sopped the Cerberus." That remedy was soon to become worse than the disease. In the fall of 1798, Coleridge and the Wordsworths made a trip to Germany, landing at Hamburg. After an interview with the aged Klopstock, the two poets separated, and Coleridge passed on to Gottingen, to attend lectures, and consort with German students and professors. Of his sojourn in Germany, he writes, "I made the best use of my time and means, and there is no period of my life to which I look back with such unmingled satisfaction." He was there in the school of Kant and his disciples, who were then leading the philosophic thought of Germany into new regions. Coleridge drank deep of this stream, and thereby qualified himself, perhaps, for the office of a great teacher to his nation; but it may well be doubted whether, on the whole, he gained much, either for himself or others, by swamping his fine poetic genius in ideal or transcendental metaphysics. Be this as it may, there was at least one good result from his knowledge of German thus acquired. He returned to England in November, 1799, and his next work was to translate Schiller's Wallenstein, · accomplishing in three weeks what many competent judges regard as the best translation ever made of any poem into English. This done, Coleridge joined Wordsworth in a tour among the lakes of Cumberland and Westmoreland; - his first sight of English mountains. About this time he became a contributor to the Morning Post, and so continued till the close of 1802. He was then in sympathy with Fox and the Whigs, not having yet grown to recognise what he afterwards acknowledged to be the "transcendent greatness' of Burke. But the progress of things in France, especially as the military despotism of Napoleon towered up in such gigantic proportions, was rapidly curing him of that delusion, and was working such changes in his mind, that in effect he soon passed over to the side of the Government. Already his belief in the Unitarian theology had been shaken; and now a closer study of Scripture, together with his hard discipline of suffering, was not long in bringing him back to the creed in which he had been reared' and he became staunch in his adhesion to the faith and worship of the Estab lished Church. In 1801, Coleridge transferred his family to Keswick, in the Lake country, where they lived much, if not most, of the time for many years, along with the Southeys. At this time the poetic season of his genius was already passing into "the sere, the yellow leaf," though he was but thirty years old; the Ode to Dejection and a few smaller pieces being all the poetry that came from him. In the Spring of 1804, he went to Malta for his health, where he soon became known to the Governor, Sir Alexander Ball, and for some time served as his secretary. He there conceived a great admiration of Sir Alexander, whose character he afterwards painted in glowing colours in The Friend. But he did not find at Malta what he went in quest of, and in the Fall of 1805 he returned to England. It is not easy to keep track of him through the next ten years. Sometimes he was with his family at Keswick; sometimes at Grasmere with Wordsworth; sometimes in London, writing for the Courier, or lecturing at the Royal Institution. Meanwhile his only work of real importance was The Friend, a series of weekly essays intended as a help to the formation of opinions in morals, politics, and art, grounded on true and permanent principles. The work was continued from June, 1809, to March, 1810, when it was given up because it did not pay the cost of publishing. It was afterwards recast and much enlarged, and published as a book in 1818; and a most instructive book it is too. Coleridge's first use of laudanum has already been mentioned. At Malta, opium-taking became a confirmed habit, and for ten years quite overmastered him. He himself, with the utmost frankness, pleads guilty to the evil habit. After my death," says he, "I earnestly entreat that a full and unqualified narrative of my wretchedness, and of its guilty cause, may be made public, that at least some little good may be effected by the direful example.” He strug gled hard against the tyrant habit, but without success. At last he put himself under the care of Dr. Gilman, who lived in a retired house at Highgate, and boarded in his family. Here he lived for the remaining eighteen years of his life, and with the good doctor's help gained the mastery over himself. During this period, the poor, dear, great man laboured with all his might to make up for lost time; and, wreck as he was, he was one of the best and wisest of England's teachers. His Two Lay Sermons, his Biographia Literaria, his recast of The Friend, his Aids to Reflection, and his Church and State, all of them the fruits of this period, were published during his life. A small volume on the inspiration of Scripture, and entitled Confessions of an Inquiring Spirit, was published after his death. The last three of these works have placed him in the highest rank of modern religious philosophers, and through them he has probably done more than any other one man to shape the religious thought of his countrymen. His Literary Remains, also published since his death, is now perhaps our best English text-book of criticism. His circle of thought was indeed prodigious. And perhaps his great mind had its most effective organ when he sat the centre of a social gathering, and overflowed in living talk. To his retirement at Highgate flocked, as on a pilgrimage, most of what was then brilliant in intellect or ardent in youthful genius, to hang upon his spoken words; and in those marvellous conversations the "old man eloquent" poured forth treasures of wisdom which became seed-points of intellectual life in many of the best minds of his time. In the Summer of 1833 Coleridge was for the last time in public, at the meeting of the British Association in Cambridge. He died at the house of Dr. Gilman on the 25th of July, 1834. Here is a brief passage from his nephew, Henry Nelson Coleridge, which it would hardly be right to leave unquoted: "Coleridge,- blessings on his gentle memory!-Coleridge was a frail mortal. He had indeed his peculiar weaknesses as well as his unique powers; sensibilities that an averted look would rack, a heart which would beat calmly in the tremblings of an earthquake. He shrank from mere uneasiness like a child, and bore the preparatory agonies of his death-attack like a martyr. He suffered an almost life-long punishment for his errors, whilst the world at large has the unwithering fruits of his labours, his genius, and his sufferings." Little room can here be spared for criticism of Coleridge's poetry. He has large variety both of matter and of style; he abounds in tenderness, delicacy, pathos; has many passages of condensed and close-twisted vigour; some, of austere, soul-lifting grandeur and sublimity; and not seldom searches the mind with happy aphoristic sayings, such as are apt to twine themselves inextricably into the reader's memory. His beauty, like that of Wordsworth, always lies first and chiefly in the thought; beauty of language coming in as the connate incarnation of beautiful thought. Sir Walter Scott, with, I believe, Christabel in his mind, pronounced him "the most imaginative poet of the age." This may well be doubted; but even a doubt on that point infers imagination enough in him to furnish out a whole regiment of ordinary poets. Though at all times wonderfully subtile and sinewy of discourse, still I am not aware that, in the poems written in the manhood of his genius, he ever lapses from good-sense, which is indeed the chief corner-stone of all high poetry. Therewithal, next after Wordsworth, he was the most original poet of his time: and it may well be questioned whether, in powers of versification, he was not even superior to his great friend. He was indeed a consummate master of rhythmical modulation. And how exquisitely, too, his diction everywhere feels the swiftest and the finest variations of his mental pulse! The "piercing sweetness of his lingual melody is well-nigh unequalled; and that melody has all the limberness and subtility of his most subtile and limber discourse. I POEMS BY SAMUEL TAYLOR COLERIDGE. GENEVIEVE. MAID of my Love, sweet Genevieve! LOVE. ALL thoughts, all passions, all delights, And feed his sacred flame. Oft in my waking dreams do I Beside the ruin'd tower. The moonshine, stealing o'er the scene, Had blended with the lights of eve; And she was there, my hope, my joy, My own dear Genevieve! She lean'd against the armèd man, Amid the lingering light. Few sorrows hath she of her own, My hope, my joy, my Genevieve! She loves me best, whene'er I sing The songs that make her grieve. I play'd a soft and doleful air, She listen'd with a flitting blush, I told her of the Knight that wore The Lady of the Land. I told her how he pined; and, ah! Interpreted my own. She listen'd with a flitting blush, Too fondly on her face! But when I told the cruel scorn That crazed that bold and lovely Knight, And that he cross'd the mountain-woods, Nor rested day nor night; That sometimes from the savage den, And sometimes from the darksome shade, And sometimes starting up at once In green and sunny glade,— There came and look'd him in the face And that, unknowing what he did, Ilis dying words, -But when I reach'd All impulses of soul and sense The rich and balmy eve; And hopes, and fears that kindle hope, Subdued and cherish'd long! She wept with pity and delight, I heard her breathe my name. Her bosom heaved,-she stepp'd aside, She half enclosed me with her arms, And gazed upon my face. "Twas partly love, and partly fear, And partly 'twas a bashful art, That I might rather feel than see The swelling of her heart. I calm'd her fears, and she was calm, My bright and beauteous Bride. DOMESTIC PEACE. TELL me, on what holy ground May Domestic Peace be found? Halcyon Daughter of the skies! Far on fearful wings she flies, From the pomp of scepter'd State, From the Rebel's noisy hate. In a cottaged vale she dwells Listening to the Sabbath bells! Still around her steps are seen Spotless Honour's meeker mien, Love, the sire of pleasing fears, Sorrow smiling through her tears, And, conscious of the past employ, Memory, bosom-spring of joy. THE ANCIENT MARINER.1 [eye, IT is an ancient Mariner, The Bridegroom's doors are open'd wide,, The guests are met, the feast is set: He holds him with his skinny hand, He holds him with his glittering eye; The Wedding Guest sat on a stone: 1 The Rev. Alexander Dyce, in a letter to the poet's nephew, H. N. Coleridge, says that Wordsworth, dining with him one day in London, told him as follows: "The Ancient Mariner was founded on a strange dream which a friend of Coleridge" had, who fancied that he saw a skeleton ship, with figures in it. We had both determined to write some poetry for a monthly magazine, the profits of which were to defray the expenses of a little excursion we were to make together. The Ancient Mariner was intended for this periodical, but was too long. I had very little share in the composition of it, for I soon found that the style of Coleridge and myself would not assimilate." Then, after remarking that he furnished some ten or eleven lines of the poem, Wordsworth added the following: "The idea of shooting an albatross' was mine; for I had been reading Shelvocke's Voyages, which probably Coleridge never saw. I also suggested the reanimation of the dead bodies, to work the ship." 2 Wordsworth, in his conversation with Dyce, stated that this stanza was furnished by himself. The other lines of his were in various parts of the poem. "The ship was cheer'd, the harbour, The ice did split with a thunder-fit; [clear'd, The helmsman steer'd us through. Merrily did we drop Below the kirk, below the hill, Below the light-house top. The Sun came up upon the left, And he shone bright, and on the right Higher and higher every day, - The Wedding-Guest here beat his breast, The bride hath paced into the hall, Nodding their heads, before her goes The Wedding-Guest he beat his breast, And thus spake on that ancient man, "And now theStorm-blast came, and he Was tyrannous and strong: He struck with his o'ertaking wings, With sloping masts and dipping prow, And the good south wind still blew be. And I had done an hellish thing, The ship drove fast, loud roar'd the blast, Ah wretch! said they, the bird to slay, And southward aye we fled. That made the breeze to blow! And now there came both mist and snow, Nor dim nor red, like God's own head, And it grew wondrous cold; And ice, mast-high, came floating by, As green as emerald: The glorious Sun uprist. Then all averr'd, I had kill'd the bird That brought the fog and mist. 'Twas right, said they, such birds to slay, That bring the fog and mist. The fair breeze klew, the white foam flew, We were the first that ever burst Down dropt the breeze, the sails dropt 'Twas sad as sad could be: And we did speak only to break The silence of the sea! All in a hot and copper sky, Right up above the mast did stand, [down, |