venty years sť de lle vare, vita ev and stort anpours passed kringlout that ime, le fast umust premilac v M, V12 11 200vera lat w.dom fagged, in al mocsivihe themes; how, it is puryara A wriment se ilustracun, al istory, od 1. teres zf scxzce und of art, same mbmissively. Fae gan it is at, by a Patre seemed to be alike familiar to him, and vis ade subveted 2; his gl and profound yet ever-graceful enricism: how the dirvest aberintos of philosophy were not intricate or obscure to him, ter the vertest jungle of wowndite learning untrodden or unknown; and how his reason and ma

gination. by dle assocations of their own connected together any of these ctless rires & as :: múke them the mavefil ekiments of one grand discourse, have been made bomo vs vidly as his own fame has penetrated, by those whose privilege and joy in wis to listen to the glorious flow of his enchanting, afinspired speech.

This privilege the editor of Mr. Colenige's collected -Table-Talk” enjoyed, with full apprecatio of its worth and full capacity of understanding what he heard, through many years. Attracted to Mr. Coleridge by ties of natural affection, as well as admiration of genius, and arealy possessed of the pre-requisite ability and attainments, perhaps to fitter person could have been found for the arduous work of seizing and preserving the salient separable portions of the great man's conversation. His first effort in this way was coeval with the very commencement of his familiar intercourse with Mr. Coleridge; and the practice, having grown habitual, was continued until death closed the gifted speaker's lips. His impression of the wondrous monologues be listened to is well-described in a charming pas sage of the affectionate preface to his "Specimens." "Throughout a longdrawn summer's day," he tells us, would this man talk to you in low, equable, but clear and musical tones, concerning things human and divine; marshalling all history, harmonizing all experiment, probing the depths of your consciousness, and revealing visions of glory and terror to the imagination; but pouring withal such floods of light upon the mind, that you might, for a season, like Paul, become blind in the very act of conversion. And this he would do without so much as one allusion to himself, without a word of reflection on others, save when any given act fell naturally in the way of his discourse,-without one anecdote that was not proof and illustration of a previous position; gratifying no passion, indulging no caprice, but, with a calm mastery over your soul, leading you onward and onward for ever through a thousand windings, yet with no pause, to some magnificent point in which, as in a focus, all the particular rays of his discourse should converge in light. In all this he was, in truth, your teacher and guide; but in a little while you might forget that he was other than a fellow-student and the companion of your way,-so playful was his manner, so simple his language, so affectionate the glance of his pleasant eye!" Aware, however, of the futility of any endeavour "to fetter down on paper” the most masterly and marvelious qualities of these singular disquisitions, he publishes his "Specimens" solely in the modest hope that, in them," something of the wisdom, the learning, and the eloquence of a great man's social converse has been snatched from forgetfulness, and endowed with a permanent shape for general use.”

Some qualifying notice like this is felt to be required when we turn from the renown of Coleridge's table-talk to the specimens of it which are now before us. Perhaps no collection of equal bulk, containing knowledge so discursive, so profound, and so agreeable, could have been gleaned from the conversation of any other person; but, whilst this admission is cordially made, it still leaves the printed matter far inferior to what the evidence of a crowd of witnesses proves to have been poured forth by the living voice. The editor acknowledges and accounts for this unavoidable inferiority; and readers have only to be thankful for the great, though not wonderful, treasure which he had it in his actual power to confer.

But in no part of the "Specimens" should we suppose the disparity to be less than in the hearty, genial expositions of the excellence of some of our old writers. This was a theme which Coleridge delighted in at all times,

and at all times wrote and spoke upon delightfully. These old dramatists and divines, with their prodigality of fancy, learning, and imagination, their deep thoughts and sweet and strong affections, and the music of their eloquence enveloping the whole, were dear to him as old familiar friends, whose value he was never weary of descanting on until his hearers caught, by sympathy, something of his own discriminating love and admiration for them. For Shakspeare, especially,- a subject frequently reverted to in the "Table-Talk,"-these feelings seem to have been almost unbounded, yet always exercised in union with the strictest intellectual justice: and every reference casts a new ray of light, as in the following passages, on the genius of the grandest of our poets:

"In Shakspeare, one sentence begets the next naturally; the meaning is all inwoven. He goes on kindling like a meteor through the dark atmosphere; yet when the creation in its outline is once perfect, then he seems to rest from his labour, and to smile upon his work, and to tell himself that it is very good. You see many scenes, and parts of scenes, which are simply Shakspeare's disporting himself in joyous triumph and vigorous fun after a great achievement of his highest genius."

66

"Shakspeare is the Spinosistic deity-an omnipresent creativeness. Milton is the deity of prescience; he stands ab extra, and drives a fiery chariot-and-four, making the horses feel the iron curb that holds them in. Shakspeare's poetry is characterless; that is, it does not reflect the individual Shakspeare; but John Milton himself is in every line of the 'Paradise Lost.' Shakspeare's rhymed verses are excessively condensed, epigrams with the point everywhere; but in his blank dramatic verse he is diffused, with a linked sweetness long drawn out. No one can understand Shakspeare's superiority fully until he has ascertained, by comparison, all that which he possessed in common with several other great dramatists of his age, and has then calculated the surplus, which is entirely Shakspeare's own. His rhythm is so perfect, that you may be almost sure that you do not understand the real force of a line, if it does not run well as you read it. The necessary mental pause after every hemistich, or imperfect line, is always equal to the time that would have been taken in reading the complete

verse."

Shakspeare's intellectual action is wholly unlike that of Ben Jonson, or Beaumont and Fletcher. The latter see the totality of a sentence or passage, and then project it entire. Shakspeare goes on evolving B out of A, and C out of B, and so on, just as a serpent moves, which makes a fulcrum of its own body, and seems for ever twisting and untwisting its own strength."

One of the great designs which Coleridge clung to to the last, yet left at last unaccomplished, was the embodiment of that philosophy of which glimpses and announcements had been given to the world in almost all his separate works. Whether under any circumstances he could have executed what he aimed at, or whether his failure must be attributed to ill-health and an infirm will, are questions not to be enquired into now. That he had read deeply on the subject, and reflected on it with a rare intensity of thought, almost every page of his prose writings, by presenting to us something subsidiary to the magnificent edifice he dreamed of, or something that had occurred to him in his meditations on it, adequately proved. His mind, indeed, was even less poetical than philosophical. Evidences of this predominating faculty are met with too frequently in the "Table-talk,” and are too characteristic of the individual to be passed by without a few examples:

"The pith of my system," he says, "is to make the senses out of the mind-not the mind out of the senses, as Locke did."

Talent, lying in the understanding, is often inherited; genius, being the action of reason and imagination, rarely or never."

"Genius must have talent as its complement and implement, just as, in like manner, imagination must have fancy. In short, the higher intellectual powers can only act through a corresponding energy of the lower."

"There is the love of the good for the good's sake, and the love of the truth for the truth's sake. I have known many, especially women, love the good for the good's sake; but very few indeed, and scarcely one woman, love the truth for the truth's sake. Yet without the latter, the former may become, as it has a thousand times been, the source of persecution for the truth,—the pretext and motive of inquisitorial cruelty and party zealotry. To see clearly that the love of the good and the true is ultimately identical, is given only to those who love both sincerely and without any foreign

ends."

We should gladly, if our space permitted it, enrich our notice with a few selections concerning religion and the Church-subjects on which Mr. Coleridge was fond of talking, and always talked well; or with some of those discriminative observations on authors and on books, in the making of which he was unequalled in his time. But these collections of Table-talk are works to which no common measure of quotation could do any justice. Their detached remarks, on a vast variety of subjects, require to be read and hoarded in the memory as suggestive materials for the reader's own mind to work upon. For this purpose they would be invaluable manuals, to be opened in brief intervals between continuous occupations; strengthening whilst they inform the intellect, enlarging the affections, and tending to realize that good result which Coleridge on his death-bed thus declared to have been his paramount aim:

"For, as God hears me, the originating, continuing, and sustaining wish and design in my heart were to exalt the glory of His Name; and, which is the same thing in other words, to promote the improvement of mankind."

THE MAN OF ROSS.

"THE Man of Ross, in Herefordshire, whose true sirname was Kirle, was never married. He was a very humble, good-natured man. He was a man of little or no literature. He always studied to do what good charitable offices he could, and was always pleased when an object offered. He was reverenced and respected by all people. He used to drink and entertain with cider, and was a sober, discreet man. He would tell people when they dined or supped with him, that he could (if they pleased) let them have wine to drink, but that his own drink was cider, and that he found it most agreeable to him, and he did not care to be extravagant with his small fortune. His estate was five hundred pounds per annum, and no more, with which he did wonders. He built and endowed an hospital, and built the spire of Ross. When any litigious suits fell out, he would always stop them, and prevent people's going to law. They would when differences happened say, Go to 'the Great Man of Ross,' or which they did more often, go to the 'Man of Ross,' and he will decide the matter. He left a nephew, a man good for little or nothing. He would have given all from him, but a good deal being entailed he could not. He smoked tobacco, and would generally smoke two pipes if in company, either at home or elsewhere."— Reliquiæ Hearniance.

GENT. MAG. VOL. CCIL

PP

THE AUTOBIOGRAPHY OF SYLVANUS URBAN.
UTOBIOGRA

CHAPTER VIII.

ENGRAVINGS.-DR. HAWKSWORTH.-THE FORGERIES Of Lauder.

:

THERE are some persons who take no pleasure in pictures or prints; but probably the greater part of the world is fond of them. It is generally thought that children are so, and in this respect most men are "children of a larger growth." There is no question that at all periods the publishers of books have found it greatly to their interest to decorate them with engravings and at no period has this been more decidedly manifested than in recent days, when a highly advanced skill in wood-engraving has combined with printing by machinery to enable the publisher to spread before "the millions" some of the best conceptions of art. The publishers of the last century, in their more limited sphere, discovered this element of success, and it gradually became the established custom to embellish the monthly magazines with one or two plates.

There were only a few occasional woodcuts, and three plates, in my first eight volumes. After that, I gave some maps, particularly of those parts of South America which were then the scene of our naval warfare. It is remarkable that the very first map I published was one of the Crimea, a country which after the lapse of nearly a hundred and twenty years has concentrated the attention of Englishmen. Other maps followed in several succeeding volumes. In 1746, when the suspension of our parliamentary reports introduced scientific subjects to our pages, various engravings were given of new inventions in mechanism; and in that year we illustrated our historical pages by the portrait of the Jacobite traitor Lord Lovat, and the Hanoverian conqueror, William Duke of Cumberland. Before the end of the same year was introduced a view of the new bridge then being built at Westminster,- -a great event, as London had hitherto possessed only one bridge and during the progress of its erection we gratified the public curiosity on the subject by views of a variety of bridges in different parts of the world. It was sometimes necessary, on account of the largeness of our number, to engrave duplicate plates. In Feb. 1747 it is noticed that "tho' we have for greater dispatch, &c., two plates engraved, the whole work cannot be printed off and dry'd under a fortnight, or more."

At the same period appeared the commencement of a long series of plates of an heraldic character. Four of these were devoted to the rudiments of the art of blason; eleven to the arms of the whole peerage of England, twelve to the peers of Scotland and Ireland, one to the NovaScotia baronets, and twenty-eight to the arms of the English baronets. These last, published between 1750 and 1754, were accompanied by fiftytwo pages of description, printed distinctly from the Magazine.

For many years subjects of natural history were frequently given. Between 1755 and 1759 there was a series of twenty plates of shells. In 1752 and 1753 were inserted several representations of birds and plants paired together: these were engraved on wood by J. Cave, and an attempt was made to colour them after nature. They were extracted in part from Catesby's Natural History of Carolina, and in part from the Natural History of Uncommon Birds, by Mr. George Edwards, librarian to the