Persons of the greatest capacity are often those, who for this reason do the least; for surveying themselves from the highest point of view, amidst the infinite variety of the universe, their own share in it seems trifling, and scarce worth a thought, and they prefer the contemplation of all that is, or has been, or can be, to the making a coil about doing what, when done, is no better than vanity.  It is hard to concentrate all our attention and efforts on one pursuit, except from ignorance of others; and without this concentration of our faculties, no great progress can be made in any one thing.  It is not merely that the mind is not capable of the effort; it does not think the effort worth making.  Action is one; but thought is manifold.  He whose restless eye glances through the wide compass of nature and art, will not consent to have “his own nothings monstered:”  but he must do this, before he can give his whole soul to them.  The mind, after “letting contemplation have its fill,” or

  “Sailing with supreme dominion
  Through the azure deep of air,”

sinks down on the ground, breathless, exhausted, powerless, inactive; or if it must have some vent to its feelings, seeks the most easy and obvious; is soothed by friendly flattery, lulled by the murmur of immediate applause, thinks as it were aloud, and babbles in its dreams!  A scholar (so to speak) is a more disinterested and abstracted character than a mere author.  The first looks at the numberless volumes of a library, and says, “All these are mine:”  the other points to a single volume (perhaps it may be an immortal one) and says, “My name is written on the back of it.”  This is a puny and groveling ambition, beneath the lofty amplitude of Mr. Coleridge’s mind.  No, he revolves in his wayward soul, or utters to the passing wind, or discourses to his own shadow, things mightier and more various!—­Let us draw the curtain, and unlock the shrine.  Learning rocked him in his cradle, and, while yet a child,

  “He lisped in numbers, for the numbers came.”

At sixteen he wrote his Ode on Chatterton, and he still reverts to that period with delight, not so much as it relates to himself (for that string of his own early promise of fame rather jars than otherwise) but as exemplifying the youth of a poet.  Mr. Coleridge talks of himself, without being an egotist, for in him the individual is always merged in the abstract and general.  He distinguished himself at school and at the University by his knowledge of the classics, and gained several prizes for Greek epigrams.  How many men are there (great scholars, celebrated names in literature) who having done the same thing in their youth, have no other idea all the rest of their lives but of this achievement, of a fellowship and dinner, and who, installed in academic honours, would look down on our author as a mere strolling bard!  At Christ’s Hospital, where he was brought up, he was the idol of those among his schoolfellows,