Coleridge sat on the brow of Highgate Hill, in those years, looking down on London and its smoke-tumult, like a escaped from the of life's battle; attracting towards him the thoughts of innumerable brave souls still engaged there. His express contributions to poetry, philosophy, or any specific province of human literature or enlightenment, had been small and sadly ; but he had, especially among young inquiring men, a higher than literary, a kind of prophetic or magician character. He was thought to hold, he alone in England, the key of German and other Transcendentalisms; knew the secret of believing by "the reason" what "the understanding" had been obliged to fling out as incredible; and could still, after Hume and Voltaire had done their best and worst with him, himself an orthodox , and say and print to the Church of England, with its singular old rubrics and surplices at Allhallowtide, Esto perpetua. A sublime man; who, alone in those dark days, had saved his crown of spiritual manhood; escaping from the black materialisms, and revolutionary , with "God, Freedom, " still his: a king of men. The practical intellects of the world did not much him, or carelessly reckoned him a metaphysical dreamer: but to the rising spirits of the young generation he had this dusky sublime character; and sat there as a kind of Magus, girt in mystery and ; his Dodona oak-grove (Mr. Gilman's house at Highgate) whispering strange things, uncertain whether or .  
The Gilmans did not encourage much company, or excitation of any sort, round their sage; nevertheless access to him, if a youth did wish it, was not difficult. He would stroll about the pleasant garden with you, sit in the pleasant rooms of the place,—perhaps take you to his own room, high up, with a rearward view, which was the chief view of all. A really charming outlook, in fine weather. Close at hand, wide sweep of flowery leafy gardens, their few houses mostly hidden, the very chimney-pots veiled under blossomy , flowed gloriously down hill; gloriously issuing in wide-tufted undulating plain-country, rich in all charms of field and town. Waving blooming country of the brightest green; dotted all over with handsome , handsome ; crossed by roads and human traffic, here inaudible or heard only as a musical hum: and behind all swam, under olive-tinted , the illimitable limitary ocean of London, with its and steeples definite in the sun, big Paul's and the many memories attached to it hanging high over all. Nowhere, of its kind, could you see a grander on a bright summer day, with the set of the air going southward,—southward, and so draping with the city-smoke not you but the city. Here for hours would Coleridge talk, concerning all conceivable or inconceivable things; and liked nothing better than to have an intelligent, or failing that, even a silent and patient human listener. He himself to all that ever heard him as at least the most surprising talker extant in this world,—and to some small minority, by no means to all, as the most excellent.
 
The good man, he was now getting old, towards sixty perhaps; and gave you the idea of a life that had been full of sufferings; a life heavy-laden, half-vanquished, still swimming painfully in seas of manifold physical and other bewilderment. Brow and head were round, and of massive weight, but the face was flabby and . The deep eyes, of a light hazel, were as full of sorrow as of inspiration; confused pain looked mildly from them, as in a kind of mild . The whole figure and air, good and otherwise, might be called flabby and irresolute; of weakness under possibility of strength. He hung loosely on his limbs, with knees , and stooping attitude; in walking, he rather than decisively steps; and a lady once remarked, he never could fix which side of the garden walk would suit him best, but continually shifted, in corkscrew fashion, and kept trying both. A heavy-laden, high-aspiring and surely much-suffering man. His voice, naturally soft and good, had contracted itself into a snuffle and singsong; he as if preaching,—you would have said, preaching earnestly and also hopelessly the weightiest things. I still his "object" and "subject," terms of continual in the Kantean province; and how he sang and snuffled them into "om-m-mject" and "sum-m-mject," with a kind of solemn shake or quaver, as he rolled along. No talk, in his century or in any other, could be more surprising.
 
, who assiduously attended him, with profound , and was often with him by himself, for a good many months, gives a record of their first . 8 Their were numerous, and he had taken note of many; but they are all gone to the fire, except this first, which Mr. Hare has printed,—unluckily without date. It contains a number of ingenious, true and half-true observations, and is of course a faithful of the things said; but it gives small idea of Coleridge's way of talking;—this one feature is perhaps the most recognizable, "Our interview lasted for three hours, during which he talked two hours and three quarters." Nothing could be more than his talk; and furthermore it was always, virtually or , of the nature of a ; suffering no interruption, however ; hastily putting aside all foreign additions, , or most desires for , as well-meant superfluities which would never do. Besides, it was talk not flowing any-whither like a river, but spreading every-whither in inextricable currents and regurgitations like a lake or sea; terribly in definite goal or aim, often in logical ; what you were to believe or do, on any earthly or heavenly thing, refusing to appear from it. So that, most times, you felt logically lost; swamped near to drowning in this tide of ingenious vocables, spreading out as if to submerge the world.
 
To sit as a passive bucket and be pumped into, whether you consent or not, can in the long-run be exhilarating to no creature; how soever the flood of that is . But if it be withal a confused flood of utterance, threatening to submerge all known of thought, and drown the world and you!—I have heard Coleridge talk, with eager musical energy, two stricken hours, his face radiant and moist, and communicate no meaning to any individual of his hearers,—certain of whom, I for one, still kept eagerly listening in hope; the most had long before given up, and formed (if the room were large enough) secondary humming groups of their own. He began anywhere: you put some question to him, made some suggestive observation: instead of answering this, or decidedly setting out towards answer of it, he would accumulate formidable , logical swim-bladders, transcendental life-preservers and other precautionary and vehiculatory gear, for setting out; perhaps did at last get under way,—but was swiftly , turned aside by the glance of some radiant new game on this hand or that, into new courses; and ever into new; and before long into all the Universe, where it was uncertain what game you would catch, or whether any.
 
His talk, , was distinguished, like himself, by : it disliked to be troubled with conditions, abstinences, definite fulfilments;—loved to wander at its own sweet will, and make its and his claims and wishes a passive bucket for itself! He had knowledge about many things and topics, much curious reading; but generally all topics led him, after a pass or two, into the high seas of theosophic philosophy, the infinitude of Kantean transcendentalism, with its "sum-m-mjects" and "om-m-mjects." Sad enough; for with such indolent of the claims and ignorances of others, he had not the least talent for explaining this or anything unknown to them; and you swam and fluttered in the wide unintelligible of things, for most part in a rather profitless uncomfortable manner.
 
Glorious islets, too, I have seen rise out of the haze; but they were few, and soon swallowed in the general element again. Balmy sunny islets, islets of the blest and the intelligible:—on which occasions those secondary humming groups would all cease humming, and hang breathless upon the eloquent words; till once your islet got wrapt in the mist again, and they could recommence humming. Eloquent expressive words you always had; piercing radiances of a most subtle insight came at ; tones of noble sympathy, recognizable as pious though strangely colored, were never wanting long: but in general you could not call this aimless, cloud-capt, cloud-based, lawlessly human of reason by the name of "excellent talk," but only of "surprising;" and were reminded bitterly of Hazlitt's account of it: "Excellent talker, very,—if you let him start from no and come to no conclusion." Coleridge was not without what talkers call wit, and there were touches of prickly in him, contemptuous enough of the world and its and popular dignitaries; he had traits even of humor: but in general he seemed deficient in la............