LITTELL'S LIVING AGE.-No. 385.-4 OCTOBER, 1851. From the Edinburgh Review. with the man, he has contributed the best materials nor can 1. Poems by Hartley Coleridge. With a Memoir of for a large and liberal comprehension of the poet; his Life. By his BROTHER. Edward Moxon. we more effectually illustrate Hartley Coleridge's poetry than by first bringing before our 2. Essays and Marginalia. By HARTLEY COL-readers some features of a life full of interest, 1851. ERIDGE. Edward Moxon. 1851. though externally but little varied. It is not often that the life and works of an author are presented to us at the same moment, and for the first time. Such may be considered to be the case on the present occasion, since far the larger portion of the poetry has remained till now unpublished; and, in the life prefixed to it, the poetry which follows finds not seldom an emblem as well as an efficient cause." 66 MR. DERWENT COLERIDGE has executed, with much success, one of the most difficult of tasks. He has written the biography of a poet in such a manner as to impart a deeper philosophic interest to his verse without detracting from its charm. The fact that as much must be lost as can possibly be gained by a tediously minute acquaintance with the life of an author, had not been overlooked by Born at Clevedon, on the 19th of September, Mr. Coleridge. He observes, "It is thought by 1796, an eight months' child, Hartley Coleridge many that the lives of literary men are sufficiently was marked from the first by a sensitiveness of known from their writings, and that any record of temperament no doubt out of proportion to his their private history is at least superfluous. Much physical strength. More than one tribute of song may be said in support of this opinion. Of poets, greeted him on his arrival into this world. Some more especially, it may be affirmed that the image of these aspirations remained unaccomplished, and which they put forth of themselves in their works some were fulfilled too well. In one of the most is a true and adequate representation of the author, beautiful of Coleridge's poems, the poet compares whatever it may be of the man; nay, that in many his own early culture with that which he desires cases it may depict the man more faithfully-may for his child. show more truly what he was, than any memorial of what he did and suffered in his mortal pilgrimage, too often a sad tissue, so it is made to appear, of frailty and sorrow. If the record were I was reared In the great city, pent mid cloisters dim, Thy prayer was heard: I" wandered like a breeze." Not less tenderly was the "animosus infans," addressed in his father's poem, "The Nightingale." That strain again! to be supplied, as has been attempted, by the ordinary materials of the biographer-by a meagre outline of every day facts, filled in by such anecdotes as vulgar curiosity most commonly collects and remembers, it had better remain a blank." To this prophecy the younger poet alludes in Much better, we cordially add; but we are happy the memorable sonnet prefixed to a small volume to be able to say, also, that the record with which of poetry published in 1833. Addressing the we are here presented is of a very different sort. "Father and Bard revered," at a far more advanced Vulgar curiosity has not been catered for in it; age than that father had attained when the above and a philosophical curiosity will not seek in-lines were written, he says, in allusion to themstruction in it without reward. The passages in his brother's life which Mr. Coleridge has sketched for us, whether such as determined his outward fortunes, or such as to a careless observer might have seemed trifles, are those by which the structure of character is indicated, and its progress is traced. A happy power of selection is among a biographer's highest though least obtrusive gifts. Mr. Coleridge has exercised it with effect, avoiding that vice of modern biographers, prolixity. Had his memoir consisted of two volumes, instead of half a volume, its force would have been lost in detail, and we should have had a far less vivid picture than is here exhibited to us of the subject it With her youthful playmate Nature played commemorates. The narrative abounds in dis- long; and he never ceased to find solace both in criminative criticism, and remarks incidentally her songs and sports. Nature did what Nature thrown out, but full of point. Above all, it is may; nor is it her fault if her harmonies, whether written with frankness and simplicity. Cherishing of the morn or the eventide, whether lyrical or a deserved respect, as well as affection, for his elegiac, have more power to "kindle" than to brother's memory, he has appreciated his character" control," and serve rather as wine to the far too well to think that it needs the concealment of infirmities from which the kindliest and most abundant natures are not always the most exempt, and the effects of which are impressed, for evil and for good, upon verse which the world will not willingly let die." In making us acquainted CCCLXXXV. LIVING AGE. VOL. XXXI. 1 Full fain would it delay me! My dear babe, festive, or as an opiate to those in trouble, than as martial music, bracing us for the warfare of life. He had learned, however, to listen to another voice above, and along with, that of Nature; and, for such discernment, he turns also in gratitude to his father. (Vol. i., p. 111.), In a strain not dissimilar, the same child was addressed at six years old by the Bard of Rydal. O thou, whose fancies from afar are brought, The breeze-like motion and the self-born carol; To brood on air then on an earthly stream. After the lapse of many a chequered year these verses retained their applicability, and were forcibly brought back to the memory even of strangers, who chanced to mark the subject of them as he paced irregularly about, with a vague grace, caught in some stream of thought-with feet that seemed almost unable to keep their hold of the ground, extended arms, a glowing cheek, and an eye still youthful, flashing beneath long white locks that floated on the air. Wordsworth also indulged in prophecy. Nature will either end thee quite ; Or, lengthening out thy season of delight, snow, the " Half the promise was granted if the other half was scattered to the winds. The season of delight had past away; but even when the autumnal pastures had become flecked with patches of monitory young lamb's heart" remained. The philosopher, whose metaphysical principles ended in the most advanced spiritualism, was, at the period of his son's birth, in the materialist stage of his progress; and it was to the enthusiasm with which he then regarded the speculations of David Hartley, that that son owed his name. He acquired at a very early date those habits of abstract thought which characterized his boyhood, though apparently the system of the young psychologist tended at least as much in the direction of Berkeley as of Hartley. The following curious anecdote was preserved in a diary kept by Mr. Henry Crabbe Robinson :-" Hartley Coleridge, when about five years old, was asked a question about himself being called Hartley. Which Hartley?' asked the boy. Why, is there more than one Hartley?' 'Yes,' he replied; there's a deal of Hartleys.' 'How so?' There 's Picture Hartley, (Hazlitt had painted a portrait of him,) and Shadow Hartley; and there's Echo Hartley, and there's Catch-me-fast Hartley; at the same time seizing his own arm with the other hand very eagerly an action which shows that his mind must have been drawn to reflect on what Kant calls the great and inexplicable mystery, viz., that man should be both his own subject and object, and that these two should be one. At the same early age," continued Coleridge, "Hartley used to be in agony of thought-puzzling himself about the reality of existence. As when some one said to him, It is not now; but it is to be.' But,' said he, if it is to be, it is.'" The relation of the potential to the actual, we must grant to be a somewhat hard riddle for a child of five years old. From the age of about seven, and during a large part of his boyhood, Hartley Coleridge resided with his uncle, Mr. Southey, at Keswick. In 1808 he was placed with his brother at school at Ambleside, under the care of the Rev. Mr. Dawes, to whom Mr. Coleridge pays a just tribute of respect:" He was a man of lofty stature, and immense bodily strength, and though sufficiently exact in the discharge of his scholastic duties, yet he evidently attached quite as much importance to the healthful recreations and out-of-door life of his scholars, as to their progress in Greek and Latin. Morbidly shy, he shrank from mixing in society, and in his walks would as soon have met a lion as a lady in his path. . . He had the very soul of honor, and carried with him in every word and gesture the evidence of a manly and cordial nature." From the lessons of this hardy northern Hartley Coleridge derived at least as much benefit as from the Greek Grammar composed for him by his father-a monument of paternal affection and industry, not a little characteristic; beginning as it does with a philosophic disclaimer of philosophy, proceeding to the complexities of gender and case, and ending with a pregnant essay on the connection between Idolatry and Atheism. It was a literary curiosity, well worthy of preservation, and will remind the reader of Milton's logico-poetical exercise, which begins with 66 "Ens" and "Predica ment," and concludes with "Rivers arise!" One of the chief advantages which Hartley Coleridge derived from his school-residence was, that it afforded him an opportunity of being much in the society of Mr. Wordsworth. It was at this time also that at his beautiful seat, Elleray, he became acquainted with Professor Wilson, "who continued to the last one of his kindest friends." Sir George Beaumont and Mr. Basil Montague were also among his friends. His biographer remarks, "It was so, rather than by a regular course of study, that he was educated-by desultory reading, by the living voice 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." a later period of his life he was described as the Wye, a wanderer through the woods." At school he had much liberty. He never played with the other boys, and probably never fought with them. He was not sufficiently adroit for ordinary. sports, and his uncle used to tell him that he had two left hands. In his lessons he was neither stupid nor unusually quick. He had no school friendships; but his companions admired him for his singularity, and loved him for the fascinating skill with which he told them tales. His powers in this respect seem to have equalled those of the Sultana Scheherezade, though his aim was much less practical : At "like It was not by a series of tales, but by one continuunity, that he enchained the attention of his auditors, ous tale, regularly evolved, and possessing a real night after night, as we lay in bed. . . during a space of years, and not unfrequently for hours together. This enormous romance, far exceeding in length, I should suppose, the compositions of Calprenede, Scudery, or Richardson, though delivered without premeditation, had a progressive story with many turns and complications, with salient points recurring at intervals, with a suspended interest varying in intensity, and occasionally wrought up to a very high pitch, and at length a catastrophe and a conclusion. He spoke without hesitation, in language as vivid as it was flowing. This power of improvisation he lost, or conceived himself to lose, when he began the practice of written composition. At a still earlier period, however, his marvellous power of continuous narration had been yet more |