“The Opium-eater calls Coleridge ‘the largest and most spacious intellect, the subtlest and most comprehensive that has yet existed among men.’ Impiety to Shakespeare! treason to Milton! I give up the rest, even Bacon. Certainly, since their day, we have seen nothing at all comparable to him. Byron and Scott were but as gun-flints to a granite mountain; Wordsworth has one angle of resemblance; Southey has written more, and all well, much admirably.…
“Let me add a few verses as usual:—
‘Pleasures—away, they please no more:
Friends—are they what they were before?
Loves—they are very idle things,
The best about them are their wings.
The dance—’tis what the bear can do;
Music—I hate your music too.
Whene’er these witnesses that time
Hath snatch’d the chaplet from our prime