THE GROVE, HIGHGATE 



ing Voltaire, when a boy had announced himself to be an infide* 

 who .later steeped himself in German metaphysics, in Pan- 

 theism, and Socinianism and was once on the point of throwing 

 in his lot with the Unitarians now in his declining years severely 

 censured them to Emerson, one of themselves, cared only to 

 reconcile German philosophy with Christian dogmas, and died 

 in the odour of orthodoxy. 



His theological wanderings are explained, for as Emerson says, 

 "" His was a catholic mind with a hunger for ideas, with eyes 

 looking before and again to the highest bards and sages." And 

 in his " Table Talk," Coleridge himself states : "I owe under 

 God, my return to the faith to my having gone much further 

 than the Unitarians, and having come round to the other side." 



Coleridge's flow of speech, readiness, and rapidity of thought, 

 were as remarkable when he lectured, as in conversation. He 

 would not, Dr. Gillman tells us, lecture on any topic that he had 

 specially to get up. Once his readiness was put to a severe test, 

 he had to lecture on the growth of the original mind, " and the 

 subject was only given out to him at the moment before delivery. 

 He turned to Dr. Gillman : "A pretty stiff subject they have 

 chosen for me," and he looked rather startled ; but it was not 

 for long. Arranging with his friend that if the audience seemed 

 bored he was to touch his leg but that if they seemed pleased he 

 was to let him go on for an hour, he began : " The lecture I am 

 about to give you is purely extempore, but I have thought and 

 read much on the' subject. Should you find a nominative case 

 looking out for a verb, or a fatherless verb for a nominative case 

 you must secure it." " This beginning," says Dr. Gillman, " was 

 a sort of mental curvetting," the audience began to smile and 

 it gave him confidence ; and the result was " he was brilliant, 

 eloquent, and logically consecutive." The time sped so swiftly 

 that the hour had passed before Dr. Gillman looked at his watch 

 but Coleridge never knew what gave rise to the singular request 

 that he should lecture on the spur of the moment. 



Coleridge was very happy in his relations with the Gillmans. 

 His grandson, Ernest Hartley Coleridge, says, " There were some 

 chords in his nature that were struck for the first time by these 

 good people. . . . Their patience must have been inexhaustible, 

 their loyalty unimpeachable, their love indestructible." 



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