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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