ct of his work on Moral and Political Philosophy being made a
text-book in our Universities was a disgrace to the national character."
We parted at the six-mile stone; and I returned homeward pensive but much
pleased. I had met with unexpected notice from a person, whom I believed
to have been prejudiced against me. "Kind and affable to me had been his
condescension, and should be honoured ever with suitable regard." He was
the first poet I had known, and he certainly answered to that inspired
name. I had heard a great deal of his powers of conversation, and was not
disappointed. In fact, I never met with any thing at all like them, either
before or since. I could easily credit the accounts which were circulated
of his holding forth to a large party of ladies and gentlemen, an evening
or two before, on the Berkeleian Theory, when he made the whole material
universe look like a transparency of fine words; and another story (which
I believe he has somewhere told himself) of his being asked to a party at
Birmingham, of his smoking tobacco and going to sleep after dinner on a
sofa, where the company found him to their no small surprise, which was
increased to wonder when he started up of a sudden, and rubbing his eyes,
looked about him, and launched into a three-hours' description of the
third heaven, of which he had had a dream, very different from Mr.
Southey's Vision of Judgment, and also from that other Vision of Judgment,
which Mr. Murray, the Secretary of the Bridge-street Junto, has taken into
his especial keeping!

On my way back, I had a sound in my ears, it was the voice of Fancy: I had
a light before me, it was the face of Poetry. The one still lingers there,
the other has not quitted my side! Coleridge in truth met me half-way on
the ground of philosophy, or I should not have been won over to his
imaginative creed. I had an uneasy, pleasurable sensation all the time,
till I was to visit him. During those months the chill breath of winter
gave me a welcoming; the vernal air was balm and inspiration to me. The
golden sun-sets, the silver star of evening, lighted me on my way to new
hopes and prospects. _I was to visit Coleridge in the spring._ This
circumstance was never absent from my thoughts, and mingled with all my
feelings. I wrote to him at the time proposed, and received an answer
postponing my intended visit for a week or two, but very cordially urging
me to complete my promise then. This delay did not damp,