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. 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. To the dazzled eyes of all ordinary mortals, content to chew the cud of parish sermons, and swallow, Sunday after Sunday, the articles of common belief, he seemed an eccentric comet. But a better astronomy recognized him as a fixed star, for he was unmistakable by that fitting Few whose verdict is both history and immortality.
But a greater than Coleridge, destined to assume a more commanding position, and exercise a still wider power over the minds of his age, arose in Thomas Carlyle. The son of a Scotch farmer, he had in his youth a hard student's life of it, and many severe struggles to win the education which is the groundwork of his greatness. His father was a man of keen penetration, who saw into the heart of things, and possessed such strong intellect and sterling common sense that the country people said "he always hit the nail on the head and clinched it." His mother was a good, pious woman, who loved the Bible, and Luther's "Table Talk," and Luther,—walking humbly and sincerely before God, her Heavenly Father. Carlyle was brought up in the religion of his fathers and his country; and it is easy to see in his writings how deep a root this solemn and earnest belief had struck down into his mind and character. He readily confesses how much he owes to his mother's early teaching, to her beautiful and beneficent example of goodness and holiness; and he ever speaks of her with affection and reverence. We once saw him at a friend's house take up a folio edition of the "Table Talk" alluded to, and turn over the pages with a gentle and loving hand, reading here and there his mother's favorite passages,—now speaking of the great historic value of the book, and again of its more private value, as his mother's constant companion and solace. It was touching to see this pitiless intellect, which had bruised and broken the idols of so many faiths, to which Luther himself was recommended only by his bravery and self-reliance and the grandeur of his aims,—it was touching, we say, and suggestive also of many
