rote for effect, and whose aim was scorn. "Coleridge is
lecturing. 'Many an old fool,' said Hannibal to some such lecturer,
'but such as this, never.'" Tom Moore, who met Coleridge at
Monkhouse's famous poets' dinner-party, goes no further than to allow
that "Coleridge told some tolerable things:" but what Tom wanted was
anecdote. Directly Coleridge began upon theory Moore was bored. He
shuts him down with a "This is absurd." Rogers was present at that
party, but we don't know what he thought about it. He admits that
Coleridge was a marvellous talker, however. "One morning when Hookham
Frere also breakfasted with me, Coleridge talked for three hours
without intermission about poetry, and so admirably that I wish every
word he uttered had been written down." But it was not always so
well. He says elsewhere that he and Wordsworth once called upon him.
Coleridge "talked uninterruptedly for about two hours, during which
Wordsworth listened with profound attention, every now and then
nodding his head. On quitting the lodging, I said to Wordsworth,
'Well, for my own part, I could not make head or tail of Coleridge's
oration; pray, did you understand it?' 'Not one syllable of it,' was
Wordsworth's reply."

Keats' account is capital. He met the Sage between Highgate and
Hampstead, he says, and "walked with him, at his alderman-after-dinner
pace, for near two miles, I suppose. In those two miles he broached
a thousand things. Let me see if I can give you
a list--nightingales--poetry--on poetical
sensation--metaphysics--different genera and species of
dreams--nightmare--a dream accompanied with a sense of touch--single
and double touch--a dream related--first and second consciousness--the
difference explained between will and volition--so say
_metaphysicians_ from a _want of smoking the second
consciousness_--monsters--the Kraken--mermaids--Southey believes
in them--Southey's belief too much diluted--a ghost story--Good
morning--I heard his voice as he came towards me--I heard it as he
moved away--I had heard it all the interval--if it may be called so."

Charles Lamb's is even better. On his way to the city he met
Coleridge, and "in spite of my assuring him that time was precious, he
drew me within the door of an unoccupied garden by the roadside, and
there, sheltered from observation by a hedge of evergreens, he took me
by the button of my coat, and closing his eyes, commenced an eloquent
discourse, waving his right hand gen