literature or enlightenment, had been small and sadly intermittent;

but he had, especially among young inquiring men, a higher than
literary, a kind of prophetic or magiciancharacter. He was thought

to hold, he alone in England, the key of German and other
Transcendentalisms; knew the sublime secret of believing by "the

reason" what "the understanding" had been obliged to fling out as
incredible; and could still, after Hume and Voltaire had done their

best and worst with him, profess himself an orthodox Christian, and
say and print to the Church of England, with its singular old rubrics

and surplices at Allhallowtide, _Esto perpetua_. A sublime man; who,
alone in those dark days, had saved his crown of spiritual manhood;

escaping from the black materialisms, and revolutionarydeluges, with
"God, Freedom, Immortality" still his: a king of men. The practical

intellects of the world did not much heed him, or carelessly reckoned
him a metaphysicaldreamer: but to the rising spirits of the young

generation he had this dusky sublimecharacter; and sat there as a
kind of _Magus_, girt in mystery and enigma; his Dodona oak-grove (Mr.

Gilman's house at Highgate) whispering strange things, uncertain
whether oracles or jargon.

The Gilmans did not encourage much company, or excitation of any sort,
round their sage; neverthelessaccess to him, if a youth did

reverently wish it, was not difficult. He would stroll about the
pleasant garden with you, sit in the pleasant rooms of the

place,--perhaps take you to his own peculiar room, high up, with a
rearward view, which was the chief view of all. A really charming

outlook, in fine weather. Close at hand, wide sweep of flowery leafy
gardens, their few houses mostlyhidden, the very chimney-pots veiled

under blossomy umbrage, flowed gloriously down hill; gloriously
issuing in wide-tufted undulating plain-country, rich in all charms of

field and town. Waving blooming country of the brightest green;
dotted all over with handsome villas, handsome groves; crossed by

roads and human traffic, here inaudible or heard only as a musical
hum: and behind all swam, under olive-tinted haze, the illimitable

limitary ocean of London, with its domes and steeples definite in the
sun, big Paul's and the many memories attached to it hanging high over

all. Nowhere, of its kind, could you see a grander prospect on a
bright summer day, with the set of the air going

southward,--southward, and so draping with the city-smoke not you but
the city. Here for hours would Coleridge talk, concerning all

conceivable or inconceivable things; and liked nothing better than to
have an intelligent, or failing that, even a silent and patient human

listener. He distinguished himself to all that ever heard him as at
least the most surprisingtalker extant in this world,--and to some

small minority, by no means to all, as the most excellent.
The good man, he was now getting old, towards sixty perhaps; and gave

you the idea of a life that had been full of sufferings; a life
heavy-laden, half-vanquished, still swimming painfully in seas of

manifold physical and other bewilderment. Brow and head were round,
and of massive weight, but the face was flabby and irresolute. The

deep eyes, of a light hazel, were as full of sorrow as of inspiration;
confused pain looked mildly from them, as in a kind of mild

astonishment. The whole figure and air, good and amiable otherwise,
might be called flabby and irresolute; expressive of weakness under

possibility of strength. He hung loosely on his limbs, with knees
bent, and stooping attitude; in walking, he rather shuffled than

decisively steps; and a lady once remarked, he never could fix which
side of the garden walk would suit him best, but continually" target="_blank" title="ad.不断地，频繁地">continually shifted,

in corkscrew fashion, and kept trying both. A heavy-laden,
high-aspiring and surely much-suffering man. His voice, naturally

soft and good, had contracted itself into a plaintive snuffle and
singsong; he spoke as if preaching,--you would have said, preaching

earnestly and also hopelessly the weightiest things. I still
recollect his "object" and "subject," terms of continual recurrence in

the Kantean province; and how he sang and snuffled them into
"om-m-mject" and "sum-m-mject," with a kind of solemn shake or quaver,

as he rolled along. No talk, in his century or in any other, could be
more surprising.

Sterling, who assiduously attended him, with profoundreverence, and
was often with him by himself, for a good many months, gives a record

of their first colloquy.[8] Their colloquies were numerous, and he
had taken note of many; but they are all gone to the fire, except this

first, which Mr. Hare has printed,--unluckily without date. It
contains a number of ingenious, true and half-true observations, and

is of course a faithful epitome of the things said; but it gives small
idea of Coleridge's way of talking;--this one feature is perhaps the

most recognizable, "Our interview lasted for three hours, during which
he talked two hours and three quarters." Nothing could be more

copious than his talk; and furthermore it was always, virtually or
literally, of the nature of a monologue; suffering no interruption,

however reverent; hastily putting aside all foreign additions,
annotations, or most ingenuous desires for elucidation, as well-meant

superfluities which would never do. Besides, it was talk not flowing
any-whither like a river, but spreading every-whither in inextricable

currents and regurgitations like a lake or sea; terribly deficient in
definite goal or aim, nay often in logical intelligibility; _what_ you

were to believe or do, on any earthly or heavenly thing, obstinately
refusing to appear from it. So that, most times, you felt logically

lost; swamped near to drowning in this tide of ingenious vocables,
spreading out boundless as if to submerge the world.

To sit as a passivebucket and be pumped into, whether you consent or
not, can in the long-run be exhilarating to no creature; how eloquent

soever the flood of utterance that is descending. But if it be withal
a confused unintelligible flood of utterance, threatening to submerge

all known landmarks of thought, and drown the world and you!--I have
heard Coleridge talk, with eager musicalenergy, two stricken hours,

his face radiant and moist, and communicate no meaning whatsoever to
any individual of his hearers,--certain of whom, I for one, still kept

eagerly listening in hope; the most had long before given up, and
formed (if the room were large enough) secondary humming groups of

their own. He began anywhere: you put some question to him, made
some suggestiveobservation: instead of answering this, or decidedly

setting out towards answer of it, he would accumulate formidable
apparatus, logical swim-bladders, transcendental life-preservers and

other precautionary and vehiculatory gear, for setting out; perhaps
did at last get under way,--but was swiftly solicited, turned aside by

the glance of some radiant new game on this hand or that, into new
courses; and ever into new; and before long into all the Universe,

where it was uncertain what game you would catch, or whether any.
His talk, alas, was distinguished, like himself, by irresolution: it

disliked to he troubled with conditions, abstinences, definite
fulfilments;--loved to wander at its own sweet will, and make its

auditor and his claims and humble wishes a mere passivebucket for
itself! He had knowledge about many things and topics, much curious

reading; but generally all topics led him, after a pass or two, into
the high seas of theosophic philosophy, the hazy infinitude of Kantean

transcendentalism, with its "sum-m-mjects " and " om-m-mjects." Sad
enough; for with such indolent impatience of the claims and ignorances

of others, he had not the least talent for explaining this or anything
unknown to them; and you swam and fluttered in the mistiest wide

unintelligible deluge of things, for most part in a rather profitless
uncomfortable manner.

Glorious islets, too, I have seen rise out of the haze; but they were
few, and soon swallowed in the general element again. Balmy sunny

islets, islets of the blest and the intelligible:--on which occasions
those secondary humming groups would all cease humming, and hang

breathless upon the eloquent words; till once your islet got wrapt in
the mist again, and they could recommence humming. Eloquent

artistically expressive words you always had; piercing radiances of a
most subtle insight came at intervals; tones of noble pious sympathy,

recognizable as pious though strangely colored, were never wanting
long: but in general you could not call this aimless, cloud-capt,

cloud-based, lawlessly meandering human discourse of reason by the
name of "excellent talk," but only of "surprising;" and were reminded

bitterly of Hazlitt's account of it: "Excellent talker, very,--if you
let him start from no premises and come to no conclusion." Coleridge

was not without what talkers call wit, and there were touches of
prickly sarcasm in him, contemptuous enough of the world and its idols

and popular dignitaries; he had traits even of poetic humor: but in
general he seemed deficient in laughter; or indeed in sympathy for

concrete human things either on the sunny or on the stormy side. One
right peal of concretelaughter at some convicted flesh-and-blood

absurdity, one burst of noble indignation at some injustice or
depravity, rubbing elbows with us on this solid Earth, how strange

would it have been in that Kantean haze-world, and how infinitely
cheering amid its vacant air-castles and dim-melting ghosts and

shadows! None such ever came. His life had been an abstract thinking