could have been given, a mere statement of actual and unquestionable fact, one which it seems absolutely impossible should not be insist ed upon by any one having to answer, according to his folly, a critic of the class we have been imagining. The inventor of the kaleidoscope might,as reasonably,have been accused of pirating the principle of that beautiful toy from the manufacturer ofcoloured glass, which he has to make use of; and gentle, and communicative, and singularly free from any thing of personal vanity to interfere with him as Coleridge was, we can imagine him, in the case which we have supposed, exhibiting the same impatience which he would undoubtedly have felt had the question been not of himself but of Shakspeare. Had the passage in any way originated the poem-had it been more than a subject which accidentally served his purpose as well and no better than a thousand others, it is impossible that he should not have referred to it, when in conversation naturally called to the subject, although we can easily conceive strong reasons why he should have in some sort feared to destroy the illusion of his romance by a formal quotation from an actual narrative. It should be remembered, that when the Ancient Mariner was first published, the custom had not yet arisen of the poet's seeking to justify every page he had written by some prose authority;-and entertaining as the notes to the poems of Southey and Scott are, and in all respects of value to the student of poetry, we remember, on our first reading Thalaba, we were any thing but pleased at the perpetual references to books of travels in support of the imagery. A part of the poet's power is lost when he forces the reader to know that he is not an improvisatore-and the marginal notes given in the new edition of the Ancient Mariner-quaintly written as they are, and in perfect imitation of our elder writers, and now necessarily printed in every republication of the poem, are far from an improvement. If the story be difficult they do not lessen the difficulties. The poem was first published without any note of any kind, and we think a reference to Shelvocke could then have been as little expected from a writer who had to make his Aucient Mariner wear the mask of reality as a reference to any thing but his own log books, from such a voyager as Captain Lemuel Gulliver. In any future editions, however, three or four lines from Shelvocke might be printed as a note, and when the works of Coleridge are printed, as one day or other they no doubt will--illustrated as Milton's poems have been by Warton, and Warton's by Mant, we have no doubt that the more perfect such an edition is, the more entirely the writer is enabled to exhibit the whole mind of the writer-often expressed in single words often shewing itself in images just touched with light, or faintly shadowed and left quietly and by themselves to produce their magic effect, the more entire will be the conviction of the absolute originality of Coleridge's poetry in the only sense in which that word can be used in speaking of poetry at all? The Edinburgh Review ought to have chosen a less offensive word than it has, when it speaks of" Coleridge's plagiarisms from himself and others." Coleridge reprints, in his essay on Church and State, a few sentences from the BIOGRAPHIA LITERARIA or the FRIEND-Works that had been long out of print, and which, by one unfortunate accident or other-the fault of his publisher, or perhaps his own fault--were never fairly brought before the public. In another book he reprints from some old newspaper an essay of his own, which he feels ought to have a place among his works, and this is what the conscientious journalist does not hesitate to call plagiarisms. The distinct statement of the fact is, of course, the only answer it can receive. The accusation with respect to others, the only important one, has been well answered by Mr. H. N. Coleridge. We really grudge the page we are obliged to give to this matter. The “Opium-Eater,” with great solemnity, tells us that Coleridge, in conversation, explained the injunction of Pythagoras to his disciples, to abstain from beans, to mean that they should avoid any interference with po litical affairs, public elections being conducted by beans. Mr. De Quincy's assertion is, that Mr. Coleridge explained the matter in this way, in conversation, without making any reference to some German who gave the same account of the matter. Mr. H. N. Coleridge says that when he was at Eton, the schoolboys of the fifth form were taught to give the same explanation, and he cites a well-known passage in Lucian in support of the interpretation. The fact is, that the explanation is every where given, and yet to any one remembering the words of the injunction, it leaves a difficulty which they contain wholly unexplained, and besides, as Mr. H. N. Coleridge says, the ballot was probably not known in the days of Pythagoras. However, we remember, on the very day we read the passage in Tait's Magazine, we met by mere accident, wholly unconnected with any examination of the particular subject, the following sentence in "St. Pierre's Studies of Nature" "Pythagoras has been calumniated as the author of various superstitious practices, among the rest abstinence from beans, &c. but as the truth is frequently obliged to appear to mankind under a veil, so the philosopher, under this allegory, conveyed to his disciples the advice to abstain from public employments, because it was the custom to make use of beans in voting at the election of magistrates."Studies of Nature, Vol. 2, p. 193, Scho berl's Translation. The Opiun-Eater," who makes a very solemn story of this matter, amusingly enough makes one of the interlocutors in this dramaticmystery say," The other day, at a dinner party, this question arising about Pythagoras and his beans, Coleridge gave us an interpretation, which I suspect from his manner was not original." Was there ever such nonsense, then, as this, of accusing him of the wish to claim it as his own? Another count in the " OpiumEater's" indictment is, that the " Hymn before sunrise in the Vale of Chamouni" is an expansion of a German poem, by Frederica Brun. Mr. H. N. Coleridge prints Frederica Brun's poem. There is some resemblance. That Coleridge would have denied this we utterly disbelieve. That in estimating the merit of his poem if he was ever led to speak of the matter, he should have regarded such resemblance a matter of very little moment was quite natural, and if he said so, he expressed an opinion in which we entirely agree. Take any one of our poets at random-Milton lies accidentally upon our table;-the poems of the Allegro and Penseroso, were suggested by the introductory poem in Burton's Anatomy of Melancholy, and a song in praise of melancholy, in Beaumont and Fletcher's comedy of Nice Valour or the Passionate Madman, has supplied not only many of the images, but what is of more moment, the music of which they are in some sort the echo. Where has Milton referred to either of these, which yet are the certain sources of the poems we have mentioned? Let any one read Coleridge's translation of Wallenstein together with the original, to which it is in every single scene, almost in every line, superior; let one see what additions have been silently and unostentatiously made by Coleridge, without in a single instance claiming as his own what he has thus given to another; expanding, enforc ing, illustrating, and winning fame for another; prodigally flinging away in translation what, were his own fame a matter of the slightest regard to him, ought to have been embodied in works more properly his own. Plagiarism! Is there a master-spirit of the age which has not acknowledged intellectual obligations to Coleridge? The any critics who have been most anxious for the fame of our great poets, have been the most anxious to trace where they could the origin of every word; we are by no means sure that the readers who enjoy poetry most, are those who feel most pleasure in this minute criticism, but to those who wish to cultivate poetical talents such study is absolutely necessary. How the language of any original poet has been formed, must always be a work of some curiosity. Of that which is peculiar in any writer to ask how it has originated is surely to do any thing but question his originality; suppose we find from one of Newton's or Warton's notes on Milton, the passages in some old romance, or some forgotten volume of geography, that have given him the names of persons and places, which have been woven by him into one of those magic webs of sound, rather than of thought, that having once fixed themselves, in the ear, hold the mind for ever captive, in most of the cases to which we allude, the evidence that the particular passages referred to, originated the thought must be altogether inconclusive, but suppose the most distinct evidence of the obligation could be given—and evidence curiously minute is often accidentally afforded what can it amount to? To this that while the heavenly power of Imagination seems to glorify and to transfigure the objects on which its light fails, yet the poet does not cease to share the human nature which, for the moment he exalts; that "the glorious faculty" given to him is after all but in degree different from that which is exercised by his humblest readerthat composition, even such as Milton's, is but the combination of imagery, received and formed even as our own duller day dreams; that the faculty at work is Man's imagination—that its materials. moulded in whatever forms at "Man's feeble race what ills await And Death, sad refuge from the storms of Fate ! The fond complaint, my song, disprove, And justify the ways of Jove. Say has he given in vain the heavenly muse? Night, and all her sickly dews, Her spectres wan, and birds of boding cry, He gives to range the dreary sky; Till down the Eastern hills afar Hyperion's march they spy, and glittering shafts of war." of Milton's admirable Hymn on the Nativity: We open one of Gray's commentators fine passage are adumbrated from a stanza almost at random. Gilbert Wakefield tells us solemnly, nothing doubting, "The imagery and thoughts of this So when the sun in bed, Curtained with cloudy red, Pillows his chin upon an orient wave; The flocking shadows pale Troop to the infernal jail, Each fettered ghost slips to his several grave; Fly after the night-steeds, leaving their moon-loved maze.” That there is some general resemblance between the passages, there can be no doubt. Suppose Gray to have said, “I had no recollection of Milton when I wrote the lines," is there one man in the world who could entertain the slightest doubt of the fact? The passages of Milton and Coleridge, in which the ridiculous charge is founded have by no means so strong a resemblance as those of Milton and Gray. The passages in Mr. Coleridge are far from being equal to his general style. We must, at some future time, say a few words on Mr. Coleridge's poetry. The political odes were written very rapidly, and before his style was perfectly formed; eloquent beyond, almost, any poetry with which we can compare them, they undoubtedly are; but Mr. Coleridge's true poetry has powers far higher than those of any eloquence. Inthe Biographia Literaria, a general reference is made to Schelling instead of marking a translated passage with inverted commas. We looked at the passage in Coleridge, and we own we have so little love for metaphysics-which,when we can understand it, seems to end in resolving itself into something which we had before known, that we wish Coleridge had left the supposed treasure where he found it. However, its value is not the question. In the very work of Coleridge's from which the passage is taken, are these words quo ted by Mr. Hare in the British Magazine, and from him in the preface to the Table Talk: "It would be a mere act of justice to myself, were I to warn my readers, that an identity of thought, or even similarity of phrase, will not be at all times a certain proof that the passage has been borrowed from Schelling, or that the conceptions were originally learnt from him. Many of the most striking resemblances, indeed all the main and fundamental ideas, were born and matured in my mind, before I had seen a page of the German philosopher. God forbid that I should be suspected of a wish to enter into a rivalry with Schelling for the honours so unequivocally his right, not only as a great and original genius, but as the founder of the philosophy of Nature, and as the most successful improver of the Dynamic system. To Schelling we owe the completion, and the most important victories, of this revolution in philosophy. To me it will be happiness and honour enough, should I succeed in rendering the system itself intelligible to my countrymen, and in the application of it to the most awful of subjects for the most important of purposes. Whether a work is the offspring of a man's own spirit, and the product of original thinking, will be discovered by those who are its sole legitimate judges by better tests than the mere reference to dates. For readers in general, let whatever shall be found in this or any future work of mine, that resembles or coincides with the doctrines of my German predecessor, though contemporary, be wholly attributed to him; provided that the absence of direct references to his books, which I could not at all times make with truth, as designating citations or thoughts actually derived from him, and which I trust, would, after this general acknowledgment, be superfluous, be not charged on me as an ungenerous concealment or intentional plagiarism.” This defence is enough to satisfy any one, and yet it does not express half the strength of Coleridge's case. We shall first endeavour to state the argument of Schelling and Coleridge, as we best can. External nature may be conceived to exist without the notion of the observer's own intelligence (i. e. in the language of the German metaphysicians-subjectivity) forming a part of the conception. The science of Natural Philosophy commences with this proposition as its postulate; and the Natural Philosopher, whatever be his system, having to consider outward nature alone, excludes Mind, and every attribute of mind, as being no part of the objects he has to examine. Occult qualities, spiritual agents, &c. cannot be by him introduced as causes; and yet every system of Natural Philosophy unconsciously and against its will, as it were, tends from Nature to Intelligence. The principle of a law breaks forth, the spiritual, and at length cease altogehusk drops off, phoenomena become ther in our consciousness. The very materiality of light, of magnetism, and and while every system of Natural of gravitation have become doubtful ; Philosophy sets out with the exclution of Mind from its premises, yet every one of them ends in tending to exhibit Nature as Intelligence. On the other hand, in the Philosophy of Mind, the inquirer regards nothing as existing but mind. For the purposes of his investigation, matter may be assumed-nay, in his premises, must be considered, not to exist. Impresses, impacts, and all the old idolatries of what may be called the material schools of Natural Philosophy, are superstitions and prejudices that Science absolutely excludes. Any inferences from the properties of matter are here out of place, and cannot but mislead. In the case of the Natural Philosopher, exclusion of Mind from his premises, and in the other the necessity of treating the existence of Matter as a prejudice, are alike mere arbitrary argumentative assumptions. The materialism of the first, and the scepticism of the second, are alike the conditions of each separate investigation.* The absolute truth of either postulate is not *The state of voluntary scepticism which the mind arbitrarily assumes for the purposes of Philosophical Investigation, and without which Metaphysics could not exist as a Science, well described in Wills's Philosophy of Unbelief,” and the apparent support which the language of Metaphysics thus gives to the cause of Infidelity, is exposed with singular acuteness.-(See " Letters on the Philosophy of Unbelief," by the Rev James Wills.-FELLOWES, London, 1835.) asserted, nor any thing more than that such postulates are the necessary prerequisites for each science respectively. The premise assumed in the Philosophy of Mind-man's own consciousness-as being a part of our own nature, and to us the ground of all certainty, is felt and admitted by all men to be more than an arbitrary assumption. The existence of things without us is an assumption, that if it is supposed not to be a part of our consciousness, cannot have to us the same evidence of its certainty. The transcendental philosopher seeks to solve this difficulty by showing ttha the former is unconsciously involved in the latter; that it is not only coherent but identical, and one and the same thing with our inherent self-consciousness. This is in substance the passage, said to be translated from Schelling,which we again have sought to translate from Coleridge, and which we fear is yet far from being intelligible ;-without discussing its value, we entreat such readers as have the opportunity of referring to the Biographia Literaria, to look at the passage. In it Mr. Coleridge is professedly giving an account of the philosophy of others. The passage opens with a complaint of the mind of most men resting in mere words which," says Mr. Coleridge, "are but the shadows of notions, even as the notional understanding is but the shadowy abstraction of living and actual truth." "To remain unintelligible to such a mind, exclaims Schelling, (these are Coleridge's words,) on a like occasion, is honour and a good name before God and man." The next paragraph begins with a reference to Schelling, and we really think it impossible to read the chapter with ordinary attention, and think that Coleridge did not do all that any writer could to refer his reader to Schelling as the originator of the passage, be its value what it may. Had he not done so, the case would not, in our view of the matter, have been materially different. Mr. Hare's would then be a perfect defence. As to such things resting on the memory of any man they do not. Like a sum in arithmetic, the argument must be worked out when it is wanted. As to the value of the matter itself, we confess it seems to us but of small account. We never read the severer parts of The editor of these volumes has done some service in publishing these records of Mr. Coleridge's opinions; many of them are but familiar illustrations of the doctrines contained in his works; the reader whose notions of Mr. Coleridge have been formed from the way in which his name has been afloat in society, will be astonished to find that the character which distinguishes his conversations as recorded here, is practical good sense, great plainness of speech, entire directness of purpose; but great as his information and powers of illustration were, we think he was not either led aright or misled by them; his illustrations were in general not so much similes from remote and unconnected objects as exhibitions of the law which he wished to point out, expressing itself in other phenomena. In many of these conversations, as in all Mr. Coleridge's later works, is his love for the church exhibited. The treatise on the church and state ought to be reprinted. Considering the extent to which the church is now assailed, something might be done by exhibiting the real question between the parties engaged in this important struggle, and by seeking to show them that their interests are not so opposed as they imagine. A tenth of the produce of the soil being reserved for national purposesbeing, if an inheritance, yet an inheritance so peculiarly circumstanced, that it is protected from ever merging in the mass of private property; is this an advantage to the country? Mr. Coleridge has, in a dozen passages of his works, maintained the affirmative of the proposition, and we think with undeniable truth. Exclude for a moment, from consideration, all the higher duties of the clergymanremove what, however, we regard as |