"Many are poets who have never penned
Their inspiration, and perchance the best;
They felt, and loved, and died, but would not lend
Their thoughts to meaner things; they compressed
The god within them, and rejoined the stars
Unlaureled upon earth."
"On my walk with Lamb," notes Robinson, "he spoke with enthusiasm of
Manning, declaring that he is the most wonderful man he ever knew, more
extraordinary than Wordsworth or Coleridge. Yet he does nothing. He has
traveled even in China, and has been by land from India through Thibet,
yet, as far as is known, he has written nothing." "My father," said
Charles Kingsley, "was a magnificent man in body and mind, and was said
to possess every talent except that of using his talents." Dr. Johnson
lamented that "those who are most capable of improving mankind very
frequently neglect to communicate their knowledge; either because it is
more pleasing to gather ideas than to impart them, or because to minds
naturally great, few things appear of so much importance as to deserve
the notice of the public." "Great constitutions," says Sir Thomas
Browne, "and such as are constellated unto knowledge, do nothing till
they outdo all; they come short of themselves, if they go not beyond
others, and must not sit down under the degree of worthies. God expects
no lustre from the minor stars; but if the sun should not illuminate
all, it were a sin in nature." Rogers said of Sydney Smith (of whose
death he had just heard), in answer to the question, "How came it that
he did not publicly show his powers?" "He had too fastidious a taste,
and too high an idea of what ought to be." Disappointment is often felt
and sometimes expressed concerning Coleridge, by those who hear so much
of his extraordinary intellect. How could he have done more? His was one
of those great, homeless souls which fly between heaven and earth; his
language was only partly understood in this world, if wholly in another.
His best utterances were but incoherencies to the human ears that heard
them. Stupid John Chester understood them as well as any.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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