Samuel Taylor Coleridge
by Robert Hancock
1796
7 in. x 6 1/8 in. (178 mm x 156 mm)
NPG 452
Inscription
This portrait
Cottle wrote in his Early Recollections, 'This portrait of Mr Coleridge was taken by Mr Robert Hancock in crayons (afterwards fastened and varnished so as to have all the stability of oils). The likeness was much admired at the time, and has an additional interest from having been drawn when Mr C's spirits were in a state of depression on account of the failure of his "Watchman". The dress is precisely that which Mr Coleridge wore when he preached his first sermon, in Mr Jardine's chapel, at Bath' (Joseph Cottle, Early Recollections Chiefly Relating to the Late Samuel Taylor Coleridge in Bristol, 1837, xxxi). The drawing of Coleridge was one of a group with Southey, Wordsworth and Lamb, 'taken in the years when each of the writers published his first volume of Poems; and (as the only fair criticism) the fidelity of the copies to the originals, in those periods, was universally admitted' (ibid. xxxiii). Crabb Robinson saw them in Cottle's house in Bristol and wrote his impressions to Wordsworth in September 1836. Coleridge described himself at this time in a letter to John Thelwall, November 1796: 'my face, unless when animated by eloquence, expresses great sloth, and great, indeed almost idiotic good-nature. 'Tis a mere carcass of a face, fat, flabby and expressive chiefly of inexpression'
Kubla Khan
In Xanadu did Kubla Khan
A stately pleasure-dome decree :
Where Alph, the sacred river, ran
Through caverns measureless to man
Down to a sunless sea.
So twice five miles of fertile ground
With walls and towers were girdled round :
And there were gardens bright with sinuous rills,
Where blossomed many an incense-bearing tree ;
And here were forests ancient as the hills,
Enfolding sunny spots of greenery.
But oh ! that deep romantic chasm which slanted
Down the green hill athwart a cedarn cover !
A savage place ! as holy and enchanted
As e'er beneath a waning moon was haunted
By woman wailing for her demon-lover !
And from this chasm, with ceaseless turmoil seething,
As if this earth in fast thick pants were breathing,
A mighty fountain momently was forced :
Amid whose swift half-intermitted burst
Huge fragments vaulted like rebounding hail,
Or chaffy grain beneath the thresher's flail :
And 'mid these dancing rocks at once and ever
It flung up momently the sacred river.
Five miles meandering with a mazy motion
Through wood and dale the sacred river ran,
Then reached the caverns measureless to man,
And sank in tumult to a lifeless ocean :
And 'mid this tumult Kubla heard from far
Ancestral voices prophesying war !
The shadow of the dome of pleasure
Floated midway on the waves ;
Where was heard the mingled measure
From the fountain and the caves.
It was a miracle of rare device,
A sunny pleasure-dome with caves of ice !
A damsel with a dulcimer
In a vision once I saw :
It was an Abyssinian maid,
And on her dulcimer she played,
Singing of Mount Abora.
Could I revive within me
Her symphony and song,
To such a deep delight 'twould win me,
That with music loud and long,
I would build that dome in air,
That sunny dome ! those caves of ice !
And all who heard should see them there,
And all should cry, Beware ! Beware !
His flashing eyes, his floating hair !
Weave a circle round him thrice,
And close your eyes with holy dread,
For he on honey-dew hath fed,
And drunk the milk of Paradise.
