"to individual objects actually present to his "senses, while his great predecessors apostro'phize classes of things presented by the me

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mory, and generalized by the understanding ; “ —I can readily believe, I say, that in this there may be too much of what our learned med’ciners call the idiosyncratic for true poetry.— For, from my very childhood, I have been ac"customed to abstract, and as it were, unrealize whatever of more than common interest my "eyes dwelt on, and then by a sort of transfu“sion and transmission of my consciousness to “identify myself with the object; and I have "often thought within the last five or six years, "that if ever I should feel once again the genial warmth and stir of the poetic impulse, and "refer to my own experiences, I should venture " on a yet stranger and wilder allegory than of yore-that I would allegorize myself as a rock, “ with its summit just raised above the surface "of some bay or strait in the Arctic Sea, while yet the stern and solitary night brooked no alternate sway `—all around me fixed and firm, methought, as my own substance, and near "me lofty masses, that might have seemed to "hold the moon and stars in fee,' and often in "such wild play with meteoric lights, or with "the quiet shine from above, which they made "rebound in sparkles, or dispand in off-shoot, " and splinters, and iridiscent needle shafts of

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"keenest glitter, that it was a pride and a place "of healing to lie, as in an apostle's shadow, "within the eclipse and deep substance-seeming gloom of these dread ambassadors from "earth to heaven, great hierarchs!" And though

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obscured, yet to think myself obscured by con"substantial forms, based in the same founda"tion as my own. I grieved not to serve them— yea, lovingly and with gladsomeness I abased "myself in their presence: for they are my brothers, I said, and the mastery is theirs by right of older birth, and by right of the migh"tier strivings of the hidden fire that uplifted "them above me."

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This poem has excited much discussion, and many individuals have expressed different opinions as to its origin. Some assert that it is borrowed from our own great poets; whilst German readers say, that it is little more than a free translation from a poem of Frederica Brun. That it is founded on Frederica Brun's poem cannot be doubted; but those who compare the two poems must at once feel, that to call Coleridge's a translation, containing as it does new thoughts, exciting different feelings, and being in fact a new birth, a glorification of the original, would be a misuse of words. I insert the following note of Coleridge's, which appears applicable to the subject:

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"In looking at objects of nature, while I am thinking, as at yonder moon dim-glimmering through the dewy window-pane, I seem rather "to be seeking, as it were asking, a symbolical language for something within me that already "and for ever exists, than observing any thing “new. Even when that latter is the case, yet " still I have always an obscure feeling, as if that "new phænomenon were the dim awaking of a forgotten or hidden truth of my inner nature.— It is still interesting as a word, a symbol! It is the Xoyos, the Creator! and the Evolver! What is the right, the virtuous feeling and consequent action, when a man having long meditated and perceived a certain truth finds another, a foreign writer, who has handled the same with an approximation to the truth, as he had previously conceived it? Joy! Let truth make her voice audible! While I was preparing the pen to write this remark I lost the train of thought which had led me to it. I meant "to have asked something else, now forgotten : "for the above answers itself-it needed no

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new answer, I trust, in my heart.”—15th April, 1805. Coleridge, who was an honest man, was equally honest in literature; and had he thought himself indebted to any other author, he would have acknowledged the same.

Born a poet, and a philosopher, by reflection, the mysterious depths of nature and the enquiry

into these depths were among his chief delights. And from boyhood he had felt that it was the business of this life, to prepare for that which is to come. His schoolfellow, Lamb, also observed, that from his youth upward, "he hungered for eternity," sincerely and fervently praying to be so enlightened as to attain it.

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Though usually described "as doing nothing," -"an idler," a dreamer," and by many such epithets-he sent forth works which, though they had cost him years of thought, never brought him any suitable return. In a note written in 1825, speaking of himself, he says, “A man of letters, friendless, because of no faction: repeatedly, and in strong language inculpated "of hiding his light under a bushel, yet destined "to see publication after publication abused by "the Edinburgh Review, as the representative "of one party, and not even noticed by the Quarterly Review, as the representative of the “other—and to receive as the meed of his labours for the cause of freedom against despotism and jacobinism, of the church against infidelity and schism; and of principle against fashion and sciolism, slander, loss, and embarrassment." If, however, we were to collect the epithets applied to Milton in his time, they would now appear incredible;-so when the misconceptions arising from slander shall have ceased, the name of Coleridge will be enrolled among those of our

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most illustrious men. The poet has said of Gay, “in wit, a man; simplicity, a child." But such was the extent and grasp of Coleridge's intellectual powers, that of him it may be said, “In wit, a giant; in simplicity, a very child." Though conscious of his own powers, with other men he walked most humbly, and whatever their station or acquirements, he would talk to them as equals. He seemed but slightly connected with the things of the world, for which, save the love of those dear to him, he cared but little, living in this affection for his friends, and always feeling and acting in the spirit of that humility he has so beautifully described. “That humility which is the mother of charity,” and which was inwoven in his being, revealing itself in all his intercourse throughout the day-for he looked on man as God's creature. All that he thought and taught was put forth in the same spirit and with the strongest sense of duty, so that they might learn of him with pleasure. Whatever he considered the faulty part of his own character, he freely acknowledged to others, with an admonition to avoid the like. His sensitive nature induced a too great proneness to a selfaccusing spirit; yet in this was there no affected humility, though it might unfortunately dispose some to think evil of him where little or none existed, or form an excuse to others for their neglect of him. With respect to other