SAMUEL TAYLOR COLERIDGE (b. 1772, d. 1834) was born at Ottery St. Mary, in Devonshire. He was the son of the vicar; but, while yet a child, he was left an orphan, and was sent to Christ's Hospital, London, where he received his education. Even then he was a great reader, devouring greedily every book within his reach. Passing to Cambridge, where he remained for two years, he neglected the studies he ought to have attended to, and allowed his mind to wander among the mazes of religion, philosophy, and politics. At last he left the University, and enlisted in a regiment of dragoons, under the name of Comberbatch; but he was soon found out, and by the aid of his friends was released from soldier life. Next we find him, with Southey and other young men, endeavouring to found what he called a "Pantisocracy," to be carried out in North America. This was to be a kind of republic, in which everybody was to exert himself for the common good. Want of money, however, prevented this Utopian scheme from being carried into execution. Coleridge, always thoughtless about the future, now married a young lady, whose sister became the wife of Southey, and settling for a while in Somersetshire, he wrote some of his finest poems. Through the kindness of the famous potters, the Wedgwoods of Staffordshire, he was enabled to visit Germany, and on his return in 1800, he took up his abode with Southey at Keswick, in the Lake Country. In 1804, he spent nine months in Malta, as secretary to the Governor of that island; and on his return to London, delivered his celebrated Lectures on Shakespeare. By this time he had taken to opium, and, under the influence of that drug, had become a dreamer. In 1810 he left his wife and children to the care of Southey, and went to London, where he found a home with his friend Gilman, the surgeon of Highgate, who was afterwards the means of weaning Coleridge from his opium-eating, or rather laudanum-drinking. During the last nineteen years of his life he was regarded as the great authority on all subjects bearing on literature. He died at Highgate in 1834.

SAMUEL TAYLOR COLERIDGE.

139

The works of Coleridge show us how much greater a poet he might have been than what he really was. His poems are, for the most part, but beautiful beginnings— roses partly blown, revealing by appearance and perfume how delicious the full blown flowers would afterwards have become. The poet, however, was dreamy, idle, procrastinating, continually planning magnificent works, of which he seldom wrote a single line. Of his complete poems, his translation of Schiller's Wallenstein is considered one of the best. This poem is very beautiful in itself, but Coleridge rendered it still more attractive by the charming touches which his own genius gave it. The Ancient Mariner, written in the old English ballad style, is the oftenest read of all his writings. It contains the story of an old sailor, as told by himself to a wedding guest, who, through the strange influence of the mariner's eye, is made, despite his own desire to get away, to stand still and hear the dreadful story to the end:-A vessel leaves a sea-port town, and the voyage is prosperous and pleasant, till a storm is encountered. After the storm, and in an evil hour, the sailor shoots an albatross—a bird which seamen consider a sign of good fortune. Ere long the vessel sails into a quiet sea, where there is neither wind nor wave; where the sun glows like a ball of fire; where the water is green with decay, and—

Here the ship remains motionless, and the sailor who shot the albatross is regarded as the cause of this misfortune. The crew are dying of thirst, when a phantom ship draws nigh, and two spectres are seen gambling with dice for the lives of the crew of the mariner's ship. The shadowy vessel vanishes; the crew, one by one, drop dead upon the deck; their bodies lie about, each face wearing a ghastly grin, and each eye fixed upon the mariner, who alone is spared. At length he feels repentent for the evil he has done, and the angelic spirits, pitying his sad case, make the dead bodies rise to their feet, and attend to the duties of sailors. They hoist the sails, and, although

there is no wind, the ship moves on till she comes to the regions where winds prevail. These speed her on her way, and at length she nears the mariner's native land. A pilot comes out from the shore, but, ere he can approach, the ship suddenly sinks, leaving the mariner struggling with the waves. He is rescued by the pilot. The memory of the agonies he endured during that awful time becomes occasionally unbearable, and his heart burns within him till his ghastly tale be told; and hence the detention of the wedding guest.

The

Of the incomplete poems, Christabel and Kubla Khan are the principal; and of his lyrics, that named Love, and sometimes Genevieve-one of the loveliest and most melodious little poems in the English language. writings of Coleridge are all notable for graceful imagery and sweetness of expression-the subjects of his narrative poems more especially being the unreal and often weird imaginings of a dreamy poetical mind.

FRAGMENT OF A DREAM.

"The shadow of the dome of pleasure
Floated midway on the waves;
Where was heard the mingled measure
From the fountain and the caves.

It was a miracle of rare device,

A sunny pleasure-dome with caves of ice!
A damsel with a dulcimer

In a vision once I saw :

It was an Abyssinian maid,

And on her dulcimer she played,

Singing of Mount Abora.

Could I revive within me

Her symphony and song,

To such deep delight 'twould win me,
That with music loud and long,

I would build that dome in air,

That sunny dome, those caves of ice!

And all who heard should see them there,

And all should cry, Beware! Beware!

His flashing eyes, his floating hair!

Weave a circle round him thrice,

And close your eyes with holy dread,

For he on honey-dew hath fed,

And drunk the milk of paradise."-Kubla Khan.

ROBERT SOUTHEY (b. 1774, d. 1843) was the son of a draper, and was born at Bristol. Through the kindness of an uncle, he was sent to Westminster School, but was afterwards expelled for writing a paper against flogging, which was published in a magazine conducted by the senior boys. At Oxford, like his fellow-student Coleridge, he paid little attention to the studies of a University course, and gave them up altogether at the end of two years, but not before he had become the intimate friend of Coleridge, with whose views in religion and politics his own were at that time identical. It will be remembered that Southey took part in attempting to form the "Pantisocracy." He published a book of poems in order to raise sufficient funds to set the wild scheme agoing. It was unsuccessful, and so also was his next poem, Joan of Arc, which Southey himself imagined would be eagerly purchased. He was now reduced to poverty, and had to depend on his mother for the necessaries of life. In Bristol, he became sincerely attached to a young lady, whom he determined to marry. To divert his thoughts, his uncle took him to Lisbon; but the well-meant scheme proved useless, for he had secretly married the object of his love, just before setting sail from Bristol. On his return to England he tried the law, did not like it, and took to poetry again. His reputation soon began to increase; and, after a second visit to Lisbon, and six months' occupation as private secretary to the Irish Chancellor of the Exchequer, he finally settled at Keswick, and there laboured so incessantly at literary work that his brain at last gave way. Some idea of his industry may be formed when it is stated that his published works amount to one hundred and nine volumes. Southey was made Poet Laureate in 1813, and in 1835 received a pension of £300 a year. During the last three years of his life he was an imbecile. Wordsworth says that when he visited him, "his eyes flashed for a moment with their former brightness, but he sank into the state in which I had found him, patting with both hands his

books affectionately like a child." He died in 1843, and was buried in the churchyard of Crossthwaite. It is worthy of remark that while Wordsworth, Coleridge, and Southey were in their younger years enthusiastic republicans, they all became staunch supporters of the crown before they died.

Southey's longer poems are curiosities in their way. The scenes are laid in nearly every part of the globe-in England, Wales, France, Spain, Arabia, India, Mexico. The most deserving of notice are-Wat Tyler, Joan of Arc, Madoc Roderick, the Last of the Goths, Thalaba, and the Curse of Kehama. Wat Tyler is a poem illustrating the revolutionary principles to which Southey was so attached in his early days. In Joan of Arc he takes his heroine to the land of spirits, and shows her how oppressors meet with the doom they so richly deserve. Madoc is the story of a Welsh prince, who is said to have discovered America. Roderick, the Last of the Goths, is a poem in blank verse, giving an account of the last Gothic King of Spain, whose oppressions brought about the loss of his kingdom. Thalaba, also in blank verse, is peculiar in that the lines are of unequal length. It is an Arabian tale, in which dreadful monsters are introduced in great numbers. The greatest poem of them all, however, is the Curse of Kehama, written in irregular lines like Thalaba, but in rhyme. It is founded on the superstitions and mythology of the Hindoos. The principal scenes are laid in Paradise-"under the roots of the ocean"-in the highest heaven-and in the lowest hell-whilst its characters are, with one exception, such as are never to be met with in this matter-of-fact world of ours.

Southey's poems are of two kinds-the first, long and ambitious; the second, after Wordsworth's middle style, short and simple. To the first kind belong his epics, all of which have just been named. They are splendidly written, but, as a recent critic says, they are merely "poetic shows." Everything is picturesque, gorgeous, correct, but tiresome also, because we have no sympathy with the characters introduced, They are of a different