Genius in Sunshine and ShadowBallou, Maturin M. (Maturin Murray)
General
Genius in Sunshine and Shadow
Ballou, Maturin M. (Maturin Murray)
Literature -- Anecdotes
Dr. Johnson and Coleridge were famous for their colloquial facility, but
both of these were rather lecturers than talkers, however delightful in
this respect the latter may have been. Johnson during his life was
undoubtedly more of a power as a talker than as a writer. It has been
said that Scott talked more poetry and Edmund Burke more eloquence than
they ever wrote. Emerson thought that "better things are said, more
incisive, more wit and insight are dropped in talk and forgotten, than
gets into books." E. H. Chapin and H. W. Beecher have talked sounder and
more brilliant theology than they ever preached from the pulpit.
Spontaneous thoughts come from our inner consciousness; sermons and
essays, from the cooler action of the brain. Coleridge, on first meeting
Byron, entertained the poet with one of his monologues, wherein he
ascended into the seventh heaven upon wings of theology and metaphysics.
Leigh Hunt described the scene to Charles Lamb, and expressed his wonder
that Coleridge should have chosen so unsympathetic an auditor. "Oh, it
was only his fun," explained Lamb; "there's an immense deal of quiet
humor about Coleridge!" Wordsworth speaks of him as the "rapt one, with
the godlike forehead," the "heaven-eyed creature." Hazlitt says that "no
idea ever entered the mind of man, but at some period or other it had
passed over his head with rustling pinions." Talfourd writes of seeing
"the palm-trees wave, and the pyramids tower, in the long perspective of
his style." When Coleridge once asked Lamb, "Charles, did you ever hear
me preach?" he received the quiet reply, "I never heard you do anything
else." Rogers tells us: "Coleridge was a marvellous talker. 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." Madame de Staël said of
him that he was great in monologue, but that he had no idea of dialogue.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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