ference to human suffering: and it is seldom that human suffering takes a form more acute than in a youthful aspirant to literary celebrity who finds himself suddenly exposed to indignity and shame and made the laughter of mankind. Mankind are always ready to applaud that which makes them laugh, whatsoever victim writhes; but none was more ready to join in the applause than I was in my two-and-twentieth year. The view which I adopted afterwards (but not immediately, nor very soon afterwards) was that no unkind word should be spoken of book or man unless there was something more to be alleged for it than the expurgation of literature by criticism; inasmuch as, generally speaking, neglect will do all that is necessary in that way.

In 1816, my brothers, in that year aged respectively seventeen and eighteen, had sent Gifford an article on Coleridge (perhaps a joint production); and although the article was not accepted, on the ground that another contributor had written one on the same subject, he had given them encouragement; and in a letter to the younger of them, dated December 4, 1817, he writes: "How was it that I never heard from you after I enclosed the MS. of Coleridge? I augured well of the mind that produced that little article. It is surely capable of greater things; but I lost sight of you all at once." It was probably this correspondence of my brothers with Gifford that suggested to me to make an attempt in the same direction; and, early in 1822, I sent him a short article upon Moore's "Irish Melodies." I heard nothing of it for several months, and I was infinitely surprised and delighted when, in October of that year, I received a letter and a remittance in acknowledgment of my article, which was to appear in the number then to be published. On referring to the article, I find it to be a light and lively piece of

criticism on the approved model of sarcastic flippancy; not, indeed, altogether suppressing the genuine admiration which I felt at that time for Moore, but nevertheless taking such opportunities as arose of mocking at him.

In the blind solitude of Witton Hall this appearance in the Quarterly Review seemed like an opening into the outer world and its sunshine. And, indeed, I think it did lead the way to the outer world; for my father and stepmother, who had seen that I was suffering in health and spirits from an unoccupied and objectless life, were now encouraged to think that if I were to go forth I might find an occupation and career in literature. My stepmother, for these years that I had been at home, had been watching me fondly and wisely, and she understood me well. She had justly considered me as in some points of character unsettled and crude; perhaps even more so than most youths may be expected to be between nineteen and twenty-two. My enthusiastic admiration of Byron was morally stultifying; I do not say debasing, because it was matter of imagination, and did not, in any positive and affirmative sense, work itself into my practical life. What it did was to supplant or stunt other and elevating admirations. But great is the loss in youth which is thereby suffered:

"We live by admiration, hope, and love.”*

By love and hope throughout life and in all its seasons; by admiration eminently in youth, and more or less, but perhaps with a diminishing predominance, afterwards. My stepmother perceived, as she was sure to do, my follies and crudities-looked through and through them. Her temper was imperturbable. She did not remonstrate, admonish, warn, advise, or discuss, with any special refer

*Wordsworth.

ence to myself and my follies. The influence she exercised was that which was necessarily to operate from living with a keen and strong understanding, governed by a pure and strenuous moral mind, as free as any human being's can be from vanity or littleness or self-love. When called upon to speak on subjects involving moral sentiments, she spoke the truth, regardless whether agreeable or disagreeable. But she took no personal aim-none, that is, at me; for persons were, no doubt, as they must be with all practical minds, the groundwork of her moral insights. The persons who presented themselves in her secluded way of life were not many; but many are not required for a true knowledge of human nature; and for the purposes of such knowledge there may be more easily too many than too few; for in this as in other ways "the hand of little employment hath the daintier sense."

Under this regimen I had so far gained in strength that within a year after this début of mine in the Quarterly Review she had come to the conclusion that I might be safely sent to London to seek my fortunes as an adventurer in literature; and my father adopted her view.

She had had a powerful coadjutrix. For in these years were the beginnings of an influence founded partly on personal admiration-at least, aided by it-which lasted in direct action through the greater part of life, and in its ultimate results, if not defeated by the adverse elements and powers, ought to reach beyond this horizon. My stepmother had a dear friend and cousin, at that time about forty years of age, by name Isabella Fenwick. Her face might have been called handsome, but that it was too noble and distinguished to be disposed of by that appellative. Her manners, her voice, and everything about her harmonized with her face, and her whole effect was simple and great, and at the same time distinctly individual. My

father says of her in one of his letters: "All the noblenesses are so obvious, and yet there is so much singleheartedness withal, that one is sure all that is on the surface is also worked into the substance of the character.”

I was then, and have been always, peculiarly amenable to manners and looks. Miss Fenwick was too far removed from me by age, and too far above me in nature and character, for me to be in love with her. My admiration was wholly unamorous, but it was very ardent. She was largely and deeply religious; gladly and affectionately submissive to the authority of the Church; but, by a law of her nature, free—a child of God in the bondage of love and in the "glorious liberty" which consists with it. Her intellect was more imaginative, various, and capacious than her cousin's; her judgment less sure-footed; her impulses more vehement; her nature more perturbed. She had the same sense of the ridiculous; and when they were together, my father (who, rigorous and austere as he was in his morality, had a profound charity and consideration for all men that were not obnoxious to moral censure) used to be somewhat shocked at the treatment which weakness and folly met with at their hands. He could bear ridicule only when it was directed at himself; and he looked so grave and severe that his wife and his son were the only persons who were ever likely to laugh at him. But though our ridicule of himself was rather pleasant to him, he could not be persuaded that ridicule of strangers and of the absent was consistent with benevolence towards them; and perhaps there was in Miss Fenwick at that time, besides what was harmless and stingless, some want of toleration for what, after all, in a just estimate, is tolerable enough - prudential virtue and worldly respectability. Her theory was that the great sinners are, through remorse and repentance, more in the way to salvation than the in

differently well-conducted people. I recollect once, when the talk was of sermons, she said the only use of them was to make respectable people uncomfortable. There would be something to be said for her preference of great sinners to respectable sinners, if great sinners did commonly repent; but, as the facts are, I am afraid the world cannot afford that moderately good conduct from mixed or secondary motives should be despised. Nevertheless, with all her vehemence of contempt for what was contemptible and her undue disrespect for what was merely creditable, she had a most generous and charitable heart; and out of an income which did not much exceed £1000, she spent (at least in the portion of her life when the disposal of her income was within my knowledge) several hundreds a year in bounties and charities. "A more generous and a tenderer heart I never knew," says Mrs. H. N. Coleridge* in a letter to Aubrey de Vere; and so say I. Nor was it by money merely or by money most that her sympathy with misfortune made itself felt. Her spirits were easily depressed, and by such depression some persons are disabled for consolatory offices. It was not so with Miss Fenwick. She said of herself that she was at home in the house of mourning; and no words could express her more truly.

There is a good deal of her mind in my writings. I wish there were more; and I wish that she had left her thoughts behind her in writings of her own. I think that during some portion of her life she had been accustomed to commune with herself in her chamber and write the results. But the diffidence of a constitutional melancholy stopped them there. They were never seen by any one, and were not allowed to survive her. Once, when I was

"Life and Letters of Mrs. II. N. Coleridge," vol. ii. p. 63.