It is tolerably clear, I think, that some considerable discount must be allowed upon the sum of disparagement in this famous criticism. We have learnt, indeed, to be more on the look-out for the disturbing influences of temperament in the judgments of this atrabilious observer than was the case when the _Life of Sterling_ was written, and it is difficult to doubt that the unfavourable strokes in the above-quoted description have been unduly multiplied and deepened, partly in the mere waywardness of a sarcastic humour, and partly perhaps from a less excusable cause. It is always dangerous to accept one remarkable talker's view of the characteristics of another; and if this is true of men who merely compete with each other in the ordinary give-and-take of the dinner-table epigrammatist and _raconteur,_ the caution is doubly necessary in the case of two rival prophets--two competing oracles. There are those among us who hold that the conversation of the Chelsea sage, in his later years, resembled his own description of the Highgate philosopher's, in this, at any rate, that it was mightily intolerant of interruption; and one is apt to suspect that at no time of his life did Carlyle "understand duologue" much better than Coleridge. It is probable enough, therefore, that the young lay-preacher did not quite relish being silenced by the elder, and that his account of the sermons was coloured by the recollection that his own remained undelivered. There is an abundance of evidence that the "glorious islets" emerged far more often from the transcendental haze than Carlyle would have us suppose. Hazlitt, a bitter assailant of Coleridge's, and whose caustic remark that "his talk was excellent if you let him start from no premisses and come to no conclusion" is cited with approval by Carlyle, has elsewhere spoken of Coleridge as the only person from whom he ever learned anything, has said of him that though he talked on for ever you wished him to talk on for ever, that "his thoughts did not seem to come with labour and effort, but as if borne on the gusts of genius, and as if the wings of his imagination lifted him from his feet." And besides this testimony to the eloquence which Carlyle only but inadequately recognises, one should set for what it is worth De Quincey's evidence to that consequence of thought which Carlyle denies altogether. To De Quincey the complaint that Coleridge wandered in his talk appeared unjust. According to him the great discourser only "seemed to wander," and he seemed to wander the most "when in fact his resistance to the wandering instinct was greatest, viz. when the compass and huge circuit by which his illustrations moved travelled farthest into remote regions before they began to revolve. Long before this coming round commenced most people had lost him, and, naturally enough, supposed that he had lost himself. They continued to admire the separate beauty of the