Chance, and one or two others. It was a
_rich_ evening. Coleridge talked his best, and it appeared better
because he and Irving supported the same doctrines. His superiority was
striking. The idea dwelt on was the higher character of the internal
evidence of Christianity, as addressed to our immediate consciousness of
our own wants and the necessity of a religion and a revelation. In a
style not to me clear or intelligible, Irving and Coleridge both
declaimed. The _advocatus diaboli_ for the evening was Mr. Taylor, who,
in a way very creditable to his manners as a gentleman, but with little
more than verbal cleverness, and an ordinary logic, and the confidence
of a young man who has no suspicion of his own deficiencies, affirmed
that those evidences which the Christian thinks he finds in his internal
convictions, the Mahometan also thinks he has; and he affirmed that
Mahomet had improved the condition of mankind. Lamb asked him whether he
came in a turban or a hat.
ELIA'S TAIL
[Sidenote: _J.B._]
When I first knew Charles Lamb, I ventured, one evening, to say
something that I intended should pass for wit. "Ha! very well; very
well, indeed!" said he. "Ben Jonson has said worse things" (I brightened
up, but he went stammering on to the end of the
sentence)--"and--and--and _better_!" A pinch of snuff concluded this
compliment, which put a stop to my wit for the evening.
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