ABSTRACT
John Sterling (1806–44) was an admirer of both Coleridge and Carlyle. After his early death from tuberculosis, a biography appeared, Essays and Tales by John Sterling, with a Memoir of His Life, edited by Julius Charles Hare. In Carlyle’s history of Sterling's death and that of his wife, Coleridge appears early on, as one of Sterling’s mentors though not an especially prepossessing one: he is ‘flabby and irresolute; expressive of weakness under possibility of strength’. Carlyle’s personal dislike runs throughout the piece, accompanied and increased by the conviction that Coleridge misled zealous men like Sterling – misled them into thinking that the Church of England could be the source of a national revival. Carlyle, accordingly, presents Sterling as an earnest liberal, full of youthful energy, whose true path is diverted into the hazy mazes of Coleridge’s talk. Sterling’s own attitude to Coleridge was both more affectionate than Carlyle’s and more insightful than that of many of the Highgate circle.
