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cross-purposes, before Bertrand conducted Morna back to that paradise as its sovereign lady. Shockingly unsentimental; but, if we all took to hermiting, or dying of our first loves, earnest statesmen would not require to cumber themselves with schemes for the relief of posterity from the national debt. There was something like a lover's quarrel between Bertrand and his bride when the settlements were being arranged; the gallant bridegroom strongly insisting upon the necessity of Morna's repudiating her step-father's bequest, in favour of Lady Cameron. But the lady had a will of her own, and declined to defeat the testator's stroke of poetical justice by doing so. a compromise, however, she agreed As to settle half the income derived from her fortune upon Eila; and, as Bertrand gave an equivalent sum from the rents of Aberlorna to Sir Roland, the practical results to all parties were the same; which is exactly how the domestic constitution in man and wife ought to be worked.

Sir Roland and his wife would have been in a bad case but for this generosity. Evil reports, affecting the ex-governor's character, in many respects, had followed him home from his colony. His future employment was thereby rendered impossible; and although the story of his complicity in a scheme to defraud his nephew did not get wind in a definite shape, still it is not likely that he could hope for anything of a comfortable reception if he ventured to show himself in England. They are a good deal seen at different Continental watering-places -apparently on good terms; but if, as may be feared, they have domes

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solation in the society of the assidutic differences, they must find conous, if not mutual, friends of the opposite sexes, who appear to rally round them with the frank devotion Bertrand feels his uncle's dishonour so characteristic of these localities. so keenly that he never even mentions the name of that recreant knight and sullier of the gallant tartan; but as long as Mr Tainsh is regular in his quarterly remittances, it is not likely that the evil old man will deeply deplore the loss of his nephew's countenance.

Mrs M'Killop's possible advent is the only other cloud that casts a shadow on the bright home at Aberlorna. Hitherto it has been cast tremble for its nearer approach can from a long distance, and those who only hope that the attraction of the southern atmosphere may continue to prove as powerful as at present. "If she comes," says Pigott, who is a pretty frequent guest of his late brother officer, "leave her to me; I'll settle her." He has not diment, but his friends look upon him vulged his proposed method of treatpetually in the right, that they as so amazingly clever, and so percherish him as a sort of talisman against the threatened evil. to ruin her out of the place, with trand's private idea is, that he means marked cards and cogged dice (the results to be handed over to the poor of the parish); but, if he is right, the chances are that two years spent in the society of Baron Hunkers & Co., will have taught her how to neutralise, at the least, any such stratagem. Let us hope, however, that she may come not at all; or, if at all, that she may come late and depart early.

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A CENTURY OF GREAT POETS, FROM 1750 DOWNWARDS.

NO. IV. SAMUEL TAYLOR COLERIDGE.

THE position of Coleridge in English literature is one of the most interesting and remarkable that can be imagined. To apportion him his place, and to justify the importance of it, are things which are easy to that true instinct which is above all criticism, but become difficult from the moment that we attempt to explain and give the reason why. The poetic priesthood, simple and austere, of Wordsworth-the wonderful mightiness and fulness of invention, and the splendid personal history of Scott-open to each of these great figures his appropriate pedestal, with a distinctness and simplicity which ease the critic from one of his most difficult labours. But Coleridge, in essence and soul more entirely a poet than either of them, dwelling more among the subjects and in the atmosphere of poetry than any man of his generation, is beyond all parallel the most perplexing figure in the literary history of his time. His soul is one of those which, like Milton's, yet even more emphatically than Milton's, dwells apart. His life belongs to this world solely by the necessities of flesh and blood, which bind him whether he wills or no; but in reality he has no more connection with the common soil than the bonds of gravitation compel. Speaking not in a religious sense, but with the humanly spiritual meaning which may be applied to the words, we find no phrase so apt to express his habit and character as those words of St Paul, "Our conversation is in heaven." In heaven, yet not in paradise-in an intermediate unknown region where Truth dwells, and all the lofty souls of things—was Coleridge's abode;

a sublimer Limbo, not below, but above humanity - such a limbo as might have been placed, had it entered into the conception of a still greater poet, on the edge of the Purgatorio instead of the Inferno-with great souls and poets dwelling in it, like those on the other side, who "without hope live in desire;" but on this, with desire and hope mingled, tracing afar off the angel forms that stand around the throne, and enduring only the splendid torment of that longing to mount higher and ever higher, which is the form of their purgation. He is like a mountain with head ever held high over the common ways of earth, sometimes enveloped in clouds and mists, but sometimes towering high above them into the blue serene which lies beyond. By such metaphors alone can we give an idea of the nature of the man who, being man, was often blamable, and often seems to have forgotten that though his head was among the stars, his feet were bound to trace the lawful ways of earthly living, taking no excuse from the height of spiritual existence to which his other part was elevated. This view of him must be considered in its turn; but his first aspect is as nearly that of sheer spirit, scarcely conscious of the necessity of embodimenta being composed of intellect, soul, and heart, without any fleshly element -as it is possible for the imagination to conceive.

This spirituality of his naturewe use the word not in a religious sense, though Coleridge's nature was at the same time deeply religious— gives a certain effect and power to all that proceeds from him, which much

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surpasses its material importance. His acknowledged greatness as a poet is built perhaps upon the very smallest matter-of-fact, foundation that ever fame had. His so-called poems, good and bad, everything he has done in rhyme, occupy but one small volume, in which there is included much that is of no particular importance, and some things which are not poetry at all; while his three real and great poems, the "Ancient Mariner," "Christabel," and "Love," would not do more than make up among them a tiny brochure. Two of these are, in scope and construction, very far from intelligible to the common understanding. They contain none of the elements of ordinary popularity; they do not appeal to the primitive emotions, nor gain any fictitious interest from that power of association which often carries a homely verse straight to the heart. Yet their power is so unquestionable that the world has acknowledged it in its own despite, in a tremor of wonder and perplexity and curiosity, not comprehending but feeling, and bowing down before its natural king. Though we hear of adverse criticism, and though his first great poem, being published with them, naturally shared the fate of Wordsworth's Lyrical Ballads, yet we find no trace of the determined opposition against which Wordsworth had to fight his way to greatness, in the case of the companion whose vivid imaginations were above criticism. "The sweet, soft, still breath of praise," says Professor Wilson, in one of his own most beautiful and poetical essays, rose from many a secret place where genius and simplicity abided; and Coleridge, amid the simpers of the silly, and the laughter of the light, and the scorn of the callous, and the abuse of the brutal, received the laurel crown woven by the hands of all the best

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of his brother bards." His poetry was not to be questioned; it was strange, wild, original, like nothing else in earth or heaven; but it thrilled every competent spectator with consciousness of a new power, a new light revealing the unseen. His images and metaphors are all drawn from that spiritual Debatable Land in which he dwelt. They are the utterance of one who sees what we cannot see, and hears what we do not hear. His whole mind and soul are uplifted to the magic hill-top on which he chants his song, with his singing-garments round him and his head among the stars. Thus the strains, so few in number, so strange in character, affect the mind more powerfully than even the avowedly great poems which are written under more ordinary conditions. It is as if an angel sang to us; yet not an angel,—a great, powerful, wandering, wayward spirit, more deeply sympathetic with earth and its anguishes than with the realm of celestial bliss-aware of a thousand occult forces unknown to us, strange beings, good and bad, whom he does not imagine, but sees with those larger other eyes than ours, which are his by right of his nature. ship that drifts against the sunset with its weird players; the beautiful angel who looks the knight in the face, and whom he knows to be a fiend; the loathly yet lovely lady, "beautiful exceedingly," who throws her magic over Christabel,—all these are apparitions from another world, from a world spiritual, unseen, between heaven and earth, unknown except in so far as the seer chooses to reveal them, yet haunting our visible life in a mysterious neighbourhood, weaving themselves in with our affairs, accounting for a thousand mysteries. which his knowledge of them and of the invisible gives him affects us

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more suddenly, more certainly, more vividly, than any other kind of poetry. It impresses not so much the understanding as a kindred imagination which is latent in every one of us, and which is more rapid and potent than even the intellect. Thus hosts of people who could give no explanation of the Ancient Mariner, or of its effect upon their minds-no more than the wedding-guest could, who is the first great example of this influence have been moved by it as all the lofty musings and fine philosophy of the "Excursion" could never move them. We do not pause here to say how profoundly this influence was felt by all who listened to the magical monologue of the poet in those days when he had ceased to put his thoughts into verse. Our object now is simply to point out that his nature, the predominance of spirit in him, his position as an almost entirely intellectual and spiritual being, is the very essence of his poetry, and has carried it straight to that innermost region of feeling which is one of the highest possessions of humanity-a thing at once deeper and wider than intellect. Thus he who has written less, and less intelligibly (so to speak), than any of his great contemporaries whose productions are to those of Wordsworth, of Byron, of Shelley, even of Keats, as a drop is to an ocean holds a position unsurpassed by any of them, and greater in actual power and influence than most. The others have laboured incomparably more, but they have attained no higher a result so far as fame is concerned. For in all of the others there are coarser elements-the visible prose of art as well as its higher inspiration-the scaffolding and tools and preparations which are necessary to every mortal structure, and betray when and how it was made. But

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Coleridge needs no scaffoldings, no implements. His is pure poetry, as his nature is all spirit. "The body that does us grievous wrong" is never visible, scarce necessary except for the mere voice, its most ethereal part. It has no active power in the matter. The song comes forth to us chanted softly, with now and then a rising swell of inspiration, out of the undiscovered world between earth and heaven. There is not even any effort of thought or invention, any strain of discovery. "What we have seen with our eyes and heard with our ears"-in this is the great secret of his fame.

Coleridge was born in 1772, in the little town of Ottery St Mary, in Devonshire. His father was vicar of the parish, and master of the grammar-school, a man of learning and piety, who died, as it seems to be almost necessary that a poet's father should die, when his son was very young.

Samuel Taylor Coleridge was the youngest of ten children. His elder brothers and sisters seem to have belonged altogether to an antecedent generation, and from those more near to him he seems to have been very soon and very completely detached; though his early recollections of the visionary time, when he was the plaything and pet of the family, and specially of his father, who was already an old man at his birth, and whose delight he was-are pathetically clear and vivid. The child, however, was only nine years old when he lost this pious and tender father, whom all his life long he laments as his one irremediable loss. A year afterwards the little fellow was sent to Christ's Hospital, a presentation to which had been secured to him by Judge Buller, once one of his father's pupils. From this time his mother's house, his family and home, seemed to disappear altogether from about him. But about him. We hear absolutely no

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come back (far in the west), with its churches and trees and faces! return but they bring with them a gloom The long warm days of summer never from the haunting memory of those whole days' leave, when, by some strange arrangement, we were turned out for the livelong day, upon our own hands, whether remember those bathing excursions to we had friends to go to or none.

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the New River which Lamb recalls with did not care much for such water-parties. so much relish, better, I think, than he can-for he was a home-seeking lad, and and strip under the first warmth of the How we would sally forth into the fields, sun, and wanton like young dace in the which those of us that were penniless (our streams, getting appetites for the noon; scanty morning crust long since exhausted) had not the means of allaying-while the cattle and the birds and the fishes were at feed about us, and we had nothing of the day, and the exercise of the pasto satisfy our cravings; the very beauty time, and the sense of liberty setting a keener edge upon them! How faint and languid, finally, we would return toward nightfall to our desired morsel, half rejoicing, half reluctant, that the hours of uneasy liberty had expired!

more of them. Whether the subsequent advancement of the race in the world is due to their own qualities entirely, or is in any degree owing to the fame of the poet, for whom neither they nor the world did much, is beyond our power of judging; but certainly the parson's family of Ottery St Mary seems to have lent little moral backing or affectionate support to its gifted child. He describes himself, in the second hard chapter of his life, after the childish petting which the youngest son had received at home, depressed, moping, friendless, poor orphan, half starved;" and piteous is the tale that follows-the sketch of Christ's Hospital, in its then condition, and of the hungry lonely boy, with genius swelling in his heart, and an unsatisfied boy's appetite, making his cheeks hollow, and his desires ravenous. The following affecting narrative, written in Coleridge's person by the tender-hearted Elia, gives the best view possible of this scanty and suffering commencement of life. At that time, it may be premised, the dietary of Christ's Hospital was of the lowest: breakfast consisting of a "quarter of penny loaf, moistened with attenuated small beer in wooden piggins, smacking of the pitched leathern jack it was poured from;" and the weekly rule giving "three banyan-days to four meat-days."

"I was a poor friendless boy; my parents, and those who should have cared for me, were far away. Those few acquaintances of theirs, whom they could reckon upon being kind to me in the great city, after a little forced notice, which they had the grace to take of me on my first arrival in town, soon grew tired of my holiday visits. They seemed to them to recur too often, though I thought them few enough. One after another, they all failed me, and I felt myself alone among six hundred playmates. Oh the cruelty of separating a poor lad from his early homestead! The yearnings which I used to have towards it in those unfledged years! How in my dreams would my native town

to go prowling about the streets object"It was worse in the days of winter, shops, to extract a little amusement; or less, shivering at cold windows of printhaply, as a last resort, in the hope of a little novelty, to pay a fifty-times-repeated visit (where our individual faces would be his own charges) to the lions in the Tower, to whose levée, by courtesy immemorial, we had a prescriptive right of admission."

as well known to the warden as those of

was, however, ameliorated by some This melancholy and harsh life curious personal incidents. Once, ing along the crowded streets, fanfor example, the solitary boy, movcied, in the strange vividness of his waking dream, that he was Leander swimming across the Hellespont. His hand "came in contact with a gentleman's pocket" as he pursued this visionary amusement, and for two or three minutes Coleridge was in danger of being taken into custody as a pickpocket. On finding out how matters really stood, howsoul-immediately gave to the strange ever, this stranger-genial, nameless

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