a man's own spirit shapes for itself are, if they can be carried into execution, the best; and when we express such a wish, we perhaps ought to remember that the time which a literary man passes in preparatory studies is passed in more happy occupation than any exercise of his talents in his communications with the public can be; that, after all, translation, when truly successful, requires powers which seek for themselves worthier employment. Wallenstein was not succsssful on its first appearance. In one of the papers of THE FRIEND, (edition of 1818,) Mr. Coleridge having occasion to quote a passage from it on the subject of divination, thus speaks of what booksellers would call its failure :

"I am tempted to quote a passage from my own translation of Schiller's Wallenstein, the more so that the work has been long ago used up as "winding sheets for pilchards," or extant only by (as I would fain flatter myself) the kind partiality of the trunk-makers: though with the exception of works for which public admiration supersedes or includes individual commendations, I scarce remember a book that has been more honored by the express attestations in favour of eminent, and even of popular literati, among whom I take this opportunity of expressing my acknowledgments to the author of Waverley, Guy Mannering, &c. How (asked Ulysses, addressing his guardian goddess) shall I be able to recognise Proteus, in the swallow that skims round our houses whom I have been accustomed to behold as a swan of Phoebus, measuring his movements to a celestial music? In both alike, she replied, thou canst recognize the god.

"So supported, I dare avow I have thought my translation worthy of a more favourable reception from the public and their literary guides and purveyors. But when I recollect that a much better and very far more valuable work, the Rev. Mr. Carey's incomparable translation of Dante, had very nearly met with the same fate, I lose all right, and, I trust, all inclination to complain: an inclination which the mere sense of its folly and uselessness will not always suffice to preclude.

COUNTESS.

What? dost thou not believe, that oft in dreams

A voice of warning speaks prophetic to us?

WALLENSTEIN.

I will not doubt that there have been such voices;

Yet I would not call them

Voices of warning, that aunounce to us

Only the inevitable. As the sun,
Ere it is risen, sometimes paints its image

In the atmosphere: so often do the spirits
Of great events stride on before the events
And in to-day already walks to-morrow.
That which we read of the Fourth Henry's
death,

Did ever vex and haunt me, like a tale,

Of my own future destiny. The king
Felt in his breast the phantom of the knife,
Long ere Ravillac arm'd himself therewith,

His quiet mind forsook him: the phantasma
Started him in his Louvre, chased him forth
Into the open air. Like funeral knells
Sounded that coronation festival;
And still with boding sense he heard the tread
Of those feet, that even then were seeking him
Throughout the streets of Paris.

WALLENSTEIN, part ii. act v. scene i.

It has been often mentioned as a subject of regret that Coleridge did not translate FAUST. We learn from the Table-Talk that he read it with some such purpose; nay, that the story of Faust had seized on his imagination to such an extent, that it became blended with an early conception of his own, in which he wished to embody, in the story of Michael Scott, his notions of the use which he thought ought to be made of the legend. His life among his many unaccomplished purposed story remained through his purposes; and we cannot but think that when he expressed in conversation a preference for Schiller above Goethe, that his judgment (if the conversation is to be regarded as expressing anything of permanent feeling, and is not to be considered with reference to some accidental turn of the

dialogue) was in this particular case affected by his recollections of Schiller connecting him with accomplished purposes-perhaps, too, with a happy time of life and hope; and while he thought of Schiller in the affectionate feeling of discipleship, which his relation to him as translator in some degree involved, that with respect to Goethe the very opposite feeling was one which the nature of his proposed task must have suggested. Faust must have been read by him with reference to his own projected improvements-each scene rendered meaningless, or deprived of its true meaning by being

considered in reference to a plot not Goethe's--and which must have been connected in thought with that despondency in which, through his writings, he so often speaks of plans unfinished-nay, never commencedor in any way existing except in his recollections of the morning dreams of his earlier poetical life. Coleridge speaks of Faust as often vulgar, and, with amusing inconsistency, the coarsest scenes in the drama are those which he perversely prefers. To us the cause of all this is at once intelligible. There is no part of what is properly called poetry in the work which a poet such as Coleridge could not have preserved or surpassed. The very scenes which in his proposed drama he probably would altogether have omitted, which would not have fallen in with his plan, are those which-not being led to compare them with anything in the phantom-drama of his dream, and which were certainly less suited to his peculiar powers than the lyrical or tragical parts of the work-he praises with a full perception of their broad farce. These scenes of boisterous mirth we are far from enjoying. Their execution, is, however, beyond all praise. But it was not such scenes as these that made Goethe to Germany more than Wordsworth has been to England. Schiller died young; and what a poet, whose powers of execution at least were in each successive work improving, and who applied himself to the cultivation of his art under the most favourable circumstances might have done, we will not venture to conjecture; but we regard

it as actually impossible that in any one faculty of the poet-except intensity of purpose-Coleridge should have regarded Schiller as at all approaching to Goethe. Between particular works of Schiller's and, of Goethe's there may be numberless points of comparison, and causes of just preference, too, of the inferior writer; but in every power of the poet, Schiller was inferior-immeasurably inferior.*

In our July number we incidentally mentioned Coleridge's translation of Wallenstein, and expressed our opinion of that wonderful work. We must be allowed to say one word on his own poems. A review of his Table-Talk, however, is not the place to discuss the matter as we could wish, even did we feel ourselves equal to the taskbut one word will be allowed us.

The first part of the Romance of Christabel is probably the poem which more than any other in the language seizes upon the imagination, and this with but little aid from story, and none from sentiment; a few pictures are placed before the eye, and they live before it for ever. Then, the versification-throughout musical, though its measurement beats somewhat too distinctly upon the ear, and forces us as it were to count its cadences; though it wants variety, yet to use language which we have ourselves elsewhere used-"it acts on the heart and mind almost as a spell." reader's mind is as powerless and yet as active as in a dream. The images presented to us we seem in some sort to create; and while every word brings

The

VOL. VI.

U

with it its distinct meaning to the ear, yet there seems to be a strange cypherlanguage accompanying every sound, as a classical poet might be supposed to fancy that the song of the Naiad was clearly to be distinguished from the flow of the waters from whose murmur it was yet inseparable. If the meaning of the poet be imperfectly apprehended, the difficulty is to be resolved into anything but vagueness. There is one of Coleridge's poemsa song heard by him in sleep, and of which he remembered and has preserved some snatches. We can imagine the poet, when he first awoke into daylight life from such enchanted dreams, dwelling upon the magic sounds, till what was at first unintelligible, began to assume strange meaning,-till the Spirit, that sent the dream, seemed, as the poet's lips measured the sounds again and again, and the mystery, not yet altogether understood, was becoming familiar, to suggest something like an interpretation. Even in such a state as we imagine the poet when in his waking hours first wondering over the phantoms of fading dulcimer, and fleeting damsel, and of gardens and groves "rising like an exhalation" to the creative music, even so have we ourselves wondered over Christabel. It is Wilson, we believewe know it is some true poet-who has told us that Christabel is a fragment, even as our dreams are fragments. To have completed it would have destroyed its character. We be lieve that the poet meant to intimate to us some mysterious connexion between the innocent Christabel's agonies and "the weal of her lover far away," and that in this poem some fancy of his on the subject of vicarious suffering was meant to be embodied—that in this some key will be found to the starworship of the Lady Geraldine-and to her "permitted" power, and to the anxious interference of Christabel's guardian angel-her mother's spirit. We cannot forbear transcribing a few stanzas, little as it is our habit or wish at any time to give fragments of a poem among our extracts. We mark a few lines

* In former editions

and words in italics, not for the purpose of giving them any peculiar emphasis, but to direct attention to the way in which the reader is told of Geraldine's being a sorceress, or, perhaps, an evil spirit-one in some suspicious way affected by the different matters which were, in the days of demonology among the tests by which those linked in unholy alliance with the powers of evil were detected. We print from the last of Mr. Pickering's editions, noticing a few variations from the form in which we remember the poem.

The lovely lady, Christabel,
Whom her father loves so well,
What makes her in the wood so late,
A furlong from the castle gate?
She had dreams all yesternight
Of her own betrothed knight;
And she in the midnight wood will pray
For the weal of her lover that's far away.

She stole along, she nothing spoke,

The sighs she heaved were soft and low, And naught was green upon the oak, But moss and rarest misletoe; She kneels beneath the huge oak tree, And in silence prayeth she.

The lady sprang up suddenly,
The lovely lady, Christabel!
It moaned as near as near can be,
But what it is, she cannot tell.-
On the other side it seems to be,
Of the huge, broad-breasted, old oak tree.

The night is chill, the forest bare ;
Is it the wind that moaneth bleak?
To move away the ringlet curl
There is not wind enough in the air
From the lovely lady's cheek-
The one red leaf, the last of its clan,
There is not wind enough to twirl
That dances as often as dance it can,

Hanging so light, and hanging so high, On the topmost twig that looks up at the sky.

Hush, beating heart of Christabel!
Jesu, Maria, shield her well!
She folded her arms beneath her cloak,
And stole to the other side of the oak.

What sees she there?

There she sees a damsel bright,
Drest in a silken robe of white,
That shadowy in the moonlight shone :
The neck that made that white robe
wan,

Her stately neck, and arms were bare;
Her blue-veined feet unsandal'd were,
And wildly glittered here and there
The gems entangled in her hair,
I guess, 'twas frightful there to see
A lady so richly clad as she-
Beautiful exceedingly!

Mary mother, save me now!
(Said Christabel,) and who art thou?

The Lady strange made answer meet,
And her voice was faint and sweet
Have pity on my sore distress,
I scarce can speak for weariness:
Stretch forth thy hand, and have no fear!

*

Stretch forth thy hand (thus ended she) And help a wretched maid to flee.

Then Christabel stretched forth her hand
And comforted fair Geraldine :

O well, bright dame! you may command
The service of Sir Leoline;
And gladly our stout chivalry
Will he send forth, and friends withal
To guide and guard thee safe and free
Home to your noble father's hall.

She rose and forth with steps they passed

That strove to be, and were not, fast. Her gracious stars the lady blest, And thus spake on sweet Christabel : All our household are at rest, The hall as silent as the cell; Sir Leoline is weak in health, And may not well awakened be, But we will move as if in stealth, And I beseech your courtesy,

This night, to share your couch with me.

They crossed the moat, and Christabel
Took the key that fitted well ;
A little door she opened straight,
All in the middle of the gate;

• In former editions

The gate that was ironed within and without,

Where an army in battle array had marched out.

The lady sank, belike through pain,
And Christabel with might and main
Lifted her up, a weary weight,
Over the threshold of the gate :
Then the lady rose again,

And moved, as she were not in pain.

So free from danger, free from fear, They crossed the court: right glad they

were.

And Christabel devoutly cried
To the Lady by her side;
Praise we the virgin all divine

Who hath rescued thee from thy distress!
Alas, alas! said Geraldine,

I cannot speak for weariness.
So free from danger, free from fear,
They cross'd the court, right glad they were.

Outside her kennel the mastiff old
Lay fast asleep, in moonshine cold.
The mastiff old did not awake,
Yet she an angry moan did make !
Never till now she uttered yell
Beneath the eye of Christabel.

They passed the hall that echoes still,
Pass as lightly as you will!
The brands were flat, the brands were dying
Amid their own white ashes lying;
But when the lady passed, there came
A tongue of light, a fit of flame;
And Christabel saw the lady's eye,
And nothing else saw she thereby,
Save the boss of the shield of Sir Leoline
tall,
Which hung in a murky old niche in the
wall.

O softly tread, said Christabel,
My father seldom sleepeth well.

Sweet Christabel her feet doth bare,
And jealous of the listening air,
They steal their way from stair to stair,
Now in glimmer, and now in gloom,
And now they pass the baron's room,

+In former editions