means
obliterated, of great beauty in youth, her expression somewhat severe,
yet gracious in manner and generous in words. She had been the honored
associate of many of the most intellectual men and women of the age; and
not a few of them were her familiar friends.[J]

Whenever it was my privilege to be admitted to the evening meetings at
Highgate, I met some of the men who were then famous, and have since
become parts of the literature of England.

I attended one of the lectures delivered by Coleridge at the Royal
Institution, and I strive to recall him as he stood before his audience.
There was but little animation; his theme did not seem to stir him into
life; even the usual repose of his countenance was rarely broken up; he
used little or no action; and his voice, though mellifluous, was
monotonous: he lacked, indeed, that earnestness without which no man is
truly eloquent.

At the time I speak of, he was growing corpulent and heavy: being seldom
free from pain, he moved apparently with difficulty, yet liked to walk
up and down and about the room as he talked, pausing now and then as if
oppressed by suffering.

I need not say that I was a silent listener during the evenings at
Highgate to which I have referred, when there were present some of those
who now "rule us from their urns"; but I was free to gaze on the
venerable man,--one of the humblest, but one of the most fervid,
perhaps, of the worshippers by whom he was surrounded,--and to treasure
in memory the poet's gracious and loving looks, the "thick, waving,
silver hair," the still, clear, blue eye; and on such occasions I used
to leave him as if I were in a waking dream, trying to recall, here and
there, a sentence of the many weighty and mellifluous sentences I had
heard,--seldom with success,--and feeling at the moment as if I had been
surfeited with honey.

The portrait of Coleridge is best drawn by his friend Wordsworth, and it
sufficiently pictures him:--

"A noticeable man, with large, gray eyes,
And a _pale_ face, that seemed undoubtedly
As if a _blooming_ face it ought to be;
Heavy his low-hung lip did oft appear,
Depressed by weight of moving phantasy;
Profound his forehead was, though not severe."

Wordsworth elsewhere speaks of him as "the brooding poet with the
heavenly eyes," and as, "often too much in love with his own dejection."
The earliest word-portrait we have of him was drawn by Wordsworth's
sister in 179