eedingly graphic, cynical, and amusing account of the
oracular meetings at Highgate, where the philosopher sat in his great
easy-chair, surrounded by his disciples and devotees, uttering, amid
floods of unintelligible, mystic eloquence, those radiant thoughts and
startling truths which warrant his claim to genius, if not to
greatness. It is curious to observe how at this early period of
Carlyle's life, when all the talent and learning of England bowed at
these levees before the gigantic speculator and dreamer, he, perhaps
alone, stood aloof from the motley throng of worshippers,--_with_
them, but not _of_ them,--coolly analyzing every sentence
delivered by the oracle, and sufficiently learned in the divine lore
to separate the gold from the dross. What was good and productive he
was ready to recognize and assimilate; leaving the opium pomps and
splendors of the discourse, and all the Oriental imagery with which
the speaker decorated his bathos, to those who could find profit
therein. It is still more curious and sorrowful to see this great
Coleridge, endowed with such high gifts, of so various learning, and
possessing so marvellous and plastic a power over all the forms of
language, forsaking the true for the false inspiration, and relying
upon a vile drug to stimulate his large and lazy intellect into
action. Carlyle seems to have regarded him at this period as a sort of
fallen demigod; and although he sneers, with an almost Mephistophelean
distortion of visage, at the philosopher's half inarticulate drawling
of speech, at his snuffy, nasal utterance of the ever-recurring
"_omnject_" and "_sumnject_" yet gleams of sympathy and
affection, not unmixed with sorrow, appear here and there in what he
says concerning him. And indeed, although the immense fame of
Coleridge is scarcely warranted by his printed performances, he was,
nevertheless, worthy both of affection and homage. For whilst we pity
the weakness and disease of his moral nature, under the influence of
that dark and terribly enchanting weed, we cannot forget either his
personal amiabilities or the great service which he rendered to
letters and to society. Carlyle himself would be the last man to deny
this laurel to the brows of "the poet, the philosopher, and the
divine," as Charles Lamb calls him; and it is certain that the
thinking of Coleridge helped to fashion Carlyle's mind, and not
unlikely that it directed him to a profounder study of German writers
than