[Footnote 1:
"I will add, at the risk of appearing to dwell too long on religious
topics, that on this my first introduction to Coleridge he reverted with
strong compunction to a sentiment which he had expressed in earlier days
upon prayer. In one of his youthful poems, speaking of God, he had said--
--'Of whose all-seeing eye
Aught to demand were impotence of mind.'
This sentiment he now so utterly condemned, that, on the contrary, he told
me, as his own peculiar opinion, that the act of praying was the very
highest energy of which the human heart was capable, praying, that is, with
the total concentration of the faculties; and the great mass of worldly men
and of learned men he pronounced absolutely incapable of prayer."--_Tait's
Magazine_, September, 1834, p. 515.
Mr. Coleridge within two years of his death very solemnly declared to me
his conviction upon the same subject. I was sitting by his bedside one
afternoon, and he fell, an unusual thing for him, into a long account of
many passages of his past life, lamenting some things, condemning others,
but complaining withal, though very gently, of the way in which many of his
most innocent acts had been cruelly misrepresented. "But I have no
difficulty," said he, "in forgiveness; indeed, I know not how to say with
sincerity the clause in the Lord's Prayer, which asks forgiveness _as we
forgive_.
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