Gents Mag 1851 part 1 p.582
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Gentleman's Magazine 1851 part 1 p.582
The immediate result was such as might have been anticipated. He went to Oxford in his nineteenth year with no very accurate knowledge of Greek and Latin, therefore no match for Eton-trained scholars in competition for distinctions awarded according to Etonian standards, but with a mind full of original thoughts and general knowledge, and a rare gift of lively and eloquent discourse. "He would hold forth by the hour (for no one wished to interrupt him) on whatever subject might have been started, either of literature, politics, or religion, with an originality of thought, a force of illustration, and a facility and beauty of expression, which I question (says Mr. Dyce, writing in the year 1849) whether any man living except his father, could have surpassed." Whether the popularity at wine-parties which was the inevitable consequence of such a gift, interfered much with his reading during the first year or two of his residence, we are not informed. But in the summer of 1818, as we learn from Mr. C. H. Townshend (who then first met him, and has recorded his impressions in a long and interesting letter) he was certainly reading hard. At Michaelmas following he took a second class in in literis humanioribus; his deficiencies in what is exclusively, and somewhat arbitrarily, called "scholarship," sinking him below the place which his "talent and general knowledge" would have raised him. Soon after, he obtained an Oriel fellowship with great distinction; and it seems as if he were now honorable providied for, and as if the kindness of the friends by whose help he had been sent to college had received its best reward. Had it turned out so, it is probable that the brief outline which we have given of his school and college life might have been thought to contain all that needed to be remembered of it. It might not have been suspected that any material feature of his character remained unnoticed. But a fellow-elect of Oriel has to pass one year of probation, at the end of which, in case of misconduct, his election may be cancelled. At the close of this probationary year, Hartley Coleridge was judged to have forfeited his fellowship, "on the ground mainly of intemperance." Great efforts were made in vain at the time to get the decision reversed; and sever comments have been made upon it since. We have ourselves heard it confidently asserted by a very high and grave authority, - a man by no means given to think indulgently of intemperance, or suspiciously fo dignities, and one whom the question must have deeply interested at the time, - that the charge of intemperance was in fact a pretext only, and that the real offence was of quite another kind, less venial perhaps in the eyes of college authorities, though not so easily reached by their statutes, and, in the eyes of the world, no offence at all, - namely, an indiscreet freedom of speech with regard to University reforms. Upon this point we can only say that the narrative before us gives us no means of forming an opinion. We have no account either of the specific charges, or of the evidence, or of the answers. Judging, however, from the tenor of Hartley's subsequent life, we can hardly assume that he had been guilty of no irregularities which formed a fair pretext for rejecting him, and (remembering how just his views were, and how pungent his remarks, upon established institutions in general,) we can have little doubt that he had said many things extremely offensive to the ears of authority, though perhaps not on that account the less wholesome, had they been weighed and considered. But what, it will be asked, were these irregularities? And how did they come upon him? For hitherto we have heard of no evil tendencies of any kind. To this question neither his brother's recollections nor the evidence which he has collected from others, enable us to give a satisfactory answer. We cannot attach much weight to early manifestations of "intense sensibility" not under proper control; of "impatience of constraint;" of a disposition to "shrink from mental pain;" of occasional "paroxysms of rage, during which he bit his arm or finger violently;" of a proneness "to yield unconsciously to slight temptations, as if swayed by a mechanical impulse apart from his volition;" for not only are such infirmities incident more or less to the youth of all large and sensitive natures, but it does no |
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