I have generally found a Scotchman with a little literature very disagreeable.  He is a superficial German or a dull Frenchman.  The Scotch will attribute merit to people of any nation rather than the English.

He had no love for Jews, or Dissenters, or Catholics, and anticipated Carlyle’s hostility to the emancipation of the negroes.  He raged against the Reform Bill, Catholic Emancipation, and the education of the poor in schools.  He was indignant with Belgium for claiming national independence.  One cannot read much of his talk about politics without amazement that so wise a man should have been so frequently a fool.  At the same time, he generally remained an original fool.  He never degenerated into a mere partisan.  He might be deceived by reactionary ideals, but he was not taken in by reactionary leaders.  He was no more capable than Shelley of mistaking Castlereagh for a great man, and he did not join in the glorification of Pitt.  Like Dr. Johnson, he could be a Tory without feeling that it was necessary at all costs to bully Ireland.  Coleridge, indeed, went so far as to wish to cut the last link with Ireland as the only means of saving England.  Discussing the Irish question, he said: 

I am quite sure that no dangers are to be feared by England from the disannexing and independence of Ireland at all comparable with the evils which have been, and will yet be, caused to England by the Union.  We have never received one particle of advantage from our association with Ireland....  Mr. Pitt has received great credit for effecting the Union; but I believe it will sooner or later be discovered that the manner in which, and the terms upon which, he effected it made it the most fatal blow that ever was levelled against the peace and prosperity of England.  From it came the Catholic Bill.  From the Catholic Bill has come this Reform Bill!  And what next?

When one thinks of the injury that the subjection of Ireland has done the English name in America, in Russia, in Australia, and elsewhere in quite recent times, one can hardly deny that on this matter Coleridge was a sound prophet.

It is the literary rather than the political opinions, however, that will bring every generation of readers afresh to Coleridge’s Table Talk.  No man ever talked better in a few sentences on Shakespeare, Sterne, and the tribe of authors.  One may not agree with Coleridge in regarding Jeremy Taylor as one of the four chief glories of English literature, or in thinking Southey’s style “next door to faultless.”  But one listens to his obiter dicta eagerly as the sayings of one of the greatest minds that have interested themselves in the criticism of literature.  There are tedious pages in Table Talk, but these are, for the most part, concerned with theology.  On the whole, the speech of Coleridge was golden.  Even the leaden parts are interesting because they are Coleridge’s lead.  One wishes