My father's life was comparatively a dream; but it was a dream of
infinity and eternity, of death, the resurrection, and a judgment to come!

No two individuals were ever more unlike than were the host and his guest.
A poet was to my father a sort of nondescript: yet whatever added grace to
the Unitarian cause was to him welcome. He could hardly have been more
surprised or pleased, if our visitor had worn wings. Indeed, his thoughts
had wings; and as the silken sounds rustled round our little wainscoted
parlour, my father threw back his spectacles over his forehead, his white
hairs mixing with its sanguine hue; and a smile of delight beamed across
his rugged cordial face, to think that Truth had found a new ally in
Fancy![143] Besides, Coleridge seemed to take considerable notice of me,
and that of itself was enough. He talked very familiarly, but agreeably,
and glanced over a variety of subjects. At dinner-time he grew more
animated, and dilated in a very edifying manner on Mary Wolstonecraft and
Mackintosh. The last, he said, he considered (on my father's speaking of
his _Vindiciae Gallicae_ as a capital performance) as a clever scholastic
man--a master of the topics,--or as the ready warehouseman of letters, who
knew exactly where to lay his hand on what he wanted, though the goods
were not his own. He thought him no match for Burke, either in style or
matter. Burke was a metaphysician, Mackintosh a mere logician. Burke was
an orator (almost a poet) who reasoned in figures, because he had an eye
for nature: Mackintosh, on the other hand, was a rhetorician, who had only
an eye to common-places. On this I ventured to say that I had always
entertained a great opinion of Burke, and that (as far as I could find)
the speaking of him with contempt might be made the test of a vulgar
democratical mind. This was the first observation I ever made to
Coleridge, and he said it was a very just and striking one. I remember the
leg of Welsh mutton and the turnips on the table that day had the finest
flavour imaginable. Coleridge added that Mackintosh and Tom. Wedgwood (of
whom, however, he spoke highly) had expressed a very indifferent opinion
of his friend Mr. Wordsworth, on which he remarked to them--"He strides on
so far before you, that he dwindles in the distance!" Godwin had once
boasted to him of having carried on an argument with Mackintosh for three
hours with dubious success; Coleridge told him--"If there had been a man
of g