of Coleridge, Southey, and Wordsworth, Lloyd, Wilson, and De Quincey,—and again by homely familiarity with town's folk, and country folk, of every degree; lastly by daily recurring hours of solitude, by lonely wanderings with the murmur of the Brathay in his ear.

It will surely be asked, what came of this? To this question, not without "great searchings of heart," I prepare to return an answer. From the year 1814, when my brother left school, my personal intercourse with him, speaking comparatively, may be said to have ceased. From this time till his death, in 1849, I saw him only for short periods, and at distant intervals. Of his outward life what needs to be communicated, with one important exception, the account of his last hours,

writers, tempered as it was with reverent admiration of the greater English. The lines are really good, though a great extension of the original : :

"Tamen ille precanti,

Mitis et affatu bonus, et patientior æqui.
Quid mirum? Non solus erat."

The Latin supine is certainly a treasure, a piece of gold not to be exchanged into any current coin without great loss. See the interesting sketch of Charles Lloyd by the editor of Coleridge's "Biographia Literaria," vol. ii., p. 382, of the 2nd edition. The initials "S. C." may remind the reader of the dearly beloved sister so often alluded to by the subject of this memoir.

I have collected from his own memoranda, or from letters, and these failing, from the information of others, not without difficulty and uncertainty. The shadow of oblivion follows close upon our steps, covering up our path as we proceed. If we do not keep an eye behind us, we soon lose sight of our past selves; a loss, I suppose, and a grief to most of us, if only as scanting our tribute of grateful remembrance to the Giver of all good. For myself, I look back on the vacant spaces of memory with a sort of shame, regarding them as lost links in the chain of natural piety. This digressionperhaps my whole narrative-will hardly escape the charge of egotism; but my task has carried me back to the calends of my own May, when I was by my brother's side, and in looking for my companion, my eye is caught by my own image.

"Salve fugacis gloria sæculi !
Salve secundâ digna dies notâ !
Salve vetustæ vitæ imago,

Et specimen venientis ævi !"

I said of my brother's outward life: but of this there will be soon but little to record. As regards the stirring interests of this life, after he left college, he may be said to have been "deprived of the residue of his years." Of his inward life, going on, as it needs must, for time and for eternity, he has himself spoken, in broken but rememberable accents,

a strain which will be heard, I think, by those who listen, among the fainter echoes of the past.

A word before I proceed, of more serious import. My brother's life at school was so blameless he seemed, and was, not merely so simple, tender-hearted, and affectionate, but so truthful, dutiful, and thoughtful-so religious, if not devout, that if his after-years had run in a happier course, the faults of his boyhood might well have been overlooked, and nothing seen but that which promised good. An eye sharpened for closer observation may, in the retrospect, descry the shadow of a coming cloud. A certain infirmity of will, the specific evil of his life, had already shown itself. His sensibility was intense, and he had not wherewithal to control it. He could not open a letter without trembling. He shrank from mental pain,

-he was beyond measure impatient of constraint. He was liable to paroxysms of rage, often the disguise of pity, self-accusation, or other painful emotion-anger it could hardly be called-during which he bit his arm or finger violently. He yielded, as it were, unconsciously to slight temptations, slight in themselves, and slight to him, as if swayed by a mechanical impulse apart from his own volition. It looked like an organic defect-a congenital imperfection. I do not offer this as a sufficient explanation. There are mysteries in our

moral nature, upon which we can only pause and doubt.

The year 1814, when he left school,* belonged

* The following extracts from a metrical letter to his sister, boyish enough in style and execution, but giving promise of that combination of vigorous thought and easy expression by which his after-compositions were distinguished, may serve to show his feelings on this occasion :

"The holidays are very near,

And then we shall come home, my dear.
You say your heart, my sister sweet,
With very thoughts of them does beat,
And sure I should be most ungrateful,
Thought I the name of Keswick hateful.
But yet from this place to depart,
Will cost an aching to my heart;
And though it is a general rule,

That school-boys long to part from school,
Yet here I've so much kindness met,
That I shall leave school with regret ;
So I regard, there's no concealing,
Midsummer with a mingled feeling.
Think not that I would gladly stay
Longer than properly I may;
For all events I hold a mind,
With patient fortitude resigned.
Of this enough. More could I write,
But it would make you weary quite
Should I thus, out of place and season,
On local ties descant and reason,
Tell you how strongly we are bound
To every little spot of ground
In which our early years delighted,
For you would think I was benighted

to the unhappiest period of my father's life. He was residing at Calne, with his friend, Mr. Morgan, (whose subsequent misfortunes are alluded to in one of Mr. Southey's published letters,) in a state of health, bodily and mental, which, together with the position of his affairs, rendered it impossible for him to contribute to my brother's support at college, and difficult, in a degree which his and our FATHER alone can measure, to make any present

In my own feeling's wilderness,

(Not far from truth I must confess,)
For such a subject once begun,

'Twould be long time ere it was done;
And therefore do I think it wise
Not to begin to moralise.
Suffice it then to say that soon,
Ere we behold another moon,
On the concluding day of June,
The ardently desired vacation
Will seal up Sara's expectation."

And again, after touching upon the death of a friend :

"Sweet sister, 'twas not my intent
On such grave subjects to comment,
In my unpolish'd doggrel rhyme;

Yet, Sara, count it not a crime

That, with such half-confounding speed,
Deep themes to lighter do succeed.
Nought in this vast world we find

So rapid as the human mind;
So, in the course of its uncurb'd range,
E'en in a moment it can change