cross his rugged cordial face, to think that
Truth had found a new ally in Fancy![14] Besides, Coleridge seemed to
take considerable notice of me, and that of itself was enough. He
talked very familiarly, but agreeably, and glanced over a variety of
subjects. At dinner-time he grew more animated, and dilated in a very
edifying manner on Mary Wollstonecraft and Mackintosh. The last, he
said, he considered (on my father's speaking of his _Vindiciae
Gallicae_ as a capital performance) as a clever scholastic man--a
master of the topics,--or as the ready warehouseman of letters, who
knew exactly where to lay his hand on what he wanted, though the goods
were not his own. He thought him no match for Burke, either in style
or matter. Burke was a metaphysician, Mackintosh a mere logician.
Burke was an orator (almost a poet) who reasoned in figures, because
he had an eye for nature: Mackintosh, on the other hand, was a
rhetorician, who had only an eye to commonplaces. On this I ventured
to say that I had always entertained a great opinion of Burke, and
that (as far as I could find) the speaking of him with contempt might
be made the test of a vulgar democratical mind. This was the first
observation I ever made to Coleridge, and he said it was a very just
and striking one. I remember the leg of Welsh mutton and the turnips
on the table that day had the finest flavour imaginable. Coleridge
added that Mackintosh and Tom Wedgwood (of whom, however, he spoke
highly) had expressed a very indifferent opinion of his friend Mr.
Wordsworth, on which he remarked to them--'He strides on so far before
you, that he dwindles in the distance!' Godwin had once boasted to him
of having carried on an argument with Mackintosh for three hours with
dubious success; Coleridge told him--'If there had been a man of
genius in the room he would have settled the question in five
minutes.' He asked me if I had ever seen Mary Wollstonecraft, and I
said, I had once for a few moments, and that she seemed to me to turn
off Godwin's objections to something she advanced with quite a
playful, easy air. He replied, that 'this was only one instance of the
ascendancy which people of imagination exercised over those of mere
intellect.' He did not rate Godwin very high[15] (this was caprice or
prejudice, real or affected) but he had a great idea of Mrs.
Wollstonecraft's powers of conversation, none at all of her talent for
book-making. We talked a little about Holcroft.