t, a
profound political speculator, a philosophic student of literature
through all its chambers and recesses, was also a circumnavigator on
the most pathless waters of scholasticism and metaphysics. He had
sounded, without guiding charts, the secret deeps of Proclus and
Plotinus; he had laid down buoys on the twilight, or moonlight, ocean
of Jacob Boehmen;[24] he had cruised over the broad Atlantic of Kant
and Schelling, of Fichte and Oken. Where is the man who shall be equal
to these things?

We at least make no such adventurous effort; or, if ever we should
presume to do so, not at present. Here we design only to make a
coasting voyage of survey round the headlands and most conspicuous
sea-marks of our subject, as they are brought forward by Mr Gillman,
or collaterally suggested by our own reflections; and especially we
wish to say a word or two on Coleridge as an opium-eater.

Naturally the first point to which we direct our attention, is the
history and personal relations of Coleridge. Living with Mr Gillman
for nineteen years as a domesticated friend, Coleridge ought to have
been known intimately. And it is reasonable to expect, from so much
intercourse, some additions to our slender knowledge of Coleridge's
adventures, (if we may use so coarse a word,) and of the secret
springs at work in those early struggles of Coleridge at Cambridge,
London, Bristol, which have been rudely told to the world, and
repeatedly told, as showy romances, but never rationally explained.

The anecdotes, however, which Mr Gillman has added to the personal
history of Coleridge, are as little advantageous to the effect of his
own book as they are to the interest of the memorable character which
he seeks to illustrate. Always they are told without grace, and
generally are suspicious in their details. Mr Gillman we believe to be
too upright a man for countenancing any untruth. He has been deceived.
For example, will any man believe this? A certain "excellent
equestrian" falling in with Coleridge on horseback, thus accosted
him--"Pray, sir, did you meet a tailor along the road?" "_A tailor_!"
answered Coleridge; "_I did meet a person answering such a
description, who told me he had dropped his goose; that if I rode a
little further I should find it; and I guess he must have meant you_."
In Joe Miller this story would read, perhaps, sufferably. Joe has a
privilege; and we do not look too narrowly into the mouth of a
Joe-Millerism. But Mr