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.