made from manuscript, was published in London simultaneously with the original in Germany. Coleridge was probably hurried, in order to be up to time. There are frequent marks of haste, especially in the want of condensation, and in the use of polysyllabic LatinEnglish, instead of monosyllabic Saxon-English. The translation had hardly any sale, and so Coleridge had no opportunity for remedying the defects caused by haste.

V.

WHEN Coleridge, at the close of the last century, returned from Germany, armed with a new language and a new literature, he was in his twenty-ninth year, he was in the bloom of an uncommonly rich young manhood. Into the lively arena, where great principles were then interlocked in a death-grapple, no man in England of that wakeful period brought more mental force, more intellectual accomplishment. Mr. Stuart, the active, able conductor of The Morning Post, for which paper Coleridge was engaged to write, declared, many years after, in reviewing his connection with Coleridge. at that period: "To write the leading paragraph of a newspaper I would prefer Coleridge to Mackintosh, Burke, or any man I ever heard of. His observations not only were confirmed by good sense, but displayed extensive knowledge, deep thought, and wellgrounded foresight; they were so brilliantly ornamented, so classically delightful. They were the writings of a scholar, a gentleman,

and a statesman, without personal sarcasm or illiberality of any kind. But when Coleridge wrote in his study without being pressed, he wandered and lost himself. He should always have had the printer's devil at his elbow with Sir, the printers want copy."

Irresolution caused by bad health is not enough to account for the failures of Coleridge, He seems to have been deficient in what the phrenologists call concentrativeness, the faculty of holding the intellect continuously to its task,. Opium, no doubt, had something to do with the inaptitude for steady work. The pretended cure for disease became the generator of worse disease. The want of will to resist the fascination of the disguised demon gave this demon the power to dethrone an ill-guarded will. On another occasion, a few years later, speaking of what Coleridge wrote for The Courier about the war in Spain, Mr. Stuart said; "Could Coleridge have written the leading paragraph daily his services would have been invaluable, but an occasional essay could produce little effect."

From a successful conductor of London daily newspapers this is strong testimony as to the capability of Coleridge. To those who

now read his prose-volumes, with that high enjoyment imparted by the pages of Plato, drawing from him the calm inspiration of profound and spiritual thoughtfulness, it seems almost incredible that the same man was able to produce, in their most effective potency, those stirring paragraphs best fitted to spur men's minds to instant action.

In 1804 Coleridge, on account of ill health, and to visit a friend, made a voyage to Malta. Here he became intimate with a superior man, Sir Alexander Ball, Governor of Malta, who made Coleridge for a time his secretary. From Malta he went to Rome, where he met Allston. Congenial spirits were these two, both splendidly gifted, richly poetical as well as intellectual, and both spiritually-minded. Two or three years before he died, Allston, in his studio at Cambridgeport, on my mentioning Coleridge, spoke of him with reverence as well as intense admiration: "The greatest man that ever I accosted." In uttering these words his voice fell and his manner grew almost solemn, as though for the moment his vision had before it his great friend. Other eminent contemporaries who came in contact with him (and the closer the contact the

stronger the impression) were similarly impressed by his presence and converse. Charles Lamb, who admired not less than he loved Coleridge, called him, with Lamb's peculiar humor, "an archangel a little damaged." The scholarly, eloquent De Quincey, with a dash of that polished exaggeration into which he is occasionally seduced, speaks of him as "the largest and most spacious intellect, the subtlest and most comprehensive, in my judgment, that has yet existed amongst men." Wordsworth says: "The only wonderful man I ever knew was Coleridge."

Coleridge quitted Rome suddenly, on a confidential hint that Napoleon had ordered his arrest. That such an order was given has been denied, on the ground that the King-crushing Emperor would not have condescended to notice the then unknown private Englishman. But Napoleon was as minute as he was unscrupulous in the instrumentalities of his despotism, and had all the hate and dread instinctive to despots, of independent thinkers and bold men of genius, a feeling deepened in this case by his hatred of England. His spies and informers were everywhere. In 1802 and 1803 Coleridge wrote in The Morning Post