⚫ There she sees a damsel bright, Her stately neck, and arms were bare; Mary mother, save me now! The Lady strange made answer meet, * Stretch forth thy hand (thus ended she) Then Christabel stretched forth her hand O well, bright dame! you may command Will he send forth, and friends withal The gate that was ironed within and without, Where an army in battle array had march- The lady sank, belike through pain, And moved, as she were not in pain. So free from danger, free from fear, were. And Christabel devoutly cried Who hath rescued thee from thy distress! I cannot speak for weariness. Outside her kennel the mastiff old They passed the hall that echoes still, She rose and forth with steps they Amid their own white ashes lying; That strove to be, and were not, fast. This night, to share your couch with me. They crossed the moat, and Christabel A little door she opened straight, * In former editions But when the lady passed, there came O softly tread, said Christabel, Sweet Christabel her feet doth bare, "There she sees a damsel bright, Her neck, her arms, her feet were bare, Is not something lost in not preserving the word disordered? + In former editions— "With hurrying steps, yet nothing fast." As still as death with stifled breath! The silver lamp burns dead and dim ; Aldine Edition, Vol. 2, p. 36. The second part of Christabel is not, we think, quite equal to the first, though it has supplied more passages to the books of extracts. Through both parts there is no pause for a moment in the narrative; and if we feel less pleasure in the second part, we are inclined to think that the fault is in the introduction of Bard Bracy's vision, throwing us again into the world of dream, from which we were glad to have escaped. The second part was written in 1800, three years after the first. Among Coleridge's poems, those which allude to himself. and his projects, and their interruptions, are always beautiful. A TOMBLESS EPITAPH. 'Tis true, Idoloclastes Satyrane! (So call him, for so mingling blame with praise, Its worthless idols! learning, power, and time, * In former editions "And now with eager feet press down." O studious Poet, eloquent for truth! YOUTH AND AGE. Verse, a breeze mid blossoms straying Where Hope clung feeding, like a bee— Both were mine! Life went a maying With Nature, Hope, and Poesy, When I was young! When I was young?-Ah, woful when ! ther - When Youth and I liv'd in't together. Flowers are lovely; Love is flower-like; Ere I was old! Ere I was old? Ah woeful Ere, Dew-drops are the gems of morning, Aldine Edition, Vol. 2, p. 74. Aldine Edition, Vol. 1, p. 200. Of Mr. Coleridge's prose works we prefer the first lay sermon. The Friend is unequal. In speaking of it, we think exclusively of the edition in three volumes, never having seen it in its original form; nor are we quite sure, from the descriptions of the original edition of these essays, whether the stamped sheets on which they were printed and circulated through the post-office, contained, together with essays on subjects to which the attention of newspaper readers would have little chance of being awakened, any of the kind of matter which constitutes an ordinary newspaper. If they did not, the attempt to circulate these essays in this fugitive and expensive form, was itself enough to account for the failure of the publication. To Mr. De Quincey we are indebted for an account of this strange speculation. The passage is one which we will take the liberty of extracting from Tail's Magazine of October, 1834 :- "The Friend, in its original publication, was, as a pecuniary speculation, the least judicious, both in its objects and its means, I have ever known. It was printed at Penrith, a town in Cumberland, on the outer verge of the lake district, and precisely twenty-eight miles removed Coleridge's abode. This distance, enough of itself in all conscience, was at least trebled in effect by the interposition of Kirkstone, a mountain which is scaled by a carriage ascent of three miles long, and so steep in parts, that, without four horses, no solitary traveller can persuade the neighbouring innkeepers to carry him. Another road, by way of Keswick, is subject to its own separate difficulties. And thus in any practical sense, for ease, for certainty, and for despatch, Liverpool, ninety-five miles distant, was virtually nearer. Dublin even, or Cork, was more eligible. Yet, in this town, so situated as I have stated, by way of purchasing such intolerable difficulties at the highest price, Coleridge was advised, and actually persuaded to set up a printer, by buying types, &c., works of very different periods of Coleridge's life: extracts from his first sermons, and political essays, delivered while he was at the age in which other men are still boys, and in which Coleridge's giant mind was yet in its boyhood-essays written after his return from Germany, but before his language was discoloured by the philosophy of their schools-a few stories told in his purest and best style, and which ought to have been by him translated into verse-rabbinical le such was instead of resorting to some printer already established in Kendal, a large and opulent town, not more than eighteen miles distant, and connected by a daily post; whereas, between himself and Penrith there was no post at all. Building his mechanical arrangements, upon this utter upside-down' inversion of all common sense, it is not surprising (as madness ruled the hour') that in all other circumstances of plan or execution, the work moved by principles of downright crazy disregard to all that a judicious counsel would have suggested. The subjects were generally chosen, obstinately in de- gends, some of which have since been refiance of the popular taste; they were printed in Mr. Hurwitz's Hebrew Tales treated in a style which avowed con-leading articles from newspapers, tempt for the popular models; and the which were too good for their place: plans adopted for obtaining payment were of a nature to ensure a speedy bankruptcy to the concern. Coleridge had a list, nobody could ever say upon whose authority gathered together, of subscribers. He tells us himself that many of these renounced the work from an early period. His subscribers could not remit four or five shillings for as many numbers without putting Coleridge to an expense of treble postage at the least. This he complains of bitterly in his Biographia Literaria, forgetting evidently that the evil was due exclusively to his own defective arrangements. People necessarily sent their subscriptions through such channels as were open to them, or such as were pointed out by Coleridge himself. Managed as the reader will collect from these indications, the work was going down hill from the first. It never gained any accessions of new subscribers: from what source, then, was the continual dropping off of names to be supplied? The printer became a bankrupt: Coleridge was as much in arrear with his articles, as with his lectures at the Royal Institution. That he was from the very first; but now he was disgusted and desponding; and with No. 28 the work came to a final stop. Some years after, it was recast, as the phrase was, and republished. But, in fact, this recast was pretty nearly a new work. The sole contributor to the original work had been Wordsworth, who gave a very valuable paper on the principles concerned in the composition of Epitaphs; and Professor Wilson, who, in conjunction with Mr Blair, an early friend, then visiting at his place on Windermere, wrote the letter signed Mathetes, the reply to which came from Mr. Wordsworth." The edition of 1818 contains the THE FRIEND. There are several essays written in a bold and masculine spirit of liberty-the more remarkable, as all men were at the time panic-stricken with the excesses of the French Revolution. We do not know any where a more remarkable paper than the comparison between the æras of the French Revolution and of the Reformation. A biographical sketch of Sir Alexander Ball does honor both to him and to Coleridge. The unsoundness of some of Paley's views is sought to be exposed; but we think that Coleridge's reply has the disadvantage of somewhat overstating the doctrines he combats. The principle of Paley, which determines the morality of acts by a calculation of consequences, may be false; but assuredly Paley would deny it to be his principle at all, if the of the calculation, were those which consequences supposed to be the subject affected the individual himself exclusively, or only such as terminated with this life. In all Paley's reasoning on the subject, the only consequences which he admits as forming properly a part of the calculation, are the general consequences of every man assuming the right to act in the same way with the inquirer. The benefit to an individual of an act of fraud, for instance, could not ever be one of the class of consequences that, in Paley's view, would enter into the question at all. But with this class of consequences Coleridge's argument would confound those intended by Paley; and the deception which we think involved in Coleridge's reply, is disguised from view by Coleridge's speaking of the habit of looking to outward consequences at all as one which seems to justify the inquirer in considering the actual consequences of the individual act alone, because he possesses full knowledge that the general consequences which would result from all men claiming the same right as he is exercising, are consequences from which no danger can be apprehended, as be and all men must know these consequences to be imaginary. We are not sure that Paley has placed morality on any thing like true grounds; but whatever may be learned on this subject from other parts of Coleridge's works, we are sure that in the essay of "The Friend," which seeks to disprove Paley's theory, the task proposed to himself by Coleridge is left undone. The Essays on the Communication of Truth are more successful; but throughout "The Friend," especially in the first two volumes, there is too much of what is purely declamatory. We do not mean to say that such declamation is deficient in any one of the powers which, from the pulpit, would produce great effect; but we think that it was unfortunate, when Mr. Coleridge thought of recasting “The Friend," that he did not burn every one of the papers which he before printed, and seek to deal anew with the subjects themselves. To recast the work must have been almost as troublesome, and was in every way less satisfactory. Let any popular preacher think of bringing together the brilliant passages of some dozen of his most admired sermons, and fancy that such a compilation could ever by possibility form a valuable theological work. Such work must, however much admired single passages may be, prove an utter failure; and we really cannot think that the chances of success in the case of the republication of which we speak, were much better. The best papers of early date republished in this collection, are the Essays on Government and on Taxation. These essays are, curiously enough, the growth of Coleridge's mind dealing with a class of subjects to which he was first led by some early plan of forming a settlement with some friends near the Sus. quehannah. Of that plan-if it was more than a dream-no very intelligible account has been ever given. It is alluded to but once, as we remember, in Coleridge's poetry. In the Monody on the death of Chatterton, after some heavy forebodings, the poet recovers into a healthier tone of feeling, and concludes with the following stanza :— Hence, gloomy thoughts! no more my soul shall dwell Wisely forgetful! O'er the ocean swell Sublime of Hope I seek the cottage dell Where Virtue calm with careless step may stray; O Chatterton! that thou wert yet alive! |