The Life of Samuel Taylor Coleridge: 1838Gillman, James
General
The Life of Samuel Taylor Coleridge: 1838
Gillman, James
Coleridge, Samuel Taylor, 1772-1834; Critics -- Great Britain -- Biography; Poets, English -- 19th century -- Biography
unanswerable evidence of his ignorance respecting all the fundamental
relations and actions of property, and of the social union!
As his reasonings, even so is his eloquence. One character pervades
his whole being: words on words, finely arranged, and so dexterously
consequent, that the whole bears the semblance of argument, and still
keeps awake a sense of surprise; but when all is done, nothing
rememberable has been said, no one philosophical remark, no one image,
not even a pointed aphorism. Not a sentence of Mr. Pitt's has ever
been quoted, or formed the favourite phrase of the day, a thing
unexampled in any man of equal reputation; but while he speaks, the
effect varies according to the character of his auditor. The man of no
talent is swallowed up in surprise; and when the speech is ended, he
remembers his feelings, but nothing distinct of that which produced
them: (how opposite an effect to that of nature and genius, from whose
works the idea still remains, when the feeling is passed away, remains
to connect itself with the other feelings, and combine with new
impressions!) The mere man of talent hears him with admiration; the
mere man of genius with contempt; the philosopher neither admires nor
contemns, but listens to him with a deep and solemn interest, tracing
in the effects of his eloquence the power of words and phrases, and
that peculiar constitution of human affairs in their present state,
which so eminently favours this power.
Such appears to us to be the prime minister of Great Britain, whether
we consider him as a statesman or an orator. The same character
betrays itself in his private life; the same coldness to realities, to
images of realities, and to all whose excellence relates to reality:
he has patronized no science, he has raised no man of genius from
obscurity, he counts no one prime work of God among his friends. From
the same source, he has no attachment to female society, no fondness
for children, no perceptions of beauty in natural scenery; but he is
fond of convivial indulgences, of that stimulation, which, keeping up
the glow of self-importance, and the sense of internal power, gives
feelings without the mediation of ideas.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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