He had a great wish to make us metaphysicians, and the perseverance with which he would occasionally re-word the same train of thought, for the edification of his pupils, was quite extraordinary. It was in fact far from an easy matter for any unpractised person to keep pace with him in threading his metaphysical labyrinths. The impressions made upon the minds of his hearers often gave an abundant consciousness of new light but they were too like the impressions of a seal upon wax, when the seal adheres; there the impressions were, but where was the capacity of communicating them to others?

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We frequently, however, trod on much safer ground than the terra incognita of metaphysics. In the course of one of our afternoons' walks, the conversation ran almost exclusively on English Poetry. Coleridge was more especially critical; whilst Parry, who in belles lettres and the arts was great authority, tempered our severer lessons with numberless illustrative remarks and recitations. He has not, I hope, forgotten another rapid review of English poetry with which he and Mr. Poole entertained me, a few years after, on our return to Paris from Versailles, where we had been spending the day together; a day to be held in remembrance by us; but which I must not now suffer, despite the charms associated with the sombre recollections of " Petit Trianon," to draw me off from the subject of my interesting rambles in the Harz, and the matters more immediately thereunto apper

taining. In the conversation to which I have just alluded, Coleridge dwelt a good deal on the circumstances which, in his opinion, must have largely contributed to the developement of Shakspeare's dramatic powers, which, great as they were by nature, owed their vast expansion, he maintained, to the cheering breath of popular applause, or the enthusiastic gale, rather, of admiration, to which there was no check in the habits or literature of society at that period. There were no writhings, moreover, he added, in those days from the stings of a trafficking criticism, against which he has elsewhere so feelingly inveighed; and I am not at all sure that it seemed to himself a thing impossible to attain the same eminence with Shakspeare, the same opportunity being afforded. But this was indeed applying to himself flattering unction.

Coleridge was more or less a transcendentalist in the greater part of what he said or wrote; whereas the string which vibrated from Shakspeare's heart was in unison with that of every human being, and therefore he was, and is, to all intelligible. He was perhaps the most practical psychologist, even Homer himself not excepted, that ever lived. Is there any presumption in saying that the modern who comes nearest to him, albeit longo intervallo, is Walter Scott?

Coleridge was certainly far from being, even at this time, an enemy to revealed religion. It might be going too far to affirm that his faith was settled. Yet he

seemed duly to appreciate the subtle scepticism of the German Universities, and, devoted as he was to metaphysical disquisitions, he was likewise fond of repeating that "an old woman's grain of faith was worth them all."

Upon one occasion, he expatiated with suitable quotations, and no small display of note and comment, on the style and matter of our old English divines, from the dawn of the Reformation to the times of South and Barrow. He gave us likewise a full and very entertaining account of the various devices to which, at one period of the English Church, the clergy were compelled to have recourse to meet the capacities of their unlettered flocks, that æra of darkness visible when it was not deemed a profanation of our churches to perform what were called "Miracle Plays" within their walls. The Scriptures were dramatized ; and the most grotesque representations even of the sacred persons of the Godhead were introduced on the stage, not only without offence, but, it would almost seem, to the edification of a generation of men who were destitute of the written word, and who were incapable of reading the Scriptures had they been set before them.

What would be thought, for instance, in the present day, of a play of Hans Sachs, which Coleridge had met with, in which Eve is represented as telling Cain and Abel to take care to have their hair combed, and

their faces and hands well washed, for that the Almighty was about to pay them a visit? Upon His approach, Eve scolds Cain for not taking off his little hat to Him, and for not giving Him his little hand to shake. Cain is represented as making a very bad hand of the Lord's Prayer; upon which Eve apologizes. In conclusion, God pays Abel the compliment of hoping to see his descendants Kings and Bishops; but that, as for Cain's children, he foresees very plainly that they will be nothing better than tinkers and shoemakers. This was, to be sure, dramatizing the Scriptures with a vengeance. But however uncouth the production of Hans Sachs may appear to modern ears, it was adapted to the taste of those for whom it was intended; and the moral of the play was not only unobjectionable, but as far superior to the vicious sentimentality of nine-tenths of the plays of Kotzebue and others of his school, as a coarse but wholesome dish and a good appetite are preferable to the pernicious delicacies with which vitiated palates seek to be pampered, and by which healthy palates are too often vitiated.

From "Miracle Plays" he proceeded to speak of the transition to familiar stories, and allegories, and quaint similes, and puns without end.

In order to illustrate, as was supposed, the inscrutable nature of the Deity, His name "Abba" was bandied through all its changes, as, for instance,

A B-B AA B-B A-backwards and forwardsforwards and backwards AB-BA. Whilst, in allusion to the degeneracy of the age, it was vociferated that now-a-days "Paradise," was a pair-of-dice; matrimony a mere matter-of-money. Was it so in the days even of Noah? Ah-No!

Jeremy Taylor was an author from whose works Coleridge always professed to have derived the greatest possible delight; and he more particularly referred us to his "Ductor Dubitantium," and his "Holy Living and Dying." He illustrated what he said of him, by quotations given with so much emphasis and kindred feeling, as bespoke a perfect brotherhood between them. Butler's Sermons were commended by him; and, as not irrelevant to this discourse on divinity, he spoke with general approbation of Burnett's "Theory of the Earth," and Brown's "Religio Medici." From his having subsequently often reverted to these works, I became desirous of being more intimately acquainted with them, and on my return to England, I was so fortunate as to find the works of Sir Thomas Brown, and Burnett's "Theory of the Earth," for sale on a London book-stall.

Jeremy Taylor's works were, most of them, in our family library, and I turned with eagerness to the following passage which Coleridge much admired, and to which it is not improbable that the author of " Brace