nor poems. The conduct of Don Alvar, in Remorse, never had a parallel. He has too much disinterestedness to be a natural character, and displays too utter a forgetfulness of his own situation in the philosophical attempt to awaken remorse in an unprincipled brother, who had plotted his assassination and was aiming at the possession of his betrothed. Religion would impart this nobleness; but without that, we are sure no stoicism whatever would be so unimpassioned as to attempt to reclaim from vice the wounder of one's love, or the plotter against one's existence. His character, therefore, is unphilosophical. To be a metaphysical experimentalist, a man must bear no selfish relation to the subject of his mental anatomy.

But apart from this leading defect, the tragedy has some terribly faithful developments of progress in guilt-of revenge. Mr. Coleridge never could have written good tragedies without laying aside his most striking talent. Men do not ordinarily philosophize-but none of our poet's impersonations could be free from this inclination. For him to succeed, all his dramatis personæ should have been the disciples of the Lyceum, or amid the groves of the Academy. How true to the life would he have given us the soliloquies of Plato, or the grave and lonely self-communings of Cato the younger!

The following scene will furnish our readers with a specimen of his powers in this department. Alhadra is a Moorish chieftainess, whose husband has just been murdered by Ordonio.

"SCENE III.The Mountains by Moonlight.

Alhad. alone in a Moorish dress.

Alh. Yon banging woods, that touch'd by autumn seem
As they were blossoming hues of fire and gold;

The flower-like woods, most lovely in decay,
The many clouds, the sea, the rock, the sands,
Lie in the silent moonshine; and the owl,

(Strange very strange !) the scritch-owl only wakes!
Sole voice, sole eye of all this world of beauty!
Unless, perhaps, she sings her screeching song
To a herd of wolves, that skulk athirst for blood.
Why such a thing am I?-Where are these men ?
I need the sympathy of human faces,

To beat away this deep contempt for all things,
Which quenches my revenge.
Oh! would to Alla,

The raven, or the sea-mew, were appointed
To bring me food! or rather that my soul
Could drink in life from the universal air!
It were a lot divine in some small skiff
Along some Ocean's boundless solitude,
To float for ever with a careless course,
And think myself the only being alive!

My children!-Isidore's children !---Son of Valdez,
This hath new strung mine arm.
Thou coward tyrant!

To stupify a woman's heart with anguish,
Till she forgot-even that she was a mother!

[She fixes her eye on the earth. Then drop in one after another from different parts of the stage, a considerable number of Morescoes, all in Moorish garments and Moorish armour. They form a circle at a distance round Alhadra, and remain silent till Naomi enters.

Nao.

Woman! May Alla and the prophet bless thee! We have obeyed thy call. Where is our chief?

And why didst thou enjoin these Moorish garments?

Alh. (Raising her eyes and looking round on the circle.) Warriors of Mahomet! faithful in the battle!

My countrymen! Come ye prepared to work
An honourable deed? And would ye work it

In the slave's garb? Curse on those Christian robes!
They are spell-blasted and whoever wears them

His arm shrinks wither'd, his heart melts away,

And his bones soften.

Alh. This night I went from forth my house, and left His children all asleep and he was living!

:

And I return'd and found them still asleep,

But he had perished-

All Morescoes.

Alh.

Perished?

He had perished!

Sleep on, poor babes! not one of you doth know
That he is fatherless—a desolate orphan;
Why should we wake them? Can an infant's arm
Revenge his murder ?

One Morescoe (to another). Did she say his murder ?
Nao. Murder? Not murdered?

Alh.

Murdered by a Christian ! [They all at once draw their sabres.

Alh. (To Naomi, who advances from the circle.) Brother of Zagri fling away thy sword;

This is thy chieftain's !

[He steps forward to take it.

Dost thou dare to receive it?

For I have sworn by Alla and the Prophet,
No tear shall dim these eyes, this woman's heart
Shall heave no groan, till I have seen that sword
Wet with the life-blood of the son of Valdez !

Ordonio was your chieftain's murderer!
Nao.

All. (kneeling.)

LA pause.

He dies, by Alla!

By Alla!

Alh. This night your chieftain armed himself, And hurried from me. But I followed him

At a distance, till I saw him enter-there.

Nao.

Alh. Yes; the mouth of yonder cavern :
After a while I saw the son of Valdez

The cavern?

Rush by with flaring torch; he likewise entered.
There was another and a longer pause;

And once methought I heard the clash of swords!
And soon the son of Valdez re-appeared!

He flung his torch towards the moon in sport,
And seemed as he were mirthful! I stood listening,
Impatient for the footsteps of my husband!

Nao. Thou called'st him?

Alh.

'Twas dark and very silent.

I crept into the cavern

What saidst thou?

No! no! I did not dare call Isidore,
Lest I should hear no answer! A brief while,
Belike, I lost all thought and memory
Of that for which I came ! After that pause,
O heaven! I heard a groan, and followed it :
And yet another groan, which guided me
Into a strange recess-and there was light,
A hideous light! his torch lay on the ground;
Its flame burnt dimly o'er a chasm's brink :
I spake; and whilst I spake a feeble groan

Came from that chasm! it was his last! his death-groan!
Nao.

Alh. I stood in unimaginable trance

Comfort her, Alla!

And agony that cannot be remembered,
Listening with horrid hope to hear a groan!
But I heard his last : my husband's death-groan!
Haste! let us onward.

Nao.
Alh.

I looked far down the pit→

My sight was bounded by a jutting fragment:
And it was stained with blood. Then first I shrieked,
My eye-balls burnt, my brain grew hot as fire,
And all the hanging drops of the wet roof
Turn'd into blood.-I saw them turn to blood!
And I was leaping wildly down the chasm,
When on the farther brink I saw his sword,
And it said vengeance!-Curses on my tongue!
The moon hath moved in Heaven, and I am here,
And he hath not had vengeance! Isidore!
Spirit of Isidore! thy murderer lives!
Away! away!

All.

Away! away! [She rushes off, all following her." vol. ii. p. 219-223.

The third volume is entirely occupied by our author's translation from Schiller's Piccolomini, and the Death of Wallenstein. We shall not stay to examine a piece, the chief merits of which

must of course be attributed to their German author. It is sufficient for us to express our deep gratitude to the translator, and our conviction that there is not a poem in our language, transferred from another, more marked by the freshness and individuality of an original production. And it is a striking fact, that the trains of thought-the modes of philosophical reasoning-the mysterious associations with invisible spirits and the arts of necromancy throughout Schiller's Wallenstein, are so analogous with Mr. Coleridge's own compositions, that we could easily deceive ourselves into the persuasion that it was his own. To those especially who are ignorant of German writings, this must be an invaluable addition to their English literature.

In closing our remarks upon these volumes, we must express our astonishment at the insertion of pieces which, however they may display the poet's ingenuity, are out of place. It provokes no commendatory smile to read his Mathematical Problem; or his Ode to a Nose; his Monody to a Tea-kettle; or his Address to a young Ass. Had they true humour, such as Cowper's Gilpin, we should not object; but we are at a loss to find in them either the sallies of wit or the recreations of fancy.

We have attended very curiously to Mr. Coleridge's philosophical opinions-because the attention of our readers must hereafter more systematically be called to them, upon the publication of his last manuscripts and his life. But this is the most appropriate place for us to observe, that a knowledge of his peculiar views is essential to a true understanding of his poetry. In reading it, we must ever bear in mind that he is an enthusiastic believer in the realism of ideas, as distinguished from nominalism. It is this which breathes into him the poetry of philosophy; that made all his thoughts to be glowing incarnations. Practically speaking, be was a thorough unbeliever in abstract metaphysics. We have read and re-read various passages in his Friend; if perchance we could make him avow his creed in his own language, and begging our readers to summon up resolution to think whilst considering them, we offer the following passages as the best for that purpose.

'Long, indeed, will man strive to satisfy the inward querist with the phrase, laws of nature. But though the individual may rest content with the seemly metaphor, the race cannot. If a law of nature be a mere generalization, it is included in the above, as an act of the mind. But if it be other and more, and yet be manifestable only in and to an intelligent spirit, it must in act and substance be itself spiritual: for things utterly heterogeneous can have no intercommunion."-The Friend, vol. iii. p. 244.

"Look round you and you behold everywhere an adaptation of means to ends. Meditate on the nature of a Being whose ideas are creative, and consequently more real, more substantial, than the things that, at

the height of their creaturely state, are but their dim reflexes,* and the intuitive conviction will arise that in such a Being there could exist no motive to the creation of a machine for its own sake; that therefore the material world must have been made for the sake of man, at once the high priest and representative of the Creator, as far as he partakes of that reason in which the essences of all things co-exist in all their distinctions, yet as one and indivisible. But I speak of man in his idea, and as subsumed in the Divine humanity, in whom alone God loved the world.”

With these quotations we shall at present content ourselves. An examination of his theories and his religion, together with the influence which the latter ought more directly to have exerted upon his poems, will be more suitable when, by some literary memoir, his general character as a man, a philosopher, and a Christian, is brought before the public.

ART. VIII.—The Darker Superstitions of Scotland, illustrated from History and Practice. By John Graham Dalyell, F.A.S.E. Whittaker. London. 1834.

MR. DALYELL is extremely well qualified for the work which he has just given to the public, inasmuch as he is not only a distinguished antiquary-the editor of many rare books-but is also, as we gather from his own remarks, a descendant of that renowned general of the same name, who was wont to terrify the covenanters and hold communion with the devil. The dreaded warrior, however, if Scottish legends are to be trusted, did not always quit the society of his supernatural ally without experiencing the hazards which arise from unequal coalitions. Having on one occasion excited the wrath or suspicion of this prince of demons, he found it necessary to seek safety in flight; when, notwithstanding the alertness of his motion, his body lost for ever the power of casting a shadow, even in the most brilliant sunshine. The evil spirit, who failed in his attempt to grasp the corporeal frame of old" Tom of Binns," seized that unsubstantial semblance of him which resulted from the interception of the solar rays; and hence it was maintained by the more rigid Presbyterians, that though General Dalyell, by favour of Satan, was impenetrable to musket balls, he was doomed to be for ever unattended by that dark and mimic outline which in a clear day marks the progress of every other human being.

Notwithstanding these preliminary qualifications on the part of

* If we may not rather resemble them to the resurgent ashes which, according to the tales of the later alchemists, in the substantial forms of bud and flower made themselves visible,

Ως τα κακας υλης βλαςήματα χρηςα και εσθλα.”