by Coleridge · Cluster: Friendship · Tears
Abstract
A witty epigram dividing friends into ac-, con- and in-quaintance (from his child’s coinage) plus a fragment on inward beauty of womanhood; friendship and grace.
Connections
Themes & Concepts: Friendship, Romantic Love, Beauty, Maturation and Growth Forms & Genres: Epigram
Testo integrale / Full text
Though friendships differ endless in degree,
The sorts, methinks, may be reduced to three.
Acquaintance many, and Conquaintance few;
But for Inquaintance I know only two —
The friend I’ve mourned with, and the maid I woo!
MY DEAR GILLMAN — The
ground
and
matériel
of
this
division
of
one’s
friends into ac, con and inquaintance, was given by Hartley
Coleridge when he was scarcely five years old . On some one asking
him if Anny Sealy (a little girl he went to school with) was an
acquaintance of his, he replied, very fervently pressing his right hand
on his heart, ‘No, she is an inquaintance!’ ‘Well! ‘tis a father’s
tale’; and the recollection soothes your old friend and inquaintance,
S. T. COLERIDGE.
Undated. First published in Fraser’s Magazine for Jan. 1835, Art.
Coleridgeiana, p. 54. First collected 1893.
If fair by Nature
She honours the fair Boon with fair adorning,
And graces that bespeak a gracious breeding,
Can gracious Nature lessen Nature’s Graces?
If taught by both she betters both and honours
Fair gifts with fair adorning, know you not
There is a beauty that resides within; —
A fine and delicate spirit of womanhood
Of inward birth? —
Now first published from an MS.