Reminiscences of Samuel Taylor Coleridge and Robert Southey

The young, with a long life in perspective, (if any life can be called long, in so brief an existence) are unable to realize the impressions of a man, nearer eighty than seventy, when the shadows of evening are gathering around, and, in a retrospective glance, the whole field of past vision appears, in all its complexities, like the indistinct tumults of a dream. His path through the world was marked by strong outlines, and instruction is to be derived from every feature of his mind, and every portion of his eventful and chequered life. In all the aspects of his character, he was probably the most singular man that has appeared in this country during the preceding century, and the leading incidents of whose life ought to stand fairly on record.