the essay, is shown in the Introduction the difference between the oratorical and the essayistic style.

After this, Burke's " Speech on Conciliation " is treated in a similar manner, the essential principles of forensic authorship being set forth.

Again, De Quincey's "Flight of a Tartar Tribe" a conspicuous example of pure narration — exhibits the character and qual ity of this department of literary composition.

Southey's "Life of Nelson" is presented in the same persona and critical manner, placing before the student the essential char acteristics of the biographical style.

The series continues with specimens of such works as "The Rime of the Ancient Mariner," by Coleridge; the "Essay on Burns," by Carlyle; the "Sir Roger De Coverley Papers," by Addi son; Milton's "Paradise Lost," Books I. and II.; Pope's " Iliad,' Books I., VI., XXII., and XXIV.; Dryden's "Palamon and Ar cite," and other works of equally eminent writers, covering, in the completed series, a large and diversified area of literary exposition

The functions of the several departments of authorship ar explained in simple terms. The beginner, as well as the some what advanced scholar, will find in this series ample instruction and guidance for his own study, without being perplexed by abstruse or doubtful problems.

With the same thoughtfulness for the student's progress, th appended Notes provide considerable information outright; bu they are also designed to stimulate the student in making re searches for himself, as well as in applying, under the direction o the teacher, the principles laid down in the critical examinatio of the separate divisions.

A portrait, either of the author or of the personage about whor he writes, will form an attractive feature of each volume. The tex is from approved editions, keeping as far as possible the origina form; and the contents offer, at a very reasonable price, the lates results of critical instruction in the art of literary expression.

The teacher will appreciate the fact that enough, and not to much, assistance is rendered the student, leaving the instructo ample room for applying and extending the principles and sug gestions which have been presented.

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INTRODUCTION.

"Ir is our belief," says Professor W. G. T. Shedd, in his Introduction to Coleridge's works, "that in the capacity of a philosopher and theologian, Coleridge is to exert his greatest and best influence."

But as this little volume will deal mainly with Coleridge as a poet and a writer in the department of belles-lettres, brief allusion only will be made to his metaphysical and theological productions. His poetic and dramatic works fill a single volume, while his speculative, biographical, and miscellaneous writings are six times as voluminous; and yet he is perhaps best known to the general literary world by his "Lyrical Ballads," "The Rime of the Ancient Mariner," "Christabel," and "The Three Graves"; by his metrical translation of Schiller's "Wallenstein"; by his "Aids to Reflection," now not much read; and by parts of his "Table Talk," frequently quoted and containing wise words on a great variety of topics.

It is, however, very true, as Professor Shedd remarks, that "the direction and impulse which his speculative opinions have given to the English thinking of the nineteenth century will, for a long time to come, be as distinct and unmistakable as the Gulf Stream in the Atlantic."

Samuel Taylor Coleridge, the youngest of ten children,

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was born October 21, 1772, at Ottery St. Mary, County of Devon, England, where his father, the Reverend John Coleridge, was vicar of the parish and the master of a school at which the sons of neighboring country gentlemen were taught. A critical Latin Grammar, which the schoolmaster published, contained a curious substitution for the ordinary names of cases, such as "posterior case," "interjective," and "quale-quare-quidditive."

Coleridge's mother, Ann Bowden, was a good housekeeper, but not a highly educated or gifted woman. Her famous son makes very few references in his writings to any influence which she may have exerted on his youthful mind; and, when his father died, in 1781, the boy, being about nine years old, left home for good, and was sent to Christ's Hospital in London, a great charity school, where Charles Lamb, a schoolmate, called him "the inspired charity boy." He was indeed a peculiar lad, dreamy, and a prodigy. At the head of his class, but without any effort or ambition to excel, he devoured the literature which he obtained from a circulating library in Cheapside. He had a fondness for solitary rambles about the city; also for the water, swimming across the New River on one occasion in his clothes, and letting them dry on his back, a foolhardy thing to which he ascribed much of his subsequent ill health.

The eight or nine years of his rather monotonous school life, during which he read Shakespeare, Homer, and Voltaire, and, according to his own account, became "bewildered in metaphysics," were enlivened by few incidents. worth recording. One however we may mention. In his

The

fifteenth year, having been kindly treated by a shoemaker and his wife, he prevailed on the cobbler to ask his master to allow him to take the boy as an apprentice. master, Bowyer, in a rage, pushed the shoemaker out of the room, and asked the lad why he was such a fool? The answer was, "Because I hate the thought of being a clergyman." "Why so?" inquired the master. "Because, to tell you the truth, I am an infidel." "You are, are you? Then I'll flog it out of you"; and he did. The poet acknowledged later that the flogging was just, and added, “I lost the opportunity of supplying safeguards to the understandings of those who, perhaps, will never thank me for what I am aiming to do, in exercising their reason."

Being a poet, by nature, the poetic fervor, he says, was first awakened in him by reading Bowles' "Fourteen Sonnets," an ordinary production, but, after reading which, he wrote his "Ode to Chatterton."

In 1791 he entered Jesus College, Cambridge, as a student "sent up" from Christ's Hospital. The next year he took a gold medal for a Greek ode, but competed unsuccessfully for other prizes. At this time he was enthusiastic for France and the French Revolution.

A curious episode is recorded of his college life at Cambridge. Being in debt for a sum less than £100, in December, 1793, Coleridge left secretly, and four months afterwards a student from the university, being in Reading, found him, in the uniform of an orderly, walking behind an officer of dragoons. He had enlisted, giving the name of Silas Titus Comberback, and might have con

tinued a soldier had he not chalked on the stall of his horse a Latin verse, which an officer saw and immediately made him his orderly. His friends procured his discharge, and he went back to Cambridge.

The same year he read and admired the poems of Wordsworth, then unknown to fame; and, visiting Oxford, met Robert Southey, with whom he became intimate. The two friends wrote together a poem on “The Fall of Robespierre"; gave historical lectures in company, at Bristol; became engaged to two sisters, Fricker by name; and projected a new social system, which they called Pantisocracy, and which they intended to establish in America. Coleridge married Sara Fricker in 1795, and the pantisocratic system was abandoned. Their married life was very happy at Clevedon, near Bristol, where they took a pretty cottage, and Coleridge wrote for The Morning Chronicle and The Critical Review while passing his first volume of poems through the press.

He here conceived the idea of publishing a weekly journal, The Watchman, for which he obtained a thousand subscribers; but the paper died out in ten weeks for lack of support. In April, 1796, his volume of poems appeared, but attracted little attention. His son, Hartley, whose brilliant and sad career is well known, was born this year, at the end of which Coleridge published his "Ode to the Departing Year."

The poet made one trial of his talents as a preacher. The sermon was on The Hair Powder Tax, and given in a Unitarian pulpit to an audience of seventeen persons, several of whom left before the discourse was ended. By