man, whom he deeply honoured and loved, to his friend Mr. Stutfield:

"I was at first much amused with your clever account of our old and valued Friend's occupations—but after a genial laugh, I read it again and was affected by its truth, and by the judicious view you have taken. My poetical predilections have not, I trust, indisposed me to value utility, or to reverence the benevolence, which leads a man of superiour talents to devote himself to the furtherance of the Useful, however coarse or homely a form it may wear, provided, I am convinced that it is, first, actually useful in itself, and secondly, comparatively so, in reference to the objects on which he would or might otherwise employ himself. It seems to me impossible but that this incessant bustle about little things, and earnestness in the removal of stupid impediments, with the irritations arising out of them, must have an undesirable effect on any mind constituted for nobler aims;-and this unquiet routine is, in my judgment, the very contrary to what I should deem a salutary alterative to the qualities in our friend's nature, of which the peccant excess is most to be apprehended. It is really grievous, that with a man of such a head and such a heart, of such varied information and in easy circumstances too, the miracle of Aaron should be reversed, a swarm of little snakes eat up the great one, the sacred serpent, symbol of intellect, dedicated to the God of Healing. I could not help thinking, when I last saw him, that he looked more aged than the interval between that and his former visit could account for."

Mr. Coleridge's "Remarks on the present mode of conducting Public Journals."

TH

HERE is one other subject, on which, after going through the present work in order to finish preparing it for the press, I have found it necessary to give some explanation. Throughout this edition I have abstained from interference with the text, as far as the sense was concerned, though the changes wrought in the course of thirty years would probably have led the author to make many alterations in it himself, had he republished the work at all in its present form. In one or two sentences only I have altered or removed a few words affecting the import of them, in order to do away with unquestionable mistakes respecting literary facts of slight importance. But from the end of the last chapter of the critique on Mr. Wordsworth's poetry I have withdrawn a paragraph concerning the detractors from his merits—the mode in which they carried on their critical warfare against him and some others-for the same reason which led the late editor to suppress a note on the subject in Vol. I.—namely this; that as those passages contain personal remarks,* right or wrong, they were anomalies in my Father's writings, unworthy of them and of him, and such as I' feel sure he would not himself have reprinted. This reason indeed is so obvious, that no explanation or comment on the subject would have been given, if I had not been told that Lord Jeffrey had of late years republished his reply to those remarks of Mr. Cole-ridge; this makes me feel it proper to say, that I press the passages in question, and should have done

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so if no contradiction had been offered to them, simply because they are personal, and now also because I believe that some parts of them, conveying details of fact, are inaccurate as to the letter; but at the same time with an assurance that in spirit they are just and true. They may be inaccurate in the letter: the speeches referred to may never have been uttered just as they were told to my Father and repeated by him; Mr. Jeffrey's language to himself he may not have recalled correctly; and I am quite willing to allow that in the way of hospitality he received more than he gave, the fact of apparent cordiality, however, being equally attested whether Mr. Jeffrey asked Mr. Coleridge to dinner or received a similar invitation from him. By the mention of these particulars my Father injured, as I think, a good cause; a volume of such anecdotes, true or false, would never have convinced men of the party which he had opposed, or brought them to confess, that the criticisms of the E. Review were in great measure dictated by party spirit; to men not of the party, who should take the trouble of referring to them, I have little doubt, that this would be apparent on the face of those writings themselves,-from the manner and from the matter of them. I must repeat, that I believe the suppressed passages to be neither mistaken nor untruthful as to their main drift, which I understand to be this: that the E. Reviewers expressed a degree of contempt for the poetical productions of their opponents in politics, which it is scarcely conceivable that they could have really felt, or would have felt had politics been out of the question-more especially with regard to the poems of Mr. Wordsworth, that they imputed a character to them, and as far as in them lay, stamped that character upon them to the eye of the

public, which those productions never could have borne to the mind of any unprejudiced, careful, and competent critic-indeed such characters at once of utter imbecility and striking eccentricity as appear at first sight to be the coinage of an ingenious brain, rather than the genuine impression which any actual body of poetry could make upon any human mind, that was not itself either imbecile or highly eccentric. This charge was, indeed, not capable of a precise proof, and Mr. C. acted with his usual incaution in openly declaring what he felt quite certain of but could not regularly demonstrate. Whether or no he had good reason to feel this certainty-waiving his personal recollections, even those that have not been denied—I willingly leave to the judgment of all who are capable of comparing the critiques in question with the poems of Mr. Wordsworth, and with the general estimate of them in the minds of thoughtful readers and lovers of poetry in general, from the time when the Lyrical Ballads first appeared till the present day. There was doubtless a petitio principii on Mr. Coleridge's part in this dispute; he assumed the merits of his friend's poetry; for though this was a point which he often sought to prove, by shewing that, taken at large, it treated of the most important and affecting themes that can interest the heart of man, and, for the most part, in a manner that would stand the test of any poetical rule or principle that could be applied to it, and this without contradiction from any one meeting him on his own ground, not merely baffling him by rude, reasonless irony, and boisterous banter-those heavy blunt weapons of disputants who abound more in scorn than in wisdom,-still questions of poetical merit are so fine and complex, that they can hardly be decided

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altogether by rule, but must be determined, as spiritual matters are to be determined, by specific results and experiences, which are, in this case, the effects produced on the poetic mind of the community. Before this proof was complete he in some sort assumed the point at issue;-he knew the critic to be possessed of superiour sense and talent, and he felt sure that though it might be possible for a man of good understanding and cultivated taste not to love and admire the poetry of Mr. Wordsworth, it was almost morally impossible that the great body of it could appear to such a person as it was presented in the pages of The Ed. Review,—a thing to be yawned or hissed off the stage at once and for ever.-Such strains of verse as Tintern Abbey, The Old Cumberland Beggar, Address to my infant Daughter, Boy of Wynander-mere, Lines left upon a Yew-tree seat, Character of the Happy Warriour;-such poems as the Ode to Duty, Evening Walk, Rob Roy's Grave, Highland Girl, Yarrow revisited, Ruth, Landamin, The Brothers, Female Vagrant, Forsaken Indian Woman,'

This Complaint of the perishing mother may be compared with Schiller's admired Nadowessische Todtenklage; but I think that both in poetry and in pathos the English poem strikes a far deeper note. The anguish of a bereaved mother's heart no other poet, I think, has ever so powerfully pourtrayed as Mr. Wordsworth.

Warmly as I admire the poetry of Keats I can imagine, that an intelligent man might read the Endymion with care, yet think that it was not genuine poetry; that it shewed a sheer misuse of abundant fancy and rhythmical power. For its range is narrow; like the artificial comedy it has a world of its own, and this world is most harmonious within itself, made up of light rich materials; but it is not deep enough or wide enough to furnish satisfaction for the general heart and mind. The passion of love excited by