without some notice itself, though as rapidly executed as the previous biographical sketch, and, from the necessity of the subject, by many times over more imperfect. To this task, therefore, the writer now addresses himself; and by way of gaining greater freedom of movement and of resuming his conversational tone, he will here again take the liberty of speaking in the first person. If Mr. Coleridge had been merely a scholar--merely a philologist--or merely a man of science--there would be no reason apparent for travelling in our survey beyond the field of his intellect, rigorously and narrowly so called. But, because he was a poet, and because he was a philosopher in a comprehensive and a most _human_ sense, with whose functions the moral nature is so largely interwoven, I shall feel myself entitled to notice the most striking aspects of his _character_ (using that word in its common limited meaning), of his disposition, and his manners, as so many reflex indications of his intellectual constitution. But let it be well understood that I design nothing elaborate, nothing comprehensive or ambitious: my purpose is merely to supply a few hints and suggestions drawn from a very hasty retrospect, by way of adding a few traits to any outline which the reader may have framed to himself, either from some personal knowledge, or from more full and lively memorials. One character in which Mr. Coleridge most often came before the public was that of politician. In this age of fervent partisanship, it will, therefore, naturally occur as a first question to inquire after his party and political connexions: was he Whig, Tory, or Radical? Or, under a new classification, were his propensities Conservative or Reforming? I answer that, in any exclusive or emphatic sense, he was none of these; because, as a philosopher, he was, according to circumstances, and according to the object concerned, all of these by turns. These are distinctions upon which a cloud of delusion rests. It would not be difficult to show that in the speculations built upon the distinction of Whig and Tory, even by as philosophic a politician as Edmund Burke, there is an oversight of the largest practical importance. But the general and partisan use of these terms superadds to this [Greek: prôton pseudos] a second which is much more flagrant. It is this: the terms Whig or Tory, used by partisans, are taken _extra gradum_, as expressing the ideal or extreme cases of the several creeds; whereas, in actual life, few such cases are found realized, by far the major part of those who answer to either one or the other denomination making only an approximation (differing by infinite degrees) to the ideal or abstract type. A third error there is, relating to the actual extent of the several denominations, even after every allowance made for the faintest approximations. Listen to a Whig, or to a Tory, and you will suppose that the great bulk of society range