GARDENS OF CELEBRITIES 



for nearly two hours, and where " there seemed to be no dish 

 like Coleridge's conversation to feed upon," the company listen- 

 ing in wonder and delight ; " he thought a second Johnson had 

 visited the earth to make wise the sons of men," and wished he 

 himself could have been his Bos well. But, as is remarked in the 

 preface to Coleridge's " Table Talk," " Johnson talked with his 

 companions, Coleridge talked to them." He monopolized the 

 conversation and Carlyle (himself an astonishing conversation- 

 alist), who did much the same, said that Coleridge's voice, naturally 

 soft and good, had contracted itself into a plaintive snuffle 

 and sing-song ... he spoke as if preaching you would have 

 said preaching earnestly and almost hopelessly, the weightiest 

 things. . . ." 



" I think, Charles," said Coleridge once to his old school-fellow 

 Lamb, referring to the days when he so nearly became a Unitarian 

 preacher, " you never heard me preach ? " 



" My dear boy," replied Lamb, " I never heard you do anything 

 else ! " 



A more sympathetic report of Coleridge's conversational gifts 

 is that of Justice Talfourd. " Who that has ever heard him can 

 forget him ? ' he wrote, " his mild benignity, the unbounded 

 variety of his knowledge, the fast-succeeding products of his 

 imagination, the childlike simplicity with which he rises from the 

 driest and commonest theme, into the wildest magnificence of 

 thought, pouring on the soul a strain of beauty and of wisdom to 

 mellow and enrich it for ever." It is a description that forcibly 

 recalls his own lines : 



" And now 'twas like all instruments, 



Now like a lonely flute ; 

 And now it is an angel's song, 



That makes the heavens be mute." 



Even Carlyle could say " no talk in his century or any other 

 could be more surprising." 



Coleridge could more than hold his own on any theme, for the 

 variety and extent of his knowledge were extraordinary, and every 

 topic under the sun brought some inspiration to him. Yet during 

 the Highgate period, his chief interest lay in philosophy and 

 religion, and whatever the starting-point of the conversation, he 

 always led the talk towards those subjects. The man who, study- 



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