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may withhold from living merit its just meed, by arresting the willing homage, without which its past labours appear vain and fruitless, and its future exertions altogether hopeless.

Should the Edinburgh Review happen to be fair and just in its comments, as the London Quarterly generally makes it a point to render a verdict directly opposite, where exists the criterion of final decision? A poem published some years ago, which excited considerable interest in all literary circles, was pronounced by one of these reviewers to be remarkable for the flow, fire, and facility of its versification, the happy management of its machinery, graphic vigour of its characters, and, in short, to be altogether a most admirable work; and by another, to be dull and dragging in style, unnatural in plot and exaggerated in character, generally spiritless, and, as a whole, a very heavy and uninteresting production, indeed. Now supposing these writers to be sincere, which may, perhaps, be conceding too much, what can be more unfair than to assume, as they thus do, their own consciousness as an unfailing standard of truth? One of the consequences of this is the formation of cliques, who, resolving their united taste to be the only true one, exert upon literature and all the arts an influence equally pernicious, for they only, in fact, extend somewhat the same narrow principles which govern the individual critic, and condemn every thing that does not strike in harmony with their peculiar notices or prejudices. Who, remembering the exquisite poetry, the profound and beautiful morality, indiscriminately condemned, by a certain set of critics, in the mass, under the absurd cognomen of the "Lake School," does not regret the want of some sure standard in the arts, which might preserve excellence from the blighting effects of arrogance, ignorance, and envy? In this same school were ridiculously blended, writers, altogether distinct, in every attribute which can possibly distinguish one elegant and gifted intellect from another.

Wordsworth, it appears, wrote a preface for a volume of poems, to which several of his friends contributed, and among others, the subject of this article. In this preface, he ventured to put forth some new opinions upon poetry as an art, in which he showed a laudable desire to strip it of its mere tinsel, and teach a host of meanless scribblers that the garniture and flaunting robes of the muses could not compensate for the absence of their living forms. The critics took offence; and, in revenge, classed every one who had contributed even a ballad to the work in the same school, upon which they heaped the most unsparing ridicule. Several of these writers resided near the lakes, and were hence called the "Lake School of Poets." But Coleridge, neither in theory nor practice, subscribed to all the principles of Wordsworth,

but has distinctly recorded in his "Biographia Literaria" his objections, while Southey, who, at this time, wrote epics in holy reverence of the sacred unities, was confounded with both. Wordsworth, the only one who attempted to reduce his views into actual practice, was sometimes led by them to affect a simplicity of language rather too severe, but even this could not destroy the freshness and beauty of the thoughts it so scantily clad. But the critics, and very soon the public also, resolved that all the authors who happened to reside within the vicinity of the lakes, were altogether bad and unreasonable; and years passed away, and custom and fashion became, as usual, too hard for justice, the decision could not be revoked, and popular writers were constantly, without the slightest fear of detection, stealing from the excommunicated school.

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To return from this digression to the subject before us. versational powers of Coleridge, unequalled in his day, though it was even more remarkable for such excellence than when

"Johnson talked, and Goldy wrote,

And bustling Bozzy penned his note,"

have never, perhaps, been adequately described, though many an eager listener has recorded his warm and genial admiration of the full, flowing, and finished language which clothed the loftiest thoughts, the subtlest beauty, and the most refined morality. The "Table Talk," collected and published by his relative, can be considered only as the mere "shreds and patches" of those connected and glowing speculations heard by the Lambs, the Hazlits, and the Talfourds, and we have never perused it, without regretting that Coleridge was not so fortunate as to have his Boswell, too, who, by preserving the dramatic effect and spirit of dialogue, might have given us a true picture of his brilliant conversation.

In a previous number, we stated that his "Marvellousness" was larger than Ideality, and that his poetry, in harmony with the fact, proves the accuracy of Spurzheim's examination, and then referred to the "Ancient Mariner," as an appropriate illustration. We would now direct the reader to a strange fragment called "Christabel," which certainly could not have been conceived without the organ large and active. Indeed, it cannot be appreciated without the same endowment. Scott, whose Marvellousness was exceedingly developed, admired it to a degree perfectly incomprehensible to those deficient in the same faculty. Basil Hall tells us, in one of his numerous journals, that until he heard Scott read the poem to his family, "he had always thought Byron's praise of it a mere hoax." The profound observer of American manners and institutions had

been made, perhaps, so often the victim of Yankee hoaxing, that he had grown over-suspicious. However this be, there can be no doubt of Byron's sincerity, for he proved it by a very excellent imitation. Coleridge's Adhesiveness was large and active, which, with his other high endowments, rendered his attachment to friends as free from the taint of selfishness as is, perhaps, permitted to our nature. All familiar with his writings, know his success in describing the softer feelings. It would not be easy to select from any author, ancient or modern, a more thrilling manifestation of this organ, delicately marked as it is by Marvellousness, and illumined by Ideality, than is to be found in the exquisite ballad of "Genevieve." The reader, who may have perused it, will at once recall, by the mere mention of its name, that genial dream of love and beauty. He will remember those six or eight concluding stanzas which so truly paint the first outpouring of a woman's affection, and know that he might turn his ear in vain to all the bards who have ever sung to the like melting notes, which, with so much simplicity, such nice discrimination of the very essence of feminine reserve vanquished by her love, tremble from his harp in the following. The reader is aware the lay had already been sung which aroused the sympathy of the maid, and extorted her weeping confession:

All impulses of soul and sense,

Had thrilled my guiltless Genevieve
The music and the doleful air,
The rich and balmy eve-

And hopes and fears that cherish hope,
An undistinguishable throng,
And gentle wishes long subdued,
Subdued and cherished long.

She wept with pity and delight,

She blushed with love and maiden shame,

And like the murmurs of a dream,

I heard her breathe my name.

Her wet cheek glowed; she step'd aside
As conscious of my look she step'd,
Then suddenly, with a timorous eye,
She flew to me, and wept!

She half enclosed me in her arms,

She pressed me with a meek embrace,
And bending back her head, looked up
And gazed upon my face.

'Twas partly love, and partly fear,
And partly 'twas a bashful art,
That I might rather feel than see,
The swelling of her heart.

There was one great defect in his organisation, not so much a defect perhaps in itself, as in view of his circumstances, of the difficulties that perpetually surrounded him, and the gross injustice with which he was treated by some of his contemporaries. We allude to his small Destructiveness and Combativeness. The size and highcultivation of his moral and intellectual faculties, led him to see the vice of contention, and the folly of resentment, in the abstract, and he constantly strove to introduce the beautiful theories of the closet into the world. A more refined morality, a purer religion, was never cherished, than that carried into even the minutiae of his daily life. Hating no one, he restrained the manifestation of a righteous indignation, and was ever ready to practise upon the sublime principles of Christianity, and return good for evil.

Yet even this magnanimity, this lofty forbearance, could not protect him from the foul calumny and inveterate rancour of those whom, as has justly been observed, the little finger of recrimination might have shivered into dust. But he listened to the injustice of critics and smiled, and when, tempted by impunity, the libeller at length invaded the sanctity of his humble hearth, though he could not but writhe under the wounded sensibility of the husband and father, yet even then he pitied and forgave.

Had his social position been as elevated as his genius, this meekness, this truly Christian spirit, would have shed additional lustre upon all his gifts; but his was the iron destiny. He was one of those who, favoured by nature and frowned on by fortune, seem designed to convince us how little, in the present state of society, the highest endowments have to do with worldly success, when compared with the accidents of birth, or with opulence. For the world, as it is, he was altogether too mild and forbearing. The ruffian is still abroad, and the strong arm of law too weak to arrest, or even to punish the most flagrant violations of private rights, and it must therefore be rather dangerous to tempt the assassin, by pledging ourselves to turn both cheeks whenever he shall choose to attack us.

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Amid all his sufferings and disappointments, he projected one great work, from the successful execution of which, he anticipated the happiest results, and around which he gathered his warmest affections, his holiest aspirations, the liveliest interest for the welfare of man, and all the fruits of his profound learning, extensive research, and a life of meditation. Its object was entirely philanthropic. His own wide intercourse with the first intellects of Europe, had convinced him that there was in truth very little settled belief in man's exalted destiny, and that religion, so long disfigured by the grossest superstition, was viewed by many as any thing but the handmaid of another world

He trusted, by a severity of reasoning which no ingenuity could resist, to demonstrate the real capacities of our nature, the truth of revelation, and the immortality of the soul-to rescue the minds of thinking men from the blighting influence of unbelief, and fix their hopes of eternity upon a basis like the mountain rock, sure, safe, and imperishable. This was the warmth of his heart, the manifestation of his large and active Benevolence, and altogether free from the spirit of mere controversy. No man of his day, perhaps, was so well fitted to bring about this beautiful union of religion and philosophy. There was not a doctrine or creed, from Zoroaster's to Swedenborg's, with which he was unacquainted, no system of scepticism, from that of the ancients to Spinoza's, whose arguments he had not weighed, sifted, and matured. But the work was never completed. The leisure and comfort which the wise institutions of society so abundantly afford to thousands of its most useless members, were denied to him, and the philosopher, who ardently longed to serve his fellows, and the man of genius, who wished only to consecrate the gifts of nature to the great cause of truth and human happiness, continued to fritter away his mind in the service of ephemeral magazines for bread

·W.

ARTICLE VII.

PATHOLOGICAL FACT, CONFIRMATORY of phrenoLOGY.

Dr. Samuel Jackson, Professor of the Institutes of Medicine in the University of Pennsylvania, communicated, in the year 1829, to the American Medical Recorder,* the following interesting fact on the

pathology of the brain. After some general remarks on the import

ance of a knowledge of the morbid state of the various organs of the body, in order to understand correctly their healthy functions, Dr. Jackson proceeds as follows:

Our knowledge of the encephalic organs is wanting in speciality; general conclusions have been arrived at, through the medium of experiments, of pathological observations, and the study of individual peculiarities. In this way it is known that they are the seats or organs of the intellectual faculties, of sensation, of locomotion, and the expressions; and the general location of these functions is determined with some accuracy. It is a question yet to be decided,

* Volume XVI, page 272.

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