perfumes'; and when he came to the two last words, which he pronounced loud, deep and distinct, it seemed to me, who was then young, as if the sounds had echoed from the bottom of the human heart, and as if the prayer might have floated in a solemn silence through the universe. The preacher then launched into his subject like an eagle dallying with the wind." 1 The following pen picture gives us a good idea of the poet's personal appearance during this period of his life: 66 In person he was a dark, tall, handsome young man, with long, black, flowing hair; eyes not merely black, but black and keenly penetrating; a fine forehead; a deep-toned, harmonious voice; a manner never to be forgotten, full of life, vivacity and kindness; dignified in person; and, added to all these, exhibiting the elements of his future greatness." But it is about this time that we first read in one of his letters of his having suffered from neuralgia of the face, and of his having alleviated the pain with laudanum—the first cloud of the many that were to darken his intellect, his will, and his life. With 1797 came the harvest year of Coleridge's poetical life. His faculties seemed to ripen almost as if by magic, and in twelve months he had produced nearly all his greatest poetry. "The Ancient Mariner," "Christabel," "The Ode to France," "Remorse,” and “Kubla Khan" were all the products of this year's labor. One cause, perhaps the main one, of this poetic fruitage is not far to seek. In the earlier part of the year Coleridge and his family had moved among the Quantock hills to the village of Nether Stowey; and here the poet came in contact with two remarkable people, Wordsworth and his sister Dorothy. The friendship between the two poets meant much to both. To Wordsworth Coleridge supplied the enthusiasm and the faith and courage necessary for carrying out 1 Smith's "Reminiscences of an Octogenarian," quoted in Coleridge's Letters. I, 181. his poetic labors; to Coleridge Wordsworth supplied a calmness and steadiness which the former, carried away by his tumultuous vitality, especially required; while Dorothy Wordsworth, with her quick, delicate perception and quiet encouragement, stimulated him to his most artistic and most imaginative efforts. The results of the united work of these two poets appeared in the Spring of 1798, when the Lyrical Ballads were published, a thin volume, to which Wordsworth had contributed four or five times as much as had his less steady co-worker. This volume, which began with The Ancient Mariner, and also contained the Lines Written Above Tintern Abbey, created little stir in the literary world, though we of to-day have come to regard it as the culmination of the revolt against the standards that prevailed through a large part of the eighteenth century. 1 About this same time Coleridge received from the Wedgwood brothers, the great English pottery makers, an annuity which, though not large, enabled him to devote his entire time to literature. In company with William and Dorothy Wordsworth he visited Germany, where he busied himself with a study of Kant and the transcendental philosophy. "Instead of troubling others with my own crude notions and juvenile compositions," he writes, "I was thenceforward better employed in attempting to store my head with the wisdom of others." He passed the winter hard at work, and made considerable progress with the language; though his letters of the time are filled with his homesickness and his yearning to see his wife and baby Hartley. Two results came from this winter thus spent: Coleridge became imbued with the German transcendental philosophy, and upon his return did more than any other man to propagate it in England. Another and more immediate result was the translation of Schiller's Wallenstein soon after his return-one of the best translations ever made of a foreign work into English. 1 "Biographia Literaria," I, 300. Upon the remainder of Coleridge's career we need dwell but briefly; for his poetic life had practically closed. Under the influence of severe bodily pain he resorted to the use of opium; and his will-power, never very strong, was shattered by the use of the drug. The story of much of the remainder of his life, especially of the succeeding decade when his powers should have been at their best, is the story of repeated failures. Coleridge's was a life of magnificent projects, destined never to be fulfilled. He undertook various employments, such as newspaper work, another magazine, along much the same lines as the Watchman, and lecturing. As a lecturer he was perhaps more successful than in any other line. His audiences certainly heard the finest critical lectures ever delivered in English. Yet he was notoriously untrustworthy in keeping these appointments, and depended upon the inspiration of the moment to carry him along. At last, after many troubles, he found a refuge under the care of Dr. Gillman, a London physician, whose family, as Leigh Hunt remarks, "had sense and kindness enough to know that they did themselves honor by looking after the comfort of such a man." Carlyle has left us a vivid description of the poet as he appeared in his last days: 66 1 Coleridge sat on the brow of Highgate Hill, in those years, looking down on London and its smoke tumult like a sage escaped from the inanity of life's battle; attracting toward him the thoughts of innumerable brave souls still engaged there. His express contributions to poetry, philosophy, or any specific province of human literature or enlightenment, had been small and sadly intermittent; but he had, especially among young inquiring men, a higher than literary, a kind of prophetic or magician character. He was thought to hold, he alone in England, the key to German and other transcendentalisms; knew the sublime secret of believing by the reason' what the understanding' had been obliged to fling out as 1 Carlyle's "Life of John Sterling." incredible a sublime man; who, alone in those dark days had saved his crown of spiritual manhood; escaping from the black materialisms, and revolutionary deluges, with God, Freedom, Immortality still his: a king of men. The practical intellects of the world did not much heed him, or carelessly reckoned him a metaphysical dreamer: but to the rising spirits of the younger generation he had this dusky, sublime character; and sat there a kind of Magus girt in mystery and enigma. The good man, he was now getting old, towards sixty, perhaps; and gave you the idea of a life that had been full of suffering; a life heavy-laden, half-vanquished, still swimming painfully in seas of manifold physical and other bewilderment. Brow and head were round, and of massive weight, but the face was flabby and irresolute. The deep eyes, of a light hazel, were as full of sorrow as of inspiration; confused pain looking mildly from them, as in a kind of mild astonishment-A heavy-laden, high-aspiring, and surely muchsuffering man." In some respects Coleridge resembles his own Ancient Mariner. Like the Mariner, he too knew the curse of Life-inDeath. We may well end this sketch of his life with the Epitaph he wrote shortly before his death, which came July 25, 1834: "Stop, Christian passer-by! Stop, child of God, Mercy for praise-to be forgiven for fame Do thou the same!" 66 THE LIFE OF LOWELL JAMES RUSSELL LOWELL, the youngest of six children, was born February 22, 1819, at Elmwood, the family home, in Cambridge, Massachusetts. His father, the Rev. Charles Lowell, was minister of one of the largest churches in Boston -a well-educated, kindly pastor whom his renowned son has characterized as a Doctor Primrose in the comparative degree." The Lowell family had been among the early settlers of Massachusetts; many of them had gained distinction; and the gracious minister was "as proud of his pedigree as ever a Talbot or a Stanley could be." In his college days he had studied medicine as well as theology, so he went among his parishioners healing and carrying the Bible. The poet's mother, whose maiden name was Spence, loved to trace a fancied relation to Sir Patrick Spens of ballad fame and to claim the traditional family gift of second sight. She showed the usual mother fondness for a youngest child, and delighted to listen for the little fellow's cheery whistle announcing for her his return from school, or to receive the nosegays of wild white-weed and blue-eyed grass which he loved to bring her. At Elmwood, with its large, square, frame, colonial house, its noble elms, and its few acres half meadow and half farm, the poet passed his youth and early manhood. Fish Pond, a small lake not far from the home, was one of Lowell's favorite haunts. Here he would sail in the summer, and in winter was happy when allowed to help the ice-cutters gather their harvest. Many of the scenes of these early years live in his poems; the line of heavy willows at the end of the New Road is commemorated first in "The Indian Summer Reverie," and later in "Under the Willows." As might be expected Lowell entered Harvard College, where he says he read everything except the prescribed books. His letters written during these years are filled with a boyish enthusiasm for the English poets, and he tells with delight of |