He extolled Bishop Butler’s Sermons at the Rolls’ Chapel as full of thought and sound views of philosophy; and conceived that he had proved the love of piety and virtue to be as natural to the mind of man as the delight it receives from the colour of a rose or the smell of a lily. He spoke of the Analysis as theological special-pleading.
He had no opinion of Hume, and very idly disputed his originality. He said the whole of his argument on miracles was to be found stated (as an objection) somewhere in Barrow.
He said Thomson was a true poet, but an indolent one. He seldom wrote a good line, but he ‘rewarded resolution’ by following it up with a bad one. Cowper he regarded as the reformer of the Della Cruscan style in poetry, and the founder of the modern school.
Being asked which he thought the greater man, Milton or Shakspeare, he replied that he could hardly venture to pronounce an opinion—that Shakspeare appeared to him to have the strength, the stature of his rival, with infinitely more agility; but that he could not bring himself after all to look upon Shakspeare as any thing more than a beardless stripling, and that if he had ever arrived at man’s estate, he would not have been a man but a monster of intellect.
Being told that Mrs. Wolstonecraft exerted a very great ascendancy over the mind of her husband, he said—‘It was always the case: people of imagination naturally took the lead of people of mere understanding and acquirement.’ This was scarcely doing justice to the author of Caleb Williams.
He spoke of Mackintosh as deficient in original resources: he was neither the great merchant nor manufacturer of intellectual riches; but the ready warehouseman, who had a large assortment of goods, not properly his own, and who knew where to lay his hand on whatever he wanted. An argument which he had sustained for three hours together with another erudite person on some grand question of philosophy, being boasted of in Coleridge’s hearing as a mighty achievement, the latter bluntly answered—‘Had there been a man of genius among you, he would have settled the point in five minutes.’
Having been introduced to a well-known wit and professed jester, and his own silence being complained of, he said he should no more think of speaking where Mr. —— was present, than of interrupting an actor on the stage.
Mr. Coleridge preferred Salvator Rosa to Claude, therein erring. He however spoke eloquently and feelingly of pictures, where the subject-matter was poetical, and where ‘more was meant than met the eye.’ Thus he described the allegorical picture by Giotto in the cemetery at Pisa, the Triumph of Death, where the rich, the young, and the prosperous, are shrinking in horror and dismay from the grim monster; and the wretched, the cripple, and the beggar, are invoking his friendly aid, both in words and tones worthy of the subject. Mr. Coleridge’s was the only conversation we ever heard in which the ideas seemed set to music—it had the materials of philosophy and the sound of music; or if the thoughts were sometimes poor and worthless, the accompaniment was always fine.
He stated of Henderson, the actor, or some person of whom a very indifferent jest was repeated, that it was the strongest proof of his ability, and of the good things he must have said to make his bad ones pass current.
He characterised the Prometheus Bound of Æschylus, as being less a drama than an Ode to Justice.