He was an ever-enduring, ever-loving friend, The most engaging home-companion. O framed for calmer times and nobler hearts! Philosopher contemning wealth and death, Here, on this monumental stone thy friends inscribe thy worth. A light has passed away from the earth. ibi Cor S. T. C. Coleridge has left three children; namely, two sons, Hartley and Derwent, and one daughter, Sara. Hartley is like his father, a man of letters, and has published a volume of poems. Derwent is in holy orders, and is married and settled in the west of England. Sara is married to her cousin, Mr. Henry Nelson Coleridge, author of Six Months in the West Indies, published in the Family Library. Mrs. Coleridge, the poet's widow, is living with her brother and sister, Mr. and Mrs. Southey, at their mansion, in the north of England. APPENDIX. COLERIDGE'S WILL. Highgate, Sept. 17th, 1829. THIS is the last will of me, Samuel Taylor Coleridge. I hereby give and bequeath to Joseph Henry Green, of Lincoln's Inn Fields, Surgeon, all my books, manuscripts, and personal estates and effects whatsoever, (except the pictures and engravings hereinafter bequeathed) upon trust, to sell and dispose of such part thereof, as shall not consist of money, according to his discretion, and to invest the produce thereof; and also all money which I may leave at my death, and that shall be due to me from the Equitable Assurance Office, or elsewhere, in the public funds, in the name of the said Joseph Henry Green; and he shall pay the dividends of the stock to be purchased therewith to my wife, Sarah Coleridge, during her life, and after her death pay the same dividends to my daughter, Sara Coleridge, she being unmarried, and as long as she shall remain single. But if my daughter, Sara Coleridge, shall before or at the time of my death have married, (unless, indeed, she, which may the Almighty in his mercy forefend, should be left a widow, wholly unprovided for by her husband's will and property, or otherwise, in which case the former disposition of this testament is to revive and take place) I then give the dividends of the stock purchased to be equally divided between my three children,-Hartley Coleridge, the Rev. Derwent Coleridge, and the aforesaid Sara Coleridge; or if one of these my three children should die, then to be equally divided between the two survivors, and the whole dividend of the stock to be paid to the last survivor. Still it is, however, that each of the three, namely, Hartley and Derwent, and my daughter Sara, should retain the right and power each of bequeathing the third part of the principal, after the death of the last survivor, according to his or her pleasure. And my will is that, notwithstanding any thing herein and before contained, and it is my desire, that my friend, Mr. Joseph Henry Green, shall, in lieu of selling my books, have the option of purchasing the same at such price as he shall himself determine, inasmuch as their chief value will be dependent on his possession of them. Nevertheless, it is my will that, in case the said Joseph Henry Green should think it expedient to publish any of the notes or writings made by me in the same books, or any of them, or to publish any other manuscripts or writings of mine, or any other letters of mine, which should be hereafter collected from, or supplied by my friends and correspondents, then my will is that the proceeds, and all benefits accruing therefrom, shall be subject to the same trusts, and be paid to or amongst such persons as shall be entitled to my said personal estate, hereinafter bequeathed. The pictures and engravings belonging to me, in the house of my dear friends, James and Ann Gillman, (my more than friends, the guardians of my health, happiness, and interests, during the fourteen years of my life that I have enjoyed the proofs of their constant, zealous, and disinterested affection, as an inmate and member of their family), I give and bequeath to Ann Gillman, the wife of my dear friend, my love for whom, and my sense of unremitted goodness, and never-wearied kindness to me, I hope, and humbly trust, will follow me as a part of my abiding being, in that state into which I hope to rise, through the merits and mediation, and by the efficacious power of the Son of God incarnate, in the blessed Jesus, whom I believe in my heart, and confess with my mouth, to have been, from everlasting, the way and the truth, and to have become man, that for fallen and sinful men he might be the resurrection and the life. And, further, I hereby tell my children Hartley, Derwent, and Sara, that I have but little to leave them, but I hope, and indeed confidently believe, that they will regard it as a part of their inheritance, when I thus bequeath to them my affection and gratitude to Mr. and Mrs. Gillman, and to the dear friend, the companion, partner, and helpmate of my worthiest studies, Mr. Joseph Henry Green. Further, to Mr. Gillman, as the most expressive way in which I can mark my relation to him, and in remembrance of a great and good man, revered by us both, I leave the manuscript volume lettered Arist. Manuscript—Brids, Achamians, Knights, presented to me by my dear friend and patron, the Right Honourable John Hookman Frere, who, of all the men that I have had the means of knowing during my life, appears to me eminently to deserve to be characterized as ὁ καλὸκ' αγάθος ο φιλόκαλος. To Mr. Frere, himself, I can only bequeath my assurance, grounded on a faith equally precious to him as to me, of a continuance of those prayers which I have for many years offered for his temporal and spiritual wellbeing. And further, in remembrance that it was under his (Mr. Gillman's) roof I enjoyed so many hours of delightful and profitable communion with Mr. J. H. Frere, it is my wish that this volume should, after the demise of James Gillman, senior, belong, and I do hereby bequeath the same, to James Gillman, junior, in' the hope that it will remain as an heirloom in the Gillman family. On revising this, my will, there seemed at first some reason to apprehend that in the disposition of my books, as above determined, I might have imposed on my executor a too delicate office. But, on the other hand, the motive, from the peculiar character of the books, is so evident, and the reverential sense which all my children entertain of Mr. Green's character, both as the personal friend of their father, and as the man most intimate with their father's intellectual labours, purposes, and aspirations, I believe to be such as will, I trust, be sufficient to preclude any delicacy that might result from the said disposition. To my daughter Sara Coleridge, exemplary in all the relations of life in which she hath been placed, a blessing to both her parents, and to her mother the rich reward which the anxious fulfilment of her maternal duties had, humanly speaking, merited, I bequeath the presentation copy of the Georgica Heptaglotta given me by my highlyrespected friend, William Sotheby, Esq. And it is my wish that Sara should never part with this volume; but that, if she should marry, and should have a daughter, it may descend to her, or if daughters, to her eldest daughter, as a memento that her mother's accomplishments, and her unusual attainments in ancient and modern languages, were not so much or so justly the object of admiration, as their co-existence with piety, simplicity, and a characteristic meekness; in short, with mind, manners, and character so perfectly feminine. And for this purpose I have recorded this my wish, in the same or equivalent words, on the first title-page of this splendid work. |