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ear like the pealing organ ; and its sound alone was the music of thought. 

 His mind was clothed with wings; and, raised on them, he lifted phi- 

 losophy to heaven. In his descriptions you then saw the progress of 

 human happiness and liberty in bright and never-ending succession, like 

 the steps of Jacob's ladder, with airy shapes ascending and descending, 

 and with the voice of God at the top." More graphically, in his peculiar 

 incisive way, Carlyle gives us his own reminiscences too. After describing 

 Coleridge's private room, and the view from it, he adds, " No where 

 could you see a grander prospect on a bright summer's day. Here for 

 hours would Coleridge talk, concerning all conceivable or inconceivable 

 things ; and liked nothing better than to have an intelligent, or, failing 

 that, even a silent and patient human listener. He distinguished himself 

 to all that ever heard him, as at least the most surprising talker extant in 

 this world;" and elsewhere he adds with some irony, what Hazlitt 

 spoke of him — " Excellent talker, very— if you let him start from no 

 premises, and come to no conclusion." 



The person of this surprising talker is drawn with uniformity enough 

 to assure us of the truth of the description. Forgive me for reminding 

 you of Wordsworth's oft-quoted account of him, as of "a noticeable man 

 with large grey eyes." A letter of his own comments on a portrait of 

 himself, recently painted, in these words: "The exceeding weakness, 

 strengthlessness, in my face was even painful to me." Carlyle says of it : 

 "The good man, he was now getting old, and gave you the idea of a lite 

 that had been full of suffering : a life heavy-laden half-vanquished ; still 

 swimming painfully in seas of manifold physical and other bewilderments. 

 Erow and head were round, and of massive weight. The eyes, of a light 

 hazel," (his gifted daughter describes those of her brother, as being like 

 her father's — " the colour of London smoke,") " were as full of sorrow as 

 of inspiration ; confused pain looked mildly from them, as in a kind of 

 mild astonishment; a heavy-laden, high-aspiring, and surely much-suffering 

 man. His voice, naturally soft and good, had contracted itself into a 

 plaintive sing-song; he spoke as if preaching — you would have said, 

 preaching earnestly and yet hopelessly, the weightiest things." 



With many weaknesses and defects, as you will gather even from 



