enius in the room, he would have settled the question in five
minutes." He asked me if I had ever seen Mary Wolstonecraft, and I said, I
had once for a few moments, and that she seemed to me to turn off Godwin's
objections to something she advanced with quite a playful, easy air. He
replied, that "this was only one instance of the ascendancy which people
of imagination exercised over those of mere intellect." He did not rate
Godwin very high[144] (this was caprice or prejudice, real or affected)
but he had a great idea of Mrs. Wolstonecraft's powers of conversation,
none at all of her talent for book-making. We talked a little about
Holcroft. He had been asked if he was not much struck _with_ him, and he
said, he thought himself in more danger of being struck by him. I
complained that he would not let me get on at all, for he required a
definition of every the commonest word, exclaiming, "What do you mean by a
_sensation_, Sir? What do you mean by an _idea_?" This, Coleridge said,
was barricadoing the road to truth: it was setting up a turnpike-gate at
every step we took. I forget a great number of things, many more than I
remember; but the day passed off pleasantly, and the next morning Mr.
Coleridge was to return to Shrewsbury. When I came down to breakfast, I
found that he had just received a letter from his friend, T. Wedgwood,
making him an offer of 150 _l._ a-year if he chose to wave his present
pursuit, and devote himself entirely to the study of poetry and
philosophy. Coleridge seemed to make up his mind to close with this
proposal in the act of tying on one of his shoes. It threw an additional
damp on his departure. It took the wayward enthusiast quite from us to
cast him into Deva's winding vales, or by the shores of old romance.
Instead of living at ten miles distance, of being the pastor of a
Dissenting congregation at Shrewsbury, he was henceforth to inhabit the
Hill of Parnassus, to be a Shepherd on the Delectable Mountains. Alas! I
knew not the way thither, and felt very little gratitude for Mr.
Wedgwood's bounty. I was presently relieved from this dilemma; for Mr.
Coleridge, asking for a pen and ink, and going to a table to write
something on a bit of card, advanced towards me with undulating step, and
giving me the precious document, said that that was his address, _Mr.
Coleridge, Nether-Stowey, Somersetshire_; and that he should be glad to
see me there in a few weeks' time, and, if I chose, would come hal