othing could be more copious than
his talk; and furthermore it was always, virtually or literally, of
the nature of a monologue; suffering no interruption, however reverent;
hastily putting aside all foreign additions, annotations, or most
ingenuous desires for elucidation, as well-meant superfluities which
would never do. Besides, it was talk not flowing any-whither like
a river, but spreading every-whither in inextricable currents and
regurgitations like a lake or sea; terribly deficient in definite goal
or aim, nay often in logical intelligibility; _what_ you were to believe
or do, on any earthly or heavenly thing, obstinately refusing to appear
from it. So that, most times, you felt logically lost; swamped near to
drowning in this tide of ingenious vocables, spreading out boundless as
if to submerge the world.

To sit as a passive bucket and be pumped into, whether you consent or
not, can in the long-run be exhilarating to no creature; how eloquent
soever the flood of utterance that is descending. But if it be withal a
confused unintelligible flood of utterance, threatening to submerge all
known landmarks of thought, and drown the world and you!--I have heard
Coleridge talk, with eager musical energy, two stricken hours, his
face radiant and moist, and communicate no meaning whatsoever to any
individual of his hearers,--certain of whom, I for one, still kept
eagerly listening in hope; the most had long before given up, and formed
(if the room were large enough) secondary humming groups of their own.
He began anywhere: you put some question to him, made some suggestive
observation: instead of answering this, or decidedly setting out
towards answer of it, he would accumulate formidable apparatus, logical
swim-bladders, transcendental life-preservers and other precautionary
and vehiculatory gear, for setting out; perhaps did at last get under
way,--but was swiftly solicited, turned aside by the glance of some
radiant new game on this hand or that, into new courses; and ever into
new; and before long into all the Universe, where it was uncertain what
game you would catch, or whether any.

His talk, alas, was distinguished, like himself, by irresolution:
it disliked to be troubled with conditions, abstinences, definite
fulfilments;--loved to wander at its own sweet will, and make its
auditor and his claims and humble wishes a mere passive bucket for
itself! He had knowledge about many things and topics, much curious
re