ever.

Coleridge left his home in the "Lake Country" forHe resumed, in London, his contributions to the Courier, and he gave other lecture courses at London and at Bristol. But his circumstances became more and more desperate, through continual ill health, pecuniary embarrassments, and his increasing addiction to opium. Finally, in 1816, he put himself under the care of Dr. Gillman of Highgate, at whose house he found a home and an asylum until his death, July 25, 1834. In 1813 his tragedy, Remorse, had a successful run of twenty nights at Drury Lane Theater. In 1816 he published Christabel, and in 1817 the Biographia Literaria and a collection or reissue of his poems, under the title Sibylline Leaves. Four volumes of Coleridge's Literary Remains were published in 1836-39, edited by his nephew Henry Nelson Coleridge.

SELECTIONS FROM COLERIDGE.

Literary Criticism.

1. THE CHARACTERISTIC EXCELLENCIES OF WORDSWORTH'S POETRY.

To these defects which, as appears by the extracts, are only occasional, I may oppose, with far less fear of encountering the dissent of any candid and intelligent reader, the following (for the most part correspondent) 5 excellencies. First, an austere purity of language both grammatically and logically; in short a perfect appropriateness of the words to the meaning. Of how high value I deem this, and how particularly estimable I hold the example at the present day, has been already Io stated: and in part too the reasons on which I ground both the moral and intellectual importance of habituating ourselves to a strict accuracy of expression. It is noticeable, how limited an acquaintance with the master-pieces of art will suffice to form a correct and 15 even a sensitive taste, where none but master-pieces have been seen and admired; while, on the other hand, the most correct notions and the widest acquaintance with the works of excellence of all ages and countries will not perfectly secure us against the 20 contagious familiarity with the far more numerous off

spring of tastelessness or of a perverted taste. If this be the case, as it notoriously is, with the arts of music and painting, much more difficult will it be to avoid the infection of multiplied and daily examples, in the practice of an art which uses words, and words only, 5 as its instruments. In poetry, in which every line, every phrase, may pass the ordeal of deliberation and deliberate choice, it is possible, and barely possible, to attain that ultimatum which I have ventured to propose as the infallible test of a blameless style; namely, 10 its untranslatableness in words of the same language without injury to the meaning. Be it observed, however, that I include in the meaning of a word not only its correspondent object, but likewise all the associations which it recalls. For the language is framed to convey 15 not the object alone, but likewise the character, mood and intentions of the person who is representing it. In poetry it is practicable to preserve the diction uncorrupted by the affectations and misappropriations which promiscuous authorship, and reading not promiscuous 20 only because it is disproportionally most conversant with the compositions of the day, have rendered general. Yet even to the poet, composing in his own province, it is an arduous work: and as the result and pledge of a watchful good sense, of fine and luminous distinc- 25 tion, and of complete self-possession, may justly claim all the honor which belongs to an attainment equally difficult and valuable, and the more valuable for being rare. It is at all times the proper food of the understanding; but in an age of corrupt eloquence 30 it is both food and antidote.

In prose I doubt whether it be even possible to pre

serve our style wholly unalloyed by the vicious phraseology which meets us everywhere, from the sermon to the newspaper, from the harangue of the legislator to the speech from the convivial chair, announcing a 5 toast or sentiment. Our chains rattle, even while we are complaining of them. The poems of Boetius rise high in our estimation when we compare them with those of his contemporaries, as Sidonius Apollinaris and others. They might even be referred to a purer Io age, but that the prose in which they are set, as jewels in a crown of lead or iron, betrays the true age of the writer. Much however may be effected by education. I believe, not only from grounds of reason, but from having in a great measure assured myself of the fact 15 by actual though limited experience, that, to a youth led from his first boyhood to investigate the meaning of every word and the reason of its choice and position, logic presents itself as an old acquaintance under

20

new names.

On some future occasion, more especially demanding such disquisition, I shall attempt to prove the close connection between veracity and habits of mental accuracy: the beneficial after-effects of verbal precision in the preclusion of fanaticism, which 25 masters the feelings more especially by indistinct watch-words; and to display the advantages which language alone, at least which language with incomparably greater ease and certainty than any other means, presents to the instructor of impressing modes 30 of intellectual energy so constantly, so imperceptibly, and as it were by such elements and atoms, as to secure in due time the formation of a second nature.