It would require a rare pen to do justice to the constitution of Coleridge's mind. It was too deep, subtle, and peculiar, to be fathomed by a morning visiter. Few persons knew much of it in any thing below the surface; scarcely three or four ever got to understand it in all its marvellous completeness. Mere personal familiarity with this extraordinary man did not put you in possession of him; his pursuits and aspirations, though in their mighty range presenting points of contact and sympathy for all, transcended in their ultimate reach the extremest limits of most men's imaginations. For the last thirty years of his life, at least, Coleridge was really and truly a philosopher of the antique cast. He had his esoteric views; and all his prose works, from the "Friend" to the "Church and State," were little more than feelers,

Thomas James Mathias;

James Millingen;
Sir William Ouseley;
William Roscoe;

Rev. Henry John Todd;
Sharon Turner.

I have been told that a majority of these persons-all the world knows that three or four at least of them-were Whigs of strong water; but probably no one ever before imagined that their political opinions had any thing to do with their being chosen Royal Associates. I have heard and believe that their only qualifications were literature and misfortune; and so the King wished. This annual donation of 1051. a year was received by Mr. Coleridge during the remainder of George the Fourth's life. In the first year of the present reign the payment was stopped without notice, in the middle of a current quarter; and was not recontinued during Coleridge's life. It is true that this resumption of the royal bounty took place under a Whig Government; but I believe the Whigs cannot justly claim any merit with the Westminster Review for having advised that act; on the contrary, to the best of my knowledge, Lord Grey, Lord Brougham, and some other members of the Whig ministry, disapproved and regretted it. But the money was private money, and they could of course have no control over it.

If the Westminster Reviewer is acquainted with any other public pension, Tory, Whig, or Radical, received by Mr. Coleridge, he has an opportunity every quarter of stating it. In the meantime, I must take the liberty of charging him with the utterance of a calumnious untruth.-H. N. C.

pioneers, disciplinants, for the last and complete exposition of them Of the art of making books he knew little, and cared less; but had he been as much an adept in it as a modern novelist, he never could have succeeded in rendering popular or even tolerable, at first, his attempt to push Locke and Paley from their common throne in England. A little more working in the trenches might have brought him closer to the walls with less personal damage; but it is better for Christian philosophy as it is, though the assailant was sacrificed in the bold and artless attack. Mr. Coleridge's prose works had so very limited a sale, that although published in a technical sense, they could scarcely be said to have ever become publici juris. He did not think them such himself, with the exception, perhaps, of the "Aids to Reflection," and generally made a particular remark if he met any person who professed or showed that he had read the "Friend" or any of his other books. And I have no doubt that had he lived to complete his great work on " Philosophy reconciled with Christian Religion," he would without scruple have used in that work any part or parts of his preliminary treatise, as their intrinsic fitness required. Hence, in every one of his prose writings there are repetitions, either literal or substantial, of passages to be found in some others of those writings; and there are several particular positions and reasonings, which he considered of vital importance, reiterated in the "Friend," the "Literary Life," the "Lay Sermons," the Aids to Reflection," and the "Church and State." He was always deepening and widening the foundation, and cared not how often he used the same stone. In thinking passionately of the principle, he forgot the authorship-and sowed beside many waters, if peradventure some chance seedling might take root and bear fruit to the glory of God and the spiritualization of

man.

His mere reading was immense; and, the quality and direction of much of it well considered, almost unique in this age of the world. He had gone through most of the Fathers, and, I believe, all the Schoolmen of any eminence; while his familiarity with all the more common depart

ments of literature in every language is notorious. The early age at which some of these acquisitions were made, and his ardent self-abandonment in the strange pursuit, might, according to a common notion, have seemed adverse to increase and maturity of power in after life; yet it was not so; he lost, indeed, for ever, the chance of being a popular writer; but Lamb's inspired charity-boy of twelve years of age continued to his dying day, when sixty-two, the eloquent centre of all companies, and the standard of intellectual greatness to hundreds of affectionate disciples, far and near. Had Coleridge been master of his genius, and not, alas! mastered by it;-had he less romantically fought a single-handed fight against the whole prejudices of his age, nor so mercilessly racked his fine powers on the problem of a universal Christian philosophy-he might have easily won all that a reading public can give to a favourite, and have left a name-not greater or more enduring indeed-but-better known, and more prized, than now it is, among the wise, the gentle, and the good, throughout all ranks of society. Nevertheless, desultory as his labours, fragmentary as his productions, at present may seem to the cursory observer -my undoubting belief is, that in the end it will be found that Coleridge did, in his vocation, the day's work of a giant. He has been melted into the very heart of the rising literatures of England and America; and the principles he has taught are the master-light of the moral and intellectual being of men, who, if they shall fail to save, will assuredly illustrate and condemn, the age in which they live. As it is, they 'bide their time.

I might here properly end what will, perhaps, seem more than enough of preface for such a work as this; but I know not how I could reconcile with the duty which I owe to the memory of Coleridge a total silence on the charges which have been made against him by a distinguished writer in one of the monthly publications. I allude, of course, to the papers which have appeared since his death in several numbers of Tait's Magazine. To Mr. Dequincey (for he will excuse my dropping his other name) I am unknown; but many years ago I learned to

admire his genius, his learning, his pure and happy style —every thing, indeed, about his writing except the subject. I knew, besides, that he was a gentleman by birth and in manners, and I never doubted his delicacy or his uprightness. His opportunities of seeing Mr. Coleridge were at a particular period considerable, and congeniality of powers and pursuits would necessarily make those opportunities especially valuable to the critical reminiscent. Coleridge was also his friend, and moreover the earth lay freshly heaped upon the grave of the departed!

Now, to all the incredible meannesses of thought, allusion, or language, perpetrated in these papers, especially the first, in respect of any other person, man or woman, besides Mr. Coleridge himself—I say nothing. Let me in silent wonder pass them by on the other side. I wish nothing but well to the writer. But even had I any interest in his punishment, what could be added to that which a returning sense of honour and gentlemanly feeling must surely at some time or other inflict on such a spirit as his!

Nor, even with regard to Coleridge, is this the time or place-if it were ever or anywhere worth the while-to expose the wild mistakes and the monstrous caricature prevailing throughout the lighter parts of Mr. Dequincey's reminiscences. That with such a subject before him, such a writer should descend so very low as he has done, is indeed wonderful; but I suppose the eloquence and acuteness of the better parts of these papers were thought to require some garnish, and with the taste shown in its selection it would be idle to quarrel. Two points only call for remark. The first is, Mr. Dequincey's charge of plagiarism, which he worthily introduces in the following

manner:

"Returning late (August, 1807) from this interesting survey, we found ourselves without company at dinner; and being thus seated tête-à-tête, Mr. Poole propounded the following question to me, which I mention, because it furnished me with the first hint of a singular infirmity besetting Coleridge's mind: 'Pray, my young friend, did you ever form any opinion, or rather, did it ever happen

to you to meet with any rational opinion or conjecture of others, upon that most irrational dogma of Pythagoras about beans! You know what I mean: that monstrous doctrine in which he asserts that a man might as well, for the wickedness of the thing, eat his own grandmother as meddle with beans.'-'Yes,' I replied; the line is in the Golden Verses. I remember it well.'

"P. True: now our dear excellent friend Coleridge, than whom God never made a creature more divinely endowed, yet, strange it is to say, sometimes steals from other people, just as you or I might do; I beg your pardon, just as a poor creature like myself might do, that sometimes have not wherewithal to make a figure from my own exchequer: and the other day at a dinner-party, this question arising about Pythagoras and his beans, Coleridge gave us an interpretation, which, from his manner, I suspect not to have been original. Think, therefore, if you have anywhere read a plausible solution.'

"I have and it was in a German author. This German, understand, is a poor stick of a man, not to be named on the same day with Coleridge: so that, if it should appear that Coleridge has robbed him, be assured that he has done the scamp too much honour.'

"P. Well: what says the German?'

"Why, you know the use made in Greece of beans in voting and balloting? Well: the German says that Pythagoras speaks symbolically; meaning that electioneering, or, more generally, all interference with political intrigues, is fatal to a philosopher's pursuits and their appropriate serenity. Therefore, says he, followers of mine, abstain from public affairs as you would from parricide. "P. Well, then Coleridge has done the scamp too much honour; for, by Jove, that is the very explanation he gave us !" "

"Here was a trait of Coleridge's mind, to be first made known to me by his best friend, and first published to the world by me, the foremost of his admirers ! But both of us had sufficient reasons," &c.

As Mr. Dequincey has asserted that all this dialogue took place twenty-eight years ago, I waive all objections