Coleridge’s facetiousness was very peculiar. It seemed like some gay flashing exotic which sprung out of, or was rather thrown out by, a dark heavy mould that seemed only calculated to bear lofty and umbrageous trees. The poem of “The Devil’s Thoughts,”
From his brimstone bed at break of day, A walking the Devil is gone. |
| COLERIDGE. | 313 |
“But we don’t hear a word of a couple of wives!” |
I remember one of his pleasant stories, told con gusto, like that of his reading “Remorse” with Mr. Kinnaird, of a school performance of a drama on the breaking-up day, in which he played a part. Unluckily the character demanded a laugh, which the juvenile actor delivered thus, “ha! ha! ha! ha!” with due pause and emphasis of indiscretion between every ha! His father called out “laugh—laugh,” upon which he repeated the ha’s more emphatically than before, when the incensed pedagogue rushed upon the stage, and, cuffing the unfortunate performer, cried, “Laugh, Sir, laugh; why don’t you laugh?” to which the only response was the “hah, hah, hah’s,” with bursts of crying between, and certainly, at last, amid the uncontrollable laughter of the audience. It was a treat to hear the old man eloquent, with his sonorous voice and glittering eye, tell and act this juvenile tale, and compare himself to the boy in the Lupercalian sacrifice who was obliged to laugh when the priest pricked his forehead with the knife reeking with the blood of the victim goat.
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