FROM
A YOUNG ENGLISHMAN'S JOURNAL :
(Germany: Godesberg-on-Rhine, July 1828 )
(The Coleridge Bulletin New Series No 1, (Winter 1992-93) p. 27)
..."I had scarcely entered the room and was trying to
improve a bad sketch I had made the day before when an old gentleman entered,
with a large quarto volume beneath his arm, whom I at once concluded to be one
of the anonymous gentry about whose personality there had been so much mystery.
As he entered, I rose and bowed. Whether he was conscious of my
well-intentioned civility I cannot say, but at all events he did not return my
salutation. I began to conjecture what manner of man he was. His general
appearance would have led me to suppose him a dissenting minister. His hair was
long, white, and neglected; his complexion was florid, his features were
square, his eyes watery and hazy, his brow broad and massive, his build
uncouth, his deportment grave and abstracted. He wore a white starchless
neckcloth tied in a limp bow, and was dressed in a shabby suit of dusky black.
His breeches were unbuttoned at the knee, his sturdy limbs were encased in
stockings of lavender-coloured worsted, his feet were thrust into well-worn
slippers, much trodden down at heel. In his ungainly attire he paced up and
down, and down and up, and round and round a saloon sixty feet square, with
head bent forward, and shoulders stooping, absently musing, and muttering to
himself, and occasionally clutching to his side his ponderous tome, as if he
feared it might be taken from him. I confess my young spirit chafed under the
wearing quarter-deck monotony of his promenade, and, stung by the cool manner
in which he ignored my presence, I was about to leave him in undisputed
possession of the field, when I was diverted from my purpose by the entrance of
another gentleman, whose kindly smile, and courteous recognition of my bow,
encouraged me to keep my ground, and promised me some compensation for the
slight put upon me by his precursor. He was dressed in a brown-holland blouse;
he held in his left hand an alpenstock (on the top of which he had placed the
broad-brimmed 'wide-awake' he had just taken off), and in his right a spring of
apple-blossom overgrown with lichen. His cheeks were glowing with the effects
of recent exercise. So noiseless had been his entry, that the peripatetic
philosopher, whose back was turned to him at first, was unaware of his
presence. But no sooner did he discover it than he shuffled up to him, grasped
him by both hands, and backed him bodily into a neighbouring arm-chair. Having
secured him safely there, he 'made assurance doubly sure,' by hanging over him,
so as to bar his escape, while he delivered his testimony on the fallacy of
certain of Bishop Berkeley's propositions, in detecting which, -he said, he had
opened up a rich vein of original reflection. Not content with cursory
criticism, he plunged profoundly into a metaphysical lecture, which, but for
the opportune intrusion of our fair hostess and her young lady friend, might
have lasted until dinner time. It was then, for the first time, I learned who
the party consisted of; and I was introduced to Samuel Taylor Coleridge,
William Wordsworth, and his daughter Dora."
The Journal of Julian Charles Young, in A Memoir of Charles
Mayne Young, by Julian Charles Young (Macmillan. 1871) pp.116-7.