And constancy lives in realms above,
And life is thorny, and youth is vain:
And to be wroth with one we love
Doth work like madness in the brain.
And thus it chanced, as I divine,
With Roland and Sir Leoline.
Each spake words of high disdain
And insult to his heart's best brother;
They parted, ne'er to meet again!
But never either found another

To free the hollow heart from paining.
They stood aloof, the scars remaining,
Like cliffs which had been rent asunder;
A dreary sea now flows between.

But neither heat, nor frost, nor thunder,
Shall wholly do away, I ween,

The marks of that which once hath been."

The admirable skill in the versification of the poem, and its exact adaptation to the spirit of different passages, may be shown by observing, in contrast with any of the passages I have recited, the sound of the spirited lines containing the command given by the knight to one of his retainers:

"Bard Bracy, bard Bracy! your horses are fleet;
Ye must ride up the hall, your music so sweet,
More loud than your horses' echoing feet!

And loud and loud to Lord Roland call,
'Thy daughter is safe in Langdale Hall!
Thy beautiful daughter is safe and free:
Sir Leoline greets thee thus through me.
He bids thee come without delay,
With all thy numerous array,
And take thy lovely daughter home;
And he will meet thee on the way,

With all his numerous array,

White with their panting palfreys' foam.""

The bard then narrates a dream which had distressed

his sleep, in which he had seen a beautiful bird—the pet dove of the castle-fascinated in the forest by a serpent, and fluttering and writhing in its toils. The dream needs no interpretation for either Geraldine or the spell-bound Christabel. When the witch hears it, she stealthily turns a look of withering fascination on her mute victim. The shrinking up of her eyes, and the large dilating of them when she assumes an air of innocence, are given with great power, as well as the effect on Christabel, who passively imitates the serpent-look that had appalled her :

"A snake's small eye blinks dull and shy,
And the lady's eyes they shrunk in her head;
Each shrunk up to a serpent's eye,

And with somewhat of malice and more of dread.
At Christabel she looked askance :

One moment-and the sight was filed!
But Christabel in dizzy trance,
Stumbling on the unsteady ground,
Shuddered aloud with a hissing sound;
And Geraldine again turned round,
And, like a thing that sought relief,
Full of wonder and full of grief,
She rolled her large bright eyes divine
Wildly on Sir Leoline.

"The maid, alas! her thoughts are gone;
She nothing sees,-no sight but one!
The maid devoid of guile and sin,
I know not how, in fearful wise,

So deeply had she drunken in

That look, those shrunken serpent eyes,
That all her features were resigned

To this sole image in her mind;

And passively did imitate

That look of dull and treacherous hate!

And thus she stood in dizzy trance,

Still picturing that look askance,

With forced unconscious sympathy,
Full before her father's view,-

As far as such a look could be
In eyes so innocent and blue!

And when the trance was o'er, the maid
Paused a while, and inly prayed;
Then, falling at the baron's feet,—
"By my mother's soul do I entreat
That thou this woman send away!'
She said: and more she could not say!:
For what she knew she could not tell,
O'ermastered by the mighty spell."

It is that description of the serpent-look of the witch's eyes which, on being read in a company at Lord Byron's, is said to have caused Shelley to faint.

The poem of "Christabel" is a fragment. It was so left by the poet. Other writers have aspired to complete it, but their imitations have proved adventures as vain as presumptuous. Coleridge himself meditated its completion; but, like other of his poems, it was a work of tomorrow—and to-morrow-and to-morrow. And his petty pace of life crept away without it.

In my lecture on Burns, I quoted to you the stanzas which the peasant-poet in fancy appropriated as the epitaph for his own tomb. It was an admonition to the living, and a touching plea for a little charity to the memory of the poor inhabitant below. The deeply-meditative imagination of Coleridge was busy too in taking the measure of an unmade grave, and dictated his own epitaph. His mind had roamed through the vast regions of human learning, and trod the highest places of speculative philosophy; his imagination had taken the boldest and most limitless flights; but this late effusion of his genius-probably his last verses-has its best beauty in

its simplicity and its perfect Christian humility. The initials will be recognised as his customary designation of his name:

"Stop, Christian passer-by! Stop, child of God,
And read with gentle breast. Beneath this sod
A poet lies, or that which once seemed he.

Oh, lift one thought in prayer for S. T. C.,
That he who many a year, with toil of breath,
Found death in life, may here find life in death!
Mercy for praise-to be forgiven for fame-

He asked and hoped, through Christ. Do thou the same."

LECTURE XIII.

Southey.

(WITH NOTICE OF CHARLES LAMB.)

Charles Lamb, the friend of Coleridge and Southey-"The Old Familiar Faces"-" Elia"-Robert Southey-Character of his prose -His complete poetical works-His mental derangement-Per

sonal interest of his poems - Satirical power- -"Wat Tyler"—

"Joan of Arc"- The product of imagination is often truth "Madoc"-"Roderic"-"Thalaba"-"The Curse of Kehama"Scriptural character of "Thalaba"-Keble's "Christian Year"Story of "Thalaba and Oneiza" - Southey's Odes-"The Retreat from Moscow". -"The Tale of Paraguay"- His playful poetryOde on the Portrait of Bishop Heber.

IN the last lecture it was my intention to give a few words, at the close, to an author whom I wished to notice briefly; but I became entangled in the witchery of "Christabel," and the glittering eye of "the Ancient Mariner" held me too long to let me accomplish my purpose. It was a life-long friend of Coleridge's I was anxious to speak of; and I must find room for him now, before proceeding to the chief subject of the present lecture. Let me, therefore, present Charles Lamb between his two friends Coleridge and Southey. His intimacy with Coleridge began within the venerable pre