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founders believed to depend. None have revived bach on natural history and physiology, and the the phantasy since; but Coleridge has lived to lectures of Eichhorn on the New Testament; and sober down his early extravagant views of political from professor Tychyen he learned the Gothic freedom into something like a disavowal of having grammar. He read the Minnesinger and the held them ; but he has never changed into a foe verses of Hans Sachs, the Nuremberg cobbler, but of the generous principles of human freedom, his time was principally devoted to literature and which he ever espoused; while Southey has be- philosophy. At the end of his “ Biographia Liter come the enemy of political and religious freedom, aria,” Coleridge has published some letters, which the supporter and advocate of arbitrary measures relate to his sojourn in Germany. He sailed, Sepin church and state, and the vituperator of all who tember 16th, 1798, and on the 19th landed at Hamsupport the recorded principles of his early years. burgh. It was on the 20th of the same month

About this time, and with the same object, that he says he was introduced to the brother of namely, to spread the principles of true liberty, the great poet Klopstock, to professor Ebeling, Coleridge began a weekly paper called “The and ultimately to the poet himself. He had an Watchman,” which only reached its ninth num- impression of awe on his spirits when he set out ber, though the editor set out on his travels to pro- to visit the Gerinan Milton, whose humble house eure subscribers among the friends of the doc- stood about a quarter of a mile froin the city gate. trines he espoused, and visited Birmingham, He was much disappointed in the countenance of Manchester, Derby, Nottingham, and Sheffield, Klopstock, which was inexpressive, and without for the purpose. The failure of this paper was a peculiarity in any of the features. Klopstock was severe mortification to the projector. No ground lively and courteous; talked of Milton and Glover, was gained on the score of liberty, though about and preferred the verse of the latter to the former, the same time his self-love was flattered by the -a very curious mistake, but natural enough in a success of a volume of poems, which he repub- foreigner. He spoke with indignation of the Eng. lished, with some communications from his friends lish translations of his Messiah. He said his first Lamb and Lloyd.

ode was fifty years older than his last, and hoped Coleridge married Miss Sarah Fricker in the Coleridge would revenge him on Englishmen by autumn of 1795, and in the following year his translating his Messiah. eldest son, Hartley, was born. Two more sons, On his return from Germany, Coleridge went to Berkley and Derwent, were the fruits of this union. reside at Keswick, in Cumberland. He had made In 1797, he resided at Nether Stowey, a village a great addition to his stock of knowledge, and le near Bridgewater, in Somersetshire, and wrote seems to have spared no pains to store up what there in the spring, at the desire of Sheridan, a was either useful or speculative. He had become tragedy, which was, in 1813, brought out under master of most of the carly German writers, or the title of “Remorse :” the name it originally rather of the state of carly German literature. He bore was Osorio. There were some circumstances dived deeply into the mystical stream of Teutonic in this business that led to a suspicion of Sheridan's philosophy. There the predilections of his earlier not having acted with any great regard to truth years no doubt came upon him in aid of his or feeling. During his residence here, Coleridge researches into a labyrinth which no human clue was in the habit of preaching every Sunday at the will ever unravel; or which were one found caUnitarian Chapel in Taunton, and was greatly pable of so doing, would reveal a mighty nothing. respected by the better class of his neighbors. He Long, he says, while meditating in England, had enjoyed the friendship of Wordsworth, who lived his heart been with Paul and John, and his head at Allfoxden, about two miles from Stowey, and with Spinoza. He then became convinced of the was occasionally visited by Charles Lamb, John doctrine of St. Paul, and from an anti trinitarian Thelwall, and other congenial spirits. “ The became a believer in the Trinity, and in Chris

Brook," a poem that he planned about this period, tianity as commonly received; or, to use his own I was never completed.

word, found a “re-conversion." Yct, for all his Coleridge had married before he possessed the arguments on the subject, he had better have means of supporting a family, and he depended retained his early creed, and saved the time wasted principally for subsistence, at Stowey, upon his in travelling back to exactly the same point where uiterary labors, the remuneration for which could he set out, for he finds that faith necessary at last be but scanty. At length, in 1798, the kind patron- which he had been taught, in his church, was age of the late Thomas Wedgwood, Esq., who necessary at his first outset in life. His arguments, granted him a pension of 1001. a-year, enabled pro and con, not being of use to any of the com hum to plan a visit to Germany; to which country munity, and the exclusive property of their owner, he proceeded with Wordsworth, and studied the he had only to look back upon his laborious trifling, language at Ratzeburg, and then went to Gottin- as Grotius did upon his own toils, when death was gen. He there attended the lectures of Blumen- upon him. Metaphysics are most unprofitable

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things; as political economists say, their labors deavored to show that his own writings in the are of the most “unproductie class" in the com- Morning Post were greatly influential on the pubmunity of thinkers.

lic mind. Coleridge himself confessed that his The next step of our poet in a life which seems Morning Post essays, though written in defence to have had no settled object, but to have been or furtherance of the measures of the government, steered compassless along, was to undertake the added nothing to his fortune or reputation. How political and literary departments of the Morning should they have been effective, when their writer, Post newspaper, and in the duties of this situation who not long before addressed the people, and he was engaged in the spring of 1802. No man echoed from his compositions the principles of freewas less fitted for a popular writer; and, in com- dorn and the rights of the people, now wrote with mon with his early connexions, Coleridge seems scorn of “mob-sycophants,” and of the “half-witto have had no fixed political principles that the ted vulgar?" It is a consolation to know that our public could understand, though he perhaps was uuthor himself lamented the waste of his manhood able to reconcile in his own bosom all that others and intellect in this way. What might he not night imagine contradictory, and no doubt he did have given to the world that is enduring and ad60 conscientiously. His style and manner of mirable, in the room of these misplaced political writing, the learning and depth of his disquisitions lucubrations! Who that has read his better works for ever came into play, and rendered him unin- will not subscribe to this truth? telligible, or, what is equally fatal, unreadable to His translation of Schiller's Wallenstein may be the mass. It was singular, ton, that he disclosed denominated a free one, and is finely executed in his biography so strongly his unsettled political It is impossible to give in the English language a principles, which showed that he had not studied more effective idea of the work of the great Ger. politics as he had studied poetry, Kant, and the man dramatist. This version was made from a ology The public of each party looks upon a copy which the author himself afterwards revised political writer as a sort of champion round whom and altered, and the translator subsequently re it rallies, and feels it impossible to follow the published his version in a more correct form, with changeable leader, or applaud the addresses of him the additional passages and alterations of Schiller. who is inconsistent or wavering in principles: it This translation will long remain as the most will not back out any but the firm unflinching effective which has been achieved of the works partisan. In truth, what an ill compliment do of the German dramatists in the British tongue. men pay to their own judgnient, when they run The censure which has been cast upon our poet counter to, and shift about from points they have for not writing more which is worthy of his repudeclared in indelible ink are founded on truth and tation, has been met by his enumeration of what reason irrefutable and eternal! They must either he has done in all ways and times; and, in have been superficial smatterers in what they first truth, he wrote a vast deal which passed anpromulgated, and have appeared prematurely in noticed, upon fleeting politics, and in newspaper print, or they must be tinctured with something columns, literary as well as political. To the like the hue of uncrimsoned apostasy. The mem- world these last go for nothing, though the author bers of what is called the “ Lake School" have calculated the thought and labor they cost him at been more or less strongly marked with this re- full value. He conceded something, however, to prehensible change of political creed, but Coleridge the prevailing idea respecting him, when he said, the least of them. In truth he got nothing by any “On my own account, I may perhaps have had change he ventured upon, and, what is more, he sufficient reason to lament my deficiency in selfexpected nothing; the world is therefore bound to control, and the neglect of concentrating my pow. say of him what cannot be said of his friends, if it ers to the realization of some permanent work. But be true, that it believes most cordially in his sin- to verse, rather than to prose, if to either, belongs cerity—and that his obliquity in politics was the voice of mourning,' for caused by his superficial knowledge of them, and Keen pangs of love awakening as a babe nis devotion of his high mental powers to different Turbulent, with an outcry in the heart,

And fears self-will'd that shunn'd the eye of hope, questions. Notwithstanding this, those who will

And hope that scarce could know itself from fear; not make a candid allowance for him, have ex

Sense of past youth, and manhood come in vain, pressed wonder how the author of the “ Consciones And genius given and knowledge won in vain, ad Populum," and the “Watchman," the friend And all which I bad cull'd in wood-walks wild, of freedom, and one of the founders of the Pantis

And all which patient toil had rear'd, and all

Commune with thee had open'd out-but flowers ocracy, could afterwards regard the drivelling and

Strew'd on my corpse, and borne upon my bier, chicanery of the pettifogging minister, Perceval, In the same coffin, for the self-same grave! as glorious in British political history, and he aimself as the “best and wisest" of ministers! In another part of his works, Coleridge says Although Coleridge avowed his belief that he speaking of what in poetry he had written, “ as to was not calculated for a popular writer, he en. myself, I have published sy little, anu that little

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of so little importance, as to make it almost ludi- It is equally creditable to the taste and judgment crous to mention my name at all.” It is evident, of Coleridge, that he was one of the first to point therefore, that a sense of what he might have done out, with temper and sound reasoning, the fallacy for fame, and of the little he had done, was felt of a great portion of Wordsworth's poetic theory by the poet; and yet, the little he did produce has namely, that which relates to low life. Wordsamong it gems of the purest lustre, the brilliancy worth contended that a proper poetic diction is a of which time will not deaden until the universal language taken from the mouths of men in genevoice of nature be heard no longer, and poetry ral, in their natural conversation under the influperish beneath the dull load of life's hackneyed enoe of natural feelings. Coleridge wisely asserted, realities.

that philosophers are the authors of the best parts The poem of Christabel./Coleridge says, was of language, not clowns ; and that Milton's lancomposed in consequence of an agreement with guage is more that of real life than the language Mr. Wordsworth, that they should mutually pro- of a cottager. This subject he has most ably duce specimens of poetry which should contain treated in chapter 17 of his Biographia Literaria. " the power of exciting the sympathy of the reader, Two years after he had abandoned the Morning by a faithful adherence to the truth of nature, and Post, he set off for Malta, where he most unexthe power of giving the interest of novelty by pectedly arrived on a visit to his friend Dr. Stodart, the modifying colors of imagination. The sudden then king's advocate in that island, and was mcharm, which accidents of light and shade, which troduced by him to the Governor, Sir Alexander moon-light or sun-set diffused over a known and Ball, who appointed him his secretary. He refamiliar landscape, appeared to represent the prac- mained in the island fulfilling the duties of his ticability of combining both.” Further he ob- situation, for which he seems to have been but serves on this thought, "that a series of poems indifferently qualified, a very short period. One might be composed of two sorts. In the one, the advantage, however, he derived from his official incidents and agents were to be, in part at least, employ: that of the pension granted by Governsupernatural; and the excellence to be aimed at ment to those who have served in similar situawas to consist in the interesting of the affections tions. On his way home he visited Italy; entered by the dramatic truth of such emotions as would Rome, and examined its host of ancient and modnaturally accompany such situations, supposing ern curiosities, and added fresh matter for thought them real, etc. For the second class, subjects to his rapidly accumulating store of ideas. Of were to be chosen from ordinary life.” Thus, it this visit he gives several anecdotes; among them appears, originated the poems of the “ Ancient one respecting the horns of Moses on Michael Mariner,” and “Christabel,” by Coleridge, and Angelo's celebrated statue of that lawgiver, in the “Lyrical Ballads” of Wordsworth.

tended to elucidate the character of Frenchmen Perhaps there is no English writer living who Coleridge was all his life a hater of France and understood better than Coleridge the elements of Frenchmen, arising from his belief in their being poetry, and the way in which they may be best completely destitute of moral or poetical feeling. combined to produce certain impressions. His A Prussian, who was with him while looking upon definitions of the merits and differences in style the statue, observed that a Frenchman was the only and poetic genius, between the earliest and latest animal, “ in the human shape, that by no possiwriters of his country, are superior to those which bility can lift itself up to religion or poetry.” A any one else has it in his power to make; for, in foolish and untrue remark on the countrymen of truth, he long and deeply meditated upon them, Fenelon and Pascal, of Massillon and Corneille. and no one can be dissatisfied by the reasons he Just then, however, two French officers of rank gives, and the examples he furnishes, to bear out happened to enter the church, and the Goth from his theories and opinions. These things he did the Elbe remarked that, the first things they would as well or better in conversation than in writing. notice would be the "horns and beard” (upon which His conversational powers were indeed unrivalled, the Prussian and Coleridge had just been rearing and it is to be feared that to excel in these, he theories and quoting history), and that the associsacrificed what was more durable ; and that heations the Frenchmen would connect with them resigned, for the pleasure of gratifying an attentive“ would be those of a he-goat and a cuckold.” It listening circle, and pleasing thereby his self-love happened that the Prus-Goth was right: the offi by its applausé, much that would have delighted cers did pass some such joke upon the figure. the world. His flow of words, delivery, and va- Hence, by inference, would the poet have his riety of information were so great, and he found readers deduce the character of a people, whose it so captivating to enchain his auditors to the car literature, science, and civilization are perhaps of his triumphant eloquence, that be sacrificed to only not the very first in the world. this gratification what might have sufficed to Another instance of his fixed and absurd dislike enfer upon him a celebrity a thousand times of every thing French, occurred during the demore to he coveted by a spirit akin to his own. livery of a course of Lectures on Poetry, at the

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Royal Institution, in the spring of 1808; in one rality and Religion ; illustrated by select passages of which he astonished his auditory by thanking from our older Divines, especially from Arch. his Maker, in the most serious manner, for so or- bishop Leighton." This is for the most part a dering events, that he was totally ignorant of a compilation of extracts from the works of the single word of “ that frightful jargon, the French Archbishop. language!" And yet, notwithstanding this public To conclude the catalogue of Mr. Coleridge's avowal of his entire ignorance of the language, works, in 1830 was issued a small volume “On Mr. Coleridge is said to have been in the habit, the Constitution of the Church and State, accord. while conversing with his friends, of expressing ing to the idea of each, with Aids towards a right the utmost contempt for the literature of that Judgment on the late Catholic Bill.” country!

In the year 1828, the whole of his poetical In the years 1809–10, Mr. Coleridge issued works, including the dramas of Wallenstein from Grasmere a weekly essay, stamped to be (which had been long out of print), Remorse, and sent' by the general post, called “ The Friend." Zapolya, were collected in three elegant volumes This paper lasted for twenty-seven numbers, and by Mr. Pickering. was then abruptly discontinued; but the papers The latter years of Mr. Coleridge's life were have since been collected and enlarged in three made easy by a domestication with his friend Mr. small volumes.

Gillman, the surgeon of Highgate Grove, and for In the year 1812, Mr. Coleridge, being in Lon- some years, the poet deservedly received an andon, edited, and contributed several very interest. nuity from his Majesty of £ 100 per annum, as ing articles to, Mr. Southey's “Omniana," in two an Academician of the Royal Society of Litera. small volumes. In the year 1816, appeared the ture. But these few most honorable pensions to Biographical Sketches of his Literary Life and worn-out veterans in literature were discontinued Opinions, and his newspaper Poems re-collected by the late ministry. Mr. Coleridge contributed under the title of “Sibylline Leaves."

one or two erudite papers to the transactions of About this time he wrote the prospectus of this Society. In the summer of 1828, Mr. Cole. “ The Encyclopædia Metropolitana,” still in the ridge made the tour of Holland, Flanders, and up course of publication, and was intended to be its the Rhine as far as Bergen. For some years beeditor ; but this final mistake was early discovered fore his death, he was afflicted with great bodily and rectified.

pain; and was on one occasion heard to say, that In the year 1816 likewise was published by for thirteen months he had from this cause walked Mr. Murray, at the recommendation of Lord By- up and down his chamber seventeen hours each ron, who had generously befriended the brother day. He died on the 25th of July, 1834, having (or rather the father) poet, the wondrous ballad previously written the following epitaph for him. tale of “Christabel.” The author tells us in his self: preface that the first part of it was written in his

“Stop, Christian passer-by! stop, child of God ! great poetic year, 1797, at Stowey; the second

And read with gentle breast. Beneath this sod part, after his return from Germany, in 1800, at A poet lies, or that which once seem'd he Keswick : the conclusion yet remains to be writ.

Oh, litt a thought in prayer for 8. T. C. !

That he, who, many a year, with toil of breath, ten! The poet says, indeed, in this preface, “ As

Found death in life, may here find life in death! in my very first conception of the tale, I had the

Mercy for praise — to be forgiven for fame, whole present to my mind, I trust that I shall yet He ask'd and hoped through Christ. Do thou the be able to embody in verse the three parts yet to

same." " We do not pretend to contradict a poet's This is perfection — worthy of the author of dreams; but we believe that Mr. Coleridge never the best essay on epitaphs in the English lancommunicated to mortal man, woman, or child, guage. He was buried in Highgate Church. He how this story of witchcraft was to end. The has left three children, namely, Hartley, Derwent, poem is, perhaps, more interesting as a fragment. and Sara. The first has published a volume of For sixteen years we remember it used to be re- poems, of which it is enough to say that they are cited and transcribed by admiring disciples, till worthy of Mr. Wordsworth’s verses addressed to at length it was printed, and at least half the him at “six years old.” The second son is in charm of the poet was broken by the counterspell holy orders, and is married and settled in the of that rival magician, Faust. In 1818 was pub- west of England ; and the poet's daughter is lished the drama of Zapolya. In 1825, “Aids united to her learned and lively cousin, Mr. Henry to Reflection, in the Formation of a Manly Char. Nelson Coleridge, the author of “Six Months in acter, on the several grounds of Prudence, Mo- the West Indies.” This young lady had the good

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fortune to be educated in the noble library on the and subjected for a few minutes to the ethereal banks of the Cumberland Greta, where she as. influence of that wonderful man's monologue, and sisted her accomplished uncle in translating from he will begin to believe himself a poet. The bar. the old French the history of the Chevalier Bay ren wilderness may not blossom like the rose; but ard, and from the Latin the account of the Abi- it will seem, or rather feel to do so, under the luspones, or Equestrian Indians of South America, tre of an imagination exhaustless as the sun.' by the Jesuit Martin Dobrizhoffer ; both of which “At the house of the attached friend, under works were published by Mr. Murray.

whose roof this illustrious man spent the latter ** But of his native speech, because well nigh years of his life, it was the custom to have a con. Disuse in him forgetfulness had wrought,

versazione every Thursday evening. Here Cole. lo Latin he composed bis history, A garrulous but a lively tale, and fraught

ridge was the centre and admiration of the circle With matter of delight and food for thought;

that gathered round him. He could not be otherAnd if he could, in Merlin's glass, have seen wise than aware of the intellectual homage of By rehou his tomes to speak our tongue were taught, which he was the object; yet there he sate, talk. The old man would have been as pleased (I ween) ing and looking all sweet and simple and divine As when he won the ear of that great empress things, the very personification of meekness and SOUTHEY's Tale of Paraguay. humility. Now he spoke of passing occurrences,

or of surrounding objects,—the flowers on the ta.

ble, or the dog on the hearth; and enlarged in The following brief sketches of Coleridge's char- most familiar wise on the beauty of the one, the acter are selected from among the numerous attachment, the almost moral nature of the other, notices which appeared in various reviews and and the wonders that were involved in each. And periodicals at the time of his decease. now, soaring upward with amazing majesty, into

" As a great poet, and a still greater philoso- those sublimer regions in which his soul depher, the world has hardly yet done justice to the lighted, and abstracting himself from the things genius of Coleridge. It was in truth of an order of time and sense, the strength of his wing soon not to be appreciated in a brief space. A far carried him out of sight. And here, even in these longer life than that of Coleridge shall not suffice his eagle flights, although the eye in gazing after to bring to maturity the harvest of a renown like him was dazzled and blinded, yet ever and anon his. The ripening of his mind, with all its golden

a sunbeam would make its way through the loopfruitage, is but the seed-time of his glory. The holes of the mind, giving it to discern that beau. close and consummation of his labors (grievous tiful amalgamation of heart and spirit, that could to those that knew him, and even to those that equally raise him above his fellow-men, or bring knew him not,) is the mere commencement of him down again to the softest level of humanity. his eternity of fame. As a poet, Coleridge was · It is easy,' says the critic before alluded to, it unquestionably great ; as a moralist, a theologian, is easy to talk-not very difficult to speechifyand a philosopher, of the very highest class, he hard to speak; but to discourse' is a gift rarely was utterly unapproachable. And here, gentle bestowed by Heaven on mortal man. Coleridge reader, let me be plainly understood as speaking has it in perfection. While he is discoursing, the not merely of the present, but the past

. Nay, world loses all its common places, and you and more. Seeing that the earth herself is now past your wife imagine yourselves Adam and Eve, her prime, and gives various indications of her listening to the affable archangel Raphael in the beginning to grow grey in years,' it would, per- garden of Eden. You would no more dream of haps, savour more of probability than presump- wishing him to be mute for awhile, than you tion, if I were likewise to include the future. It would a river, that imposes silence with a stilly is thus that, looking both to what is, and to what sound.' Whether you understand two consecu. has been, we seem to feel it, like a troth intuitive, tive sentences, we shall not stop too curiously to that we shall never have another Shukspeare in enquire; but you do something better-you feel the drama, nor a second Milton in the regions of the whole, just like any other divine music. And sublimer song. As a poet, Coleridge has done 'tis your own fault if you do not “a wiser and a enough to show how much more he might and better man arise to-morrow's morn.' could have done, if he had so thought fit. It was

The Metropolitan. truly said of him, by an excellent critic and ac. An elaborate and admirable critique on Colecoraplished jodge, 'Let the dullest clod that ever ridge's “ Poetical Works,” in “The Quarterly vegetated, provided only he be alive and hears, be Review, No. CIII.," written just before his death, shut up in a room with Coleridge, or in a wood, opens as follows:

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