when the compass and huge circuit,
by which his illustrations moved, travelled farthest into remote regions,
before they began to revolve. Long before this coming round commenced, most
people had lost him, and naturally enough supposed that he had lost
himself. They continued to admire the separate beauty of the thoughts, but
did not see their relations to the dominant theme. * * * * However, I can
assert, upon my long and intimate knowledge of Coleridge's mind, that logic
the most severe was as inalienable from his modes of thinking, as grammar
from his language." [Footnote: Tait's Mag. Sept. 1834, p. 514.] True: his
mind was a logic-vice; let him fasten it on the tiniest flourish of an
error, he never slacked his hold, till he had crushed body and tail to
dust. He was _always_ ratiocinating in his own mind, and therefore
sometimes seemed incoherent to the partial observer. It happened to him as
to Pindar, who in modern days has been called a rambling rhapsodist,
because the connections of his parts, though never arbitrary, are so fine
that the vulgar reader sees them not at all. But they are there
nevertheless, and may all be so distinctly shown, that no one can doubt
their existence; and a little study will also prove that the points of
contact are those which the true genius of lyric verse naturally evolved,
and that the entire Pindaric ode, instead of being the loose and lawless
out-burst which so many have fancied, is, without any exception, the most
artificial and highly wrought composition which Time has spared to us from
the wreck of the Greek Muse.
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