ed in a delightful sentence:

For one mercy I owe thanks beyond all utterance--that, with all my
gastric and bowel distempers, my head hath ever been like the head
of a mountain in blue air and sunshine.

It is to be feared that Coleridge's "gastric and bowel distempers" had
more effect on his head than he was aware of. Like other men, he often
spoke out of a heart full of grievances. He uttered the bitterness of an
unhappily married dyspeptic when he said: "The most happy marriage I can
picture or image to myself would be the union of a deaf man to a blind
woman." It is amusing to reflect that one of the many books which he
wished to write was "a book on the duties of women, more especially to
their husbands." One feels, again, that in his defence of the egoism of
the great reformers, he was apologizing for a vice of his own rather than
making an impersonal statement of truth. "How can a tall man help thinking
of his size," he asked, "when dwarfs are constantly standing on tiptoe
beside him?" The personal note that occasionally breaks in upon the
oracular rhythm of the _Table Talk_, however, is a virtue in literature,
even if a lapse in philosophy. The crumbs of a great man's autobiography
are no less precious than the crumbs of his wisdom. There are moods in
which one prefers his egotism to his great thoughts. It is pleasant to
hear Coleridge boasting; "The _Ancient Mariner_ cannot be imitated, nor
the poem _Love_. _They may be excelled; they are not imitable._" One is
amused to know that he succeeded in offending Lamb on one occasion by
illustrating "the cases of vast genius in proportion to talent and the
predominance of talent in conjunction with genius in the persons of Lamb
and himself." It is amusing, too, to find that, while Wordsworth regarded
_The Ancient Mariner_ as a dangerous drag on the popularity of _Lyrical
Ballads_, Coleridge looked on his poem as the feature that had sold the
greatest number of the copies of the book. It is only fair to add that in
taking this view he spoke not self-complacently, but humorously:

I was told by Longmans that the greater part of the _Lyrical
Ballads_ had been sold to seafaring men, who, having heard of the
_Ancient Mariner_, concluded that it was a naval song-book, or, at
all events, that it had some relation to nautical matters.

Of autobiographical confessions there are not so many in _Table Talk_ as
one would like. At the same time, ther