Note 814 — Chapter IV · THE CHANGE IN THE OTHER NATIONS.

Carlyle, in a very fine passage, admits their acceptance of “all true singers of every age and clime.” I fear the Devil’s Advocate’s devil, if you gave him a little time, could collect a curious dossier of contrary instances: but this matters little. They are entitled to credit for maintaining and spreading this catholic faith. But even Dryden, according to his lights, had championed it a century earlier; Gray, if he could have shaken off the deadly sin of Accidia—the deadliest to the man of letters—would have been Herder + either Schlegel, and more also, long before any of them; and Coleridge is Coleridge, however much he may have annoyed Carlyle at Highgate.