ed
to think, that while it strengthens every argument against the
composition of such Memoirs, it does, without benefiting the cause
either of virtue, knowledge, or religion, exhibit many mournful
sacrifices of personal dignity, after which it seems impossible that Mr.
Coleridge can be greatly respected either by the Public or himself.

Considered merely in a literary point of view, the work is most
execrable. He rambles from one subject to another in the most wayward
and capricious manner; either from indolence, or ignorance, or weakness,
he has never in one single instance finished a discussion; and while he
darkens what was dark before into tenfold obscurity, he so treats the
most ordinary common-places as to give them the air of mysteries, till
we no longer know the faces of our old acquaintances beneath their cowl
and hood, but witness plain flesh and blood matters of fact miraculously
converted into a troop of phantoms. That he is a man of genius is
certain; but he is not a man of a strong intellect nor of powerful
talents. He has a great deal of fancy and imagination, but little or no
real feeling, and certainly no judgment. He cannot form to himself any
harmonious landscape such as it exists in nature, but beautified by the
serene light of the imagination. He cannot conceive simple and majestic
groupes of human figures and characters acting on the theatre of real
existence. But his pictures of nature are fine only as imaging the
dreaminess, and obscurity, and confusion of distempered sleep; while all
his agents pass before our eyes like shadows, and only impress and
affect us with a phantasmagorial splendour.

It is impossible to read many pages of this work without thinking that
Mr. Coleridge conceives himself to be a far greater man than the Public
is likely to admit; and we wish to waken him from what seems to us a
most ludicrous delusion. He seems to believe that every tongue is
wagging in his praise--that every ear is open to imbibe the oracular
breathings of his inspiration. Even when he would fain convince us that
his soul is wholly occupied with some other illustrious character, he
breaks out into laudatory exclamations concerning himself; no sound is
so sweet to him as that of his own voice; the ground is hallowed on
which his footsteps tread; and there seems to him something more than
human in his very shadow. He will read no books that other people read;
his scorn is as misplaced and extravagant as h