nor bung-hole, if I can see what our ancestors can have to do with the matter." "Your reading, my friend, has been but scanty," said Neddybug, in a huff; "it has been decided over and over again." "Your humility is not great," said Lord Lovejugs," you should receive everything we tell you with a complete prostration of the understanding." "Go on, o' Heaven's name," quoth Panurge,— "tell me the reason of the occurrence, an' it so please you; for I have other questions to ask of you, after you have satisfied me on this." farthest coast of Bohemia, or hunting wild birds on the huge mountains of the barbarian Picts?" "'Tis by a divine ordinance and appointment," replied Lord Lovejugs; "and, therefore, you may tell your master, Pantagruel, that if he presumes to doubt it, he will certainly be damned. Many things are given for the exercise of faith and obedience; and this is one." "But still," added Neddybug, "it is possible to see the reason even of this. There are in that miraculous House, certain individuals who act as what is called "Proxies," upon whom any member of that House, before going away from ancestors. This proxy is, then, to all intents and purposes, the same as the person who is ordinarily in possession of the wisdom; and thinks, and speaks, and determines, with a double, or triple, or quadruple share of knowledge and weight, according to the number of persons who have placed their wisdom in his charge.” "The wisdom of our ancestors," said the Ser-it, can shed all the agglomerated wisdom of his geant, was shown in many ways,-and a particular manner they had of showing it was by always taking care to have descendants to whom to bequeath it. This wisdom, then, accumulating through a great many ages, was always left, by our ancestors, along with their estates, to their eldest sons, so you will see that nothing can be clearer than that a person who inherits his ancestors' estates must inherit the wisdom of his ancestors also. Now, unless you doubt that our ancestors had wisdom, you cannot doubt that they who have inherited that wisdom, are actually in possession of all the wisdom which has at any time been possessed by the deceased generations in this island." "And what becomes," quoth Panurge, "of the younger children?" "Oh, they also are provided for, by the wisdom of our ancestors! Our ancestors, foreseeing how hard would be their conditions, invented snug little places for the younger branches of their families; quiet, easy situations, in which not much wisdom was required ;—and, for a long period of years, you will find that almost all the brothers and sisters of those who have inherited the wisdom of their ancestors had not much cause to complain." "Your logic is most close and convincing," said Panurge; "it is impossible to doubt the truth of what you say. But my master, Pantagruel, was if possible, more troubled in mind upon another point, namely, what magical property there was in a certain House in your island, which enabled those same possessors of the wisdom of their ancestors, to hear debates, and form judgments, and give decisions on the most intricate subjects mentioned in that House, though they themselves were far away, yea, even in their yachts, on the "Then, by the Apostle of Tours," exclaimed Panurge, why not appoint a few of those wonderful men to be permanently proxies for the whole? If they speak with double weight and authority from being deputed, as it were, to be the depositories of the general wisdom, why not let certain of them hold the wisdom of the rest for a limited time? 'Twere a good plan,-were it not?" ""Tis against all law and precedent," said Neddybug "Contrary to the divine and human institutions of this country!" exclaimed Lovejugs"Unsafe to attempt it," said the Sergeant"Blasphemous, damnable, and heretical!" added the Lord Bishop. "Well, be it so, gentlemen," quoth Panurge," "Sa, sa,-we sat here to drink, and neither to be heretical nor damnable. Tapster, ho! where the devil art thou lurking all this time in thy cellar, and leaving three gentlemen to perish of thirst and starvation! By Paul, I shall go back to the good Pantagruel, and amaze his huge heart with the news I bring. Don't you drink, Neddybug? Don't you drink, Lord Lovejugs ? Aha! I see neither of you will appoint any one your proxy in bibulation !" So Panurge made the bottle fly round the table as if it had wings; and returned into the Court of Gargantua after many days, and related unto him all the adventures he had encountered in the Island of the Angles. SAMUEL TAYLOR COLERIDGE. BY THE ENGLISH OPIUM-EATER. ABOUT the latter end of the century, Coleridge | then it was) of Altona; for Klopstock was a penvisited North Germany again, in company with Mr. and Miss Wordsworth. Their tour was chiefly confined to the Hartz forest and its neighbourhood. But the incident most worthy of remembrance in their excursion, was a visit made to Klopstock; whom they found either at Hamburgh or, perhaps, at the Danish town (as sioner of the Danish king. An anonymous writer, who attacked Coleridge most truculently in an early number of Blackwood, and with an acharnement that must astonish those who knew its object, has made the mistake of supposing Coleridge to have been the chief speaker, who did not speak at all. The case was this: Klopstock could not speak English, though every body remembers the pretty broken English of his second wife. Neither Coleridge nor Wordsworth, on the other hand, spoke German with any fluency. French, therefore, was the only medium of free communication; that being pretty equally familiar to Wordsworth and to Klopstock. But Coleridge found so much difficulty even in reading French, that, wherever (as in the case of Leibnitz's Theodicée) there was a choice between an original written in French and a translation, though it might be a very faulty one, in German, he always preferred the latter. Hence, it happened that Wordsworth, on behalf of the English party, was the sole supporter of the dialogue. The anonymous critic says another thing, which certainly has an air of truth, viz., that Klopstock plays a very secondary role in the interview (or words to that effect.) But how was that to be avoided in reporting the case, supposing the fact to have been such ? Now the plain truth is, that Wordsworth, upon his own ground, is an incomparable talker; whereas, Klubstick (as Coleridge used to call him) was always a feeble and careless one Besides, he was now old and decaying. Nor at any time, nor in any accomplishment, could Klopstock have shone, unless in the noble art of skating. Wordsworth did the very opposite of that with which he was taxed; for, happening to look down at Klopstock's swollen legs, and recollecting his age, he felt touched by a sort of filial pity for his helplessness. And upon another principle, which, in my judgment, Wordsworth is disposed to carry too far, viz., the forbearance, and the ceremonious caution which he habitually concedes to an established reputation, even where he believes it to have been built on a hollow foundation, he came to the conclusion, that it would not seem becoming in a young, and as yet obscure author, to report faithfully the real superiority he too easily maintained in such a colloquy. But neither had Klopstock the pretensions as a poet, which the Blackwood writer seems to take for granted. Germany, the truth is, wanted a great Epic poet. Not having produced one in that early condition of her literary soil when such a growth is natural and favoured by circumstances, the next thing was to manufacture a substitute. The force of Coleridge's well-known repartee-when, in reply to a foreigner asserting that Klopstock was the German Milton, he said, "True, sir; a very German Milton," cannot be fully appreciated but by one who is familiar with the German poetry, and the small proportion in which it is a natural and spontaneous product. It has been often noticed, as the misfortune of the Roman literature, that it grew up too much under the oppression of Grecian models, and of Grecian models depraved by Alexandrian art; a fact, so far as it was a fact, which crippled the genial and characteristic spirit of the national mind. But this evil, after all, did not take effect except in a partial sense. Rome had cast much of her literature in her own moulds before these exotic models had begun : to domineer. Not so with Germany. Her literature, since its revival in the last century (and the revival upon the impulse of what cattle! -Bodmer on the one hand, and Gottsched on the other!) has hardly moved a step in the freedom of natural grace. England for nineteen and France for the twentieth of all her capital works, has given the too servile law and with regard to Klopstock, if ever there was a good exemplification of the spurious and the counterfeit in literature, seek it in the "Messiah." He is verily and indeed the Birmingham Milton. This Klopstockian dialogue, by the way, was first printed (hardly published) in the original, or Lake edition of "The Friend." In the recast of that work it was omitted: nor has it been printed any where else that I am aware of. About the close of the first revolutionary war it must have been, or in the brief interval of peace, that Coleridge resorted to the English Lakes as a place of residence. Wordsworth had a natural connexion with that region by birth, breeding, and family alliances. Wordsworth attracted Coleridge to the Lakes; and Coleridge, through his affinity to Southey, eventually attracted him. Southey, as is known to all who take an interest in the Lake colony, married a sister of Mrs. Coleridge's: and, as a singular eccentricity in the circumstances of that marriage, I may mention, that, on his wedding day, (at the very portico of the church, I have been told,) Southey left his bride, to embark for Lis. bon. His uncle, Dr. Herbert, was chaplain to the English factory in that city; and it was to benefit by the facilities in that way opened to him for seeing Portugal that Southey now went abroad. He extended his tour to Spain; and the result of his notices was communicated to the world in a volume of travels. By such accidents of personal or family connexion as I have mentioned, was the Lake colony gathered; and the critics of the day, unaware of the real facts, supposed them to have assembled under common views in literature-particularly with regard to the true functions of poetry, and the true theory of poetic diction. Under this original blunder, laughable it is to mention, that they went on to find in their writings all the agreements and common characteristics which their blunder had presumed; and they incorporated the whole community under the name of the Lake School. Yet Wordsworth and Southey never had one principle in common. Indeed, Southey troubled himself little about abstract principles in any thing; and so far from agreeing with Wordsworth to the extent of setting up a separate school in poetry, he told me himself (August 1812) that he highly disapproved both of Mr. Wordsworth's theories and of his practice. It is very true, that one man may sympathize with another, or even follow his leading, unconscious that he does so; or he may go so far as, in the very act of virtual imitation, to deem himself in opposition; but this sort of blind agreement could hardly be supposed of two men as discerning and as self-examining as Wordsworth and Southey. And, in fact, a philosophic investigation of the difficult questions connected with this whole slang about schools, Lake schools, &c., would shew that Southey has not, nor ever had, any peculiarities in common with Wordsworth, beyond that of exchanging the old prescriptive diction of poetry, introduced between the periods of Milton and Cowper, for the simpler and profounder forms of daily life in some instances, and of the Bible in others. The bold and uniform practice of Wordsworth was here adopted timidly by Southey. In this respect, however, Cowper had already begun the reform; and his influence, concurring with the now larger influence of Wordsworth, has operated so extensively, as to make their own original differences at this day less perceptible. By the way, the word colony, reminds me that I have omitted to mention in its proper place, some scheme for migrating to America, which had been entertained by Coleridge and Southey about the year 1794-5, under the learned name of Pantisocracy. So far as I ever heard, it differed little, except in its Grecian name, from any other scheme for mitigating the privations of a wilderness, by settling in a cluster of families bound together by congenial tastes and uniform principles, rather than in self-depending, insulated households. Steadily pursued, it might, after all, have been a fortunate plan for Coleridge. Soliciting my food from daily toil," a line in which Coleridge alludes to the scheme, implies a condition that would have upheld Coleridge's health and happiness, somewhat better than the habits of luxurious city life as now constituted in Europe. To return to the Lakes, and to the Lake colony of poets:-So little were Southey and Wordsworth connected by any personal intercourse in those days, and so little disposed to be connected, that, whilst the latter had a cottage in Grasmere, Southey pitched his tent at Greta Hall, on a little eminence rising immediately from the romantic river Greta and the town of Keswick. Grasmere is in Westmoreland; Keswick in Cumberland; and they are thirteen good miles apart. Coleridge and his family were domiciliated in Greta Hall, sharing that house, a tolerably large one, on some principle of amicable division, with Mr. Southey. But Coleridge personally was more often to be found at Grasmere-which presented the threefold attractions of loveliness so complete, as to eclipse even the scenery of Derwentwater; a pastoral state of society, free from the deformities of a little town like Keswick; and, finally, the society of Wordsworth. Not before 1815, or 1816, could it be said that Southey and Wordsworth were even upon friendly terms; so entirely is it untrue that they combined to frame a school of poetry. Up to that time, they viewed each other with mutual respect, but also with mutual dislike; almost, I might say, with mutual disgust. Wordsworth disliked in Southey the want of depth, as regards the power of philosophic abstraction, of comprehensive views, and of severe principles of thought. Southey disliked in Wordsworth, the | air of dogmatism, and the unaffable haughtiness of his manner. Other more trivial reasons combined with these. At this time, when Coleridge first settled at the lakes, or not long after, a romantic and somewhat tragical affair drew the eyes of all England, and, for many years, continued to draw the steps of tourists, to one of the most secluded Cumberland valleys, so little visited previously, that it might be described almost as an undiscovered chamber of that romantic district. Coleridge was brought into a closer connexion with this affair than merely by the general relation of neighbourhood; for an article of his in a morning paper, I believe, unintentionally furnished the original clew for unmasking the base impostor who figured as the foremost actor in this tale. Other generations have arisen since that time, who must naturally be unacquainted with the circumstances; and, on their account, I shall here recal them. One day in the Lake season, there drove up to the Royal Oak, the principal inn at Keswick, a handsome and well-appointed travelling carriage, containing one gentleman of somewhat dashing exterior. The stranger was a picturesque-hunter, but not of that order who fly round the ordinary tour with the velocity of lovers posting to Gretna, or of criminals running from the police; his purpose was to domiciliate himself in this beautiful scenery, and to see it at his leisure. From Keswick, as his headquarters, he made excursions in every direction amongst the neighbouring valleys; meeting generally a good deal of respect and attention, partly on account of his handsome equipage, and still more from his visiting cards, which designated him as "The Hon. Augustus Hope." Under this name, he gave himself out for a brother of Lord Hopetoun's, whose great income was well known, and, perhaps, exaggerated amongst the dalesmen of northern England. Some persona had discernment enough to doubt of this; for the man's breeding and deportment, though showy, had a tang of vulgarity about it; and Coleridge assured me, that he was grossly ungrammatical in his ordinary conversation. However, one fact, soon dispersed by the people of a little rustic post office, laid asleep all demurs; he not only received letters addressed to him under this assumed name,—that might be through collision with accomplices,-but he himself continually franked letters by that name. Now, that being a capital offence, being not only a forgery, but, (as a forgery on the Post Office,) sure to be prosecuted, nobody presumed to question his pretensions any longer; and, henceforward, he went to all places with the consideration attached to an Earl's brother. All doors flew open at his approach: boats, boatmen, nets, and the most unlimited sporting privileges, were placed at the disposal of the "Honourable" gentleman: and the hospitality of the whole country taxed itself to offer a suitable reception to the patrician Scotsman. It could be no blame to a shepherd girl, bred in the sternest solitude which England has to shew, that she should fall into a ritual wants it has from generation to generation administered. It is not only the very smallest chapel by many degrees in all England, but is so mere a toy in outward appearance, that, were it not for its antiquity, its wild mountain exposure, and its consecrated connexion with the final hopes and fears of the adjacent pastoral hamlet,— but for these considerations, the first movement of a stranger's feelings would be towards loud snare which hardly any of her betters had escaped. Nine miles from Keswick, by the nearest bridle road, but fourteen or fifteen by any route which the honourable gentleman's travelling carriage could have traversed, lies the Lake of Buttermere. Its margin, which is overhung by some of the loftiest and steepest of the Cumbrian mountain, exhibits on either side few traces of human neighbourhood; the level area, where the hills recede enough to allow of any, is of a wild, pas-laughter; for the little chapel looks not so much toral character, or almost savage; the waters of a mimic chapel in a drop scene from the Opera the lake are deep and sullen; and the barrier House, as a miniature copy from such a scene; mountains, by excluding the sun for much of his and evidently could not receive within its walls daily course, strengthen the gloomy impressions. more than a half dozen of households. From At the foot of this lake (that is at the end where this sanctuary it was-from beneath the maternal its waters issue) lie a few unornamented fields, shadow, if not from the altar of this lonely chapel, through which rolls a little brook-like river con- —that the heartless villain carried off the flower necting it with the larger Lake of Crummock; of the mountains. Between this place and Kesand at the edge of this miniature domain, upon wick they continued to move backwards and forthe road side, stands a cluster of cottages, so wards, until at length, with the startling of a small and few that, in the richer tracts of the thunderclap to the affrighted mountaineers, the islands, they would scarcely be complimented bubble burst: officers of justice appeared: the with the name of hamlet. One of these, and I stranger was easily intercepted from flight; and, believe the principal, belonged to an indepen- upon a capital charge, was borne away to Cardent proprietor, called, in the local dialect, a lisle. At the ensuing assizes he was tried for 'Statesman;' and more, perhaps, for the sake of forgery, on the prosecution of the Post-office; gathering any little local news, than with much found guilty, left for execution, and executed view to pecuniary profit at that era, this cottage accordingly. On the day of his condemnation, offered the accommodations of an inn to the tra- Wordsworth and Coleridge passed through Carveller and his horse. Rare, however, must have lisle, and endeavoured to obtain an interview been the mounted traveller in those days, unless with him. Wordsworth succeeded; but, for some visiting Buttermere for itself, and as a terminus unknown reason, the prisoner steadily refused to ad quem; for the road led to no further habita- see Coleridge; a caprice which could not be petions of man, with the exception of some four or netrated. It is true that he had, during his five pastoral cabins, equally humble, in Gates- whole residence at Keswick, avoided Coleridge garth dale. Hither, however, in an evil hour for with a solicitude which had revived the original the peace of this little brotherhood of shepherds, suspicions against him in some quarters, after came the cruel spoiler from Keswick. His errand they had generally subsided. But for this, his was, to witness or to share in the char-fishing; motive had then been sufficient: he was of a for in Derwentwater (the Lake of Keswick) no Devonshire family, and naturally feared the eye char is found, which breeds only in the deeper or the inquisitive examination, of one who bore a waters, such as Windermere, Crummock, Butter- name immemorially associated with the southern mere, &c. But whatever had been his first ob- part of that county. Coleridge, however, had ject, that was speedily forgotten in one more been transplanted so immaturely from his native deeply interesting. The daughter of the house, region, that few people in England knew less of a fine young woman of eighteen, acted as waiter. its family connexions. That, perhaps, was unIn a situation so solitary, the stranger had unli- known to this malefactor; but at any rate he mited facilities for enjoying her company, and knew that all motive was now at an end for dis. recommending himself to her favour. Doubts guise of any sort; so that his reserve, in this about his pretensions never arose in so simple a particular, was unintelligible. However, if not place as this; they were overruled before they him, Coleridge saw and examined his very intecould well have arisen, by the opinion now gene- resting papers. These were chiefly letters from ral in Keswick that he really was what he pre- women whom he had injured, pretty much in the tended to be: and thus, with little demur, ex- same way and by the same impostures as he had cept in the shape of a few natural words of part- so recently practised in Cumberland; and, as ing anger from a defeated or rejected rustic ad- Coleridge assured me, were in part the most mirer, the young woman gave her hand in mar- agonizing appeals that he had ever read to huriage to the showy and unprincipled stranger. I man justice and pity. The man's real name was, know not whether the marriage was, or could I think, Hatfield. And amongst the papers were have been, celebrated in the little mountain cha- two separate correspondences, of some length, pel of Buttermere. If it were, I persuade myself from two young women, apparently of superior that the most hardened villain must have felt a condition in life, (one the daughter of an Engmomentary pang on violating the altar of such a lish clergyman,) whom this villain had deluded chapel, so touchingly does it express, by its mi- by marriage, and, after some cohabitation, abanniature dimensions, the almost helpless humility doned,-one of them with a family of young of that little pastoral community to whose spi-children. Great was the emotion of Coleridge when he recurred to his remembrance of these | were She, meantime, under the name of the Beauty of Buttermere, became an object of interest to all England: dramas and melo-dramas produced in the London theatres upon her story; and for many a year afterwards, shoals of tourists crowded to the secluded lake, and the little homely cabaret, which had been the scene of her brief romance. It was fortunate for a person in her distressing situation, that her home was not in a town: the few, and simple neighbours, who had witnessed her imaginary elevation, having little knowledge of worldly feelings, never for an instant connected with her disappointment any sense of the ludicrous, or spoke of it as a cala.. mity to which her vanity might have co-operated. They treated it as unmixed injury, reflecting shame upon nobody but the wicked per petrator. Hence, without much trial to her womanly sensibilities, she found herself able to resume her situation in the little inn; and this she continued to hold for many years. In that place, and that capacity, I saw her repeatedly, and shall here say a word upon her personal apperance, because the Lake poets all admired her greatly. Her figure was, in my eyes, good; but I doubt whether most of my readers would have thought it such. She was none of your evanescent, wasp-waisted beauties; on the contrary, she was rather large every way; tallish, and proportionably broad. Her face was fair, and her features feminine; and unquestionably she was what all the world have agreed to call "goodlooking." But, except in her arms, which had something of a statuesque beauty, and in her carriage, which expressed a womanly grace, together with some slight dignity and self-possession, I confess that I looked in vain for any positive qualities of any sort or degree. Beautiful, in any emphatic sense, she was not. Everything about her face and bust was negative; simply without offence. Even this, however, was more than could be said at all times: for the expression of her countenance was often disagreeable. This arose out of her situation; connected as it was with defective sensibility, and a misdirected pride. Nothing operates so differently upon different minds, and different styles of beauty, as the inquisitive gaze of strangers, whether in the spirit of respectful admiration, or of insolence. Some I have seen, upon whose angelic beauty this sort of confusion settled advantageously, and like a softening veil; others, in whom it meets with proud resentment, are sometimes disfigured by it. In Mary of Buttermere, it roused mere anger and disdain; which, meeting with the sense of her humble and dependent situation, gave birth to a most unhappy aspect of countenance. Men, who had no touch of a gentleman's nature in their composition, sometimes insulted her by looks and by words: and she too readily attributed the same spirit of impertinent curiosity to every man whose eyes happened to settle steadily upon her face. Yet, once at least, I must have seen her under the most favourable circumstances: for on my first visit to Buttermere, I had the pleasure of Mr. Southey's company, who was incapable of wounding anybody's feelings, and to Mary, in particular, was well known by kind attentions, and I believe by some services. Then at least I saw her to advantage, and perhaps for a figure of her build, at the best age; for it was about nine or ten years after her misfortune, when she might be twenty-seven or twenty-eight years old. We were alone, a solitary pair of tourists: nothing arose to confuse or distress her. She waited upon us at dinner, and talked to us freely." This is a respectable young woman," I said to myself; but nothing of that enthusiasm could I feel, which beauty, such as I have beheld at the lakes, would have been apt to raise under a similar misfortune. One lady, not very scrupulous in her embellishments of facts, used to tell an anecdote of her, which I |