which he had been exposed,
till he was fourteen years of age, and from which, his own consciousness
of superiority made him revolt. He then stated that he had renounced all
his Unitarian sentiments; that he considered Unitarianism as a heresy of
the worst description; attempting in vain, to reconcile sin and holiness;
the world and heaven; opposing the whole spirit of the Bible; and
subversive of all that truly constituted christianity. At this interview
he professed his deepest conviction of the truth of Revelation; of the
Fall of Man; of the Divinity of Christ, and redemption alone through his
blood. To hear these sentiments so explicitly avowed, gave me unspeakable
pleasure, and formed a new, and unexpected, and stronger bond of union.

A long and highly interesting theological conversation; followed, in
which Mr. C. proved, that, however weak his body, the intellectual vigour
of his mind was unimpaired. He exhibited, also, more sobriety of manner
than I had before noticed in him, with an improved and impressive
maturity in his reflections, expressed in his happiest language; and
which, could it have been accurately recorded, would have adorned the
most splendid of his pages;--so rare and pre-eminent was the powerful and
spontaneous utterance with which this gifted son of genius was endowed.

Mr. Coleridge, at his next visit, related to me some of his Italian
adventures; one or two of which I here introduce.

After quitting Malta, he had landed in Sicily, and visited Etna; his
ascent up whose side, to the crater, he graphically described, with some
striking features; but as this is a subject proverbially enlarged upon by
all travellers, I waive further notice, and proceed to state, that Mr. C.
after leaving Sicily passed over to the south of Italy, and journeyed on
to Rome.

Shortly after Mr. Coleridge had arrived in this city, he attracted some
notice amongst the literati, as an English "Man of Letters." Cardinal
Fesch, in particular, was civil, and sought his company; but that which
was more remarkable, Jerome Buonaparte was then a resident at Rome, and
Mr. C.'s reputation becoming known to him, he sent for him, and after
showing him his palace, pictures, &c. thus generously addressed him:
"Sir, I have sent for you to give you a little candid advice. I do not
know that you have said, or written anything against my brother Napoleon,
but as an Englishman, the supposition is not unreasonable. If you have,
my advice is, that you leave Italy as soon as you possibly can!"

This hint was gratefully received, and Mr. Coleridge soon after quitted
Rome, in the suite of Cardinal Fesch. From his anxiety to reach England,
he proceeded to Leghorn, where a circumstance occurred which will excite
every reader's sympathy. Mr. Coleridge had journeyed to this port, where
he rather hoped, than expected to find some conveyance, through the
medium of a neutral, that should waft him to the land, "more prised than
ever." The hope proved delusive. The war was now raging between England
and France, and Buonaparte being lord of the ascendant in Italy, Mr.
Coleridge's situation became insecure, and even perilous. To obtain a
passport was impossible; and as Mr. C. had formerly rendered himself
obnoxious to the great Captain by some political papers, he was in daily
and hourly expectation of being incarcerated in an Italian prison, which
would have been the infallible road to death!

In half despair of ever again seeing his family and friends, and under
the constant dread of apprehension by the emissaries of the Tuscan
government, or French spies; he went out one morning to look at some
ruins in the neighbourhood of Leghorn, in a state of despondency, where,
certainty, however terrible, would have been almost preferable to
suspense. While musing on the ravages of time, he turned his eye, and
observed at a little distance, a seafaring looking man, musing in
silence, like himself, on the waste around. Mr. Coleridge advanced
towards him, supposing, or at least deeming it possible, that he also
might be mourning his captivity, and commenced a discourse with him; when
he found that the stranger was an American captain, whose ship was then
in the harbour, and on the point of sailing for England.

This information sent joy into his heart; but he testified no emotion,
determined to obtain the captain's good will, by showing him all the
civilities in his power, as a preliminary to any future service the
captain might be disposed to render him, whether the power were united
with the disposition or not. This showed adroitness, with great knowledge
of human nature; and more winning and captivating manners than those of
Mr. C. when called forth, were never possessed by mortal! In conformity
with this almost forlorn hope, Mr. Coleridge explained to the American
captain the history of the ruin; read to him some of the half defaced
Latin and Italian inscriptions, and concluded with extolling General
Washington, and predicting the stability of the Union. The right keys,
treble and tenor, were touched at the same moment. "Pray young man," said
the captain, "who are you?" Mr. C. replied, "I am a poor unfortunate
Englishman, with a wife and family at home; but I am afraid I shall never
see them more! I have no _passport_, nor means of escape; and, to
increase my sorrow, I am in daily dread of being thrown into jail, when
those I love will not have the last pleasure of _knowing_ that I am
dead!" The captain's heart was touched. He had a wife and family at a
distance. "My young man," said he, "what is your name?" The reply was,
"Samuel Taylor Coleridge." "Poor young man," answered the captain. "You
meet me at this place to-morrow morning, exactly at ten o'clock." So
saying, the captain withdrew, Mr. C. stood musing on the singular
occurrence, in which there was something _inexplicable_. His discernment
of the stranger's character convinced him there existed no _under plot_,
but still there was a wide space between _probability_ and _certainty_.
On a balance of circumstances, he still thought _all fair_, and, at the
appointed hour, repaired to the interior of the ruins.

No captain was there; but in a few minutes he appeared, and, hastening up
to Mr. Coleridge, exclaimed exultingly, "I have got your passport!" "How!
What!" said Mr. C. almost overpowered by his feelings. "Ask me no
questions," replied the captain; "you are my _steward_, and you shall
sail away with me to-morrow morning!" He continued, giving him his
address, "You come to my house to-morrow early, when I will provide you
with a _jacket_ and _trowsers_, and you shall follow me to the ship with
a _basket of vegetables_" In short, thus accoutred, he _did_ follow the
captain to the ship the next morning; and in three hours fairly sailed
out of Leghorn harbour, triumphantly on his course to England!

As soon as the ship had cleared the port, Mr. Coleridge hastened down to
the cabin, and cried, "my dear captain, tell me how you obtained my
passport?" Said the captain, very gravely, "Why, I went to the
authorities, and _swore_ that you were an _American_, and my steward! I
_swore_ also, that I knew your father and mother; that they lived in a
red-brick house, about half a mile out of New York, on the road to
Boston!"

It is gratifying to add, that this benevolent little-scrupulous captain
refused to accept any thing from Mr. C. for his passage to England; and,
behaved in many other respects, with the same uniform kindness. During
the voyage, Mr. Coleridge told me, he was attacked with a dangerous
illness, when he thought he should have _died_, but for the "_good
captain_," who attended him with the solicitude of a father. Mr. C. also
said, had he known what the captain was going to _swear_, whatever the
consequences might have been, he would have prevented him.[82]

The following long letter will be read with interest.


"Bristol, 1807.

Dear Cottle,

To pursue our last conversation. Christians expect no outward or sensible
miracles from prayer. Its effects, and its fruitions are spiritual, and
accompanied says that _true Divine_, Archbishop Leighton, 'not by reasons
and arguments, but by an inexpressible kind of evidence, which they only
know who have it.'

To this I would add, that even those who, like me I fear, have not
attained it, yet may presume it. First, because reason itself, or rather
mere human nature, in any dispassionate moment, feels the necessity of
religion, but if this be not true there is no religion, no religation, or
binding over again; nothing added to reason, and therefore _Socinianism_,
misnamed _Unitarianism_, is not only not _Christianity_, it is not even
_religion_, it does not _religate_; does not bind anew. The first outward
and sensible result of prayer is, a penitent resolution, joined with a
consciousness of weakness in effecting it, yea even a dread, too well
grounded, lest by breaking and falsifying it, the soul should add guilt
to guilt; by the very means it has taken to escape from guilt; so
pitiable is the state of unregenerate man.

Are you familiar with Leighton's Works? He resigned his archbishoprick,
and retired to voluntary poverty on account of the persecutions of the
Presbyterians, saying, 'I should not dare to introduce christianity
itself with such cruelties, how much less for a surplice, and the name of
a bishop.' If there could be an intermediate space between inspired, and
uninspired writings, that space would be occupied by Leighton. No show of
learning, no appearance, or ostentatious display of eloquence, and yet
both may be shown in him, conspicuously and holily. There is in him
something that must be felt, even as the scriptures must be felt.

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