In a walk one day, after stopping, according to his custom, to claim admiration for some happy aspect of the landscape, or beautiful composition on a smaller scale of natural objects, caught by him at the precisely best point of view in the midst of his conversation on other subjects, he added, good-humouredly, that there were three callings for success in which Nature had furnished him with qualifications—­the callings of poet, landscape-gardener, and critic of pictures and works of art.  On hearing this I could not but remember how his qualifications for the second were proved by the surprising variety of natural beauties he managed to display to their best advantage, from the very circumscribed limits of the garden at Rydal Mount, ’an invisible hand of art everywhere working’ (to use his own exquisite expression) ‘in the very spirit of Nature,’ and how many there were who have owed the charm of their grounds and gardens to direction sought from his well-known taste and feeling.  As to works of art, his criticism was not that of one versed in the history of the schools, but, always proceeding upon first principles, the ‘prima philosophia,’ as he called it; and it was, as it appeared to me, of the highest order.

He was a very great admirer of Virgil, not so much as a creative poet, but as the most consummate master of language, that, perhaps, ever existed.  From him, and Horace, who was an especial favourite, and Lucretius, he used to quote much.[265]

[265] Memoirs, ii. 467-83.

* * * * *

(g) ON THE DEATH OF COLERIDGE.

The death of Coleridge was announced to us by his friend Wordsworth.  It was the Sunday evening after the event occurred that my brother and I walked over to the Mount, where we found the Poet alone.  One of the first things we heard from him was the death of one who had been, he said, his friend for more than thirty years.  He then continued to speak of him; called him the most wonderful man that he had ever known—­wonderful for the originality of his mind, and the power he possessed of throwing out in profusion grand central truths from which might be evolved the most comprehensive systems.  Wordsworth, as a poet, regretted that German metaphysics had so much captivated the taste of Coleridge, for he was frequently not intelligible on this subject; whereas, if his energy and his originality had been more exerted in the channel of poetry, an instrument of which he had so perfect a mastery, Wordsworth thought he might have done more permanently to enrich the literature, and to influence the thought of the nation, than any man of the age.  As it was, however, he said he believed Coleridge’s mind to have been a widely fertilising one, and that the seed he had so lavishly sown in his conversational discourses, and the Sibylline leaves (not the poems so called by him) which he had scattered abroad so extensively covered with his annotations,