"James White is extinct; and with him the suppers have long ceased. He
carried away with him half the fun of the world when he died--of my world,
at least. His old clients look for him among the pens; and, missing him,
reproach the altered feast of St. Bartholomew, and the glory of Smithfield
departed forever."

The great friend and Mentor, however, of Charles Lamb's youth, was (as has
frequently been asserted) Samuel Taylor Coleridge, who was a philosopher,
and who was considered, almost universally, to be the greater genius of
the two. It may be so; and there is little doubt that in mere capacity, in
the power of accumulating and disbursing ideas, and in the extent and
variety of his knowledge, he exceeded Lamb, and also most of his other
contemporaries; but the mind of Lamb was quite as original, and more
compact. The two friends were very dissimilar, the one wandering amongst
lofty, ill-defined objects, whilst the other "clung to the realities of
life." It is fortunately not necessary to enter into any comparative
estimate of these two remarkable persons. Each had his positive qualities
and peculiarities, by which he was distinguishable from other men; and by
these he may therefore be separately and more safely judged.

In his mature age (when I knew him) Coleridge had a full, round face, a
fine, broad forehead, rather thick lips, and strange, dreamy eyes, which
were often lighted up by eagerness, but wanted concentration, and were
adapted apparently for musing or speculation, rather than for precise or
rapid judgment. Yet he was very shrewd, as well as eloquent; was
(slightly) addicted to jesting; and would talk "at sight" upon any subject
with extreme fluency and much knowledge. "His white hair," in Lamb's
words, "shrouded a capacious brain."

Coleridge had browsed and expatiated over all the rich regions of