paradox to say that external prosperity was not
necessarily happiness. But on Coleridge lies the whole weight of the
sad reflection that has since come into the world, with which for us
the air is full, which the children in the market-place repeat to each
other. Even his language is forced and broken, lest some saving
formula should be lost--'distinctities', 'enucleation', 'pentad of
operative Christianity'--he has a whole vocabulary of such phrases,
and expects to turn the tide of human thought by fixing the sense of
such expressions as 'reason', 'understanding', 'idea'.

Again, he has not the jealousy of the true artist in excluding all
associations that have no charm or colour or gladness in them;
everywhere he allows the impress of an inferior theological
literature; he is often prolix and importunate about most indifferent
heroes--Sir Alexander Ball, Dr. Bell, even Dr. Bowyer, the coarse
pedant of the Blue-coat School. And the source of all this is closely
connected with the source of his literary activity. For Coleridge had
chosen as the mark of his literary egotism a kind of intellectual
_tour de force_--to found a religious philosophy, to do something with
the 'idea' in spite of the essential nature of the 'idea'. And
therefore all is fictitious from the beginning. He had determined,
that which is humdrum, insipid, which the human spirit has done with,
shall yet stimulate and inspire. What he produced symbolizes this
purpose--the mass of it _ennuyant_, depressing: the _Aids to
Reflection_, for instance, with Archbishop Leighton's vague pieties
all twisted into the jargon of a spiritualistic philosophy. But
sometimes 'the pulse of the God's blood' does transmute it, kindling
here and there a spot that begins to live; as in that beautiful
fragment at the end of the _Church and State_, or in the distilled and
concentrated beauty of such a passage as this:

The first range of hills, that encircles the scanty vale of
human life, is the horizon for the majority of its
inhabitants. On its ridges the common sun is born and
departs. From them the stars rise, and touching them they
vanish. By the many, even this range, the natural limit and
bulwark of the vale, is but imperfectly known. Its higher
ascents are too often hidden by mists and clouds from
uncultivated swamps, which few have courage or curiosity to
penetrate. To the multitude below these vapours appear now