After his marriage, Coleridge settled at Clevedon, near Bristol, and projected many plans of industrious occupation in the fields of literature; but he soon became tired of this retreat, and removed to Bristol, where he was materially aided in his designs of publication by that very generous and sympathizing publisher, Joseph Cottle. He first started a weekly political paper, called the Watchman, most of which he wrote himself; but, from his indolent irregularity, the work stopped at the tenth number. Failing in this, he retired, in the latter part of 1796, to a cottage in Nether Stowey, in Somersetshire, on the grounds of his friend and benefactor, Mr. Poole, and near Mr. Wordsworth. He was at this time in the habit of contributing verses to one of the London papers, as a means of subsistence; and it was while residing here that the greater part of his poems were composed, though many were not published till later: these were his Lyrical Ballads, Christabel, the Ancient Mariner, and his tragedy of Remorse. In 1798 he was enabled, through the munificence of Mr. Thomas Wedgewood, to travel in Germany and to study at some of its famed universities. He was very industrious in the study of the literature and philosophy of that country, and may be considered as the introducer of German philosophy to the notice of British scholars. After his return from Germany, Coleridge settled with his family at Keswick, in Cumberland, near the "lakes," in which region Wordsworth and Southey resided; and hence the appellation of "Lake Poets," given to these three individuals. In the mean time, his habit of opium-eating, into which he had been seduced from its apparent medicinal effects, had gained tremendously upon him, and had undermined his health. There is no portion of literary history more sad than that which reveals the tyrannical power which that dreadful habit had over him, and his repeated but vain struggles to overcome it. It made him its victim, and held him, bound hand and foot, with a giant's strength. In consequence of his enfeebled health, he went to Malta in 1804, and returned in 1806.2 From this period till about 1816 he led a sort of wandering life, sometimes with one friend and sometimes with another, and much of the time separated from his family, supporting himself by lecturing, publishing, and writing for the London papers. The great defect in his character was the want of resoluteness of will. He saw that his pernicious habit was destroying his own happiness and that of those dearest to him; entangling him in meanness, deceit, and dishonesty; and yet he had not the strength of will to break it off.3 In 1816 he placed himself under the care of Mr. Gilman, a physician in Highgate, London, and with his generous family he resided till his death. band's intellectual powers. De Quincey, in his Literary Reminiscences, thus speaks :-" Coleridge assured me that his marriage was not his own deliberate act, but was in a manner forced upon his sense of honor by the scrupulons Southey, who insisted he had gone too far in his attentions to Miss F. for any honorable retreat." 1 Read the painfully interesting account in Cattle's Reminiscences, and the most faithful Christian letter of Cottle to Coleridge, together with the answer of the latter. Read, also, an able article in the North British Review, December, 1865. See, too, some fine remarks on Coleridge by Talfourd, in his edition of Lamb's Works, vol. i. p. 274. 2"It was in the year 1807 that I first saw this illustrious man, the largest and most spacious intellect, the subtlest and most comprehensive, in my judgment, that has yet existed amongst men."-DE QUINCEY. The fine saying of Addison is familiar to most readers.-that Babylon in ruins is not so affecting a spectacle, or so solemn, as a human mind overthrown by lunacy. How much more awful, then, and more magnificent a wreck, when a mind so regal as that of Coleridge is overthrown or threatened with overthrow, not by a visitation of Providence, but by the treachery of his own will, and the conspiracy, as it were, of himself against himself!"-DE QUINCEY. Most of his prose works he published between the years 1817 and 1825,-th two Lay Sermons, the Biographia Literaria, the Friend, in three volumes, th Aids to Reflection, and the Constitution of the Church and State. After his death which took place on the 25th of July, 1834, collections were made of his Table Talk, and other Literary Remains.1 Few men have exerted a greater influence upon the thinking mind of th nineteenth century than Samuel Taylor Coleridge, whether we regard hi poetry or his prose writings. He wrote, however, for the scholastic few rathe than for the reading many. Hence he has never become what may be calle a popular writer, and never will be. But if he exerted not so great an in fluence upon the popular mind directly, he did indirectly through those wh have studied and admired his works, and have themselves popularized hi own recondite conceptions. His Aids to Reflection in the Formation of a Manh Character is a book full of wisdom, of sound Christian morality, and of the most just observations on life and duty; and from his series of essays, Th Friend, might be culled gems of rich and beautiful and profound thought that would make a volume of priceless worth. His poetry unites great vividness of fancy to a lofty elevation of moral feeling and unsurpassed melody of versification; but then much of it must be said to be obscure. He himself. in fact, admits this, when he says, in a later edition of one of his poems, that where he appears unintelligible "the deficiency is in the reader." Still. enough that is clear remains to delight, instruct, and exalt the mind; and few authors have left to the world, both in prose and poetry, so much delicious and invigorating food on which the worn spirit may feed with pleasure and profit, and gain renewed strength for the conflicts of the world, as this philosophic poet and poetic philosopher.3 In conversation, Coleridge particularly shone. Here, probably, he never had his equal: so that he gained the title of the "Great Conversationalist." "It is deeply to be regretted," says an admiring critic, "that his noble genius was, to a great extent, frittered away in conversation, which he could pour forth, unpremeditatedly, for hours, in uninterrupted streams of vivid, dazzling, original thinking." "Did you ever hear me preach?" said Coleridge to Lamb. "I never heard you do any thing else," was his friend's reply. Certainly through this medium he watered with his instructions a large circle of disci 1 A few months before his death, Mr. Coleridge wrote his own humble and affecting epitaph : Stop, Christian passer-by! Stop, child of God, He ask'd, and hoped in Christ. Do thou the same. In reference to that singularly wild and to have written the following epigram, adstriking poem, The Ancient Mariner, he is said dressed to himself: "Your poem must eternal be, Dear sir! it cannot fail! ledge, in so many points at least, of particular facts."-ARNOLD: Letter to W. W. Hull, Esq. "I think, with all his faults, old Sam was | philosophy and poetry with so full a know more of a great man than any one who has lived within the four seas, in my memory. It is refreshing to see such a union of the highest -pleship; but what treasures of thought has the world lost by his unwillingness es make his pen the mouth-piece of his mind!1 HYMN BEFORE SUNRISE IN THE VALE OF CHAMOUNI. [Besides the rivers Arvé and Arveiron, which have their sources in the foot of Mont Blanc, fe conspicuous torrents rush down its sides; and within a few paces of the glaciers the GenDane Major grows in immense numbers, with its "flowers of loveliest blue."] Hast thou a charm to stay the morning star Rave ceaselessly; but thou, most awful form! O dread and silent mount! I gazed upon thee, Till thou, still present to the bodily sense, Didst vanish from my thought: entranced in prayer, Yet, like some sweet beguiling melody, So sweet, we know not we are listening to it, Thou the meanwhile wast blending with my thoughts, Awake, my soul! not only passive praise Thou first and chief, sole Sovran of the Vale! pious and eloquent periods did it flow! The auditors seemed to be wrapt in wonder and delight, as one conversation, more profound or clothed in more forcible language than another, fell from his tongue. He spoke nearly for two hours with unhesitating and uninterrupted fluency. As I returned homeward to Kensington, I thought a second Johnson had visited the earth to make wise the sons of men; and regretted that I could not exercise the powers of a second Boswell to record the wisdom and the eloquence that fell from the orator's lips." 1 The following is the testimony of Dr. Dib-| din to Coleridge's conversational powers: "I shall never forget the effect his conversation made upon me at the first meeting, at a dinnerparty. It struck me as something not only quite out of the ordinary course of things, but an intellectual exhibition altogether matchless. The viands were unusually costly, and the banquet was at once rich and varied; but there seemed to be no dish like Coleridge's conversation to feed upon, and no information so instructive as his own. The orator rolled himself up, as it were, in his chair, and gave the most unrestrained indulgence to his Read Edinburgh Review, xxvii. 58, xxviii. speech; and bow fraught with acuteness and 448, lxi. 129; London Quarterly, xi. 173, lii. 1, originality was that speech, and in what co-liii. 79, lix. 1; and American Quarterly, xix. 1. Companion of the morning star at dawn, And you, ye five wild torrents fiercely glad! Your strength, your speed, your fury, and your joy, And who commanded (and the silence came), "Here let the billows stiffen and have rest?" Ye ice-falls! ye that from the mountain's brow Who made you glorious as the gates of heaven God! sing, ye meadow-streams with gladsome voice! Ye living flowers that skirt the eternal frost! Utter forth God, and fill the hills with praise! Thou too, hoar Mount! with thy sky-pointing peaks, Oft from whose feet the avalanche, unheard, Shoots downward, glittering through the pure serene, Slow-travelling with dim eyes suffused with tears, 1 The glaciers assume in the sunshine all manner of colors. Thou dread ambassador from earth to heaven, QUALITIES ESSENTIAL TO THE TEACHER. O'er wayward childhood wouldst thou hold firm rule, But Love is subtle, and doth proof derive And the soft murmurs of the mother dove, Woos back the fleeting spirit, and half supplies; Thus Love repays to Hope what Hope first gave to Love. When, overtask'd at length, Both Love and Hope beneath the load give way; ΤΟ ΑΝ ΙΝFANT. Ah, cease thy tears and sobs, my little life! The structure of this hymn is extremely Doble; it commences and concludes with the idea of the mount in its oneness, while the mind is allowed in its intervening strains to mingle with the individualities of its scenery. it constitutes a picture as unique in its grandeur as any that poetry presents."-SCRYM GEOUR. |