I have felt since then
Of thrice three hundred thousand men."

Not that we insinuate any disrespect to Sir Alexander Ball. He was
about the foremost, we believe, in all good qualities, amongst
Nelson's admirable captains at the Nile. He commanded a seventy-four
most effectually in that battle; he governed Malta as well as Sancho
governed Barataria; and he was a true practical philosopher--as,
indeed, was Sancho. But still, by all that we could ever learn, Sir
Alexander had no taste for the abstract upon any subject; and would
have read, as mere delirious wanderings, those philosophic opinions
which Coleridge fastened like wings upon his respectable, but
astounded, shoulders.

We really beg pardon for having laughed a little at these crazes of
Coleridge. But laugh we did, of mere necessity, in those days, at Bell
and Ball, whenever we did not groan. And, as the same precise
alternative offered itself now, viz., that, in recalling the case, we
must reverberate either the groaning or the laughter, we presumed the
reader would vote for the last. Coleridge, we are well convinced, owed
all these wandering and exaggerated estimates of men--these diseased
impulses, that, like the _mirage_, showed lakes and fountains where
in reality there were only arid deserts, to the derangements worked by
opium. But now, for the sake of change, let us pass to another topic.
Suppose we say a word or two on Coleridge's accomplishments as a
scholar. We are not going to enter on so large a field as that of his
scholarship in connexion with his philosophic labours, scholarship in
the result; not this, but scholarship in the means and machinery,
range of _verbal_ scholarship, is what we propose for a moment's
review.

For instance, what sort of a German scholar was Coleridge? We dare say
that, because in his version of the _Wallenstein_ there are some
inaccuracies, those who may have noticed them will hold him cheap in
this particular pretension. But, to a certain degree, they will be
wrong. Coleridge was not _very_ accurate in any thing but in the use
of logic. All his philological attainments were imperfect. He did not
talk German; or so obscurely--and, if he attempted to speak fast, so
erroneously--that in his second sentence, when conversing with a
German lady of rank, he contrived to assure her that in his humble
opinion she was a ----. Hard it is to fill up the hiatus decorously;
but, in fact, the word very coarsely expressed that she