For whilst we pity
the weakness and disease of his moral nature, under the influence of
that dark and terribly enchanting weed, we cannot forget either his
personal amiabilities or the great service which he rendered to
letters and to society. Carlyle himself would be the last man to deny
this laurel to the brows of "the poet, the philosopher, and the
divine," as Charles Lamb calls him; and it is certain that the
thinking of Coleridge helped to fashion Carlyle's mind, and not
unlikely that it directed him to a profounder study of German writers
than he had hitherto given to them.
Coleridge had already formed a school both of divinity and
philosophy. He had his disciples, as well as those far-off gazers who
looked upon him with amazement and trembling, not knowing what to make
of the phenomenon, or whether to regard him as friend or foe to the
old dispensation and the established order of things. He had written
books and poems, preached Unitarian sermons, recanted, and preached
philosophy and Church-of-Englandism.
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