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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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Untitled Article
The girl was i * i the earliest and freshest spring of youth s lovely and bright > with a somewhat careless and inconsiderate air , and she seemed but half inclined to heed the sage advice of he * elder companion . Sh& held in her hand a rose , with which 6 he was toying , and had she been alive you would have expected momentarily to see it taken between the taper fingers , and scattered in wilftxl profusion . Coleridge uttered an expression of admiration , and then , as if talking to himself , apostrophized in some such words as these : c There she stands , with the world all before her : to her it is as a fairy dream , a vision of unmingled joy . To her it is as is that lovely flower , which woos her by its bright hue and fragrant perfume . Poor child ! must thou too be reminded of the thorns that lurk beneath ? Turn thee to thy monitress ! she bids thee clasp not too closely pleasures that lure but to wound thee . Look into her eloquent eyes ; listen to her pleading voice ; her words are words of wisdom ; garner them rip in thy heart ; and when the evil days come , the days in which thou shalt say " 1 find no pleasure in them , " remember her as
thus she stood , and , with uppointing finger , bade thee think of the delights of heaven—that heaven which is ever ready to receive the returning wanderer to its rest . ' He spoke of the effect of different sounds upon his sensations ; said , of all the pains the sense of hearing ever-brought to him , that of the effect made by a dog belonging to some German conjurer was the greatest . The man . pretended that the dog would
answer , ' Ich bedanke mein herr / when , anything was g iven to it ; and the effort and contortion made by the dog to proauce the required sound , proved that the scourge , or some similar punishment , had been applied to effect it . In contrast to this was , the homage he rendered to the speaking voice of Mrs . Jordan , ojqt
which he expatiated in such rapturous terms , as if he had been indebted to it for a sixth sense . He said that it was the exquisite witchery of her tone that suggested an idea in his ' Remorse / that if Lucifer had had permission to retain his angel voice , hell would have been hell no longer . In the course of the evening the talented editor of the * Comic Annual' made his appearance .
He was then known only by his Hogarthian caricature of ' the Progress of Cant , ' upon which Coleridge complimented him . After some time he introduced many of his etchings , which were then unknown to the world , and they were the means of exciting in Coleridge the first genuine hearty laugh I had seen . If one had not admired entirely , it would have been enough to have
made him envied . Laugh after laugh followed as the square tablets ( trump cards in the pack of the genius of caricature ) were laid upon the table , and a merry game it was for all . The effect was not a little increased by the extreme quietude of
their master , who stood by without uttering a word , except with the corners of his mouth , where the rich fund of humour which
Untitled Article
Aft Evening with Charles Lamb and Coleridge . 167
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Citation
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Monthly Repository (1806-1838) and Unitarian Chronicle (1832-1833), March 2, 1835, page 167, in the Nineteenth-Century Serials Edition (2008; 2018) ncse.ac.uk/periodicals/mruc/issues/vm2-ncseproduct2643/page/23/
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