Besides the able and zealous disciples who acknowledged his leadership, we may find many affinities in Carlyle's masculine if narrow teaching; or again, in a school which diverged in a very opposite direction, for the theory of Church authority sanctioned by the Oxford disciples of Cardinal Newman is, in spite of its different result, closely allied to Coleridge's; while the modern Hegelians—though they regard him as a superficial dabbler—must admit that he rendered the service (of doubtful value, perhaps) of infecting English thought with the virus of German metaphysics, and will perhaps admit that, in principle, he anticipated some of their most cogent criticisms of the common enemy. Coleridge never constructed a system. If a philosophy, or its creator, is to be judged by the systematic characters, Coleridge must take a very low place. But when we think what philosophical systems have so far been; what flimsy and air-built bubbles in the eyes of the next generation; how often we desire, even in the case of the greatest men, that the one vital idea (there is seldom so much as one!) could be preserved, and the pretentious structure in which it is involved permitted once for all to burst; we may think that another criterion is admissible; that a man's work may be judged by the stimulus given to reflection, even if given in so intricate a muddle and such fragmentary utterances that its disciples themselves are hopelessly unable to present it in an orderly form. Upon that ground, Coleridge's rank will be a very high one, although, when all is said, the history, both of the man and the thinker, will always be a sad one—the saddest in some sense that we can read, for it is the history of early promise blighted and vast powers all but running hopelessly to waste. FOOTNOTES: [11] A lecture delivered at the Royal Institution of Great Britain, 9th March, 1888. It seems desirable to say that some of the statements in the Lecture rest upon an examination of original documents, many of which have not hitherto been accessible to biographers. I owe my acquaintance with them chiefly to Mr. Dykes Campbell, whose knowledge of the subject is most minute and exhaustive. A complete biography still remains to be written; it may be expected from Mr. Ernest Coleridge, who is in possession of a great mass of his grandfather's papers. THE END PRINTED BY SPOTTISWOODE AND CO., NEW-STREET SQUARE LONDON SMITH, ELDER, & CO.'S PUBLICATIONS. =A SHORT HISTORY OF THE RENAISSANCE IN ITALY.= Taken from the work of JOHN ADDINGTON SYMONDS. By Lieut.-Col. ALFRED PEARSON. With a Steel Engraving of a recent Portrait of Mr. Symonds. Demy 8vo. 12_s._ 6_d._ =VOLTAIRE'S VISIT TO ENGLAND, 1726–1729.= By ARCHIBALD BALLANTYNE. Crown 8vo. 8_s._ 6_d._ =THE JOCKEY CLUB AND ITS FOUNDERS.= By ROBERT BLACK, M.A., Author of 'Horse Racing in France,' &c. Crown 8vo. 10_s._ 6_d._