Addison P.Russell的《素描与随笔》（Characteristics: Sketches and Essays, 1884）第一篇记述若干人物回忆大诗人柯勒律治（Coleridge），专门说他的谈话（conversation），题下还加注说，自毕达哥拉斯以来还不曾有过那么会说话的人（not since Pythagoras does an equal charm seem to have graced the speech of any man）。

大散文家Lamb讲了一个故事，一伙诗人，如Wordsworth, Rogers, TomMoore等（“英格兰一半的诗人”）和老柯一起吃饭，老柯说个不停，其他人只好听着——阿波罗说话时，缪斯也只好当哑巴（The Muses were dumb while Apollo lectured）。

“瘾君子”De Quincey说老柯像大河，惊涛拍岸，洪波涌起，然后复归自然，长流不绝，传达着无垠的思想：like some great river, that had been checked and fretted by rocks, or thwarting islands, and suddenly recovers its volume of waters, and its mighty music, swept at once, as if returning to his natural business, into acontinuous strain of eloquent dissertation, certainly the most novel, the most finely illustrated, and traversing the most spacious fields of thought, by transitions the most just and logical, that it was possible to conceive。这段英文本身亦如它所形容的老柯讲话，听起来像斯美塔那的《伏尔塔瓦河》。

在女作家的耳朵里，老柯的话却没有那么汹涌。莎翁研究专家MaryCowden Clarke回忆，老柯嘴里说出的思想，犹如落雪飘进耳朵（His ideas, embodied in words of purest eloquence, flew about m ears like drifts of snow）。这个比喻很有趣，令人想起陶渊明的“倾耳无希声，在目皓已洁”（《癸卯岁十二月中作与从弟敬远》），更想起老子的“大音希声”。

从流水到落雪，物质没变，物态变了，流态也变了，从连续变到离散（“量子”，）感觉当然不一样了。