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sublime simplicity and most deep tenderness. It is one of the most melancholy things in human nature, to see how often the grandest mysteries of the meditative soul lie at the mercy of surface-skimming ridicule, and self-satisfied rejoicing ignorance-It is like seeing the most solemn gestures of human dignity mimicked into grotesque absurdity by monkeys. Now, to our mind, the impropriety of the treatment which has been bestowed upon Mr Coleridge, is mightily increased by the very facilities which the peculiarities of the poet himself afforded for its infliction. It is a thing not to be denied, that, even under the most favourable of circumstances, the greater part of the readers of English poetry could never have been expected thoroughly and intimately to understand the scope of those extraordinary productions-but this ought only to have acted as an additional motive with those who profess to be the guides of public opinion, to make them endeavour, as far as might in them lie, to render the true merits of those productions more visible to the eye of the less penetrating or less reflective. Unless such be the duty of professional critics on such occa sions and one, too, of the very noblest duties they can ever be called upon to discharge-we have erred very widely in all our ideas concerning such matters.

However well he might have been treated by the critics-nay, however largely he might have shared in the sweets of popularity-there is no doubt Mr Coleridge must still have continued to be a most eccentric author. But the true subject for regret is, that the unfavourable reception he has met with, seems to have led him to throw aside almost all regard for the associations of the multitude and to think, that nothing could be so worthy of a great genius, so unworthily despised, as to reject in his subsequent compositions every standard save that of his own private whims. Now it was a very great pity that this remarkable man should have come so hastily to such a resolution as this and by exaggerating his own original peculiarities, thus widened the breach every day between himself and the public. A poet, although he may have no great confidence in the public taste, as a guide to excellence, should

always, at least, retain the wish to please it by the effect of his pieceseven while he may differ very widely from common opinions, with regard to the means to be employed. This is a truth which has unfortunately been very inadequately attended to by several of the most powerful geniuses of our time; but we know of none upon whose reputation its neglect has been so severely visited as on that of Mr Coleridge. It is well, that in spite of every obstacle, the native power of his genius has still been able to scatter something of its image upon all his performances-it is well, above all things, that in moods of more genial enthusiasm he has created a few poems, which are, though short, in conception so original, and in execution so exquisite, that they cannot fail to render the name of Coleridge co-extensive with the language in which he has written-and to associate it for ever in the minds of all feeling and intelligent men, with those of the few chosen spirits that have touched in so many ages of the world the purest and most delicious chords of lyrical enchantment.

Those who think the most highly of the inborn power of this man's genius, must now, perhaps, be contented, if they would speak of him to the public with any effect, to suppress their enthusiasm in some measureand take that power alone for granted which has been actually shown to exist. Were we to speak of him without regard to this prudential rule

and hazard the full expression of our own belief in his capacities-there is no question we should meet with many to acknowledge the propriety, to use the slightest phrase, of all that we might say-but these, we apprehend, would rather be found among those who have been in the society of Mr Coleridge himself, and witnessed the astonishing effects which, according to every report, his elo quence never fails to produce upon those to whom it is addressed-than among men who have (like ourselves) been constrained to gather their only ideas of him from the printed productions of his genius. We are very willing to acknowledge, that our own excess of admiration may have been in some measure the result of peculiar circumstances-that it may have arisen out of things too minute to be ex

plained and which, if explained, would be regarded by many as merely fantastic and evanescent. What, according to our belief, Mr Coleridge might have been-what, according to the same belief, he may yet be these are matters in regard to which it may be wise to keep silence. We have no desire, had we the power, to trouble our readers with any very full exposition of our opinions, even concerning what he has done in poetry. Our only wish for the present, is to offer a few remarks in regard to one or two of his individual productions, which may perhaps excite the attention of such of our readers as have never yet paid any considerable attention to any of them--and this, more particularly, as we have already hinted, with a view to our own countrymen in Scotland.

The longest poem in the collection of the Sibylline Leaves, is the Rime of the Ancient Mariner-and to our feeling, it is by far the most wonderful also-the most original-and the most touching of all the productions of its author. From it alone, we are inclined to think an idea of the whole poetical genius of Mr Coleridge might be gathered, such as could scarcely receive any very important addition either of extent or of distinctness, from a perusal of the whole of his other works. To speak of it at all is extremely difficult; above all the poems with which we are acquainted in any language-it is a poem to be felt-cherished-mused upon-not to be talked about-not capable of being described-analyzed or criticised. It is the wildest of all the creations of genius-it is not like a thing of the living, listening, moving world-the very music of its words is like the melancholy mysterious breath of something sung to the sleeping ear-its images have the beauty-the grandeur-the incoherence of some mighty vision. The loveliness and the terror glide before us in turns-with, at one moment, the awful shadowy dimness-at another, the yet more awful distinctness of a majestic dream.

Dim and shadowy, and incoherent, however, though it be-how blind, how wilfully, or how foolishly blind must they have been who refused to see any meaning or purpose in the Tale of the Mariner! The imagery,

indeed, may be said to be heaped up to superfluity-and so it is—the language to be redundant and the narrative confused. But surely those who cavilled at these things, did not consider into whose mouth the poet has put this ghastly story. A guest is proceeding to a bridal-the sound of the merry music is already in his ears-and the light shines clearly from the threshold to guide him to the festival. He is arrested on his way by an old man, who constrains him to listen-he seizes him by the hand-that he shakes free-but the old man has a more inevitable spell, and he holds him, and will not be silent.

He holds him with his glittering eye,

The wedding-guest stood still, And listens like a three-years child: The mariner hath his will.

The wedding guest sat on a stone,

He cannot ehuse but hear-
And thus spake on that ancient man,
The bright-eyed mariner.

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The bride hath paced into the hall,

Red as a rose is she:

Nodding their heads before her goes

The merry minstrelsy.

The wedding-guest he beat his breast,
Yet he cannot chuse but hear-

And thus spake on that ancient man,
The bright-eyed mariner.

In the beginning of the mariner's narrative, the language has all the impetus of a storm-and when the ship is suddenly locked among the polar ice, the change is as instantaneous as it is awful.

The ice was here, the ice was there,
The ice was all around:

It cracked and growled, and roared and howl'd,

Like noises in a swound!

At length did cross an Albatross :
Thorough the fog it came;

As if it had been a Christian soul,
We hailed it in God's name.

It ate the food it ne'er had eat,
And round and round it flew.
The ice did split with a thunder-fit;
The helmsman steer'd us through!

And a good south wind sprung up
The Albatross did follow,
And every day, for food or play,

Came to the Mariner's hollo!

In mist or cloud, or mast or shroud,
It perch'd for vespers nine;

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I shot the ALBATROSS!

All the subsequent miseries of the crew are represented by the poet as having been the consequences of this violation of the charities of sentiment; and these are the same miseries which the critics have spoken of, as being causeless and unmerited! We have no difficuity in confessing, that the ideas on which the intent of this poem hinges, and which to us seem to possess all beauty and pathos, may, after all, have been selected by the poet with a too great neglect of the ordinary sympathies. But if any one will submit himself to the magic that is around him, and suffer his senses and his imagination to be blended together, and exalted by the melody of the charmed words, and the splendour of the unnatural apparitions with which the mysterious scene is opened, surely he will experience no revulsion towards the centre and spirit of this lovely dream. There is the very essence of tenderness in the remorseful delight with which the Mariner dwells upon the image of the "pious bird of omen good," as it

Every day, for food or play,
Came to the Mariner's hollo!
And the convulsive shudder with
which he narrates the treacherous
issue, bespeaks to us no pangs more
than seem to have followed justly on
that inhospitable crime. It seems as
if the very spirit of the universe had
been stunned by the wanton cruelty
of the Mariner-as if earth, sea,
and sky, had all become dead and
stagnant in the extinction of the mov-
ing breath of love and gentleness.
All in a hot and copper sky,
The bloody Sun, at noon,
Right up above the mast did stand,
No bigger than the moon.
Day after day, day after day,
We stuck, nor breath nor motion,
As idle as a painted ship
Upon a painted ocean.
Water, water, every where,
And all the boards did shrink;
Water, water, every where,
or any drop to drink.

e very deep did rot: 0 Christ!
at ever this should be!

Yea, slimy things did crawl with legs Upon the slimy sea.

About, about, in reel and rout
The death-fires danced at night;
The water, like a witch's oils,
Burnt green, and blue, and white.
Ah! well a-day! what evil looks
Had I from old and young!
Instead of the cross, the Albatross
About my neck was hung.
In the "weary time" which follows,
a spectre-ship sails between them and
the "broad bright sun" in the west.
This part of the poem is much im-
proved in this last edition of it. The
male and the female skeleton in the
spectre-ship, or, as they are now called,
"DEATH and LIFE-IN-DEATH," have
diced for the ship's crew-and she,
the latter, has won the ancient Mari-
ner. These verses are, we think,
quite new. The second of them is,
perhaps, the most exquisite in the
whole poem.

The naked hulk alongside came,
And the twain were casting dice;
"The game is done! I've won, I've won !"
Quoth she, and whistles thrice.
The Sun's rim dips; the stars rush out :
At one stride comes the dark;
With far-heard whisper, o'er the sea,
Off shot the spectre-bark.

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We listen'd and look'd sideways up!
Fear at my heart, as at a cup,
My life-blood seem'd to sip!

The stars were dim, and thick the night, The steersman's face by his lamp gleam'd white;

From the sails the dews did drip-
Till clombe above the eastern bar
The horned Moon, with one bright star
Within the nether tip.

The crew, who had approved in calmness the sin that had been committed in wantonness and madness, die,—and the Mariner alone is preserved by the rise of an expiatory feeling in his mind. Pain, sorrow, remorse, there are not enough ;-the wound must be healed by a heartfelt sacrifice to the same spirit of universal love which had been bruised in its infliction.

The moving Moon went up the sky,
And no where did abide :
Softly she was going up,
And a star or two beside-

Her beams bemock'd the sultry main,
Like April hoar-frost spread;
But where the ship's huge shadow lay,
The charmed water burnt alway
A still and awful red.

Beyond the shadow of the ship,
I watch'd the water-snakes:

They moved in tracts of shining white,
And when they reared, the elfish light
Fell off in hoary flakes.

Within the shadow of the ship
I watch'd their rich attire:

Blue, glossy green, and velvet black,
They coiled and swam; and every track
Was a flash of golden fire.

O happy living things! no tongue
Their beauty might declare:

A spring of love gusht from my heart,
And I blessed them unaware!

Sure my kind saint took pity on me,
And I blessed them unaware.

The self same moment I could pray;
And from my neck so free
The Albatross fell off, and sank
Like lead into the sea.

It is needless to proceed any longer in this, for the principle of the poem is all contained in the last of these extracts. Had the ballad been more interwoven with sources of prolonged emotion extending throughout-and had the relation of the imagery to the purport and essence of the piece been a little more close-it does not seem to us that any thing more could have been desired in a poem such as this. As it is, the effect of the wild wandering magnificence of imagination in the details of the dream-like story is a thing that cannot be forgotten. It is as if we had seen real spectres, and were for ever to be haunted. The unconnected and fantastic variety of the images that have been piled up before us works upon the fancy, as an evening sky made up of half lurid castellated clouds-half of clear unpolluted azure-would upon the eye. It is like the fitful concert of fine sounds which the Mariner himself hears after his spirit has been melted, and the ship has begun to sail homewards. Around, around, flew each sweet sound, Then darted to the Sun;

Slowly the sounds came back again,
Now mixed, now one by one.
Sometimes a-dropping from the sky
I heard the sky-lark sing;
Sometimes all little birds that are,
How they seem'd to fill the sea and air
With their sweet jargoning!

And now 'twas like all instruments,

Now like a lonely flute;

And now it is an angel's song,

That makes the Heavens be mute.

It ceased; yet still the sails made on
A pleasant noise till noon,
A noise like of a hidden brook
In the leafy month of June,
That to the sleeping woods all night
Singeth a quiet tune.

The conclusion has always appeared to us to be happy and graceful in the utmost degree. The actual surface-life of the world is brought close into contact with the life of sentiment-the soul that is as much alive, and enjoys, and suffers as much in dreams and visions of the night as by daylight. One feels with what a heavy eye the Ancient Mariner must look and listen to the pomps and merry-makings→→→ even to the innocent enjoyments-of those whose experience has only been of things tangible. One feels that to him another world-we do not mean a supernatural, but a more exquisitely and deeply natural world-has been revealed and that the repose of his spirit can only be in the contemplation of things that are not to pass away. The sad and solemn indifference of his mood is communicated to his hearer-and we feel that even after reading what he had heard, it were better to turn from the bridegroom's door." O Wedding-Guest! this soul hath been Alone on a wide wide sea: So lonely 'twas, that God himself Scarce seemed there to be.

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sweeter than the marriage-feast,

"Tis sweeter far to me,
With a goodly company !—
To walk together to the kirk
To walk together to the kirk,
And all together pray,
While each to his great Father bends,
Old men, and babes, and loving friends,
And youths and maidens gay!
Farewell, farewell! but this I tell
To thee, thou Wedding-Guest!
He prayeth well, who loveth well
Both man, and bird, and beast.
He prayeth best, who loveth best
All things both great and small;
For the dear God who loveth us,
He made and loveth all.

The Mariner, whose eye is bright,
Whose beard with age is hoar,
Is gone; and now the Wedding-guest
Turned from the bridegroom's door.

He went like one that hath been stunned,
And is of sense forlorn :

A SADDER AND A WISER MAN,
HE ROSE THE MORROW MORN.-

Of all the author's productions, the one which seems most akin to the Ancient Mariner, is Christabel, a wonderful piece of poetry, which has been far less understood, and is as yet far less known than the other. This performance does not make its appearance in the Sibylline Leaves-but we hope Mr Coleridge will never omit it in any

future collection. The reception it met with was no doubt a very discouraging one, more particularly when contrasted with the vehement admiration which seems to have been expressed by all who saw it while yet in MS. Mr Coleridge, however, should remember that the opinions of the few who saw and admired Christabel then, may very well, without any overweening partiality on his part, be put into competition with the many who have derided it since. Those who know the secret history of the poem, and compare it with the productions of the most popular poets of our time, will have no difficulty in perceiving how deep an impression his remarkable creation had made on the minds of those of his contemporaries, whose approbation was most deserving to be an object of ambition with such a man as Mr Coleridge.

Christabel, as our readers are aware, is only a fragment, and had been in existence for many years antecedent to the time of its publication. Neither has the author assigned any reason either for the long delay of its appearance or for the imperfect state in which he has at last suffered it to appear. In all probability he had waited long in the hope of being able to finish it to his satisfaction; but finding that he was never revisited by a mood sufficiently genial-he determined to let the piece be printed as it was. It is not in the history of Christabel alone that we have seen reason to suspect Mr Coleridge of being by far too passive in his notions concerning the mode in which a poet ought to deal Iwith his muse. It is very true, that the best conceptions and designs are frequently those which occur to a man of fine talents, without having been painfully sought after: but the exertion of the Will is always necessary in the worthy execution of them. It behoves a poet, like any other artist, after he has fairly conceived the idea of his piece, to set about realising it in good earnest, and to use his most persevering attention in considering how all its parts are to be adapted and conjoined. It does not appear that even the language of a poem can arise spontaneously throughout like a strain of music, any more than the colours of the painter will go and arrange themselves on his canvass, while he is musing on the subject in another room.

Language is a material which it requires no little labour to reduce into beautiful forms,-a truth of which the ancients were, above all others, well and continually aware. For although vivid ideas naturally suggest happy expressions, yet the latter are, as it were, only insulated traits or features, which require much management in the joining, and the art of the composer is seen in the symmetry of the whole structure. Now, in many respects Mr Coleridge seems too anxious to enjoy the advantages of an inspired writer, and to produce his poetry at once in its perfect form-like the palaces which spring out of the desert in complete splendour at a single rubbing of the lamp in the Arabian Tale. But carefulness above all is necessary to a poet in these latter days, when the ordinary medium through which things are viewed is so very far from being poetical-and when the natural strain of scarcely any man's associations can be expected to be of that sort which is most akin to high and poetical feeling. There is no question there are many, very many passages in the poetry of this writer, which shew what excellent things may be done under the impulse of a happy moment-passages in which the language--above all things-has such aërial graces would have been utterly beyond the reach of any person who might have attempted to produce the like, without being able to lift his spirit into the same ecstatic mood. It is not to be denied, however, that among the whole of his poems there are only a few in the composition of which he seems to have been blessed all throughout with the same sustaining energy of afflatus. The Mariner-we need not say-is one of these. The poem Love is another-and were Christabel completed as it has been begun, we doubt not it would be allowed by all who are capable of tasting the merits of such poetry, to be a third-and, perhaps, the most splendid of the three.

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It is impossible to gather from the part which has been published any conception of what is the meditated conclusion of the story of Christabel. Incidents can never be fairly judged of till we know what they lead to. Of those which occur in the first and second cantos of this poem, there is no doubt many appear at present very strange and disagreeable, and the

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