Some music is above me; most music is beneath me. I like Beethoven and Mozart - or else some of the aerial compositions of the elder Italians, as Palestrina * and Carissimi. And I love Purcell.

The best sort of music is what it should be sacred; the next best, the military, has fallen to the lot of the Devil.

Good music never tires me, nor sends me to sleep. I feel physically refreshed and strengthened by it, as Milton says he did.

feeling; mere addresses to the sensual ear he could not away with; hence his utter distaste for Rossini, and his reverence for Beethoven and Mozart.-ED.

* Giovanni Pierluigi da Palestrina was born about 1529, and died in 1594. I believe he may be considered the founder or reformer of the Italian church music. His masses, motets, and hymns are tolerably well known amongst lovers of the old composers; but Mr. Coleridge used to speak with delight of some of Palestrina's madrigals which he heard at Rome.

Giacomo Carissimi composed about the years 1640 -1650. His style has been charged with effeminacy; but Mr. C. thought it very graceful and chaste. Henry Purcell needs no addition in England. — ED.

I could write as good verses now as ever I did, if I were perfectly free from vexations, and were in the ad libitum hearing of fine music, which has a sensible effect in harmonizing my thoughts, and in animating and, as it were, lubricating my inventive faculty. The reason of my not finishing Christabel is not, that I don't know how to do it for I have, as I always had, the whole plan entire from beginning to end in my mind *; but I fear I could not carry on with equal

* I should not have thought it necessary, but for the opinion expressed in Fraser's Magazine for October, 1834, p.394., to remark here, that the verses published in the European Magazine, No. LXVII., and dated April, 1815, purporting to be a conclusion of Christabel, are not by Mr. Coleridge. With deference to the critic, I must take the liberty to say that they have not a particle of the spirit of the genuine poem; and that the metre and rhythm are copied by one whose eye was better than his ear. Besides, Coleridge's Bracy was not Merlin, neither was his Geraldine the Lady of the Lake. In fact, the genuine poem was well known, by recitation and transcription, nearly twenty years before its publication; and the writer of the conclusion had, of course, seen it. I believe I could name the Avellaneda of Christabel - but he is now gone, and it would reflect no credit upon his memory. Ed.

*

success the execution of the idea, an extremely subtle and difficult one. Besides, after this continuation of Faust, which they tell me is very poor, who can have courage to attempt a reversal of the judgment of all criticism against continuations? Let us except Don Quixote, however, although the second part of that transcendant work is not exactly uno flatu with the original conception.

July 8. 1833.

PUBLIC SCHOOLS.

I AM clear for public schools as the general rule; but for particular children private education may be proper. For the purpose

"The thing attempted in Christabel is the most difficult of execution in the whole field of romance witchery by daylight—and the success is complete." -Quarterly Review, No. CIII. p. 29.

of moving at ease in the best English society, mind, I don't call the London exclusive clique the best English society,· the defect of a public education upon the plan of our great schools and Oxford and Cambridge is hardly to be supplied. But the defect is visible positively in some men, and only negatively in others. The first offend you by habits and modes of thinking and acting directly attributable to their private education; in the others you only regret that the freedom and facility of the established and national mode of bringing up is not added to their good qualities.

I more than doubt the expediency of making even elementary mathematics a part of the routine in the system of the great schools. It is enough, I think, that encouragement and facilities should be given; and I think more will be thus effected than by compelling all. Much less would I incorporate the German or French, or any modern

language, into the school labours. I think

that a great mistake. *

*"One constant blunder " I find it so pencilled by Mr. C. on a blank page of my copy of the "Bubbles from the Brunnens -" of these New-Broomers - these Penny Magazine sages and philanthropists, in reference to our public schools, is to confine their view to what schoolmasters teach the boys, with entire oversight of all that the boys are excited to learn from each other and of themselves with more geniality even because it is not a part of their compelled school knowledge. An Eton boy's knowledge of the St. Lawrence, Mississippi, Missouri, Orellana, &c. will be, generally, found in exact proportion to his knowledge of the Ilissus, Hebrus, Orontes, &c.; inasmuch as modern travels and voyages are more entertaining and fascinating than Cellarius; or Robinson Crusoe, Dampier, and Captain Cook, than the Periegesis. Compare the lads themselves from Eton and Harrow, &c. with the alumni of the New-Broom Institution, and not the lists of school-lessons; and be that comparison the criterion." ED.