The scene must have
been high. The company kicked about the poor diabolic writer's head as
though it had been a tennis-ball. Coleridge, the yet unknown criminal,
absolutely perspired and fumed in pleading for the defendant; the
company demurred; the orator grew urgent; wits began to smoke the case
as an active verb, the advocate to smoke as a neuter verb; the 'fun
grew fast and furious,' until at length the delinquent arose, burning
tears in his eyes, and confessed to an audience now bursting with
stifled laughter (but whom he supposed to be bursting with fiery
indignation), 'Lo, I am he that wrote it.'"
4. _Sic_ in _Essays on his own Times_ by S. T. C., the
collection of her father's articles made by Mrs. Nelson (Sara)
Coleridge; but without attributing strange error to Coleridge's own
estimate (in the _Biographia Literaria_) of the amount of his
journalistic work, it is impossible to believe that this collection,
forming as it does but two small volumes, and a portion of a third, is
anything like complete.
5. Alas, that the facts should be so merciless to the most excellent
arguments! Coleridge could not foresee that Napoleon would, years
afterwards, admit in his own Memoirs the insincerity of his
overtures.
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