32
JEUX D'ESPRIT AND MINOR POEMS, 1798-1824.
And who there besides but Corinna de Staël![1]
Turned Methodist and Tory!
"Aye—Aye"—quoth he—"'t is the way with them all,
When Wits grow tired of Glory:
But thanks to the weakness, that thus could pervert her,
Since the dearest of prizes to me 's a deserter:200
Mem—whenever a sudden conversion I want,
To send to the school of Philosopher Kant;
And whenever I need a critic who can gloss over
All faults—to send for Mackintosh to write up the Philosopher."[2]
24.
The Devil waxed faint at the sight of this Saint,
And he thought himself of eating;
And began to cram from a plate of ham
Wherewith a Page was retreating—
Having nothing else to do (for "the friends" each so near
- ↑ ["At half-past nine [Wednesday, December 8, 1813] there was a grand dress party at Carlton House, at which her Majesty and the Prince Regent most graciously received the following distinguished characters from the Russian Court, viz. the Count and Countess Leiven, Mad. La Barrone (sic) de Staël, Monsieur de Staël," etc.—Morning Chronicle, December 10, 1813.]
- ↑ [In the review of Madame de Staël's De L'Allemagne (Edinburgh Review, October, 1813, vol. 22, pp. 198-238), Sir James Mackintosh enlarged upon and upheld the "opinions of Kant" as creative and seminal in the world of thought. In the same article he passes in review the systems of Hobbes, Paley, Bentham, Reid, etc., and finds words of praise and admiration for each in turn. See, too, a passage (p. 226) in which he alludes to Coleridge as a living writer, whose "singular character and unintelligible style" might, in any other country but England, have won for him attention if not approval. His own "conversion" from the extreme liberalism of the Vindiciæ Gallicæ of 1791 to the philosophic conservatism of the Introductory Discourse (1798) to his lecture on The Law of Nature and Nations, was regarded with suspicion by Wordsworth and Coleridge, who, afterwards, were still more effectually "converted" themselves.]
