And drunk the milk of Paradise.[47]
Madame de Staël was by no means pleased with her intercourse with him, saying spitefully and feelingly, “M. Coleridge a un grand talent pour le monologue” (“Mr. Coleridge has a great talent for monologue”).
Caroline Fox’s Journals.
Here we have different views of Coleridge’s monologues. Mme. de Staël objected to his monopolizing the conversation, but his friends loved to hear him. Lamb, of course, had to have his joke.
Where is the use of the lip’s red charm,
The heaven of hair, the pride of the brow,
And the blood that blues the inside arm—
Unless we turn, as the soul knows how,
The earthly gift to an end divine?