Nothing, indeed,
could more strikingly illustrate the commanding advantage possessed by
a poet interpreting a poet than is to be found in Coleridge's
occasional sarcastic comments on the _banalit???s_ of our national
poet's most prosaic commentator, Warburton--the "thought-swarming, but
idealess Warburton," as he once felicitously styles him. The one man
seems to read his author's text under the clear, diffused, unwavering
radiance emitted from his own poetic imagination; while the criticism
of the other resembles a perpetual scratching of damp matches, which
ash a momentary light into one corner of the dark assage, and then go
out.
CHAPTER X
Closing years--Temporary renewal of money troubles--The Aids to Reflection
--Growing weakness-Visit to Germany with the Wordsworths--Last illness
and death.
[1818-1834.]
For the years which now remained to Coleridge, some sixteen in number,
dating from his last appearance as a public lecturer, his life would
seem to have been attended with something, at least, of that sort of
happiness which is enjoyed by the nation of uneventful annals. There is
little to be told of him in the way of literary performance; little
record remains, unfortunately, of the discursively didactic talk in
which, during these years, his intellectual activity found its busiest
exercise; of incident in the ordinary sense of the word there is almost
none.
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