UNIV. OF CHARACTERISTICS. I. THE CONVERSATION OF COLERIDGE.* DE QUINCEY. It was, I think, in the month of August, but certainly in the summer season, and certainly in the year 1807, that I first saw this illustrious man, the largest and most spacious intellect, the subtlest and the most. comprehensive, in my judgment, that has yet existed amongst men. . . . Little points of business being settled, Coleridge, like some great river, the Orellana, or the St. Lawrence, that had been checked and fretted by rocks, or thwarting islands, and suddenly recovers its volume of waters, and its mighty music, swept at once, as if returning to his natural business, into a continuous strain of eloquent dissertation, certainly the most novel, the most finely illustrated, and traversing the most spacious fields of thought, by transitions the most just and logical, that it was possible to conceive. HAZLITT. I had heard a great deal of Coleridge's powers of conversation, and was not disappointed. In fact, I never met with any thing at all like them, either before or since. I could easily credit the accounts which were circulated of his holding forth to a large party of ladies and gentlemen, an evening or two before, on the Berkeleian Theory, where he made the whole material * "Not since Pythagoras does an equal charm seem to have graced the speech of any man." HO WIMU AIMBOLIAD 2 CHARACTERISTICS. universe look like a transparency of fine words; and another story of his being asked to a party at Birmaghan's, of his smoking tobacco and going to sleep after dinner, on a sofa, where the company found him, to their no small surprise, which was increased to wonder when he started up of a sudden, and rubbing his eyes, looked about him, and launched into a three hours' description of the third heaven, of which he had had a dream. H. N. COLERIDGE. Throughout a long-drawn summer's day would this man talk to you in low, equable, but clear and musical, tones, concerning things human and divine; marshaling all history, harmonizing all experiment, probing the depths of your consciousness, and revealing visions of glory and of terror to the imagination; but pouring withal such floods of light upon the mind, that you might, for a season, like Paul, become blind in the very act of conversion. And this he would do, without so much as one allusion to himself, without a word of reflection on others, save when any given act fell naturally in the way of his discourse, - without one anecdote that was not proof and illustration of a previous position;-gratifying no passion, indulging no caprice, but with a calm mastery over your soul, leading you onward and onward forever through a thousand windings, yet with no pause, to some inagnificent point in which, as in a focus, all the party-colored rays of his discourse should converge in light. In all this he was, in truth, your teacher and guide; but in a little while you might forget that he was other than a fellow-student and the companion of your way, so playful was his manner, so simple his language, so affectionate the glance of his pleasant eye. There were, indeed, some whom Coleridge tired, and some whom he sent asleep. It would occasionally so happen, when the abstruser mood was strong upon him, and the visitor was narrow and ungenial. I have seen him at times when you could not incarnate him, — when he shook aside your petty questions or doubts, and burst with some impatience through the obstacles of common conversation. Then, escaped from the flesh, he would soar upward into an atmosphere almost too rare to breathe, but which seemed proper to him, and there he would float at ease. Like enough, what Coleridge then said, his subtlest listener would not understand as a man understands a newspaper; but, upon such a listener, there would steal an influence, and an impression, and a sympathy; there would be a gradual attempering of his body and spirit, till his total being vibrated with one pulse alone, and thought became merged in contemplation : And so, his senses gradually wrapt In a half sleep, he 'd dream of better worlds, But it would be a great mistake to suppose that the general character of Mr. Coleridge's conversation was abstruse or rhapsodical. . . . Mr. Coleridge's conversation at all times required attention, because what he said was so individual and unexpected. But when he was dealing deeply with a question, the demand upon the intellect of the hearer was very great; not so much for any hardness of language, for his diction was always simple and easy; nor for the abstruseness of the thoughts, for they generally explained, or appeared to explain, themselves; but pre-eminently on account of the seeming remoteness of his associations, and the exceeding subtlety of his transitional links. . . . It happened to him as to Pindar, who in modern days has been called a rambling rhapsodist, because the connections of his parts, though never arbitrary, are so fine, that the vulgar reader sees them not at all. But they are there nevertheless, and may all be so distinctly shown, that no one can doubt their existence; and a little study will also prove that the points of contact are those which the true genius of lyric verse naturally evolved, and that the entire Pindaric ode, instead of being the loose and lawless outburst which so many have fancied, is, without any exception, the most artificial and highly-wrought composition which Time has spared to us from the wreck of the Greek Muse. So I can well remember occasions, in which, after listening to Mr. Coleridge for several delightful hours, I have gone away with divers splendid masses of reasoning in my head, the separate beauty and coherency of which I deeply felt; but how they had produced, or how they bore upon each other, I could not then perceive. In such cases I have mused sometimes even for days afterward upon the words, till at length, spontaneously as it seemed, "the fire would kindle," and the association which had escaped my utmost efforts of comprehension before, flashed itself all at once upon my mind with the clearness of noonday light. MARY COWDEN CLARKE. It was in the summer of 1821 that I first met Samuel Taylor Coleridge. It was on the East Cliff at Ramsgate. He was contemplating the sea under its most attractive aspect in a dazzling sun, with sailing clouds that drew their purple shadows over its bright green floor, and a merry breeze of sufficient prevalence to emboss each wave with a silvery foam. . . . As he had no companion, I desired to pay my respects to one of the most extraordinary — and, indeed, in his department of genius, the most extraordinary man of his age. And being possessed of a talisman for securing his consideration, I introduced myself as a friend and admirer of Charles Lamb. The pass-word was sufficient, and I found him immediately talking to me in the bland and frank tones of a standing acquaintance. A poor girl had that morning thrown herself from the pierhead in a pang of despair, from having been betrayed by a villain. He alluded to the event, and went on to denounce the morality of the age that will hound from |