blood-red peaks before his view. There His minor poems are, like the rest, is not such another character in poetry. fragments; fine breathings of his spirit, He is a pure creation;-Apollo coming not elaborate displays of his power. Like "like night," and to the clang of his own the careless touches of a great musician celestial armour, upon the Grecian tents, on the piano, which are often more imis scarcely more appalling than this pale pressive than his grand bravuras; or like and wizard being, with the cold ring, the casual strokes of a painter, which are produced by the weight of the albatross, sometimes more striking than his finished still felt about his neck, and the " curse pictures, so do these slight and short efof a dead man's eye" haunting his looks, fusions surpass such laboured efforts as -passing "like night from land to land," Remorse" and Zapolya." In his and transferring the burden of his misery stanzas entitled "Love," "earth has not to the souls of the men who are appointed anything to show so fair" as the closing to be held by his eye. And then, such lines describing the enthusiastic and holy language as he uses-wild, unearthly, tenderness of the enamoured maiden. unlike the discourse of human beings! How different the love of Coleridge from And such imagery- nor dim nor red, that of Byron? The one is a pure ideallike God's own head, the glorious sun ism, refined, gentle, chivalric, passing the uprist"—"as idle as a painted ship upon love of women; the other is a combinaa painted ocean!" And such a tale he tion of gross passion and flimsy sentitells! Like the phantasmagoria of a mentalism; it is-but, pah! the subject mind which, even by day, and when is disgusting. "Kubla Khan" is a sober, is a magic lantern, but which, when drunk or delirious at midnight, hoists all sail, crying, "Hollo, my fancy, whither wilt thou go?" so do the vapoury incidents sweep over the stage, till the reader's brain reels, and he becomes uncertain whether he or his author be mad, but sure that there is madness between them. And such dramatis persona!-a nameless captain of a nameless ship—an albatross winnowing the sadly silent air-a mariner, in a freak, shooting the bird-a spirit, her lover, revenging the inhospitable deed-two skeleton figures dicing on the dead deck of a skeleton ship for the life of the marinera crew of demons reanimating a crew of corpses-two airy beings talking in strangest dialogue to each other Coleridge's prose is as peculiar as his about the guilty man-a being called verse. It is remarkable for length of Death-in-Life, found in no mythology-sentence; for disregard of petty elegangood spirits, who are not angels-a her- cies; for continual digressions; for a mit, whom you can hardly believe not to horizon of thought, ever retiring and be also a shadow-and a wedding guest, widening as we advance; for the use of forming the sole link connecting the su- frequent archaisms of expression; for perhuman story with earthly life. The perpetual unexpectedness and occasional moral of the tale is pure and distinct, but so obvious, that we wonder that, to inculcate it, he has been at the pains of inventing a machinery so new and so stupendous.

melody which, though with "sputtering noise rejected" by the critics of the "Edinburgh," the spirit of the age values, not merely as a "psychological curiosity," but loves for its ethereal imagery and its dream-like music. It is a new proof of the immortality of the soul. Coleridge was essentially a dreamer; and a gallery of the pictures of glory or of gloom which flashed upon his "half-shut eye," if represented on canvas or in fresco, would have formed a second Sixtine. There are, besides, many single little poems which fell casually from his pen; some of them reminding you of thunder-drops, large, heavy, electric, while others glitter like the orbed dew from the womb of the morning.

obscurity; and for great freshness and fervour of poetic imagery. His light is often dim, but never dry, so constantly is it moistened and bedewed by feeling and fancy. His "Friend," though ram

bling and discursive, unsuccessful as an the pen which drew Manfred on the elucidation of his opinions, and unfortu- Jungfrau, or for that which painted the nate in its first absurd mode of publica- Mariner in his "silent sea.' And we tion, contains some noble prose writing; cannot but think Coleridge has surpassed as, for instance, his picture of Luther in Byron in his representation of the first the Warteburg-"the heroic student sit- murderer. Byron's Cain is a being elating beside his lamp, which is seen by borately bad; the Cain of Coleridge has the lone traveller in the plain Bischofs- only the guilt of a moment upon his roda like a star on the mountain;" his conscience. Byron's Cain is a metapicture of the spirit of law "following physical murderer; the Cain of Coleridge the criminal like the sleepless eye of is the creature of impulse. In Byron God;" and the one tale of suffering and the interest of Cain is dwarfed, and the patience which he interposes amid the grandeur of his guilt dwindles, beside sterner disquisitions of the book. His the lurid beauty and eloquent blasphemy "Biographia Literaria" is a large ill- of Lucifer, who becomes the hero of the judged production. It is one vast di- drama; the Cain of Coleridge appears gression; plan it has none. Large pas- solitary, bearing his own iniquity like a sages are pilfered bodily from Schelling. covering, and scathed by the fire of his It is a series of unfulfilled promises, own devouring remorse. Byron could hung upon a thread of curious and cha- not have created that figure of Abel, racteristic biography. His "Confessions "whose feet disturbed not the sands," of an Inquiring Spirit" are such a chap- nor have written that fearful sentence ter as he would have thrown off from his describing the blasted beauty and might spirit in one oracular night at Highgate. of the pallid murderer, "whose mighty Once, and only once, in it does he kindle limbs were wasted as by fire, and whose into high eloquence, in describing Debo- hair was as the matted locks upon the rah rising, in the calm majesty of a "mo- bison's forehead;" although neither could ther in Israel," from "under her palm-tree Coleridge, nor perhaps any being that on the mountain, where she had dwelt ever breathed but Byron, have so perin peace aforetime." It is very valuable, however, as opening up the important question of inspiration-according to Arnold, the most important since the Reformation. Here, as in his poetry, we prefer his smaller pieces. His "Notes of a Journey to the Brocken" prompt the wish that he had visited all the romantic regions in the world, from Norway to the Himalayan Hills. And his Wanderings of Cain" is the most scriptural and primitive composition we know, As a converser, Coleridge in the course except the "Vision of Mirza." Cain is of his life seems to have passed through indeed a most poetical subject. Stained three phases. In his youth, according by the first dye of gore, sealed by the to Lamb and Hazlitt, he was ardent, hand of God from the punishment of varied, impassioned, lofty; his voice men, but pursued by the cry of his bro- sounded much, and the woods and hills ther's blood, from which he could no echoed to his talk. This was the golden more escape than from himself, which age of his conversation; and those who became a part of himself, and which, heard him speak with rapture of his exeven as the sound of the sea fills the hibitions, the effect of which was inshell, filled the trembling hollows of his creased by the dark profusion of his ear, he is an object of profoundly pa-locks, the white and marble mass of his thetic, as well as tragic interest, fit for brow, the misty eloquence of his eye, the

sonified the despair, or talked the sophistry and the eloquence of hell, or carried us up with the grim pair along that sullen but sublime flight through the stars, trembling and darkening as the infernal wings swept by, and through the shadowy shapes of former worlds which had arisen, passed, and perished, ere the "infant sun was rolled together, or had tried his beams athwart the gulf profound."

formly successful; more dreamily abstruse, and less exuberantly poetical; less the overflowing of his mind, than the motion produced by the spur of external stimulus. To this period belong his melancholy failures at the Royal Institution, where, with face inflamed and tongue parched, he sucked oranges and drank water, and

rich dreamy air of his lips, and the atmosphere of enthusiasm which seemed to surround him, and which "swayed to his outline gracefully." Then he talked continually ere breakfast, in his morning walk-at breakfast, "over tea and toast and honey"-at dinner, as a relish to "Welsh mutton and turnips"-after it, over his "flip”—in the stage-coach, to could scarcely, after all, get his jaws to the wondering passengers over the move; his six-in-the-evening breakfasts, counter, to the staring shopmen-in the and so forth. The third was perhaps solitary inn, to the portly landlady, deem- the most interesting of all. It included ing him upped from the moon; and, if he his residence under the roof of Mr Gilllacked company, to himself. He talked man, where-recovered in a measure about all things, and a few others, from from the influence of the dangerous drug, shoe-leather to the solar system; but his though still an invalid, the cloud of deprincipal topics were metaphysics, theo- traction having passed from off the sun logy, and poetry. He talked sometimes, of his fame as it drew toward the west, though more rarely, in short and spark- in the enjoyment of ease and plenty, and ling aphorism, and sometimes in long in the centre of friends and worshippers and linked declamation. He talked in-he sat a Socrates giving his little sethe pulpit as well as in private; and by nate laws, and consulted as though one all accounts his sermons and their de- did inquire at an oracle. It was fine to livery were those of a poet. He talked, hear of statesmen, and popular poets, and many hearts burned within them. and great preachers, and accomplished Wordsworth's guttural voice uttered its literati, going out to sit as children at manly pleasure, Lamb's fine eye laughed the feet of this once depreciated and over with joy, and Hazlitt's deep brow abused man. Changed indeed from what flushed in silence, or his tongue told in he had been when his voice echoed in the struggling accents his admiration of the woods of Foxden, when he could talk man who first taught him to think, first loftily and unwearied a livelong summer's agitated the pool of his sleeping soul. day, and when his dark hair floated over At the close of this brilliant period, re- his ivory forehead; he was now a frail fusing a fixed situation as a preacher, and greyhaired old man, with feeble voice and not anxious to cage his eagle ener- and wasted system. The bard had sunk gies into the circle of any profession (a or risen into the sage. The "Anciente determination which he lived bitterly to Marinere" had still his glittering eye, regret), he took a tour to Germany, where and much of his strange power of speech. he heard old Blumenbach; took the con- And how many were glad to drink wisceit out of Klopstock; visited the Brocken; dom on all subjects, from the science of and did and said a great many wonder- the stars to the language of the flowers, ful things. We refer to the recollec- at the now slender, soft, interrupted, but tions of De Quincey for the particulars of profound stream which issued from his his after-career-his Maltese excursion; lips! There might be seen the giant his connection with the "Morning Post;" form of Edward Irving stooping to listen his different series of lectures; his ac- to the "old man eloquent." Leigh Hunt quaintance with Lord Byron; and his stepped in sometimes, and Coleridge took deeper and more fatal intimacy with him to the garden, and talked to him of opium, which he put on as a garment, a some favourite flower as an emblem and garment of burning poison. During this miniature of the universe. There Charles period his conversation assumed its second Lamb shot in often his spiritual countephase-became less brilliant, and less im-nance, ever sure of welcome for "auld langposing; equally abundant, but less uni- syne." There Wordsworth and Southey

showed occasionally their anointed heads. There Talfourd, and other young and generous spirits, including the blood relations of the bard, were no strangers. And there now and then appeared, from the hills of Scotland, the eagle eye and the "storm of golden hair" adorning the head of Wilson. And thus living and talking, the centre of such a circle, and the cynosure of such eyes, the good old man at length fell asleep.

As a man, he had his faults, all springing from one root-want of self-control

and terminating in one apex-remorse— which ultimately softened into repentance, and was, we trust, crowned with pardon. But originally he had a heart as warm as his intellect was ample. If he sinned, he suffered, and rueful was the expiation. Let his admirers be warned from the rock where he split, and for him let this couplet in his epitaph be his excuse and his eulogium:

"Mercy for praise, to be forgiven for fame, He ask'd and hoped through Christ. Do thou the same."

THOMAS CAMPBELL.

Ir is a fortunate thing for a poet to make | tion-if he be greedy of its immediate a hit at starting. Once write a popular gains-if he love the hasty garlands of poem, or even song, and your name cleaves reputation better than that slow, deep, its native night, and obtains that floating rich flower of fame which Nature, "who notoriety which is rarely, if ever, lost, and hardens the ruby in a million years, and which secures attention, if not fame, to works in duration in which Alps and whatever else you write. Not only are the Andes come and go like rainbows," rears booksellers for ever after your accommo- by a long, late process-his rapid and dating friends, but the public, when once instant popularity is a curse, and not a familiarised with a name, after once relax- blessing, to his genius. Not every one ing its sage face into a smile of compla- can, like a Schiller or a Goethe, dally cency, is loth to write itself down an ass, awhile with the meretricious mistress, reby recalling, however it may modify, its putation, drink from her hand the dainverdict. Otherwise with one whose strug-tiest cup of her enchantments, and then, gles after renown, however vigorous, have rejecting the wanton, bind himself up, by altogether failed of introducing him into severe and solemn training, to gain the any circle of admirers, much wider than chary and chaste, but divine hand of fame that which any talented man can com--of that fame which is indeed "the spur mand by the private exercise of his abilities. His name, if alluded to by any of his devoted friends, comes like a staggering blow to the ignorance of the portion of the pensive public which never heard of him or of his works before. Its menAnd yet we readily admit that this true tion, accordingly, is resented as an imper- poet began his career with a strong and tinence, and inch by inch must he con- pure love, if not the profoundest insight tinue to climb the sides, and probably die into the meaning and mystery of his art. ere he reach the summit of the difficult Nowhere shall we find the poetical feelhill. Fortunate, in truth, for a poet is ing more beautifully linked to the joyous the early culmination of his name; but rapture of youth than in the "Pleasures only in a secular point of view, or when of Hope." It is the outburst of genuine he happens to be a disinterested and en-enthusiasm; and even its glitter we love, thusiastic devotee of his art. If he have as reminding us of the "shining morning no high religious purposes in its prosecu- face" of a schoolboy. But our objection

that the clear spirit doth raise"—"the last infirmity of noble minds." Too many besides Thomas Campbell tarry in the Calypso Island till the sun be down, and Ithaca is still afar.

to Campbell is, that this precipitate shine is far less to be classed with the imitaof fame upon his young head dazzled his tive and the cold-the schools of Boileau eyes, satisfied his ambition, chilled his and Pope. He not only belongs to no love of his art, and excites the suspicion, school; but, in short, deep gushes of gethat his real object all along had been nuine genius-in single thoughts, where the dowry of the muse, and not herself. you do not know whether more to adThe "Pleasures of Hope" bears no more mire the felicity of the conception, or the proportion to the powers of its author delicate and tremulous finish of the exthan does the "Robbers" to those of pression-in drops of spirit-stirring or Schiller, or "Werter" to those of Goethe. melting song-and in a general manliBut where is Campbell's "Wallenstein," ness and chastity of manner, Campbell or his "Faust?" We have instead only was perhaps the finest ARTIST of his day. such glimpses-the more tantalising that His mind had the refinement of the fethey are beautiful-of a rare and real vein male intellect, added to the energy of of original genius, as are furnished in the the classic man. His taste was not of "Last Man," "Hohenlinden," and "O'Con- the Gothic order, neither was it of the nor's Child."

"Measures inspiration's hour, And tells its height in heaven."

Roman; it was that of a Greek, neither Campbell's great power was enthusiasm grotesque nor finically fastidious. His -subdued. His tempest moves on grace- imagery was select, not abundant; out of fully, and as to the sound of music. He a multitude of figures which throng on arrests the fury of his turbulent vein by his mind, he had the resolution to choose stretching forth the calm hand of taste, only the one which, by pre-established as an escaped lunatic is abated in a mo- harmony, seemed destined to enshrine the ment by the whisper of his keeper, or by idea. His sentiment was sweet, without his more terrible tap of quiet, imperious being mawkish, and recherché, without command. There is a perpetual alterna- being affected. Here, indeed, is Camption going on in his mind. He is this bell's fine distinction. He never bemoment possessed by his imagination; the comes metaphysical in discriminating the next, he masters and tames it, to walk various shades, nor morbid in painting meekly in the harness of his purpose; or, the darker moods of sentiment. He to use his own fine image, while his genius preserves continually the line of demaris flaming above, his taste below, "like the cation between sentiment and passion. dial's silent power," With the latter, in its turbulence-its selfish engrossment-the unvaried, but gorgeous colouring which it flings across all objects-the flames of speech which He is inferior thus to the very first class break out from its lips, he rarely meddles. of poets, whose taste and art are uncon- But of that quieter and nobler feeling, scious. His are at once conscious to him- which may be called, from its stillness, its self and visible to others. Their works, subdued tone, its whispered accents, its like Nature's, arrange themselves into shade of pensiveness, the moonshine of elegance and order, amid their impetuous the mind, he is pre-eminently the poet. and ecstatic motion; their apparent ex- His lines on "Revisiting a Scene in Artravagances obey a law of their own, and gyleshire," and those on "Leaving a Scene create a taste for their appreciation; their in Bavaria," are the perfection of this hair, shed on the whirlwind, falls abroad, species of poetry. They are meditations, through its own divine instinct, in lines imbued at once with all the tenderness of of waving beauty; their flashing eye en-moonlight, and all the strength of sunriches the day; their wild, uncontrollable shine. Manly is his melancholy, and even step "brings from the dust the sound of his sigh proclaims the breadth and depth liberty." But, if Campbell be too mea- of the chest from which it is upheaved. sured, and timid, and self-watchful, to appertain to those Demi-urgi of poetry, he

"To bear is to conquer our fate," is the motto of this brave philosophy, which con