persons on this earth, in himself, in Plato
(as many suppose), and in Schelling, viz., the utmost expansion and in
some paths the utmost depths of the searching intellect with the utmost
sensibility to the powers and purposes of Art: whilst, as a creator in
Art, he had pretensions which neither Plato nor Schelling could make.
His powers as a Psychologist (not as a Metaphysician) seem to me
absolutely unrivalled on earth. And had his health been better, so as
to have sustained the natural cheerfulness towards which his nature
tended, had his pecuniary embarrassments been even moderately lightened
in their pressure, and had his studies been more systematically directed
to one end--my conviction is that he would have left a greater
philosophic monument of his magnificent mind than Aristotle, or Lord
Bacon, or Leibnitz.

With these feelings as to the pretensions of Coleridge, I am not likely
to underrate anything which he did. But a thing may be very difficult to
do, very splendid when done, and yet false in its principles, useless in
its results, memorable perhaps by its impression at the time, and yet
painful on the whole to a thoughtful retrospect. In dancing it is but
too common that an intricate _pas seul_, in funambulism that a dangerous
feat of equilibration, in the Grecian art of _desultory_ equitation
(where a single rider governs a plurality of horses by passing from one
to another) that the flying contest with difficulty and peril, may
challenge an anxiety of interest, may bid defiance to the possibility of
inattention, and yet, after all, leave the jaded spectator under a sense
of distressing tension given to his faculties. The sympathy is with the
difficulties attached to the effort and the display, rather than with
any intellectual sense of power and skill genially unfolded under
natural excitements. It would be idle to cite Madame de Stael's remark
on one of these meteoric exhibitions, viz., that Mr. Coleridge possessed
the art of monologue in perfection, but not that of the dialogue; yet it
comes near to hitting the truth from her point of view. The habit of
monologue which Coleridge favoured lies open to three fatal objections:
1. It is antisocial in a case expressly meant by its final cause for the
triumph of sociality; 2. It refuses all homage to women on an arena
expressly dedicated to their predominance; 3. It is essentially fertile
in _des longueurs_. Could there be imagined a trinity of treasons
agai