the theatre of diplomatic contest between Austria and Russia, ere the sword shall ultimately decide which of the two powers is to possess those rich and important provinces. The sympathies of Europe must be on the side of Austria; the more so as the political and commercial interests of Austria are in this case identical with those of Europe. The intrigues of Russia in the principalities, which we have before described, and her brutal violation of the existing treaties and the laws of the country, have provoked too much resistance on the part of the Wallachians and Moldavians, and in its turn, too much violence on the part of the Russian consul-general, not to prove sufficiently that Russia is looked upon by the people of those provinces as their enemy, and her influence in the local governments as a despotic usurpation. It is not to be doubted, therefore, that the inhabitants of the principalities,-aware, as they are, of their being too feeble to maintain their own independence, and to form a distinct state between such powerful neighbours,-would feel themselves essentially benefited by being placed under the sway of Austria; whose government, on the whole, is friendly to the labouring classes, and promotes the physical comforts of the people. Such a combination would be the most advantageous for Turkey itself, especially as there are yet wide tracts in the East, in which she may receive a compensation for any loss in Europe. The cradle of the Ottoman power may be the source of new strength and regeneration, and the eastern shores of the BLACK SEA are not yet Russian. In losing the mere nominal sovereignty which she indeed still enjoys over the principalities,-distinct in their laws, their religion and their language, -whose trans-Danubian position renders them difficult for the Porte to defend against Russian arms and Russian intrigues, Turkey, acquiescing in the occupation of these provinces by Austria, and the extension of her sway to the Black Sea, will experience the real, and to herself, most important, advantage of seeing interposed between herself and Russia an antagonist fully able to control her deadly enemy on land, and, with time, probably on the Black Sea also. ARTICLE IV. 1. The Life of Samuel Taylor Coleridge. By JAMES GILMAN. London: Pickering. 1838. 1st vol. 8vo. 2. Coleridge's Table Talk. 2nd edition. 1 vol. 12mo. 1836. 3. The Literary Remains of Samuel Taylor Coleridge. Collected and edited by H. N. COLERIDGE, Esq. M.A. Pickering. 1836-7. 3 vols. 8vo. THIS journal is of too recent date to have joined in the chorus of panegyric sent forth upon the death of Coleridge by the daily, monthly and quarterly press, which, with a few honorable exceptions, for more than a quarter of a century, had done all in its power to keep his name in obscurity, or to bring it into contempt. We are not, however, inclined to regret our backwardness in noticing the literary character of one, who in any age would have been remarkable, but who in his own was illustrious, whether we regard him as an analytic or a creative thinker, or take into account the wide and arduous round of his acquired knowledge. The craze' and often merely contagious applause that follows the funeral pyre and the last valediction of 'good-great' men are subsiding; the mists of personal feeling and prejudice breaking away; and, whatever our fitness for the task may be, our opportunities are certainly more favourable at this eleventh hour for calmly and considerately weighing the moral and intellectual qualities of the poet-philosopher, than if we had hurried into the field at the first summons. It forms no part of our present design to enter into the merits of Coleridge's philosophy as a science and a system, further than it has been made publici juris in his prose works from the Friend' to the Church and State.' It was intended, according to his reporter in the Table Talk, "to reduce all "knowledges into harmony. To oppose no other system, but "to show what was true in each; and how'-and herein it dif"fered from what goes by the name of eclecticism-'that which "was true in the particular, in each of them became error, be"cause it was only half the truth.'—an endeavour to unite the "insulated fragments of truth, and therewith to frame a per"fect mirror. I wish, in short," he proceeds, "to connect by 66 a moral copula natural history with political history; or, in "other words, to make history scientific, and science historical "—to take from history its accidentality, and from science its "fatalism." Beyond this we have only the reports of others to trust to, without the means of guarding against their misconceptions; or fragments published with such discretion as guided Antony in the extracts he made from Cæsar's will. Neither shall we avail ourselves, further than as they help to throw light upon his literary character, of the many sketches, descriptions and reminiscences, that have appeared of Coleridge's personal and mental habits. For*, as it has been well observed, "anecdotes that derive their whole and sole interest "from the great name of the person concerning whom they are "related, and neither illustrate his general character nor his particular actions, would scarcely have been noticed or re"membered, except by men of weak minds. It is not unlikely, "therefore, that they were misapprehended at the time; and it " is most probable that they have been related as incorrectly, " as they were noticed injudiciously." Enough will remain in Coleridge's history, without drawing upon the stores of garrulous biography, to fill up a much larger space than we can allot to him. "Quicquid ex Agricola amavimus, quicquid "mirati sumus, manet mansurumque est in animis hominum, " in æternitate temporum, fama rerum." There is no need to bind up the idle weeds that an enemy has sown or scattered, in a chaplet of amaranth. 66 We are fortunate in having for our guide so considerate a chronicler as Mr. Gilman. In the Life before us he has approved himself worthy of the dedication to the republication of the Friend.' It is a portraiture of the man as well as the philosopher: not perhaps altogether an unbiassed one, nor was it likely that any one "domesticated with Coleridge" for twenty years, should be an unprejudiced biographer. But, after all, love and reverence are as good elements for lifewriting as indifference or wakeful censure. Mr. Coleridge's character will, eventually, form a part in the philosophical history of the human mind: but, in the meantime, Mr. Gilman's memorial' will better recommend its subject to a nu * From the British Magazine, No. 37. Subscribed J. C. H. merous class of readers, than if some Diogenes or Marinus had drawn up an éloge, or a critical disquisition, in which, not the man himself, but a certain learned, eloquent and logical abstract, instead of attracting, repelled or transcended our sympathies. Candour and kindliness are not the only merits in Mr. Gilman's Life; he is evidently an instructed man, bringing to what he received from Coleridge a healthy and active understanding, and that spirit of inquiry and habit of decision which are oftener found in his profession than, on an average, in any other. He has every right to what he bespeaks in his preface, "the candour and kindness of his readers ; or, rather he has little need of them, and is entitled, in return, to their acknowledgements, for imparting to them with so much truth and liveliness his knowledge of the illustrious subject of this Memoir. وو 66 Contrary to what is generally observed in men of great mental power, Coleridge inherited the talents and temperament of his father rather than of his other parent. Mrs. Coleridge was a wife and mother of the Vicar of Wakefield' stamp, and an excellent partner for the Vicar of Ottery, whose simplicity and mental abstractions stood often in need of her worldly sense and watchfulness. Possessing none, ❝even of the most common female accomplishments of her day, "she had neither love nor sympathy for the display of them "in others. She disliked, as she would say, 'your harpsichord "ladies,' and strongly tried to impress on her sons their little "value in their choice of wives." We protest, however, against Mr. Gilman's attempt to transfer to "another most respectable clergyman of the neighbourhood" the current stories of the elder Coleridge's simplicity and abstraction. The same qualities in the son not only warrant him to have been a chip of the old block, but also betray what the old block itself was; Mr. De Quincey has related his appropriation of a lady's white gown—apron, Mr. Gilman says-under the idea that he was stowing away a portion of his own linen that had made its way to the upper air.' But the following anecdote is equally characteristic: "On one occasion, having to breakfast with his bishop, Mr. Coleridge went, as was the practice of that day, into a barber's shop to have his head shaved, wigs being then in common use. Just as the operation was completed, the clock struck nine, the hour at which the bishop punctually breakfasted. Roused, as from a reverie, he instantly left the barber's shop, and in his haste forgetting his wig, appeared at the breakfast table, where the bishop and his party had assembled. The bishop, well acquainted with his absent manners, courteously and playfully requested him to walk into an adjoining room, and give his opinion of a mirror which had arrived from London a few days previously; and which disclosed to his astonished guest the consequences of his haste and forgetfulness." He frequently indulged his congregation in his sermons with Hebrew quotations, or, as his parishioners expressed themselves, gave them the very words the spirit spoke in. This proved a serious disadvantage to his successor, a worthy man, but who never gave them any of the immediate language of the Holy Ghost.' The only fruits of his learning were a Latin Grammar for the use of his school, in which for the usual, if not very accurate term ablative case, he substituted the more intelligible one of the quale-quare-quidditive case, and a Miscellaneous Dissertation arising from the 17th and 18th chapters of the Book of Judges, with a well-written preface on the Bible, ending with an advertisement of his school, and his method of teaching Latin. Coleridge's repugnance to read or write anything about himself' was so great, that it was next to impossible to obtain from him any particulars of his early life. We believe that the twenty years he spent under Mr. Gilman's care were so much the happiest and best regulated period of his life, and consciously so to himself, that he shrank back from the recollections of times when, to use his own expression, he was "rolling rudderless," "the wreck of what he once was," and when his state was one of "Grief without a pang, void, dark, and drear, In word, or sigh, or tear*." Mr. Gilman, from one of the few notes he did obtain, informs us that Samuel Taylor Coleridge was the youngest child of ten by the same mother, and as such, he probably inherited the weakly health of his father, who died at the age of sixty-two, before Samuel had reached his seventh year. Francis, the brother next to him in seniority, was the object * Dejection. An Ode. |