sensibilities in general were incomparably quicker and more subtle than
those of the friend in whom he so generously recognised a master; and
the reach of his sympathies extends to forms of human emotion, to
subjects of human interest which lay altogether outside the somewhat
narrow range of Wordsworth's.

And, with so magnificent a furniture of those mental and moral
qualities which should belong to "a singer of man to men," it must not
be forgotten that his technical equipment for the work was of the most
splendidly effective kind. If a critic like Mr. Swinburne seems to
speak in exaggerated praise of Coleridge's lyrics, we can well
understand their enchantment for a master of music like himself.
Probably it was the same feeling which made Shelley describe
_France_ as "the finest ode in the English language." With all, in
fact, who hold--as it is surely plausible to hold--that the first duty
of a singer is to sing, the poetry of Coleridge will always be more
likely to be classed above than below its merits, great as they are.
For, if we except some occasional lapses in his sonnets--a metrical
form in which, at his best, he is quite "out of the running" with
Wordsworth--his melody never fails him. He is a singer always, as
Wordsworth is not always, and Byron almost never. The _'olian
Harp_ to which he so loved to listen does not more surely respond in
music to the breeze of heaven than does Coleridge's poetic utterance to
the wind of his inspiration. Of the dreamy fascination which Love
exercises over a listening ear I have already spoken; and there is
hardly less charm in the measure and assonances of the _Circassian
Love Chant. Christabel_ again, considered solely from the metrical
point of view, is a veritable _tour de force_--the very model of a
metre for romantic legend: as which, indeed, it was imitated with
sufficient grace and spirit, but seldom with anything approaching to