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Note: This text has been automatically extracted via Optical Character Recognition (OCR) software. The text has not been manually corrected and should not be relied on to be an accurate representation of the item.
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philanthropist , it has seemed to create a purer atmosphere around , and redeemed many a rnomenjt from the common-place routine of mere matter-of-fact existence . To catch a glimpse of any one of these deified portions of humanity in the streets , has been sufficient to make the heart beat with doubled motion , and many a time has served to refresh the tired feet and send them on their
way rejoicing . And when Fortune has been so dear a friend as to bring the chance of seeing them face to face , —of hearing them speak , perchance , —of having a word or look that one might appropriate , ( selfish this , but so it has been , )—the head has grown dizzy at the thought , ' and has revelled in anticipation as blessed as must have been that of an ancient mythologist at the thought of a banquet with the gods . It was during a worshipful time like
this , upon a bright sunshiny spring morning , worthy such an announcement , that a friend said , Come to me next Tuesday , I am going to Charles Lamb ' s—Coleridge is to be there—and you shall go with me . ' My heart was 6 n its knees the next minute , and for the two or three intervening days I trod on air ; I lived in a dream of some coming good , at times mingled with the fear lest it should never arrive . It was not to see these objects of worship in a crowd , where I might , perchance , hear a word , or catch a
glimpse , as one does at the prime picture of an exhibition , between the chinks of people ' s bodies , but to see them for hours uninterruptedly ; to see them in the character of friends to each other , when there would be no influence of the world upon them ; to watch them , listen to them , without losing look or word ; to see Coleridge with the < Charles' of his sonnets , and the ' Mary '
of his songs ; to fill one ' s ears with the heart's talk of two poets , so much the purer for its being uncontaminated by the desire for fame . The time came nearer and nearer , and at last the very day , and I called for my kind pleasure purveyor , and we walked together to the well-remembered quaint-looking house by the canal , which had seen so many worthy of note pass along its banks , and , alas for the absent , one walk into itself instead , —one
of the generation who , in their moods of abstraction , ' know not their right hand from their left , ' nor unstable water from terra firmd . Rap at the door , with the heart beating quite as strongly ; open- —in—speaking in a whisper as if we had entered a cathedral . How difficult is it to give a faithful record of past impressions ! Since those days , old things have passed away , and all things are become new . ' I am not the same I that I was then ,
and the two I ' s encounter on the way and stare at one another in strange bewilderment . It is not with the facts themselves , but with the inferences drawn—iVom those facts , that change has been so busy . How he came , or when he came , or whether they were there when we entered , is all forgotten ; but I have them distinctly before me as if it were yesterday . Coleridge , with his clear , calm , blue eyes and expansive forehead ,- —his sweet , child-like , unruffled
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An Evening with Ch&rk * Lamb and Coleridge * 163
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Citation
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Monthly Repository (1806-1838) and Unitarian Chronicle (1832-1833), March 2, 1835, page 163, in the Nineteenth-Century Serials Edition (2008; 2018) ncse.ac.uk/periodicals/mruc/issues/vm2-ncseproduct2643/page/19/
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