standard of the importance of any event or circumstance, and not by the baser and more limited usefulness of the improvement of our personal interests, or facilitating the business of life, and making success in its common things more easily achieved. Where then shall we place Coleridge? Among those who have enlarged the sphere of thought, who have given a finer tact to human feeling, and fitted men for their duties by imparting a greater moral energy? or shall we degrade him to the rank of those who have effected nothing-attempted nothing but suffered their powers to moulder in indolent disuse? In due justice to his merits, we can place him in neither class. We respect his qualities as a man, and admire those of his mind-but we do not rank him high as a philosopher. We honour him as a man of genius, and as a virtuous man; as one who sacrificed himself, so far as worldly reward goes, to give to men the principles he thought for their advantage now and for ever, but we are not sure that he was gifted with the capacity to attain all the proud glory that we attach to that name. In saying this, we are aware that we directly oppose the opinions of others. We therefore hazard the assertion with diffidence-but still, having formed the decision after some study of his works, and some reflection on his mind, we must express it. Our verdict is not given in a spirit of depreciation or contemptuous disregard for the estimation with which many value him, nor to detract from his real worth-but merely and simply because the calm conclusion of our judgment is against him. Our remarks can extend no farther than to assign to him his just rank, for we do not wish to lower him-but on the contrary, from our admiration, which is great, if not overweening, we would elevate him as far as that feeling, balanced and corrected by conscience, will allow.

We would wish to see his works universally read-as from none can be gathered more purity of thought, more refinement of feeling, a more delicate or nobler moral tone; though at the same time we feel they are not for the many, and that the large portion of those whom curiosity, or even a better motive, might induce to their perusal, would throw them by as unintelligible, denounce them as absurd, or, if of a modest or generous nature, look with pity and despair on themselves or the author. But all should remember, that it would be great weakness to pass a hasty condemnation on the labours of such a man. The difficulty in discovering a meaning, may be in themselves; for great minds do not often pass off in vapour. They generally labour with strength and fidelity, and are not apt to allow the chain of thought to become disunited, or their subject to disappear in the obscure rambling of remote association, and fade like a dream. They grasp firmly, and pursue

ardently, and wish not, by conceding to difficulty, to bring on themselves the deep rebuke of incapacity.

We will here quote Coleridge's remarks on understanding the sense of an author.

"In the perusal of philosophical works, I have been greatly benefited by a resolve which, in the antithetic form, and with the allowed quaintness of an adage or maxim, I have been accustomed to word thus:Until you understand a writer's ignorance, presume yourself ignorant of his understanding.""

This maxim he applies to the Timæus of Plato.

-"Whatever I comprehend, impresses me with a reverential sense of the author's genius; but there is a considerable portion of the work to which I can attach no consistent meaning."

"Therefore, utterly baffled in all my attempts to understand the ignorance of Plato, I concluded myself ignorant of his understanding."

Such modesty, on the part of such a man, should moderate the rash decisions of his inferiors. The charges brought against his writings, are obscurity and vagueness; but we see little of either, as some link can always be found, by those sufficiently interested in the topics he discusses to give their attention, even though it be exacting and painful. No one but a madman can talk or write, unless his mind moves in a current of regular and coherent thought; but even this may not make him easily understood-the subjects may not be genial; the associations, which with all men are peculiar, may be indistinct, and the leading idea may at last seem lost in the multitude of its suggestions and analogies, till each thought, instead of being bound by clear, though attenuated fibres, seems like the stars, to be held in their places by no common bond or law, but to roll through space unchecked and unguided. This appears to have been the case with Coleridge, and the editor in the preface to the Table Talk, gives an account of the effect on himself of some of the far-off wanderings of his relative's mind.

"So I can well remember occasions in which, after listening to Mr. Coleridge for several delightful hours, I have gone away with divers splendid masses of reasoning in my head, the separate beauty and coherency of which, I deeply felt; but how they had produced, or how they bore upon each other, I could not then perceive. In such cases, I have mused sometimes even for days afterwards upon the words, until at length, spontaneously as it seemed, the fire would kindle,' and the association, which had escaped my utmost efforts of comprehension before, flashed itself all at once upon my mind with the clearness of noon-day light."

Of course, one with whom a mode of thinking so peculiar ast these passages would indicate, had become habitual, was unfitted for popularity. The mass of people would not take the trouble to toil through long processes of reasoning to discover a meaning; and this difficulty, if there were no others, would

confine him to the few congenial spirits who were students of similar subjects, and apt at following their relations. This serious obstacle to his reputation arose, if we do not mistake, among other deteriorating influences, from the very greatness itself of his mind. It should be remembered, that he was remarkable as a poet as well as philosopher; and if we do not very much err, would have been more distinguished as the first than the last. He possessed the finest elements for the formation of the poetic character, and such as will ever be successful, where circumstances do not deter or drive the current of thought and feeling in a different direction. His fancy was active, free, and brilliant; his imagination powerful and splendid. Yet it was this very combination of noble faculties, a small portion of which, with a shrewder and more calculating, and less artless spirit, would, as it does daily, have brought the highest distinction, that lessened with Coleridge his excellence as a poet, and his value as a philosopher. With that great gift, the imaginative faculty, his thoughts were ever floating on a sea of gold; and his mind, moving mid its magnificence, and dazzled by its lustre, became too glowing and excited to stay its progress among dry details, or droop its wings of fire over the dark chasms of mere

reason.

He saw too much and too far. With his great erudition new suggestions were ever rising; and, with the roll of his mind, new views, delicate differences, and obscure analogies thronged the way, till thought became distracted, mid the variety and vastness, and formidable array of obstacles. It is probable that he kept in his hand the clue to the labyrinthine movements of his ideas, though to others all was seemingly dark, confused and chaotic. Whatever may have been the pleasure to himself, of looking on the beauty of a subject, of seeing all its relations, of marking the infinite extent into which it seemed to expand as his mind contemplated it, and his imagination imbued it with its splendour, and then, after all these elements were disposed and arranged, of viewing it as a whole, he imparts but little to those who cannot keep pace with him, and hold on the same course with equal power and rapidity. For this reason all his labours seem but fragments, portions of a vast rock, that a giant has broken off, but without a trace of any connection,-there are all the evidences of great strength suddenly exerted, but none of regular or continued effort. He followed or seems to have followed, and it may have been consistently, some one principle or set of principles, on which he had based the importance of his works; their future value and bearing on the moral and intellectual condition of men. But he made an unfortunate mistake in not eradicating his early love for mys

tical theology, the learning of the schools, and their dark and harsh obscurity, which was enough to dull the edge and weigh like lead on the life and vivacity of any mind. This bias was an early and fatal affection; the one that withered his usefulness, by confining the interest men felt in his productions, and which he afterwards, with an almost unaccountable wilful perversity, increased by plunging in the poisonous flood of metaphysics. He was conscious, as we have shown in a former extract, of this bar to his popularity; and why not at once have torn away the disposition before it became an immedicable disease, and followed the star of glory that rose before him in the form of poetry, and which beamed upon him in all the attractive splendour of present reputation, and the lustre of immortality? This, at last, will be all or nearly all the record left of him; for we are not sure, that ten years will not bring oblivion over his name as a philosopher. The editor of the Table Talk predicts for him a proud destiny.

"Nevertheless, desultory as his labours, fragmentary as his productions, at present, may seem to the cursory observer, my undoubting belief is, that in the end it will be found that Coleridge did, in his vocation, the day's work of a giant. He has been melted into the very heart of the rising literatures of England and America; and the principles he has taught are the master light of the moral and intellectual being of men, who, if they shall fail to save, will assuredly illustrate and condemn the age in which they live. As it is, they bide their time."

We believe the first paragraph to be true, but doubt, though with every wish that we may be mistaken, the extent of the influence, and its lasting character, implied in the second. But we will extract from his "Biographia" his appreciation of his own labours. The chapter whence we take it, is a denial of the assertions of those who have charged him with idleness: and the manner is so gentle, and the indignation so melancholy and subdued, that we cannot help feeling he was unjustly accused.

"Would that the criterion of a scholar's utility were the number and moral value of the truths which he has been the means of throwing into the general circulation; or the number and value of the minds whom, by his conversation or letters, he has excited into activity, and supplied with the germs of their after growth! A distinguished rank might not, indeed, even then, be awarded to my exertions; but I should dare look forward with confidence to an honourable acquittal."

There are some lines among his poetry that give his own idea of his powers, and the reason why they have never yielded the full harvest of their promise: perhaps there is too much self depreciation about them, and too lofty a self praise; and if these are both true, his estimate may be the real one, and instead of vanity or conceit dictating the verdict, it may be but justice to himself and the result of an accurate self-knowledge.

They are from "Lines on a friend who died of a frenzy fever, induced by calumnious reports."

"As oft, at twilight gloom, thy grave I pass,
And sit me down upon its recent grass,
With introverted eye, I contemplate
Similitude of soul, perhaps of-fate;

To me hath Heaven, with bounteous hand assigned
Energic reason, and a shaping mind,

The daring ken of truth, the patriot's part,

And pity's sigh, that breathes the gentle heart,

Sloth jaundiced all! and from my graspless hand

Drop friendship's precious pearls, like hour-glass sand."

And in the Table Talk, we have another opinion of himself that gives us a perfect idea of the man.

:

"Hamlet's character is the prevalence of the abstracting and generalizing habit over the practical. He does not want courage, skill, will, or opportunity; but every incident sets him thinking and it is curious, and at the same time, strictly natural, that Hamlet, who all the play seems reason itself, should be impelled, at last, by mere accident, to effect his object. I have a smack of Hamlet myself, if I may say so."

This sets Coleridge before us like a mirror, and with this hint, we think that we could pursue him almost to the very depths of the inward man. We perceive sensibility, active. and excitable, an eager and impassioned curiosity, an acute reason, a capacious understanding, a strong judgment, but which, from its depth, did not decide readily, and accompanied its conclusions with a doubt: all the elements of a great mind, but with one defect, a practical disposition. Thus he was ever philosophising, moralising, and sentimentalising, but wandering without a direct or immediate purpose, and thence comes the vagueness and mysticism with which he is charged. It should be remembered, that the being mystical, though no proof of greatness, is common, and we presume must be called a common failing, with great minds. There are conceptions which cannot be expressed by words, though they appear strongly, clearly, and vividly to the individual, yet when it is attempted to clothe them with language, they pass off, as the elements that form the strongest bodies, when let loose, mingle with the thinnest vapour of the air. It should be remembered too, that the horizon which limits the vision of the humbler spirits is not the same which bounds the view of the more powerful. The sphere of the one is of the earth, the other, in its quest of truth, seems to melt itself into the grandeur and the vastness of the realms in which it soars. It becomes one with the Eternal Power it strives to view,—a portion of the spirituality that it feels is all which harmonizes with itself. The lustre of its own intelligence seems to present but imperfections, and it strives,