What was good and productive he
was ready to recognize and assimilate; leaving the opium pomps and
splendors of the discourse, and all the Oriental imagery with which
the speaker decorated his bathos, to those who could find profit
therein. It is still more curious and sorrowful to see this great
Coleridge, endowed with such high gifts, of so various learning, and
possessing so marvellous and plastic a power over all the forms of
language, forsaking the true for the false inspiration, and relying
upon a vile drug to stimulate his large and lazy intellect into
action. Carlyle seems to have regarded him at this period as a sort of
fallen demigod; and although he sneers, with an almost Mephistophelean
distortion of visage, at the philosopher's half inarticulate drawling
of speech, at his snuffy, nasal utterance of the ever-recurring
"_omnject_" and "_sumnject_" yet gleams of sympathy and
affection, not unmixed with sorrow, appear here and there in what he
says concerning him. And indeed, although the immense fame of
Coleridge is scarcely warranted by his printed performances, he was,
nevertheless, worthy both of affection and homage.
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