That in
certain cases where acknowledgment was due it was not made, we may
ascribe to opinion; or to defects which broke the complete rotundity of
such a circle of endowments that without this breach they would have
swollen their possessor to almost preterhuman proportions, empowering
him to "bestride the narrow world like a Colossus."
Let the truth be spoken of all men. Let no man's greatness be a bar
to full utterance; but let temperance and charity--duties peculiarly
imperative when uttering derogatory truth--be especially observed
towards a resplendent suffering brother like Coleridge, suffering from
his own weakness, but on that very account entitled to a tenderer
consideration from those who are themselves endowed to feel and claim
something more than common human affinity with a nature so large and so
susceptive. Could but a tithe of the fresh insights he has given us be
allowed as an offset against his short-comings, never, from any scholar
of sound sensibilities, would a whisper be heard against his name. Under
the coarse, rusty, one-pronged spur of sectarian or political rancor,
or from the knawing consciousness of sterile inferiority to a creative
mind, plenty of people are ready and eager to try, with their net-work
of flimsy phrases, to cramp the play of a giant's limbs, or, with the
slow slimy poison of envy and malice, to spot and deform his beauty and
his symmetry.
Pages:
373
374
375
376
377
378
379
380
381
382
383
384
385
386
387
388
389
390
391
392
393
394
395
396
397