of her husband and family. Possessing none, even of the most common
female accomplishments of her day, she had neither love nor sympathy for
the display of them in others. She disliked, as she would say, "your
harpsichord ladies," and strongly tried to impress on her sons their
little value, in their choice of wives. As a clergyman's wife her
conduct was exemplary; the father of my friend had a fortune in such a
woman, and she found in him, with all his peculiarities, a kind, sweet
tempered, engaging husband. She was, I should add, a very good woman,
though like Martha, over careful in many things, very ambitious for the
advancement of her sons in life, but wanting perhaps that flow of heart
which her husband possessed so largely. But "imperfection cleaves to
mortality." Such, as given in this brief sketch, were the parents of the
subject of this memoir. [3]

I have heard Coleridge relate the following anecdote of his father. The
old gentleman had to take a short journey on some professional business,
which would detain him from home for three or four days: his good wife,
in her care and watchfulness, had packed a few things in a small trunk,
and gave them in charge to her husband, with strong injunctions that he
was to put on a clean shirt every day. On his return home, his wife went
to search for his linen, when, to her dismay, it was not in the trunk. A
closer search, however, discovered that the vicar had strictly obeyed
her injunctions, and had put on daily a clean shirt, but had forgotten
to remove the one underneath. This might have been the pleasantest and
most portable mode of carrying half a dozen shirts in winter, but not so
in the dog-days.

As a preacher, he was peculiar: it is said, that the poor idolized, and
looked upon him with great reverence; and when death removed this
distinguished and eminent scholar from among them, his successor had