the mind is
not capable of the effort; it does not think the effort worth making.
Action is one; but thought is manifold. He whose restless eye glances
through the wide compass of nature and art, will not consent to have
"his own nothings monstered:" but he must do this, before he can give
his whole soul to them. The mind, after "letting contemplation have its
fill," or

"Sailing with supreme dominion
Through the azure deep of air,"

sinks down on the ground, breathless, exhausted, powerless, inactive;
or if it must have some vent to its feelings, seeks the most easy and
obvious; is soothed by friendly flattery, lulled by the murmur of
immediate applause, thinks as it were aloud, and babbles in its dreams!
A scholar (so to speak) is a more disinterested and abstracted character
than a mere author. The first looks at the numberless volumes of a
library, and says, "All these are mine:" the other points to a single
volume (perhaps it may be an immortal one) and says, "My name is written
on the back of it." This is a puny and groveling ambition, beneath the
lofty amplitude of Mr. Coleridge's mind. No, he revolves in his wayward
soul, or utters to the passing wind, or discourses to his own shadow,
things mightier and more various!--Let us draw the curtain, and unlock
the shrine. Learning rocked him in his cradle, and, while yet a child,

"He lisped in numbers, for the numbers came."

At sixteen he wrote his _Ode on Chatterton_, and he still reverts to
that period with delight, not so much as it relates to himself (for that
string of his own early promise of fame rather jars than otherwise) but
as exemplifying the youth of a poet. Mr. Coleridge talks of himself,
without being an egotist, for in him the individual is always merged in
the abstract and general. He distinguished himself at school and at the
University by his knowledge of the classics, and gained several prizes
for Greek epigrams. How many men are there (great scholars, celebrated
names in literature) who having done the same thing in their youth, have
no other idea all the rest of their lives but of this achievement, of
a fellowship and dinner, and who, installed in academic honours, would
look down on our author as a mere strolling bard! At Christ's
Hospital, where he was brought up, he was the idol of those among his
schoolfellows, who mingled with their bookish studies the music of
thought and of humanity; and he was usually attended round the cloist