SAMUEL TAYLOR COLERIDGE.

Ir was, I think, in the month of August, but certainy in the summer season, and certainly in the year 1807, that I first saw this illustrious man, the largest and most spacious intellect, the subtlest and the most comprehensive, in my judgment, that has yet existed amongst men. My knowledge of him as a man of most original genius began about the year 1799. A little before that time, Mr. Wordsworth had published the first edition (in a single volume) of the "Lyrical Ballads," at the end or the beginning of which was placed Mr. Coleridge's poem of the "Ancient Mariner," as the contribution of an anonymous friend. It would be directing the reader's attention too much to myself, if I were to linger upon this, the greatest event in the unfolding of my own mind. Let me say in one word, that, at a period when neither the one nor the other writer was valued by the public - both having a long warfare to accomplish of contumely and ridicule before they could rise into their present estimation-I found in these poems"the ray of a new morning," and an absolute revelation of untrodden worlds, teeming with power and beauty, as yet unsuspected amongst men.

I had received directions for finding out the house where Coleridge was visting; and, in riding down a main street of Bridgewater, I noticed a gateway corresponding to the description given me. Under this was standing, and gazing about him, a man whom I shall describe. In height he might seem to be about five feet eight; (he

was, in reality, about an inch and a half taller, but his figure was of an order which drowns the height;) his person was broad and full, and tended even to corpulence; his complexion was fair, though not what painters technically style fair, because it was associated with black hair; his eyes were large and soft in their expression; and it was from the peculiar appearance of haze or dreaminess, which mixed with their light, that I recognized my object. This was Coleridge. I examined him steadfastly for a minute or more; and it struck me that he saw neither myself nor any other object in the street. He was in a deep reverie; for I had dismounted, made two or three trifling arrangements at an inu door, and advanced close to him, before he had apparently become conscious of my presence. The sound of my voice, announcing my own name, first awoke him ; he started, and for a moment seemed at a loss to understand my purpose or his own situation; for he repeated rapidly a number of words which had no relation to either of us. There was no mauvaise honte in his manner, but simple perplexity, and an apparent difficulty in recovering his position amongst daylight realities. This little scene over, he received me with a kindness of manner so marked, that it might be called gracious. The hospitable family with whom he was domesticated, were distinguished for their amiable manners and enlightened understandings; they were descendants from Chubb, the philosophic writer, and bore the same name. For Coleridge, they all testified deep affection and esteem sentiments in which the whole town of Bridge water seemed to share; for in the evening, when the heat of the day had declined, I walked out with him;

and rarely, perhaps never, have I seen a person so much interrupted in one hour's space as Coleridge, on this occasion, by the courteous attentions of young and old.

Coleridge led me to a drawing-room, rang the bell for refreshments, and omitted no point of a courteous reception. He told me that there would be a very large dinner party on that day, which, perhaps, might be disagreeable to a perfect stranger; but, if not, he could assure me of a most hospitable welcome from the family. I was too anxious to see him under all aspects, to think of declining this invitation. And these little points of business being settled-Coleridge, like some great river, the Orellana, or the St. Lawrence, that had been checked and fretted by rocks or thwarting islands, and suddenly recovers its volume of waters, and its mighty music-swept at once, as if returning to his natural business, into a continuous strain of eloquent dissertation, certainly the most novel, the most finely illustrated, and traversing the most spacious fields of thought, by transitions the most just and logical, that it was possible to conceive. What I mean by saying that his transitions were "just," is by way of contradistinction to that mode of conversation which courts variety by means of verbal connections. Coleridge, to many people, and often I have heard the complaint, seemed to wander; and he seemed then to wander the most, when in fact his resistance to the wandering instinct was greatest, viz. when the compass, and huge circuit, by which his illustrations moved, travelled farthest into remote regions, before they began to revolve. Long before this coming-round commenced, most people had lost him, and naturaйy enough supposed that he had lost

himself. They continued to admire the separate beauty of the thoughts, but did not see their relations to the dominant theme. Had the conversation been thrown upon paper, it might have been easy to trace the continuity of the links: just as in Bishop Berkeley's Siris, from a pedestal so low and abject, so culinary, as Tar Water, the method of preparing it, and its medicinal effects, the dissertation ascends, like Jacob's ladder, by just gradations, into the Heaven of Heavens, and the thrones of the Trinity. But Heaven is there connected with earth by the Homeric chain of gold; and being subject to steady examination, it is easy to trace the links. Whereas, in conversation, the loss of a single word may cause the whole cohesion to disappear from view. However, I can assert, upon my long and intimate knowledge of Coleridge's mind, that logic, the most severe, was as inalienable from his modes of thinking, as grammar from his language.

ner.

THE ANCIENT MARINER.

THERE are three readers of Coleridge's Ancient MariThe first is gross enough to fancy all the imagery of the mariner's visions delivered by the poet, for actual facts of experience; which being impossible, the whole pulverizes, for that reader, into a baseless fairy tale.

The second reader is wiser than that; he knows that the imagery is not baseless; it is the imagery of febrile delirium, really seen, but not seen as an external reali

ty.

The mariner had caught the pestilential fever, which carried off all his mates; he only had survivedthe delirium had vanished; but the visions that had haunted the delirium, remained.

"Yes," says the third reader, "they remained; naturally they did, being scorched by fever into his brain; but how did they happen to remain on his belief as gospel truths? The delirium had vanished, except as visionary memorials of a sorrow that was cancelled? Why was it that craziness settled upon this mariner's brain, driving him, as if he were a Cain or another Wandering Jew, to "pass like night - from land to land," and, at uncertain intervals, wrenching him until he made rehearsal of his errors, even at the hard price of "holding children from their play and old men from the chimney-corner"? That craziness as the third reader dechipers, rose out of a deeper soil than any bodily affection. It had its root in penitential sorrow. O, bitter is the sorrow to a conscientious heart when too late it discovers the depth of a love that has been trampled under foot! That mariner had slain the creature, that on all the earth, loved him best. In the darkness of his cruel superstition he had done it, to save his human brothers from a fancied inconvenience and yet by that very act of cruelty, he had himself called destruction on their heads. The Nemesis that followed punished him through them— him that wronged, through those that wrongfully he sought to benefit. That spirit who watches over the sanctities of love is a strong angel-is a jealous angel, and this angel it was

"That loved the bird, that loved the man

That shot him with his bow."