r Highgate one
day, a "loose, slack, not well-dressed youth" was introduced to him:

It was Keats. He was introduced to me, and stayed a minute or so.
After he had left us a little way, he came back, and said: "Let me
carry away the memory, Coleridge, of having pressed your hand!"
"There is death in that hand," I said to ----, when Keats was gone;
yet this was, I believe, before the consumption showed itself
distinctly.

Another famous anecdote relates to the time at which Coleridge, like
Wordsworth, carried the fires of the French Revolution about him into the
peace of the West Country. Speaking of a fellow-disciple of the liberty of
those days, Coleridge afterwards said:

John Thelwall had something very good about him. We were once
sitting in a beautiful recess in the Quantocks, when I said to him:
"Citizen John, this is a fine place to talk treason in!" "Nay!
Citizen Samuel," replied he, "it is rather a place to make a man
forget that there is any necessity for treason!"

Is there any prettier anecdote in literary history?

Besides the impersonal wisdom and the personal anecdotes of the _Table
Talk_, however, there are a great number of opinions which show us
Coleridge not as a seer, but as a "character"--a crusty gentleman, every
whit as ready to express an antipathy as a principle. He shared Dr.
Johnson's quarrel with the Scots, and said of them:

I have generally found a Scotchman with a little literature very
disagreeable. He is a superficial German or a dull Frenchman. The
Scotch will attribute merit to people of any nation rather than the
English.

He had no love for Jews, or Dissenters, or Catholics, and anticipated
Carlyle's hostility to the emancipation of the negroes. He raged against
the Reform Bill, Catholic Emancipation, and the education of the poor in
schools. He was indignant with Belgium for claiming national independence.
One cannot read much of his talk about politics without amazement that so
wise a man should have been so frequently a fool. At the same time, he
generally remained an original fool. He never degenerated into a mere
partisan. He might be deceived by reactionary ideals, but he was not taken
in by reactionary leaders. He was no more capable than Shelley of
mistaking Castlereagh for a great man, and he did not join in the
glorification of Pitt. Like Dr. Johnson, he could be a Tory without
feeling that it was necessary