WORDSWORTH. 331 He publishes his poems, and critics laugh at them. They call them childish, and the author silly; and yet unheeding them, he still lives under the habitual sway of Nature, and urges that the effect of Nature and her contemplation exalt the soul to thoughts that live, while meaner, worldly glories die away— Perish the roses and flowers of kings, Princes and emperors, and the crowns and palms Let the reader mark the sweet contemplative rhythm of those few lines, and then let him imagine what sort of man he could have been who wrote the following: My heart leaps up when I behold A rainbow in the sky! So was it when my life began; So be it when I shall grow old, The child is father to the man; And I could wish my days to be Bound each to each by natural piety. We do not wonder that such writing as this did not pay, when the amorous poetry of Moore and the romantic sensationalism of Lord Byron filled the market. The chief reviews called Wordsworth a fool, an idiot, a dolt, a dullard, and even put him-he dwelt among the lakes, and was a native of Cumberland-among the Cockney school of the "Lakers;" they also, we must remember, at a later period, utterly rejected Keats, and laughed with immense enjoyment over the poetry of Coleridge. But, instead of holding that battles, sieges, grand descriptions, tears, sighs, murder, blood, suicide, assassination and death alone were "poetical," instead of holding that kings and princes, Timours, Bajazets, Hamets, Grand Turks, potentates, and great noblemen alone deserved a monopoly of high and pure feelings, Wordsworth quietly went on, worshipping Nature, and assuring his own heart that that which is true and beautiful, is beautiful and true in the heart of a peasant as well as in that of a great warrior or a Serene Highness. As his poetry, so was his life, pure, sweet, useful,and lengthy and somewhat prosaic. But what is valuable in Wordsworth's poetry is very valuable indeed; and I think a true lover of what is highest and best in poetic expression, would rather have written his "Ode on the Intimations of Immortality" than any other existing piece of the same length. In Wordsworth poetry is of the greatest weight, the greatest purity, and is put forward for the very noblest use. It is to elevate, to teach, to ennoble; never to flatter, or simply to amuse and to betray. In religious loftiness Wordsworth approaches Milton, and the poet becomes the priest. It is probable that, as years go on, the fame of this great man, with his childlike simplicity and unobtrusive majesty, will grow upon the world. Certainly, upon some minds, and those of the best and wisest, it will grow. It is to be noted that, like all great poets, his sermons in verse have not a momentary, but a perpetual application. The writer dismisses him with an earnest injunction to all scholars to study him; for he is like a beautiful wood with a somewhat rough fringe of brambles and brushwood. It does not look inviting; but, when entered and studied, the traveller will find an endless source of comfort and consolation, and will discover endless scenes of beauty within its borders. Wordsworth was S. T. COLERIDGE. 333 a great writer and admirer of the sonnet, and it would be scarcely fair to conclude our notice of him without this citation : The world is too much with us, late and soon; We have given our hearts away-a sordid boon! So might I, standing on this pleasant lea, Coleridge, as has been already stated, in many things, is an equally remarkable man; in some yet more so. He was educated at the Blue-Coat School, London, which was a sufficient reason for the critics for ever afterwards to treat him as a Cockney. His peculiar bent of mind led him, not into the Church, though he was a born preacher, but into a far wider pulpit-literature. He entered Jesus College, Cambridge, in 1791, and abruptly quitted it in 1792, without having taken a degree, having become obnoxious on account of the revolutionary principles which he had so warmly welcomed. To his ardent admiration, France had slain her king and dipped her hands in the blood of nobles, from the purest motives; and to Robert Southey, his friend, two years his junior, the same aspirations appeared almost divine. Full of ardent republicanism, a Socinian, preaching Unitarianism, and inflated with a notion of impossible liberty, Coleridge, with three other poets, Wordsworth, Southey, and Lloyd, determined to emigrate to the wilds of America, and there to establish a Pantisocracy (a government of all), where all should be free, and "there should be no priest or king to mar the common felicity." While waiting for funds to emigrate, these enthusiasts met with their matches in three sisters, the Misses Fricker, of Bristol, and married them. Henceforward (and it is pleasant, while it is sad, to chronicle the failure of these good and great men) we may read in their histories the gradual advent of a calmer wisdom. The cruelties of the French Revolution, the wild excesses of Republicanism, the despotism of Napoleon, soon convinced them that the world was not yet ripe for a government by all, and that good priests and good kings must at least be kept in their places for some time. Southey became an ardent Conservative ; Coleridge read himself into the most learned, faithful, humble, and devoted unpaid servant and defender of the Church of England, and the firmest Trinitarian possible. He had before this established the "Watchman,' ," "that all might know the truth, and that the truth might make us free." He resided at Nether Stowey; officiating as a preacher of that which he afterwards hated so thoroughly, Unitarianism, at Shrewsbury and Taunton. His "Watchman did not succeed; his poems were scoffed at; but still this wonderful man went forward in his literary life, accumulating knowledge, dispensing it freely, talking, lecturing, editing a newspaper, and writing, preaching, and talking Coleridge wherever he went. In many cases he was entirely above his audience; the papers that he touched perished under his editorship; his poems were not understood; his prose was pro nounced drouthy, wild, rhapsodical. Yet he met with. great and good friends. The great manufacturers, Josiah and Thomas Wedgwood, enabled him to proceed to Germany for fourteen months, to complete his education. In 1804 he became secretary to Sir Alexander Ball at Malta, with a salary of eight hundred pounds; but he only held the post a very short time. He was born, in fact, for a studious life, and the knowledge he accumulated was immense and multifarious. In 1816, chiefly at Lord Byron's recommendation, he published "Christabel," a wild and wondrous tale, never finished. His other poetical works are not fragments, but they were produced in a very desultory manner, and were sent out mixed with prose disquisitions "The Statesman's Manual, or the Bible the best Guide;" "The Friend, a series of Essays;" "Biographia Literaria," and "Lay Sermons ;"" Aids to Reflection" (1825), and "Church and State" (1830). About that time he had nearly worn himself out with writing and thinking; and to still his restless mind and acute touches of disease he had recourse to the use of opium. Still he went on, planning and meditating. He who had little method, produced the best essay on it, republished as the scheme of the "Encyclopædia Metropolitana." His conversations have been collected in a very fragmentary way, and published as the "Table-Talk of Samuel Taylor Coleridge ;" and a most interesting book it is. The wonderfully luminous mind of the man, the floods of knowledge, the vast strength of his wisdom, may be seen there; alas! not in its magnificent proportions, but as an Elgin marble, broken, yet noble and wonderful still. But throughout that, as throughout his life, wasted, as he thought it, and |