ed to be very much dissatisfied that I preferred
his Letters to his Sermons. The last were forced and dry; the
first came naturally from him. For ease, half-plays on words,
and a supine, monkish, indolent pleasantry, I have never seen
them equalled.

[15] He complained in particular of the presumption of his
attempting to establish the future immortality of man,
'without' (as he said) 'knowing what Death was or what Life
was'--and the tone in which he pronounced these two words
seemed to convey a complete image of both.

So Coleridge went on his. In digressing, in dilating, in passing from
subject to subject, he appeared to me to float in air, to slide on
ice. He told me in confidence (going along) that he should have
preached two sermons before he accepted the situation at Shrewsbury,
one on Infant Baptism, the other on the Lord's Supper, showing that he
could not administer either, which would have effectually disqualified
him for the object in view. I observed that he continually crossed me
on the way by shifting from one side of the footpath to the other.
This struck me as an odd movement; but I did not at that time connect
it with any instability of purpose or involuntary change of principle,
as I have done since. He seemed unable to keep on in a straight line.
He spoke slightingly of Hume (whose Essay on Miracles he said was
stolen from an objection started in one of South's Sermons--_Credat
Judaeus Apella!_). I was not very much pleased at this account of
Hume, for I had just been reading, with infinite relish, that
completest of all metaphysical _choke-pears_, his _Treatise on Human
Nature_, to which the _Essays_, in point of scholastic subtlety and
close reasoning, are mere elegant trifling, light summer-reading.
Coleridge even denied the excellence of Hume's general style, which I
think betrayed a want of taste or candour. He however made me amends
by the manner in which he spoke of Berkeley. He dwelt particularly on
his _Essay on Vision_ as a masterpiece of analytical reasoning. So it
undoubtedly is. He was exceedingly angry with Dr. Johnson for striking
the stone with his foot, in allusion to this author's Theory of Matter
and Spirit, and saying, 'Thus I confute him, Sir.' Coleridge drew a
parallel (I don't know how he brought about the connexion) between
Bishop Berkeley and Tom Paine. He said the one was an instance of a
subtle, the other of an acute mind, than which no