S. T. COLERIDGE.
Shrewsbury.
Coleridge, even at this date, shows signs of a Catholicism in literary taste beyond the average man of his time; but it is an Intellectual Hospitality to all sorts and conditions of minds and men rather than a wide or deep enlightenment.
He already manifested a tendency to read the most abstruse and out-of-the-way books. He commissioned Thelwall to purchase for him Iamblichus, Proclus, Sidonius Apollinaris, Plotinus, Ficino; and he read Dupuis' huge "Origine de tous les Cultes", a fantastic work tracing the genesis of all religions to the worship of the stars ("Letters", 181-2). This love of recondite lore remained with him through life; but it was his meeting with William and Dorothy Wordsworth that helped most at this juncture to develop the possibilities within him. Wordsworth was one of those who are lofty rather than wide, but who, by their self concentration, act as a healthy corrective to the over-diffusiveness of the Shakespearian type of mind.)