" The last explains more completely than the other
the attributes of the deities specially named.
The most elaborate (perhaps impartial) sketches of Coleridge--his great
talents, combined with his great weaknesses--may be found in Hazlitt's
Essays, "The Spirit of the Age" and "My First Acquaintance with Poets;"
and in the eighth chapter of Mr. Carlyle's "Life of John Sterling."
In Lamb's letters it is easy to perceive that the writer soon became aware
of the foibles of his friend. "Cultivate simplicity, Coleridge," is his
admonition as early as 1796. In another place his remark is, "You have
been straining your faculties to bring together things infinitely distant
and unlike." Again, "I grieve from my very soul to observe you in your
plans of life veering about from this hope to the other, and settling
nowhere." Robert Southey, whose prose style was the perfection of
neatness, and who was intimate with Coleridge throughout his life, laments
that it is "extraordinary that he should write in so rambling and
inconclusive a manner;" his mind, which was undoubtedly very pliable and
subtle, "turning and winding, till you get weary of following his mazy
movements."
Charles Lamb, however, always sincerely admired and loved his old
schoolfellow, and grieved deeply when he died.
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