But as for his eloquence, he
was from his youth upwards _Isoo torrentior_, his dialectical
ingenuity was unequalled, and in disquisition of the speculative order
no man was so apt as he to penetrate more deeply into his subject than
most of his readers would care to follow him. _?? priori_,
therefore, one would have expected that Coleridge's instincts would
have led him to rhetorise too much in his diction, to refine too much
in his arguments, and to philosophise too much in his reflections, to
have hit the popular taste as a journalist, and that at the age of
eight-and-twenty he would have been unable to subject these tendencies
either to the artistic repression of the maturer writer or to the
tactical restraints of the trained advocate. This eminently natural
assumption, however, is entirely rebutted by the facts. Nothing is more
remarkable in Coleridge's contributions to the _Morning Post_ than
their thoroughly workmanlike character from the journalistic point of
view, their avoidance of "viewiness," their strict adherence to the one
or two simple points which he is endeavouring at any particular
juncture in politics to enforce upon his readers, and the steadiness
with which he keeps his own and his readers' attention fixed on the
special political necessities of the hour.
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