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An Unpublished Poem, by Hartley Coleridge, with the following note by the editor:
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This early production of the late Hartley Coleridge may not be without interest, as it describes a state of social manners which is already passing away, in a style of composition which belongs in some measure to the past.
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Though all unknown to Greek and Roman song, The paler Hyson and the dark Souchong, Though black, not green, the warbled praises share Of knightly troubadour or gay _trouvère_. Yet deem not thou, an alien quite to numbers, That friend to prattle, and that foe to slumbers, Which Kian-Long, imperial poet praised So high that cent. per cent. its price was raised; Which Pope himself would sometimes condescend To plead commodious at a couplet's end; Which the sweet bard of Olney did not spurn, Who loved the music of the 'hissing urn,' Let her who bade me write, exact the Muse, Inspire my genius and my tea infuse, So shall my verse the hovering sylphs delight, And critic gnomes relinquish half their spite, Clear, warm and flowing as my liquid theme, As sweet as sugar and as smooth as cream.
gpt
What the poet really said is found in Book the Fourth of the
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Task.
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Now stir the fire, and close the shutters fast, Let fall the curtains, wheel the sofa round, And while the bubbling and loud-hissing urn Throws up a steamy column, and the cups That cheer, but not inebriate, wait on each, So let us welcome peaceful evening in.
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Bowles was in the habit of daily riding through a country turnpike-gate, and one day he presented his twopence to the gatekeeper as usual. 'What is that for, sir?' he asked. 'For my horse, of course.' 'But, sir, you have no horse.' 'Dear me!' exclaimed the astonished poet; 'am I walking?' Mrs. Moore also told me that Bowles gave her a Bible as a birthday present. She asked him to write her name in it; he did so, inscribing it to her as a gift--_From the Author_. 'I never,' said he, 'had but one watch, and I lost it the very first day I wore it.' Mrs. Bowles whispered to me, 'And if he got another to-day, he would lose it as quickly.' I met not long ago, near Salisbury, a gentleman farmer who had been one of his parishioners, and cherished an affectionate remembrance of the good parson. He told me one story of him that is worth recording: one day he had a dinner-party; the guests were kept waiting for the host; his wife went upstairs to see by what mischance he was delayed. She found him in a sad 'taking,' hunting everywhere for a silk stocking. After a minute search Mrs. Bowles found that he had put _the two stockings on one leg_! Once when his own house was pointed out to him, he could not by any possibility call to mind who lived there. --_Hall_,
gpt
With reference to the tea-drinking, of course there was such a thing as excess and indigestion--but nobody ever heard of a man kicking his wife to death because he had drunk tea; and no wife ever complained of her home being made unhappy through her husband drinking tea. There was not a judge on the bench who had not borne witness to the fact that drunkenness was an incentive to crime. When the judges began to admit that tea-drinking was increasing the criminal statistics of the country, then Mr. Ford could come forward with his amusing statement.
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As tea did not come into England until 1610, and coffee until 1652, beer or wine was taken at all meals. The queen would only take beer regularly. Her maids of honour breakfasted, or rather dined, off meat and beer. Single and double beers were on all tables. In the year 1570 the scholars of Trinity College, Cambridge, consumed 2250 barrels of beer, as appears from the State Papers of the time. Two tuns of wine a month were accredited to the suite of Mary Queen of Scots during her confinement in England. --