nsfiguration of Bell, gradually Coleridge heated himself to such an
extent, that people, when referring to that subject, asked each other:
"Have you heard Coleridge lecture on _Bel and the Dragon_?"

The next man glorified by Coleridge was John Woolman, the Quaker. Him,
though we once possessed his works, it cannot be truly affirmed that
we ever read. Try to read John, we often did; but read John we did
not. This however, you say, might be our fault, and not John's. Very
likely. And we have a notion that now, with our wiser thoughts, we
_should_ read John, if he were here on this table. It is certain that
he was a good man, and one of the earliest in America, if not in
Christendom, who lifted up his hand to protest against the
slave-trade. But still, we suspect, that had John been all that
Coleridge represented, he would not have repelled us from reading his
travels in the fearful way that he did. But, again, we beg pardon, and
entreat the earth of Virginia to lie light upon the remains of John
Woolman; for he was an Israelite, indeed, in whom there was no guile.

The third person raised to divine honours by Coleridge was Bowyer, the
master of Christ's Hospital, London--a man whose name rises into the
nostrils of all who knew him with the gracious odour of a
tallow-chandler's melting-house upon melting day, and whose memory is
embalmed in the hearty detestation of all his pupils. Coleridge
describes this man as a profound critic. Our idea of him is different.
We are of opinion that Bowyer was the greatest villain of the
eighteenth century. We may be wrong; but we cannot be _far_ wrong.
Talk of knouting indeed! which we did at the beginning of this paper
in the mere playfulness of our hearts--and which the great master of
the knout, Christopher, who visited men's trespasses like the
Eumenides, never resorted to but in love for some great idea which had
been outraged; why, this man knouted his way through life, from bloody
youth up to truculent old age. Grim idol! whose altars reeked with
children's blood, and whose dreadful eyes never smiled except as the
stern goddess of the Thugs smiles, when the sound of human
lamentations inhabits her ears. So much had the monster fed upon this
great idea of "flogging," and transmuted it into the very nutriment of
his heart, that he seems to have conceived the gigantic project of
flogging all mankind; nay worse, for Mr Gillman, on Coleridge's
authority, tells us (p. 24) the followin