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HARTLEY COLERIDGE.* HARTLEY COLERIDGE was the eldest son of Samuel Taylor Cole- ridge ; and was born at Clevedon, near Bristol, in 1796. Shortly after his birth, his father removed to Keswick ; and here or at Am- bleside Hartley spent the greater part of his childhood and boy- hood. He early displayed a subtilty of thought that seemed to promise the taste and faculty for metaphysical inquiries which were his father's most prominent characteristics ; while, on the other hand, Wordsworth addressed to him, when six years old, an exquisitely beautiful poem, painting him as a child in whom the imaginative and emotional were even then developed to such a degree as to excite the mingled hopes and fears of the almost pro- phetic bard. Actually, the most striking trait of his boyhood was the excess in which he possessed the faculty of invention ; so that he may be said literally to have lived in a world of his own crea- tion. At school, tale-telling was more his serious occupation than his occasional amusement. His brother Derwent, the writer of his

life, records of him-

" His achievement, if I may so express myself, as a story-teller, was unique. It was not by a series of tales, but by one continuous tale regularly evolved, and possessing a real unity, that he enchained the attention of his auditors, night after night, as we lay in bed, (for the time and place, as well as the manner in which he carried on his witchery, might have been adopted from Scheherezade,) for a space of years, and not unfrequently for hours to- gether. 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 com- plications, with salient points recurring at intervals, with a suspended in- terest varying in intensity, and occasionally wrought up to a very high pitch, and at length a final catastrophe and conclusion. Whether in the sense of Aristotle it could be said to have had a beginning, a middle, and an end— whether there was a perfect consistency, and subordination of parts—I will not trust my recollection to decide. There was certainly. a great variety of persons sharply characterized, who appeared on the stage in combination and not merely in succession. In the conception of these, my impression is that very considerable power was evinced. He spoke without hesitation, in language as vivid as it was flowing."

It would have been strange if a boy who was the son of Cole- ridge, the nephew of Southey, and the frequent guest of Words- worth, Wilson, and the other men of genius who congregated in the neighbourhood of our English lakes, had not early felt within him poetic stirrings and tried to shape them into verse. It is in accord- ance too with all experience, that the power of improvisation described above should have failed the young poet when he ventured onwritten composition, and that, like all mortals, he had to acquire the use of his tools by effort and practice. His solid education meanwhile had not been neglected ; and though his reading was somewhat desultory, it was none the worse for that, as tending to awaken and expand his tastes and sympathies, while the illustrious men with whom he spent so much of his time were at hand to guide, correct, and enlighten. His poetical training may be said to have been completed by familiarity " with town's-folk and country-folk of every degree "; by a habit even then strong upon him of lonely wandering, not, we may be sure, =enlivened by reflection and observation ; and by the romantic scenery which was ever before his eye, and moulding his plastic nature to the perception and the love of beauty. The sequel of this charming tale is melancholy in the extreme ; seldom has brighter morning been followed by murkier, sadder noon. He was sent to Oxford at the usual age ; and, though scarcely any details of his University career are given, we are led to infer that he gave way to a habit of intoxica- tion, to such a degree, that after being elected probationary Fellow of Oriel, it was found impossible to avoid depriving him of his fellowship at the close of his probationary year. After a vain attempt, or rather intention of attempt, to support himself in London by literature, and a subsequent failure to keep a school at Ambleside, he seems to have given himself up to inactivity and despair, and to have passed the remainder of his life, which was extended to fifty years, on the banks of Grasmere, occupying or rather amusing himself by read- ing and occasionally writing for magazines. During that period, he published, in 1833, a small volume of poems, now making up with his Memoir the first of the volumes we are reviewing ; a volume of biographies, which were generally admired, and are to be republished ; and edited a single-volume edition of Massinger and Ford. These, with the poems now contained in the second vo- lume before us, constitute the whole written product of thirty years. A life so meagre in incident, so unproductive of great visible re- sults, could only have been written effectively. by telling the whole truth, tenderly indeed, and with loving, pitying sympathy for the man, but still fearlessly, and with the detail and accuracy of a scientific exposition. It there was a struggle and a manful resist- ance to temptation, it ought to have been shown, and some account given of the peculiar attraction in the bait, or the peculiar weak- ness of the individual, which ended in the fatal and complete ruin of poor Hartley's fortunes and character. If, on the other hand, his character was so deplorably weak that he fell at once irre- coverably, this fact would have its special interest to a philo- sophic inquirer. As Mr. Derwent Coleridge has written the life, Hartley's fall is a mystery, only to be partially accounted for by surmises of inherited organic weakness, to which his education had applied no preventive remedy. Surely there are men living who were Hartley Coleridge's contemporaries at Oxford, and who could * Poems, by Hartley Coleridge. With a Memoir of his Life, by his Brother. Two volumes. Published by Moxon. Essaysand Marginalia, by Hartley Coleridge. Two volumes. Published by Kamas

have told Derwent something of the process by which the kinsman of poets and philosophers sank from one depth of degradation to another, still retaining his fine powers of mind and noble qualities, till he realized the line of the ancient satirist-

" Virtutem videant intabescantque

Surely, too, that after life of thirty years, when he was the

favourite and boon companion of Cumberland and West- moreland, must have been richer in anecdote and remembered talk than the meagre pages before us would lead us to infer. Had Derwent Coleridge not stood on his clerical purity, and shrunk from soiling the whiteness of his neckcloth by the company of publicans and sinners, he would have produced a work of far more literary ability and of far profounder interest. He might have given to it something of that deep pathos which Hogarth reaches by blending traits of loveliness and purity with scenes of filth, riot, and debauchery. But besides being a clergy- man and having strict notions of what is due to his cloth, he labours under another disadvantage, of having only once seen his brother in the interval from his settling at Grasmere till the ill- ness that preceded his death. Of thisperiod we have consequently no detail; and the life of a man like Hartley Coleridge is all de- tail, and can only be told properly by those who are in the habit of constant free intercourse with him. This defect would not have been felt had Derwent substituted for a regular biography a series of his brother's letters, with connecting links of narrative. This, with a plain statement of his mode of hfe, extenuating nought nor putting down aught in malice, would, we are quite sure, have pro- duced upon the reader much more the effect which the real man produced upon all who knew him,—a tender regard, in which admi- ration and affection were touchingly blended with pity and regret. The letters that are given do more, in our opinion, to sustain Hart- ley's reputation for talent and humour than his poems. We quote one written to Derwent in 1821. "Do not think yourself obliged to me for this letter, though I intend it for a very kind one. Don't be frightened, now—I've no more intention of beg- ging a favour than conferring one. I'm not going to dun you nor to give you good advice ; yet, after all, I can't pretend to draw a bill upon your gratitude, for I have several motives for writing that take precedence of that oldfashioned one—kindness to you. You must know, then, that I do not, in the course of the day talk half as much nonsense as my health requires •; ,consequence whereof, so great an accumulation of that substance takes place upon my brain that the vessels occasionally discharge their contents in my most serious conversation—nay, in my gravest compositions. This truly mortifying accident occurred on the day whereon we parted, in the course of a very interesting discourse on capital punishment. * * * I am thoroughly convinced there is nothing so wholesome for mind and body as talking non- sense. Writing it is not half so good ; it's like sending sal volatile by the waggon with the cork out : but, situated as we are, what can one do better ? Nonsense, however, should never be written except to one's very intimate friends,—good folks, whose careful memories can supply the proper looks and tones, and whose imaginations can restore our stalest good things to their original freshness. Even a pun does not look well on paper ; it's so like de- liberate villany : and then its orthographical imperfections are so open to the gaze of a censorious world. A lie is still worse—without the solemn face, it is mere vapid impudence. But a funny thing—that son and heir of laugh- ter—which never grows old, and might be as good a hundred years hence as at the moment of utterance—alas, alas pen and ink are its destruction. Woful it is to reflect, that of all the wonders that you and I and the Mauro* have produced in that way—not one can be of the slightest benefit to pos- terity. The words, indeed, may be handed down from generation to geno- ration, like relic bones and sacred of the saints (most of who by the way, never pared their nails at a l) t—o OTOTO Ira' cc—they :1 t Cr 1 nail-parings (nO ' will work no miracles. The wine will be drawn and the bare lees be left this vault to boast of. Two things, therefore, must the world despair of enjoying —a printed collection of our FUNNY THINGS, and a polyglott edition of Joe Miller: the latter, by general confession, incomprehensible to all but John Bull, and the former to all but our own :Jingle two selves—like the ladies' coronation-tickets not transferable. This is a pity ; but what remedy ? Let them be like the Druidical mysteries—qua tradere tiefas. We shall never forget them. I don't how it is, but I can never laugh at anything but what is exquisitely bad, anappearancepearan at least, purely accidental. In- deed, a premeditated funny thing is worse than a premeditated piece of sen- sibility. Wit to me is hardly ever laughable, because it is an exertion of the faculties ; and humour, true humour, is too nearly connected with thought. I may laugh at it at first hearing, or so long as it has the effect of surprise ; but if it will bear thinking of, I cannot recur to it whenever my sides want a shaking. Few persons, I believe, enjoy the humorous more than myself; and the higher the humour the greater is my delight ; but as far as the mere excitement of the risible muscles is concerned, the coarsest drollery will answerjust as well. I never laugh now at Hogarth, or Fielding, or Cervantes, or if I do it is at their meanest jokes, unless in sympathy with others. But at our old funny things I can laugh by myself for an hour together ; nay, they furnish me with a reservoir of laughter for all needful occasions. If ever any of those jokes which must be laughed at ' are obtruded upon me, I have but to recal the image of you kicking about the stone in my aunt's court, and complaining how you did hurt yourself,' (I can hardly write for thinking of it,) and I gratify the joker to the very altitude of his ambition."

The Essays have much of the offhand and gossipy character of letters ; never long pursuing a path marked out beforehand, but rushing from side to side wherever a wild flower or an insect on the wing tempts the fancy of the rover, whose lively sensibility and reflective cast of mind lend beauty. and value to his most transient impressions and his most devious wanderings. Then the subject he starts is never treated exhaustively, but the side which is presented is illustrated by quick flashes of wit, fancy, and feeling, and he hurries off at the spur of association, ra- pidly glancing at every interesting object that comes across him, and giving more the impression of first-rate conversation than of essays carefully composed in solitary study. They are not the work of a man who has so trained himself to habits of profound and accurate thinking, as that his mind unconsciously and spon- taneously reaches conclusions by a method, and contemplates truths in their most universal form ; but of one who is rather indulging in reverie than exercising thought, and the sequence of whose ideas is • A playful name for his 'leather.

rather a curious and suggestive study than valuable as leading to any positive results. To persons who are fond of reading aloud, they offer exactly the qualities needed : they are clever, brilliant, allusive, kindly, suggestive of varied and endless talk, and do not suffer by such interruption, being themselves quite as discursive and fragmentary. Hartley Coleridge is hardly a humorist, for his

quaintness is scarcely more than phraseological, and is the play, of

intellect rather than the bias of character : still, though his motley is only skin-deep, it is effectively worn, and carries off triumph- antly much that would not be saved by either its wit or wisdom. He seems to have been a close and attentive reader ; and his mar- ginal notes are judicious, shrewd, and well worthy of preservation. Probably he would have been greater in the department of criti- cism than in any other, had his power of work been equal to his

talents; for his taste was good, his relish of literature-keen, and

his reading extensive, while his quaint expressions, his lively fancy, and his racy idiomatic English, would have powerfully aided him as a writer of articles ; nor would his various divergen- cies, under prudent editorial restriction, have failed to give to his criticisms something of an original and independent interest. His Poems, which are of a slight and occasional character, with the exception of a youthful dramatic fragment, are chiefly interest- ing as a testimony to the struggle that was to the last going on within him between his better nature and the habit to which he had allowed himself to become enslaved. The language and metre are generally excellent, superior to the substance they embody, ex- cept where strong personal feeling gives strength and precision to the sentiment. The two following are eminently beautiful, and very touching in their personal allusion to the writer.

"How shall a man foredoom'd to lone estate, Untimely old, irreverently grey, Much like a patch of dusky snow in May,

Dead sleeping in a hollow, all too late— How shall so poor a thing congratulate

The blest completion of a patient wooing, Or how commend a younger man for doing 'What ne'er to do lath been his fault or fate ?

There is a fable, that I once did read, Of a bad angel, that was someway good, And therefore on the brink of heaven he stood, Looking each way, and no way could proceed; Till at the last he purged away his sin By loving all the joy he saw within."

" ML-LT131 DILEXIT.

"She sat and wept beside His feet ; the weight Of sin oppress'd her heart ; for all the blame, And the poor malice of the worldly shame,

To her was past, extinct, and out of date—

Only the sin remain'd—the leprous state: She would be melted by the heat of love, By fires far fiercer than are blown to prove And purge the silver ore adulterate. She sat and wept, and by her untress'd hair Still wiped the feet she was so blest to touch ; And He wiped off the soiling of despair From her sweet soul, because she loved so much.

I am a sinner, full of doubts and fears ; Make me a humble thing of love and tears."

The following lines were written a few months before his death in a copy of his Poems : their title alludes to his long-cherished intention of publishing another volume.

" FOLLOWED BY ANOTHER.'

"Oh! woful impotence of weak resolve, Recorded rashly to the writer's shame. Days pass away, and Time's large orbs revolve, And every day beholds me still the same; Till oft neglected purpose loses aim, And hope becomes a flat unheeded lie. And conscience, weary with the work of blame, In seeming slumber droops her wistful eye, As if she would resign her unregarded ministry."

The union of utter impotence of will, of which drunkenness seems to us to have been a symptom as well as of course a reacting cause, with fine qualities of heart, high intellectual powers, and strong religious sentiments, will surprise no one whose experience of mankind is not very limited. It is not within our province to dogmatize on such matters, but the perusal of these poems, in con- nexion with what we know of Hartley Coleridge's life, has often sug- gested to us the consolatory hope, vague as it may be, that in many cases where the will has become quite powerless to direct the life, the inner spirit is entirely divorced from participation in vicious habits, and undergoes a process of purification by the very horror and loathing and remorse with which it regards the sensual and brutish companion which a Mezentian punishment attaches to it during this mortal pilgrimage.