To refute this assertion, there are his 'Wallenstein;' his love poems of intensest beauty; his 'Ancient Mariner,' with his touches of profoundest tenderness amidst the wildest and most bewildering terrors; his holy and sweet tale of 'Christabel,' with its enchantments, and richer humanities; the depths, the sublimities, and the pensive sweetness of his 'Tragedy;' the heart-dilating sentiments scattered through his 'Friend;' and the stately imagery which breaks upon us at every turn of the golden paths of his metaphysical labyrinth. And if he has a power within him mightier than that which even these glorious creations indicate, shall he be censured because he has deviated from the ordinary course of the age in its development, and instead of committing his imaginative wisdom to the press, has delivered it from his living lips? He has gone about in the true spirit of an old Greek bard, with a noble carelessness of self, giving fit utterance to the divine spirit within, him. Who that has ever heard can forget him? His mild benignity, the unbounded variety of his knowledge, the fast succeeding products of his imagination, the child-like simplicity with which he rises from the dryest and commonest theme into the wildest magnificence of thought, pouring on the soul a stream of beauty and wisdom to mellow and enrich it for ever? The seeds of poetry, the materials for thinking, which he has thus scattered will not perish. The records of his fame are not in books only, but on the fleshly tablets of young hearts, who will not suffer it to die even in the general ear, however base and unfeeling criticism may deride their gratitude."--_Mr. Sergeant Talfourd._ Dr. Dibdin has given an animated description of Coleridge's lecturing and conversation, which concurs with the universal opinion.