Brow and head were
round and of massive weight, but the face was flabby and
irresolute. The deep eyes, of a light hazel, were as full of
sorrow as of inspiration, confused pain looked mildly from them,
as in a kind of mild astonishment. The whole figure and air,
good and amiable otherwise, might be called flabby and
irresolute, expressive of weakness under possibility of
strength . . . a heavy-laden, high-aspiring, and surely much
suffering man."
*Carlyle.
And yet to this broken-down giant men crowded eagerly to hear him
talk. Never, perhaps, since the great Sam had held his court had
such a talker been heard. And although there was no Boswell near
to make these conversations live again, the poet's nephew, Henry
Nelson Coleridge, gathered some of his sayings together into a
book which he called Table Talk. With his good friends Coleridge
spent all his remaining life from 1816 till 1834, when he died.
Meanwhile his children and his home were left to the care of
others. And when Coleridge threw off his home ties and duties it
was upon Southey that the burden chiefly fell.
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