Specimens of the Table Talk of S.T.Coleridge | Page 4

Mr. Coleridge's conversation at all times required attention, because
what he said was so individual and unexpected. But when he was
dealing deeply with a question, the demand upon the intellect of the
hearer was very great; not so much for any hardness of language, for
his diction was always simple and easy; nor for the abstruseness of the
thoughts, for they generally explained, or appeared to explain,
themselves; but preeminently on account of the seeming remoteness of
his associations, and the exceeding subtlety of his transitional links.
Upon this point it is very happily, though, according to my observation,
too generally, remarked, by one whose powers and opportunities of
judging were so eminent that the obliquity of his testimony in other
respects is the more unpardonable;--"Coleridge, to many people--and
often I have heard the complaint--seemed to wander; and he seemed
then to wander the most, when, in fact, his resistance to the wandering
instinct was greatest,--viz. when the compass and huge circuit, by
which his illustrations moved, travelled farthest into remote regions,
before they began to revolve. Long before this coming round
commenced, most people had lost him, and naturally enough supposed

that he had lost himself. They continued to admire the separate beauty
of the thoughts, but did not see their relations to the dominant theme. *
* * * However, I can assert, upon my long and intimate knowledge of
Coleridge's mind, that logic the most severe was as inalienable from his
modes of thinking, as grammar from his language." [Footnote: Tait's
Mag. Sept. 1834, p. 514.] True: his mind was a logic-vice; let him
fasten it on the tiniest flourish of an error, he never slacked his hold, till
he had crushed body and tail to dust. He was always ratiocinating in his
own mind, and therefore sometimes seemed incoherent to the partial
observer. It happened to him as to Pindar, who in modern days has
been called a rambling rhapsodist, because the connections of his parts,
though never arbitrary, are so fine that the vulgar reader sees them not
at all. But they are there nevertheless, and may all be so distinctly
shown, that no one can doubt their existence; and a little study will also
prove that the points of contact are those which the true genius of lyric
verse naturally evolved, and that the entire Pindaric ode, instead of
being the loose and lawless out-burst which so many have fancied, is,
without any exception, the most artificial and highly wrought
composition which Time has spared to us from the wreck of the Greek
Muse. So I can well remember occasions, in which, after listening to
Mr. Coleridge for several delightful hours, I have gone away with
divers splendid masses of reasoning in my head, the separate beauty
and coherency of which I deeply felt, but how they had produced, or
how they bore upon, each other, I could not then perceive. In such
cases I have mused sometimes even for days afterwards upon the words,
till at length, spontaneously as it seemed, "the fire would kindle," and
the association, which had escaped my utmost efforts of comprehension
before, flash itself all at once upon my mind with the clearness of
noon-day light.
It may well be imagined that a style of conversation so continuous and
diffused as that which I have just attempted to describe, presented
remarkable difficulties to a mere reporter by memory. It is easy to
preserve the pithy remark, the brilliant retort, or the pointed anecdote;
these stick of themselves, and their retention requires no effort of mind.
But where the salient angles are comparatively few, and the object of
attention is a long-drawn subtle discoursing, you can never recollect,
except by yourself thinking the argument over again. In so doing, the

order and the characteristic expressions will for the most part
spontaneously arise; and it is scarcely credible with what degree of
accuracy language may thus be preserved, where practice has given
some dexterity, and long familiarity with the speaker has enabled, or
almost forced, you to catch the outlines of his manner. Yet with all this,
so peculiar were the flow and breadth of Mr. Coleridge's conversation,
that I am very sensible how much those who can best judge will have to
complain of my representation of it. The following specimens will, I
fear, seem too fragmentary, and therefore deficient in one of the most
distinguishing properties of that which they are designed to represent;
and this is true. Yet the reader will in most instances have little
difficulty in understanding the course which the conversation took,
although my recollections of it are thrown into separate paragraphs for
the sake of superior precision. As I never attempted to give
dialogue--indeed, there was seldom much dialogue to give --the great
point