In the execution of minor verses, we think we could show that Hartley should have the praise of surpassing his father; but nevertheless it would be absurd, on a general view, to compare the two men. Samuel Taylor was so much bigger; what there was in his son was equally good, perhaps, but then there was not much of it; outwardly and inwardly he was essentially little. In poetry, for example, the father has produced two longish poems, which have worked themselves right down to the extreme depths of the popular memory, and stay there very firmly, in part from their strangeness, but in part from their power. Of Hartley, nothing of this kind is to be found—he could not write connectedly; he wanted steadiness of purpose, or efficiency of will, to write so voluntarily; and his genius did not, involuntarily, and out of its unseen workings, present him with continuous creations; on the contrary, his mind teemed with little fancies, and a new one came before the first had attained any enormous magnitude. As his brother observed, he wanted ‘back thought.’ ‘On what plan, Mr. Coleridge, are you arranging your books?’ inquired a lady. ‘Plan, madam? I have no plan: at first I had a principle; but then I had another, and now I do not know.’ The same contrast between the ‘shaping mind’ of the father, and the gentle and minute genius of the son, is said to have been very plain in their conversation. That of Samuel was continuous, diffused, comprehensive. ‘Strongly it bears us along in swelling and limitless motion, Nothing before and nothing behind, but the sky and the ocean.’ ‘Great talker, certainly,’ said Hazlitt, ‘_if_ you will let him start from no _data_, and come to no conclusion.’ The talk of Hartley, on the contrary, though continuous in time, was detached in meaning; stating hints and observations on particular subjects; glancing lightly from side to side, but throwing no intense light on any, and exhausting none. It flowed gently over small doubts and pleasant difficulties, rippling for a minute sometimes into bombast, but lightly recovering and falling quietly in ‘melody back.’