raria, and the rich veins of thought distilled through Coleridge's lectures and conversations into the rising literature of England and America, to have been, beyond any other single cause, instrumental to its working.

It would be a curious chapter in literary statistics, and an instructive one in the history of opinions, could it be ascertained from the keepers of book-stalls what has been the demand within the last fifteen or twenty years, compared with any equal period of time in the preceding century, for neglected works of English poetry, travels, history and divinity. The number and the nature of old books that have been reprinted will, however, furnish us with sufficient ground for congratulation. In the latter half of the eighteenth century a fine collection of sterling volumes might be likened to Ezekiel's vision of dry bones; and a popular disciple of the reigning schools of history and poetry might have pointed to Raleigh and Spenser, to North’s Plutarch or to Ford's plays, and asked of the librarian the question that was put to the prophet, 66 Can these books live?" This, notwithstanding, has come to pass : and while we rejoice in the healthy infusion of new life into our literature in its better parts, it ought not to be forgotten, that equally by their example and their doctrines, Coleridge and his associates sacrificed, in the assertion of higher principles of taste and composition, every chance of immediate popularity, at a time when, by going with the stream instead of cleansing the fountain-head, literature would have been to them not bread alone, but wealth, and welcome, and noisy reputation.

In the concluding chapter of his Biographia, Coleridge complains of his having been gossiped about, as devoted to

metaphysics, and, worse than all, to a system incomparably “ nearer to the visionary flights of Plato, and even to the jar

gon of the mystics, than to the established tenets of Locke.” In this sentence we have an important and distinguishing feature of his literary character, which it may be well to notice before we enter upon the third period of his intellectual education, his sojourn in Germany. We refer to the intense vitality which appears in Coleridge's · Metaphysics,' that, beyond every other quality, even beyond his mastery of constructive reasoning, distinguishes him among the moral teachers

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of his age. In the works of Hume, Cousin and Mackintosh, for instance, it appears too frequently that they contemplate a sort of abstract and notional man, and not humanity at large; theirs is the morbid anatomy of intellect, not the theory and praxis of mind. But, in the conduct and discussion of a problem, Coleridge brings his whole being into play, and gives as full credence to the promptings of his feelings and first impressions as to the mechanical process of his understanding. Hence, he never rests satisfied with a mere fragment or phenomenon of truth, but, possessing himself of the law and germ of its operation and production, determines its worth and significance in relation to other phenomena, of them all in reference to some common conception, and this again to its final archetype and idea. And this habit, or rather this exemption from a mistaken habit of looking upon the grounds of moral science as a sort of chess-play, he himself ascribes to an acquaintance with an order of thinkers to whom the

budge-doctors of the school' have seldom resorted, but who were for the most part regarded as interlopers on their rights and privileges by the regular professors and divines. “ writings of these mystics,” he says, “ acted in no slight de“gree to prevent my mind from being imprisoned within the “ outline of any single dogmatic system. They contributed to “ keep alive the heart in the head ; gave me an indistinct, yet “ stirring and working presentiment, that all the products of " the mere reflective faculty partook of death, and were as the “ rattling twigs and sprays in winter, into which a sap was “ yet to be propelled, from some root to which I had not “ penetrated, if they were to afford my soul either food or 66 shelter."

The passage in the Biographia, from which these sentences are taken is so characteristic of its author, and so beautiful in itself, that we make no apology for giving the entire paragraph that precedes them, particularly as the work, though better known than formerly, may not be familiar to some of our readers.

“Whoever is acquainted with the history of philosophy, during the two or three last centuries, cannot but admit, that there appears to have existed a sort of secret and tacit compact among the learned, not to pass beyond a certain limit in speculative science. The privilege of free thought, so highly extolled, has at no time been held valid in actual practice, except within this limit; and not a single stride beyond it has ever been ventured without bringing obloquy on the transgressor. The few men of genius among the learned class, who actually did overstep this boundary, anxiously avoided the appearance of having so done. Therefore the true depth of science, and the penetration to the inmost centre, from which all the lines of knowledge diverge to their ever-distant circumference, was abandoned to the illiterate and the simple, whom unstilled yearning, and an original ebulliency of spirit, had urged to the investigation of the indwelling and living ground of all things. These then, because their names had never been inrolled in the guides of the learned, were persecuted by the registered livery-men as interlopers on their rights and privileges. All without distinction were branded as fanatics and phantasts ; not only those, whose wild and exorbitant imaginations had actually engendered only extravagant and grotesque phantasms, and whose productions were, for the most part, poor copies and gross caricatures of genuine inspiration ; but the truly inspired likewise, the originals themselves! And this for no other reason, but because they were the unlearned, men of humble and obscure occupations.

my own experience, that there exist folios on the human understanding, and the nature of man, which would have a far juster claim to their high rank and celebrity, if in the whole huge volume there could be found as much fullness of heart and intellect, as burst forth in many a simple page of George Fox, Jacob Behmen, and even of Behmen's commentator, the pious and fervid William Law.”

The manhood, the annus mirabilis" of Coleridge's poetical life, according to a profound student of his poetry, was in the year 1797, when he was only twenty-five. At this time he was engaged with Wordsworth in composing or arranging the Lyrical Ballads, which were published in the year following. The Remorse, or rather the play he first called Osorio, was also written in this year. Mr. Gilman is unnecessarily tender over his friend's reputation, lest any one should still suspect Coleridge of having been at this time a spy in the French service, or a smuggler; and his caution reminds us of similar prudence in Sir John Hawkins, who deprecates the idea that Johnson was addicted to alchemy because he sometimes amused himself with chemical experiments. Coleridge about this time projected a poem, in the manner of The Task, but upon a broader basis, to be entitled The Brook: and he was in the habit almost daily of making studies, as artists call them, among the sloping coombes and acclivities of Quantock. Hence some titled Dogberry of the neighbourhood took it into his head that the poet, bookin-hand, was taking plans of the coast.

Coleridge, while he resided at Nether-Stowey, was in the habit of preaching often at the Unitarian chapel at Taunton, and, through his ministerial office, became acquainted with the late Mr. Hazlitt, who, at one period of their intimacy at least, was an ardent admirer, although he afterwards became one of the most inveterate assailants of “the preacher.” A lively description of Coleridge in 1798 and of his peculiar power as an orator—which, by the way, accords ill with Mr. Cottle's particular account of his failure in Mr. Jardine's pulpit at Bath—is to be found in Mr. Hazlitt's collected works. It has been often cited; but the closing sentences are so expressive of Coleridge in the prime of manhood, and of the fascination he exercised over persons of imaginative character, that we borrow them once again.

“ On the Tuesday following, the half-inspired speaker came. VOL, VIII.--No XVI.

I was

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called down into the room where he was, and went half hoping, half afraid. He received me very graciously, and I listened for a long time without uttering a word, and did not suffer in his opinion by my silence. * For those two hours (he was afterwards pleased to say) ‘he was conversing with W. H.'s forehead.' His appearance was different from what I had anticipated from seeing him before. At a distance, and in the dim light of the chapel, there was to me a strange wildness in his aspect, a dusky obscurity, and I thought him pitted with the small-pox. His complexion was at that time clear, and even bright,

*As are the children of yon azure sheen.' His forehead was broad and high, as if built of ivory, with large projecting eyebrows, and his eyes rolling beneath them like a sea with darkened lustre;

"A certain tender bloom his face o'erspread'; a purple tinge, as we see it in the pale, thoughtful complexions of the Spanish portrait painters, Murillo and Velasquez. His mouth was rather open, his chin good-humoured and round, and his nose small.

“ Coleridge in his person was rather above the common size, inclining to the corpulent. His hair (now, alas! grey, and during the latter years of his life perfectly white) was then black, and glossy as the raven's wing, and fell in smooth masses over his forehead. This long liberal hair is peculiar to enthusiasts*."

The year 1798 brings us to the close of the second period of Coleridge's education in manhood. On the 16th of September, in company with Mr. Wordsworth and his sister, he sailed from Great Yarmouth for Hamburg. In his Biographia he has thus noted the opening of a new era in his intellectual life :

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“While my mind was thus perplexed” (struggles with the world and with himself then lying heavy on him)" by a gracious Providence, for which I can never be sufficiently grateful, the generous and munificent patronage of Mr. Josiah and Mr. Thomas Wedgewood enabled me to finish my education in Germany. Instead of troubling others with my own crude notions, and juvenile compositions, I was thenceforward better employed in attempting to store my own head with the wisdom of others. I made the best use of my time and means; and there is therefore no period of my life on which I look back with such unmingled satisfaction."

What the Latin and the languages of southern Europe were to our national literature in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, the German has become in the nineteenthnot so much a model or a mirror, as a map of regions first laid open and planted by others, but which still have room

Originally published in the “ Liberal," vol. ii. pp. 23—27.