The deep eyes, of a light hazel, were as full of sorrow as
of inspiration; confused pain looked mildly from them, as in a kind of
mild astonishment. The whole figure and air, good and amiable
otherwise, might be called flabby and irresolute; expressive of
weakness under possibility of strength. He hung loosely on his limbs,
with knees bent, and stooping attitude; in walking he rather shuffled
than decisively stept; and a lady once remarked he never could fix
which side of the gardenwalk would suit him best, but continually
shifted, corkscrew fashion, and kept trying both; a heavy-laden, high-
aspiring, and surely much-suffering man. His voice, naturally soft and
good, had contracted itself into a plaintive snuffle and singsong; he
spoke as if preaching--you could have said preaching earnestly and
almost hopelessly the weightiest things. I still recollect his 'object'
and 'subject,' terms of continual recurrence in the Kantean province;
and how he sang and snuffled them into 'om-m-ject' and 'sum-m-mject,'
with a kind of solemn shake or quaver as he rolled along. [1] No talk
in his century or in any other could be more surprising."
Such, as he appeared to this half-contemptuous, half-compassionate,
but ever acute observer, was Coleridge at this the zenith of his
influence over the nascent thought of his day.
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