ent Mariner_. His
literary success grew in spite of opposition. He had a strange
attractive gift of conversation, or rather of monologue, as De Stael
said, full of _bizarrerie_, with the rapid alternations of a dream,
and here and there a sudden summons into a world strange to the
hearer, abounding with images drawn from a sort of divided, imperfect
life, as of one to whom the external world penetrated only in part,
and, blended with all this, passages of the deepest obscurity,
precious only for their musical cadence, the echo in Coleridge of the
eloquence of the older English writers, of whom he was so ardent a
lover. All through this brilliant course we may discern the power of
the Asiatic temperament, of that voluptuousness which is perhaps
connected with his appreciation of the intimacy, the almost mystical
_rapport_, between man and nature. 'I am much better', he writes, 'and
my new and tender health is all over me like a voluptuous feeling.'

And whatever fame, or charm, or life-inspiring gift he has had is the
vibration of the interest he excited then, the propulsion into years
that clouded his early promise of that first buoyant, irresistible
self-assertion: so great is even the indirect power of a sincere
effort towards the ideal life, of even a temporary escape of the
spirit from routine. Perhaps the surest sign of his election--that he
was indeed, on the spiritual side, the child of a noble house--is that
story of the Pantisocratic scheme, which at this distance looks so
grotesque. In his enthusiasm for the French Revolution, the old
communistic dream with its appeal to nature (perhaps a little
theatrical), touched him, as it had touched Rousseau, Saint-Pierre,
and Chateaubriand. He had married one, his affection for whom seems to
have been only a passing feeling; with her and a few friends he was to
found a communistic settlement on the banks of the Susquehannah--'the
name was pretty and metrical.' It was one of Coleridge's lightest
dreams; but also one which could only have passed through the liberal
air of his earlier life. The later years of the French Revolution,
which for us have discredited all such dreams, deprived him of that
youthfulness which is the preservative element in a literary talent.

In 1798, he visited Germany. A beautiful fragment of this period
remains, describing a spring excursion to the Brocken. His excitement
still vibrates in it. Love, all joyful states of mind, are
self-expressi