PHILOSOPHY. BY J. C. SHAIRP, PRINCIPAL OF THE UNITED COLLEGE OF ST. SALVATOR AND ST. LEONARD, AUTHOR OF CULTURE AND RELIGION." PII VATES ET PHŒBO DIGNA LOCUTI. NEW YORK: PUBLISHED BY HURD AND HOUGHTON. 1872. [Reprinted from the Second Edinburgh Edition.] RIVERSIDE, CAMBRIDGE: 8TEREOTYPED AND PRINTED BY H. O. HOUGHTON AND COMPANY. TO THE RIGHT HONORABLE SIR JOHN TAYLOR COLERIDGE, THE NEPHEW OF COLERIDGE, THE FRIEND OF WORDSWORTH, THE LIFE-LONG FRIEND OF KEBLE, AND HIS BIOGRAPHER, IN WHOSE SERENE AGE AND BEAUTIFUL CHARACTER ANOTHER GENERATION SEES EMBODIED THE BEST WISDOM OF HIS POET FRIENDS. PREFACE TO SECOND EDITION. THE Essays on Wordsworth, Coleridge, and Keble, were, as stated in the former Preface, intended to be in some sort thank-offerings, single stones contributed to their memorial cairns. Another name I feel should have followed, or rather have preceded these. Of Walter Scott and his poetry, the first poetry I knew, it was my wish to have said something in another essay, and to have added it to this series, or perhaps put it in the first, which would have been its proper place. But before this was done, his Centenary had come, during which so much was spoken, and well spoken, on the subject, that this does not seem the time for saying more. But if, adopting Wordsworth's lines, we say "Blessings be with them—and eternal praise, Who gave us nobler loves, and nobler cares — to Walter Scott will fall a large share in that benediction. These Essays are in no sense criticisms of the poets they deal with, at least as that word is generally understood. To take the measure of |