It came
with the descent of Samuel Taylor Coleridge upon Shrewsbury, to take
over the charge of a Unitarian Congregation there.
He did not come till late on the Saturday afternoon before he was to
preach; and Mr. Rowe [the abdicating minister], who himself went
down to the coach in a state of anxiety and expectation to look for
the arrival of his successor, could find no one at all answering the
description, but a round-faced man, in a short black coat (like a
shooting-jacket) which hardly seemed to have been made for him, but
who seemed to be talking at a great rate to his fellow-passengers.
Mr. Rowe had scarce returned to give an account of his
disappointment when the round-faced man in black entered, and
dissipated all doubts on the subject by beginning to talk. He did
not cease while he stayed; nor has he since.
Of his meeting with Coleridge, and of the soul's awakening that
followed, Hazlitt has left an account (My First Acquaintance with
Poets) that will fascinate so long as English prose is read.
'Somehow that period [the time just after the French Revolution] was
not a time when NOTHING WAS GIVEN FOR NOTHING. The mind opened, and
a softness might be perceived coming over the heart of individuals
beneath "the scales that fence" our self-interest.' As Wordsworth
wrote:
Bliss was it in that dawn to be alive,
But to be young was very Heaven.
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