[E] Dr. Wordsworth’s Memoir, page 53.
[F] Memoir, page 71-2.
[G] Chambers’ Papers for the People, article Wordsworth.
[H] Vol. 1, page 149 to 154.
[I] Memoirs, Vol. 1., page 156
[J] Dr. Wordsworth’s “Memoirs,” vol. 2, p. 94.
[K] “Memoirs,” vol. 2, p. 102-105.
[L] Memoirs, vol. ii., p. 121.
[M] This view of Coleridge is confirmed by Carlyle, in his “Life of John Sterling,” just published.
“Coleridge sat on the brow of Highgate-hill, in those years, looking down on London and its smoke tumult, like a sage escaped from the inanity of life’s battle; attracting towards him the thoughts of innumerable brave souls still engaged there. His express contributions to poetry, philosophy, or any specific province of human literature or enlightenment, had been small and sadly intermittent; but he had, especially among young inquiring men, a higher than literary,—a kind of prophetic, or magician character. He was thought to hold,—he alone in England,—the key of German and other transcendentalisms; knew the sublime secret of believing by ‘the reason’ what ‘the understanding’ had been obliged to fling out as incredible; and could still, after Hume and Voltaire had done their best and worst with him, profess himself an orthodox Christian, and say and point to the Church of England, with its singular old rubrics and surplices at Allhallowtide, Esto perpetua. * * * * He distinguished himself to all that ever heard him as at least the most surprising talker extant in this world,—and to some small minority, (by no means to all,) the most excellent. The good man, he was now getting old, towards sixty perhaps,—and gave you the idea of a life that had been full of sufferings; a life heavy-laden, half-vanquished, still swimming painfully in seas of manifold physical and other bewilderment. * * * * * I still recollect his ‘object’ and ‘subject,’ terms of continual recurrence in the Kantean province; and how he sung and snuffled them into ‘om-m-mject’ ‘sum-m-mject,’ with a kind of solemn shake or quaver, as he rolled along. No talk, in his century or in any other, could be more surprising.