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And these gray rocks; this household lawn;
These trees, a veil just half withdrawn ;
This fall of water, that doth make
A murmur near the silent lake;
This little bay, a quiet road
That holds in shelter thy abode-
In truth, together do ye seem

Like something fashioned in a dream ;
Such forms as from their covert peep
When earthly cares are laid asleep!
Yet, dream or vision as thou art,
I bless thee with a human heart :
God shield thee to thy latest years!
I neither know thee nor thy peers;
And yet my eyes are filled with tears.
With earnest feeling I shall pray
For thee when I am far away:
For never saw I mien or face,

In which more plainly I could trace
Benignity and homebred sense
Ripening in perfect innocence.
Here scattered, like a random seed,
Remote from men, thou dost not need
The embarrassed look of shy distress
And maidenly shamefacedness:
Thou wear'st upon thy forehead clear
The freedom of a mountaineer:
A face with gladness overspread!
Soft smiles, by human kindness bred!
And seemliness complete, that sways
Thy courtesies, about thee plays;
With no restraint, but such as springs
From quick and eager visitings

Of thoughts that lie beyond the reach
Of thy few words of English speech:
A bondage sweetly brooked, a strife
That gives thy gestures grace and life!
So have I, not unmoved in mind,
Seen birds of tempest-loving kind,
Thus beating up against the wind.

What hand but would a garland cull
For thee who art so beautiful?
O happy pleasure! here to dwell
Beside thee in some heathy dell;
Adopt your homely ways, and dress
A shepherd, thou a shepherdess!
But I could frame a wish for thee
More like a grave reality:
Thou art to me but as a wave

Of the wild sea; and I would have
Some claim upon thee, if I could,
Though but of common neighbourhood.
What joy to hear thee, and to see!
Thy elder brother I would be-
Thy father-anything to thee!

Now thanks to Heaven! that of its grace

Hath led me to this lonely place.
Joy have I had; and going hence,

I bear away my recompense.
In spots like these it is we prize
Our memory, feel that she hath eyes:
Then, why should I be loath to stir ?
I feel this place was made for her;
To give new pleasure like the past,
Continued long as life shall last.
Nor am I loath, though pleased at heart,
Sweet Highland girl! from thee to part;
For I, methinks, till I grow old,
As fair before me shall behold,
As I do now, the cabin small,
The lake, the bay, the waterfall;
And thee, the spirit of them all!

Laodamia.

"With sacrifice before the rising morn, Vows have I made by fruitless hope inspired;

And from the infernal gods, 'mid shades forlorn
Of night, my slaughtered lord have I required:
Celestial pity I again implore;

Restore him to my sight-great Jove, restore!'

So speaking, and by fervent love endowed
With faith, the suppliant heavenward lifts her hands;
While, like the sun emerging from a cloud,
Her countenance brightens and her eye expands;
Her bosom heaves and spreads, her stature grows;
And she expects the issue in repose.

O terror! what hath she perceived?-O joy!
What doth she look on ?-whom doth she behold?
Her hero slain upon the beach of Troy?
His vital presence? his corporeal mould?
It is if sense deceive her not-'tis he!
And a god leads him, winged Mercury!

Mild Hermes spake, and touched her with his wand That calms all fear: 'Such grace hath crowned thy prayer,

Laodamia! that at Jove's command

Thy husband walks the paths of upper air;

He comes to tarry with thee three hours' space;
Accept the gift; behold him face to face!"

Forth sprang the impassioned queen her lord to clasp,
Again that consummation she essayed ;
But unsubstantial Form eludes her grasp
As often as that eager grasp was made.
The phantom parts-but parts to reunite,
And reassume his place before her sight.
'Protesiláus, lo! thy guide is gone!
Confirm, I pray, the vision with thy voice.
This is our palace-yonder is thy throne;
Speak, and the floor thou tread'st on will rejoice.
Not to appal me have the gods bestowed
This precious boon; and blest a sad abode.'

'Great Jove, Laodamia, doth not leave
His gifts imperfect. Spectre though I be,
I am not sent to scare thee or deceive;
But in reward of thy fidelity.

And something also did my worth obtain ;
For fearless virtue bringeth boundless gain.

:

'Thou knowest, the Delphic oracle foretold
That the first Greek who touched the Trojan strand
Should die but me the threat could not withhold:
A generous cause a victim did demand;
And forth I leapt upon the sandy plain;
A self-devoted chief-by Hector slain.'

'Supreme of heroes; bravest, noblest, best!
Thy matchless courage I bewail no more,
Which then, when tens of thousands were depressed
By doubt, propelled thee to the fatal shore ;
Thou found'st-and I forgive thee-here thou art—
A nobler counsellor than my poor heart.

"But thou, though capable of sternest deed,
Wert kind as resolute, and good as brave;
And he, whose power restores thee, hath decreed
That thou shouldst cheat the malice of the grave.
Redundant are thy locks, thy lips as fair
As when their breath enriched Thessalian air.

No spectre greets me-no vain shadow this;
Come, blooming hero, place thee by my side!
Give, on this well-known couch, one nuptial kiss
To me, this day, a second time thy bride!'
Jove frowned in heaven; the conscious Parcæ threw
Upon those roseate lips a Stygian hue.

'This visage tells thee that my doom is past; Nor should the change be mourned, even if the joys Of sense were able to return as fast

And surely as they vanish. Earth destroys

Those raptures duly-Erebus disdains; Calm pleasures there abide—majestic pains. 'Be taught, O faithful consort, to control Rebellious passion; for the gods approve The depth, and not the tumult, of the soul; A fervent, not ungovernable love.

Thy transports moderate; and meekly mourn
When I depart, for brief is my sojourn.'

'Ah, wherefore? Did not Hercules by force
Wrest from the guardian monster of the tomb
Alcestis, a reanimated corse,

Given back to dwell on earth in vernal bloom?
Medea's spells dispersed the weight of years,
And son stood a youth 'mid youthful peers.

'The gods to us are merciful; and they
Yet further may relent; for mightier far
Than strength of nerve and sinew, or the sway

Of magic potent over sun and star,

Is love, though oft to agony distressed,

And though his favourite seat be feeble woman's breast.

'But if thou goest, I follow.' 'Peace!' he said;
She looked upon him, and was calmed and cheered;
The ghastly colour from his lips had fled.
In his deportment, shape, and mien appeared
Elysian beauty, melancholy grace,

Brought from a pensive though a happy place.

He spake of love, such love as spirits feel
In worlds whose course is equable and pure;
No fears to beat away, no strife to heal,
The past unsighed for, and the future sure;
Spake of heroic arts in graver mood
Revived, with finer harmony pursued.

Of all that is most beauteous-imaged there
In happier beauty; more pellucid streams,
An ampler ether, a diviner air,

And fields invested with purpureal gleams;
Climes which the sun, who sheds the brightest day
Earth knows, is all unworthy to survey.

Yet there the soul shall enter which hath earned
That privilege by virtue. 'Ill,' said he,
'The end of man's existence I discerned,
Who from ignoble games and revelry

Could draw, when we had parted, vain delight,
While tears were thy best pastime, day and night:
'And while my youthful peers before my eyes-
Each hero following his peculiar bent-
Prepared themselves for glorious enterprise
By martial sports; or, seated in the tent,
Chieftains and kings in council were detained-
What time the fleet at Aulis lay enchained.
"The wished-for wind was given: I then revolved
The oracle upon the silent sea;
And, if no worthier led the way, resolved
That, of a thousand vessels, mine should be
The foremost prow in pressing to the strand-
Mine the first blood that tinged the Trojan sand.

'Yet bitter, ofttimes bitter was the pang,
When of thy loss I thought, beloved wife!
On thee too fondly did my memory hang,
And on the joys we shared in mortal life;
The paths which we had trod-these fountains,
flowers;

My new-planned cities, and unfinished towers.

'But should suspense permit the foe to cry,
"Behold they tremble! haughty their array;
Yet of their number no one dares to die!"
In soul I swept the indignity away :

Old frailties then recurred; but lofty thought,
In act embodied, my deliverance wrought.
'And thou, though strong in love, art all too weak
In reason, in self-government too slow;

I counsel thee by fortitude to seek

Our blest reunion in the shades below.

The invisible world with thee hath sympathised;
Be thy affections raised and solemnised."
'Learn, by a mortal yearning, to ascend—
Seeking a higher object. Love was given,
Encouraged, sanctioned, chiefly for that end;
For this the passion to excess was driven,
That self might be annulled: her bondage prove
The fetters of a dream, opposed to love.'

Aloud she shrieked; for Hermes reappears!
Round the dear shade she would have clung; 'tis
vain ;

The hours are past-too brief had they been years;
And him no mortal effort can detain :

Swift toward the realms that know not earthly day,
He through the portal takes his silent way,
And on the palace-floor a lifeless corse she lay.
By no weak pity might the gods be moved;
She who thus perished, not without the crime
Of lovers that in reason's spite have loved,
Was doomed to wear out her appointed time
Apart from happy ghosts, that gather flowers
Of blissful quiet 'mid unfading bowers.
-Yet tears to human suffering are due;
And mortal hopes defeated and o'erthrown
Are mourned by man, and not by man alone,
As fondly he believes. Upon the side
Of Hellespont (such faith was entertained)
A knot of spiry trees for ages grew
From out the tomb of him for whom she died;
And ever, when such stature they had gained,
That Ilium's walls were subject to their view,
The trees' tall summits withered at the sight-
A constant interchange of growth and blight!

Memoirs of Wordsworth were published in 1851, two volumes, by the poet's nephew, CHRISTOPHER WORDSWORTH, D.D. This is rather a meagre, unsatisfactory work, but no better has since appeared. Many interesting anecdotes, reports of conversation, letters, &c. will be found in the Diary of Henry Crabb Robinson, 1869. In 1874 was published Recollections of a Tour made in Scotland, A.D. 1803, by DOROTHY WORDSWORTH, sister of the poet, to whose talents and observation, no less than to her devoted affection, her brother was largely indebted.

SAMUEL TAYLOR COLERIDGE.

SAMUEL TAYLOR COLERIDGE, a profound thinker and rich imaginative poet, enjoyed a high reputation during the latter years of his life for his colloquial eloquence and metaphysical and critical powers, of which only a few fragmentary specimens remain. His poetry also indicated more than was achieved. Visions of grace, tenderness, and majesty seem ever to have haunted him. Some of these he embodied in exquisite verse; but he wanted concentration and steadiness of purpose to avail himself sufficiently of his intellectual riches. A happier destiny was also perhaps wanting; for much of Coleridge's life was spent in poverty and dependence, amidst disappointment and ill-health, and in the irregularity caused by an unfortunate and excessive use of opium,

which tyrannised over him for many years with unrelenting severity. Amidst daily drudgery for the periodical press, and in nightly dreams distempered and feverish, he wasted, to use his own expression, 'the prime and manhood of his intellect. The poet was a native of Devonshire, born on the 20th of October 1772 at Ottery St Mary, of which parish his father was vicar. He received the principal part of his education at Christ's Hospital, where he had Charles Lamb for a schoolfellow. He describes himself as being, from eight to fourteen, 'a playless day-dreamer, a helluo librorum;' and in this instance, the child was father of the man,' for such was Coleridge to the end of his life. A stranger whom he had accidentally met one day on the streets of London, and who was struck with his conversation, made him free of a circulating library, and he read through the catalogue, folios and all. At fourteen, he had, like Gibbon, a stock of erudition that might have puzzled a doctor, and a degree of ignorance of which a school-boy would have been ashamed. He had no ambition; his father was dead, and he actually thought of apprenticing himself to a shoemaker who lived near the school. The head-master, Bowyer interfered, and prevented this additional honour to the craft of St Crispin, made illustrious by Gifford and Bloomfield. Coleridge became deputy-Grecian, or head-scholar, and obtained an exhibition or presentation from Christ's Hospital to Jesus College, Cambridge, where he remained from 1791 to 1793. In his first year at college he gained the Brown gold medal for the Greek ode; next year he stood for the Craven scholarship, but lost it; and in 1793 he was again unsuccessful in a competition for the Greek ode on astronomy. By this time he had incurred some debts, not amounting to 100; but this so weighed on his mind and spirits, that he suddenly left college, and went to London. He had also become obnoxious to his superiors from his attachment to the principles of the French Revolution.

When France in wrath her giant-limbs upreared,

And with that oath which smote air, earth, and sea,
Stamped her strong foot, and said she would be free,
Bear witness for me, how I hoped and feared!
With what a joy my lofty gratulation

Unawed I sang, amid a slavish band:
And when to whelm the disenchanted nation,
Like fiends embattled by a wizard's wand,
The monarchs marched in evil day,
And Britain joined the dire array;
Though dear her shores and circling ocean,
Though many friendships, many youthful loves
Had swollen the patriot emotion,

And flung a magic light o'er all her hills and groves,
Yet still my voice, unaltered, sang defeat

To all that braved the tyrant-quelling lance,
And shame too long delayed, and vain retreat!
For ne'er, O Liberty! with partial aim

I dimmed thy light, or damped thy holy flame;
But blest the peans of delivered France,
And hung my head, and wept at Britain's name.
France, an Ode.

In London, Coleridge soon felt himself forlorn and destitute, and he enlisted as a soldier in the 15th, Elliot's Light Dragoons. 'On his arrival at the quarters of the regiment,' says his friend and biographer, Mr Gillman, 'the general of the district inspected the recruits, and looking hard at

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He seems

Coleridge, with a military air, inquired: "What's your name, sir?" "Comberbach." (The name he had assumed.) What do you come here for, sir?" as if doubting whether he had any business there. "Sir," said Coleridge, "for what most other persons come-to be made a soldier." "Do you think," said the general, "you can run Frenchman through the body?" "I do not know," replied Coleridge, "as I never tried; but I'll let a Frenchman run me through the body before I'll run away." "That will do," said the general, and Coleridge was turned into the ranks." The poet made a poor dragoon, and never advanced beyond the awkward squad. He wrote letters, however, for all his comrades, and they attended to his horse and accoutrements. After four months' serviceDecember 1793 to April 1794-the history and circumstances of Coleridge became known. According to one account, he had written under his saddle on the stable-wall, Eheu! quam infortunii miserrimum est fuisse felicem, which led to inquiry on the part of the captain of his troop, who had more regard for the classics than Ensign Northerton in Tom Jones. Another account attributes the termination of his military career to a chance recognition on the street. His family being apprised of his situation, his discharge was obtained on the 10th of April 1794.* then to have set about publishing his Juvenile Poems by subscription, and while at Oxford in June of the same year, he met with Southey, and an intimacy immediately sprung up between them. Coleridge was then an ardent republican and a Socinian-full of high hopes and anticipations, the golden exhalations of the dawn.' In conjunction with his new friend Southey; with Robert Lovell, the son of a wealthy Quaker; George Burnett, a fellow-collegian from Somersetshire; Robert Allen, then at Corpus Christi College; and Edmund Seaward, of a Herefordshire family, also a fellow-collegian, Coleridge planned and proposed to carry out a scheme of emigration to America. They were to found in the New World a Pantisocracy, or state of society in which each was to have his portion of work, and their wives-all were to be married-were to cook and perform domestic offices, the poets cultivating literature in their hours of leisure, with neither king nor priest to mar their felicity. From building castles in the air,' as Southey has said, 'to framing commonwealths was an easy transition.' For some months this delusion lasted; but funds were wanting, and could not be readily raised. Southey and Coleridge gave a course of public lectures, and wrote a tragedy on the Fall of Robespierre, and the former soon afterwards proceeding with his uncle to Spain and Portugal, the Pantisocratic scheme was abandoned. Coleridge and Southey married two sisters-Lovell, who died in the following year, had previously been married to a third sisterladies of the name of Fricker, amiable, but wholly without fortune.

Coleridge, still ardent, wrote two political pamphlets, concluding that truth should be

*Miss Mitford states that the arrangement for Coleridge's discharge was made at her father's house at Reading. Captain Ogle -in whose troop the poet served-related at table one day the story of the learned recruit, when it was resolved to make exertions for his discharge. There would have been some difficulty in the case, had not one of the servants waiting at table been induced to enlist in his place. The poet, Miss Mitford says, never forgot her father's zeal in the cause.

1798, the 'generous and munificent patronage' of Messrs Josiah and Thomas Wedgwood, Staffordshire, enabled the poet to proceed to Germany to complete his education, and he resided there fourteen months. At Ratzeburg and Göttingen he acquired a well-grounded knowledge of the German language and literature, and was confirmed in his bias towards philosophical and metaphysical studies. On his return in 1800, he found Southey established at Keswick, and Wordsworth at Grasmere. He went to live with the former, and there his opinions underwent a total change. The Jacobin became a royalist, and the Unitarian a warm and devoted believer in the Trinity. In the same year he published his translation of Schiller's Wallenstein, into which he had thrown some of the finest graces of his own fancy. The following passage may be considered a revelation of Cole

spoken at all times, but more especially at those times when to speak truth is dangerous. He established also a periodical in prose and verse, entitled The Watchman, with the motto, 'That all might know the truth, and that the truth might make us free.' He watched in vain. Coleridge's incurable want of order and punctuality, and his philosophical theories, tired out and disgusted his readers, and the work was discontinued after the ninth number. Of the unsaleable nature of this publication, he relates an amusing illustration. Happening one day to rise at an earlier hour than usual, he observed his servant-girl putting an extravagant quantity of paper into the grate, in order to light the fire, and he mildly checked her for her wastefulness. La, sir,' replied Nanny, 'why, it is only Watchmen.' He went to reside in a cottage at Nether Stowey, at the foot of the Quantock Hills a rural retreat which he has commemor-ridge's poetical faith and belief, conveyed in lanated in his poetry :

And now, beloved Stowey! I behold

Thy church-tower, and, methinks, the four huge elms
Clustering, which mark the mansion of my friends;
And close behind them, hidden from my view,
Is my own lowly cottage, where my babe
And my babe's mother dwell in peace! With light
And quickened footsteps thitherward I tread.

At Stowey, Coleridge wrote some of his most
beautiful poetry—his Ode on the Departing Year;
Fears in Solitude; France, an Ode; Frost at Mid-
night; the first part of Christabel; the Ancient
Mariner; and his tragedy of Remorse. The
luxuriant fulness and individuality of his poetry
shews that he was then happy, no less than cager,
in his studies. Wordsworth thus described his
appearance:

A noticeable man with large grey eyes,
And a pale face that seemed undoubtedly
As if a blooming face it ought to be;
Heavy his low-hung lip did oft appear
Depressed by weight of musing Phantasy;
Profound his forehead was, but not severe.

guage picturesque and musical:

Oh! never rudely will I blame his faith

In the might of stars and angels ! 'Tis not merely
The human being's pride that peoples space
With life and mystical predominance;

Since likewise for the stricken heart of love
This visible nature, and this common world,
Is all too narrow: yea, a deeper import
Lurks in the legend told my infant years,
Than lies upon that truth we live to learn.
For fable is Love's world, his house, his birthplace;
Delightedly dwells he 'mong fays, and talismans,
And spirits; and delightedly believes
Divinities, being himself divine.
The intelligible forms of ancient poets,
The fair humanities of old religion,
The power, the beauty, and the majesty,

That had their haunts in dale, or piny mountain,
Or forest, by slow stream, or pebbly spring,

Or chasms and watery depths; all these have vanished.

They live no longer in the faith of reason!
But still the heart doth need a language; still
Doth the old instinct bring back the old names;
And to yon starry world they now are gone,
Spirits or gods, that used to share this earth
With man as with their friend; and to the lover,
Yonder they move, from yonder visible sky
Shoot influence down; and even at this day
'Tis Jupiter who brings whate'er is great,
And Venus who brings everything that's fair.

The old fable-existences are no more;

The fascinating race has emigrated (wandered out or away).

The two or three years spent at Stowey seem to have been at once the most felicitous and the most illustrious of Coleridge's literary life. He had established his name for ever, though it was long in struggling to distinction. During his residence at Stowey, the poet officiated as Unitarian preacher at Taunton, and afterwards at Shrewsbury.* In The lines which we have printed in Italics are an expansion of two of Schiller's, which Mr Hayward Hazlitt walked ten miles in a winter day to hear Coleridge-another German poetical translator-thus literpreach. When I got there,' he says, 'the organ was playing the Tooth Psalm, and when it was done, Mr Coleridge rose and gave ally renders : out his text: "He departed again into a mountain himself alone." As he gave out this text, his voice rose like a stream of rich distilled perfumes; and when he came to the last two words, which he pronounced loud, deep, and distinct, it seemed to me, who was then young, as if the sounds had echoed from the bottom of the human heart, and as if that prayer might have floated in solemn silence through the universe. The idea of St John came into my mind, of one crying in the wilderness, who had his loins girt about, and whose food was locusts and wild-honey. The preacher then launched into his subject like an eagle dallying with the wind. The sermon was upon peace and war-upon church and state-not their alliance, but their separation-on the spirit of the world and the spirit of Christianity, not as the same, but as opposed to one another. He talked of those who had inscribed the cross of Christ on banners dripping with human gore! He made a poetical and pastoral excursion-and to shew the fatal effects of war, drew a striking contrast between the simple shepherd-boy driving his team afield, or sitting under the hawthorn, piping to his flock, as though he should never be old, and the same poor country lad, crimped, kidnapped, brought into town, made drunk at an alehouse, turned into a wretched drummer-boy, with his hair sticking on end with powder and pomatum, a long cue at his back, and tricked out in the finery of the profession of blood:

"Such were the notes our once loved poet sung:"

and, for myself, I could not have been more delighted if I had

heard the music of the spheres.'

As a means of subsistence, Coleridge reluctantly consented to undertake the literary and political department of the Morning Post, in which he supported the measures of government. In 1804, we find him in Malta, secretary to the governor, Sir Alexander Ball. He held this office only nine months, and, after a tour in Italy, returned to England to resume his precarious labours as an author and lecturer. The desultory, irregular habits of the poet, caused partly by his addiction to opium, and the dreamy indolence and procrastination which marked him throughout life, seem to have frustrated every chance and opportunity of self-advancement. Living again at Grasmere, he issued a second periodical, The

Friend, which extended to twenty-seven numbers. times committing a golden thought to the blank The essays were sometimes acute and eloquent, leaf of a book or to a private letter, but generally but as often rhapsodical, imperfect, and full of content with oral communication-the poet's time German mysticism. In 1816, chiefly at the recom- glided past. He had found an asylum in the mendation of Lord Byron, the 'wild and wondrous house of a private friend, Mr James Gillman, tale' of Christabel was published. The first part, surgeon, Highgate, where he resided for the last as we have mentioned, was written at Stowey as nineteen years of his life. Here he was visited far back as 1797, and a second had been added by numerous friends and admirers, who were happy on his return from Germany in 1800. The poem to listen to his inspired monologues, which he was still unfinished; but it would have been poured forth with exhaustless fecundity. 'We almost as difficult to complete the Faery Queen, believe,' says one of these rapt and enthusiastic as to continue in the same spirit that witching listeners, 'it has not been the lot of any other strain of supernatural fancy and melodious verse. literary man in England, since Dr Johnson, to Another drama, Zapoyla-founded on the Winter's command the devoted admiration and steady zeal Tale-was published by Coleridge in 1818, and, of so many and such widely differing discipleswith the exception of some minor poems, com- some of them having become, and others being pletes his poetical works. He wrote several char-likely to become, fresh and independent sources acteristic prose_disquisitions-The Statesman's of light and moral action in themselves upon the Manual, or the Bible the Best Guide to Political principles of their common master. One half of Skill and Foresight; A Lay Sermon (1816); A│these affectionate disciples have learned their Second Lay Sermon, addressed to the Higher lessons of philosophy from the teacher's mouth. and Middle Classes, on the existing Distresses and He has been to them as an old oracle of the Discontents (1817); Biographia Literaria, two academy or Lyceum. The fulness, the inwardness, volumes (1817); Aids to Reflection (1825); On the the ultimate scope of his doctrines, has never yet Constitution of the Church and State (1830); &c. been published in print, and, if disclosed, it has He meditated a great theological and philosophical been from time to time in the higher moments work, his magnum opus, on 'Christianity as the of conversation, when occasion, and mood, and only revelation of permanent and universal valid-person begot an exalted crisis. More than once ity, which was to 'reduce all knowledge into has Mr Coleridge said that, with pen in hand, he harmony'-to 'unite the insulated fragments of felt a thousand checks and difficulties in the truth, and therewith to frame a perfect mirror.' expression of his meaning; but that-authorship He planned also an epic poem on the destruction aside-he never found the smallest hitch or imof Jerusalem, which he considered the only sub- pediment in the fullest utterance of his most subtle ject now remaining for an epic poem; a subject fancies by word of mouth. His abstrusest thoughts which, like Milton's Fall of Man, should interest became rhythmical and clear when chanted to all Christendom, as the Homeric War of Troy their own music."* Mr Coleridge died at Highinterested all Greece. Here,' said he, 'there gate on the 25th of July 1834. In the preceding would be the completion of the prophecies; the winter he had written the following epitaph, striktermination of the first revealed national religion ing from its simplicity and humility, for himself: under the violent assault of paganism, itself the Stop, Christian passer-by! Stop, child of God! immediate forerunner and condition of the spread And read with gentle breast. Beneath this sod of a revealed mundane religion; and then you A poet lies, or that which once seemed hewould have the character of the Roman and the Oh! lift a thought in prayer for S. T. C.! Jew; and the awfulness, the completeness, the That he, who many a year, with toil of breath, justice. I schemed it at twenty-five, but, alas! Found death in life, may here find life in death! venturum expectat. This ambition to execute Mercy for praise-to be forgiven for fame, some great work, and his constitutional infirmity of purpose, which made him defer or recoil from such an effort, he has portrayed with great beauty and pathos in an address to Wordsworth, composed after the latter had recited to him a poem "on the growth of an individual mind :'

Ah! as I listened with a heart forlorn,

The pulses of my being beat anew:
And even as life returns upon the drowned,
Life's joy rekindling roused a throng of pains-
Keen pangs of love, awakening as a babe
Turbulent, with an outcry in the heart;

And fears self-willed, that shunned the eye of hope;
And hope that scarce would know itself from fear;
Sense of past youth, and manhood come in vain ;
And genius given, and knowledge won in vain;
And all which I had culled in wood-walks wild,
And all which patient toil had reared, and all
Commune with thee had opened out-but flowers
Strewed on my corse, and borne upon my bier,
In the same coffin, for the self-same grave!
These were prophetic breathings, and should be a
warning to young and ardent genius. In such
magnificent alternations of hope and despair, and
in discoursing on poetry and philosophy-some-

He asked and hoped through Christ-do thou the

same.

It is characteristic of this remarkable man that on the last evening of his life (as related by his daughter) 'he repeated a certain part of his religious philosophy, which he was specially anxious to have accurately recorded.' Immediately on the death of Coleridge, several compilations were made of his table-talk, correspondence, and literary remains. His fame had been gradually extending, and public curiosity was excited with respect to the genius and opinions of a man who combined such various and dissimilar powers, and who was supposed capable of any task, however gigantic. Some of these Titanic fragments are valuable-particularly his Shakspearean criticism. They attest his profound thought and curious

Quarterly Review, vol. lii. p. 5. With one so impulsive as Coleridge, and liable to fits of depression and to ill-health, these appearances must have been very unequal. Carlyle, in his Life of Sterling, ridicules Coleridge's monologues as generally tedious, hazy, and unintelligible. We have known three men of genius, all poets, who frequently listened to him, and yet described him as In his happiest moods generally obscure, pedantic, and tedious. he must, however, have been great. His voice and countenance were harmonious and beautiful. 71

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