e became suddenly
enamoured of Bishop Berkeley's fairy-world, and used in all companies to
build the universe, like a brave poetical fiction, of fine words--and he
was deep-read in Malebranche, and in Cudworth's Intellectual System (a
huge pile of learning, unwieldly, enormous) and in Lord Brook's
hieroglyphic theories, and in Bishop Butler's Sermons, and in the Duchess
of Newcastle's fantastic folios, and in Clarke and South and Tillotson,
and all the fine thinkers and masculine reasoners of that age--and
Leibnitz's _Pre-established Harmony_ reared its arch above his head, like
the rainbow in the cloud, covenanting with the hopes of man--and then he
fell plump, ten thousand fathoms down (but his wings saved him harmless)
into the _hortus siccus_ of Dissent" etc.[102]

The same style which glistens and sparkles in describing the fancy of Pope
rises to an inspired chant with a clearly defined cadence at the
recollection of the past glory of Coleridge:

"He was the first poet I ever knew. His genius at that time had angelic
wings, and fed on manna. He talked on for ever; and you wished him to talk
on for ever. His thoughts did not seem to come with labour and effort; but
as if borne on the gusts of genius, and as if the wings of his imagination
lifted him from off his feet. His voice rolled on the ear like the pealing
organ, and its sound alone was the music of thought. His mind was clothed
with wings; and raised on them, he lifted philosophy to heaven. In his
descriptions, you then saw the progress of human happiness and liberty in
bright and never-ending succession, like the steps of Jacob's ladder, with
airy shapes ascending and descending, and with the voice of God at the top
of the ladder. And shall I, who heard him then, listen to him now? Not I!
That spell is broke; that time is gone for ever; that voice is heard no
more: but still the recollection comes rushing by with thoughts of
long-past years, and rings in my ears with never-dying sound."[103]

It would take much space to illustrate all the notes to which Hazlitt's
voice responds--the pithy epigram of the Characteristics, the
Chesterfieldian grace in his advice "On the Conduct of Life," the
palpitating movement with which he gives expression to his keen enjoyment
of his sensual or intellectual existence, and the subdued solemnity of his
reveries which sometimes remind us that he was writing in an age which had
rediscovered Sir Thomas Browne. The following sen